Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

On the last day of school, all of them had gathered together in the classroom – Mademoiselle Bustier had entrusted them to lock up, and left them alone. Everyone was sprawled across the desks and on the floor, discussing their plans for the summer holidays – Max was going for summer schools for robotics, Kim said he had plans with Ondine for athletic meets, and Mylene was getting together with environmental groups all summer. Adrien said he had to model for his father’s new line (and blushed when everyone agreed he’d look fantastic), Max and Marinette made plans to get together for the new Ultimate Mechastrike game. They invited Adrien, who tried to say maybe – but Marinette seemed determined. “I’ll make sure you come,” she said. “You missed the last one too!”

“You’re an amazing friend, Marinette,” he said.

She smiled at him ruefully. Before he had time to decode the meaning of her smile, someone suggested they play a game of truth and dare.

“Boo!” declared Alya at once. “You all know everything about each other. Everyone takes dares here, and all the truth questions get sidestepped.”

“Okay, alright – let’s do only truths!” suggested Rose.

“How does that work?” Nino asked.

“Everyone gets to ask one question, and everyone has to answer.”

“Oh –” said Alya. “Pas mal. Let’s do that.”

Everyone argued all over again – Nino wanted to know more of the rules, Ivan was confused about what kind of questions they should ask, and Luka didn’t really want to play, but he was alright as long as he was allowed to strum his guitar alongside.

“It’s easy!” said Rose. “So – for example, I ask, ‘Who here has fallen in love before?’ And all of you answer.”

Everyone giggled – Ivan and Mylene simultaneously saying of course they were in love. Alya teased Nino by pretending she had never loved before, and he laughed. Kim said he never had, which was patently untrue but at least Ondine wasn’t here to hear it. To Adrien’s surprise, Marinette said yes, which made him wonder who she was in love with – he had to be brilliant, if Marinette had fallen in love with him. Tactfully, Adrien said no – he didn’t want to be questioned further, and he definitely didn’t want to say he had a crush on Ladybug. It reeked of being star struck.

Kim then demanded if anyone in the group had been drunk before. Juleka grinned and said she’d worked her way through her aunt’s wine collection one night with Luka. Rose and Alya said they never had. Adrien admitted that at some brand parties he’d had a bit too much wine – with his father’s permission, naturally! And all the boys said they’d tried alcohol together. Everyone turned to Marinette, who looked pink in the ears.

“Yes,” she admitted. “I have.”

“When?” demanded Alya. “Why have I not heard of it?”

“The question didn’t ask for details!” Marinette exclaimed. “I don’t have to answer you.”

To which Ivan promptly responded by asking everyone for details. Since everyone else had already given them, once again, all eyes swiveled to Marinette, who definitely looked very pink.

“Fine!” she said. “I did once sneak out with some of my cousins, and all of us polished off a large amount of wine. It wasn’t good wine, we were in the campagne, everyone got soundly scolded, and yes, I snuck out.”

“Damn, DC!” said Kim.

“Perfect little Marinette, eh?” Alya elbowed her. “I bet you were the one who organised it all.”

Everyone burst into giggles, while Adrien surveyed Marinette. She’d gone even pinker at Alya’s comment, which made him think Alya wasn’t off the mark. It was funny to think of Marinette as someone who snuck out of home, got drunk and fell in love with people.

But it was Mylene’s turn, and she had a question ready. “Who was everyone’s first kiss?”

Alya said she’d kissed someone from her previous school for the first time. Nino pretended to be outraged by this, admitting later that his first kiss was definitely Alya. Mylene and Ivan had no secrets to share, and neither did Nath and Mark. Juleka confessed that she’d actually kissed an upperclassman before she and Rose had gotten together. Kim’s ears went red and he fooled no one by saying he’d kissed someone from his athletic meets. Max was the real surprise, saying he’d found someone at his summer camp. Alix announced she had no intention to kiss anyone, and she wouldn’t do it for the future either.

Once again, Adrien said no. For one thing – he hadn’t been kissed as Adrien, and for another – he didn’t… remember it. And whatever was between Kagami and him… it had fizzled out with his superhero responsibilities. There had been no time for kissing.

Everybody once again turned to Marinette. Adrien looked at her curiously – sincerely hoping that he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been kissed yet.

“Um,” she said, and she looked perfectly adorable. “I kissed a friend of mine from outside of school.”

There was a silence.

“Who?” demanded Alya.

“Wait, you don’t know either?” asked Adrien.

Marinette was blushing till the ends of her hair. “It was outside of school! And not important.”

Not important. Adrien wondered who Marinette could have kissed that was not important.

“Was it Luka?” demanded Mylene.

“Oh, no,” said Marinette. “We didn’t – we aren’t – well, the less said the better. It wasn’t him.”

“But if it wasn’t Luka,” began Kim, “Who was it, DC? You have to tell me, I have to threaten him for trying his moves on you.”

“Mon dieu!” said Marinette, alarmed. “It’s no one anyone knows.”

“Even I?” asked Nino. “We’ve known each other since we were kids, Marinette!”

“Believe it or not,” said Marinette, flaring up just a little uncharacteristically. “I have a life outside of school.”

“No, you don’t!” said Alya.

“Don’t I?” challenged Marinette.

“That I don’t know about?” she insisted.

Marinette huffed, and Adrien bit the inside of his cheek with his smile. Who could Marinette have possibly kissed that even Alya didn’t know about?

Marinette went pinker under his gaze. He didn’t turn away, looking at her curiously. She wouldn’t tell him – but she might tell Chat Noir.

Chapter Text

They weren’t best friends or anything – but he dropped in on her once or twice every few months. She gave him something warm to drink on solo patrols, and it was easy to talk to her. It was easy to talk to her in general – especially when he was Chat Noir. He didn’t know why Marinette stopped being a stumbling mess when he had his mask on, but he didn’t question it too much.

He hadn’t intended to go to her during the summer. The whole thing was, retrospectively, not one of his smarter moments.

Sun set on the school in half breaths. Summer had begun – the days were promising to be longer than ever.

The girls left soon after their game was over. Marinette had directed the class in cleaning teams, they’d locked the classroom and left the key with the guard. All of Adrien’s classmates were excited about the coming of summer and Adrien was…

He couldn’t help it. Summer didn’t mean anything except long modelling shoots and trips with his dad to boring parties with no one to talk to – except for Chloe. Summer just spelled… boredom. He could probably drop in on Marinette once or twice, Maybe there would be an akuma attack or two to keep him company and have him spending time with Ladybug – and even with Chat Noir’s lightness, he couldn’t look forward to akuma attacks.

But he shoved these thoughts aside while walking with Nino to his locker. All the girls had done the smart thing and emptied their stuff during recess, which left the boys alone. They were all weighing in on what Ivan should be getting Mylene for her birthday, and no one had good ideas.

“Chemistry set,” said Max, pushing his glasses up.

“That’s bullshit, Max,” said Kim. “Take her swimming!”

“Now that’s absurd,” said Nino with a grin. “Mates, you’re all going about it wrong. Girls like flowers, and chocolates. Big gestures!”

“Or small and sentimental,” nodded Adrien.

“And how would you know?” asked Nathaniel, nudging him with his shoulder.

Adrien rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to be a genius to know that, Nath. Girls are like us – they like things that make them feel loved.”

At once all the boys hooted and teased. Adrien blushed pink, but stood by what he said. They must have been feeling rowdy – Kim took a running jump to touch the top of the door frame when they reached the locker rooms. Not wanting to embarrass himself, Adrien didn’t even try – but Nino fell on his face as he did. Naturally, everyone laughed.

“Idiot,” said Adrien fondly, giving him a hand up.

Nino grinned. They opened out their lockers and started the process of stuffing their books into their bags. Adrien glanced briefly at the pink stickers on Marinette’s locker.

“Hey, who do you think Marinette kissed?” he asked the room at large.

All the boys paused.

“It wasn’t me,” said Max.

“No one was thinking it was you,” said Kim.

“No one thinks it was you, either,” Nathaniel shot back.

“It could be me,” said Kim with a grin. “DC and I were close when we were kids.”

“I don’t think it was any of us,” said Ivan.

“That’s not possible,” said Nino, shaking his head. “Marinette’s been friends with us for forever. We haven’t changed classes since fifth grade. She can’t have known anyone to kiss.”

Adrien frowned. “You’re certain she doesn’t have any friends outside of us?”

“Alya’s the first friend she made outside of us!” said Nino. “It had to have been one of us. And god knows we’ve all had a crush on Marinette at some point.”

Now that was news. Adrien turned away from his locker, closing it shut. “You’ve all had a crush on Marinette?”

Even Kim had the decency to look a little embarrassed. Adrien gave a low whistle. “C’est incroyable. It’s not a joke! You’ve all crushed on her?”

“To be honest, we were wondering when you were going to crush on her,” admitted Marc.

“Wh – I – seriously?”

“It’s just how it goes,” nodded Nathaniel. “She’s too nice, too friendly. It’s really hard not to like her. No one except Nino acted on it though. It’s stupid to even try – unless you’re akumatised,” he added thoughtfully. “It would be like trying to love a God.”

Adrien blinked.

Marinette.

The one who had tripped while over her own shoes bringing croissants to Chat Noir.

“I only acted on it because Adrien made me,” sighed Nino. “It was stupid. But I guess he didn’t know. He was new here too.”

Everyone nodded wisely.

“Attendez, attendez!” said Adrien. “You aren’t supposed to act on your crushes on Marinette?”

“What do you think are the chances of Marinette liking you back?” asked Max.

“Er –”

“One in one –”

“No, we don’t need the numbers, Markov!” said Nino hastily.

“Not all of us think of her as a goddess,” said Ivan, thankfully sensible. “She’s just… many things, you know? She’s kind, she sews, bakes, she used to figure skate the best out of all of us and she has never scored low in any classes, and she’s friends with everyone. And I’ve never seen her afraid. Not even during akuma attacks!”

Adrien frowned again. “One moment! If she kissed someone – and it had to be one of you – then clearly she had to have liked one of you.”

Everyone looked at each other. Adrien instantly regretted saying anything, because a low feeling of suspicion had settled on everybody.

“Or, it could be you,” smirked Nino. “You’re an outsider.”

“Ouch,” said Adrien. “Hurtful.”

“Wait – couldn’t it be Adrien?” Kim demanded. “It sure isn’t me. God knows Dupain-Cheng has been annoyed with me since that one time I pushed her into the pool.”

Max frowned. “It could be Adrien.”

“No, it couldn’t,” said Adrien firmly. “Marinette’s a good friend.”

“Well, then who is it?” asked Kim, frustrated.

“You know, it’s funny,” said Ivan slowly. “Mylene messaged me the same thing.”

Nino looked up. “The girls don’t know?”

“I think not,” said Ivan with a frown.

“Oh no,” sighed Nino. “Alya is going to go mad.”

For the record, Adrien did express his disapproval. As her friend, and her secret superhero friend, he did his duty. He said, “For the record, I think this is a bad idea,” and said nothing else besides.

TheLadyBlogger: u guys better know what ur doing.

Mylie <3: We don’t because you haven’t told us anything.

THE CHIEN: we’re going to find out who marinette kissed.

Alix: are you saying it wasn’t one of u bozos

Ivan: that’s the thing!! It really isn’t one of us.

adrienagresteofficial: For the record, I think this is a bad idea.

Considering his duty done, Adrien sat back, and silently promised Marinette that he felt bad for being so curious but he was so curious. He listened in on the conversations of these old friends, with Nino saying it might be that boy from the trip to campagne, that it might be someone from the skating rink lessons, that it might be the one senior who had assisted the teacher in art classes. Despite all lack of evidence, the conspiracy theory that it was Adrien was gaining traction. Alix demanded more information, Kim wanted everyone to tackle Marinette separately.

theDudeLahiffe: i still say it could be Adrien.

adrienagresteofficial: For the last time, Nino. It wasn’t me.

TheLadyBlogger: it wasn’t Adrien, Nino.

julekaaa: We’re in summer vacation though. When are we going to needle her anyway?

This was true. Adrien wasn’t going to be able to get out of his house at all, Max was heading for a summer school on robotics, Kim would be busy with athletics meets with Ondine, and Mylene was meeting with her groups of environmental activists. Alix said she might make some time, but she was going on vacation with her family – so it was going to have to be during the tail end of summer. Juleka and Rose promised to try, but Adrien sincerely doubted that they’d get much out of her. And Nino was out of the question.

THE CHIEN: well, we will use this group when we can. everyone try to see if you remember anything or anyone marinette could have smooched

Alix: you’re disgusting, chien

Adrien put his phone away.

“Heh, you’re still thinking about it, aren’t you?” asked Plagg.

“I didn’t know everyone had a crush on her!” said Adrien. “That’s insane, right?”

“Everyone has a crush on you, too, Monsieur Apple-cheeks.”

“Shut up, Plagg,” said Adrien, going pink. “Anyway they like… Adrien. Adrien doesn’t even get to go out during the summer.”

“Easily remedied, though?” said Plagg, his eyebrows waggling. “You should go to her. Ask her who it was. She’d tell you as Chat Noir. She’s your friend, after all.”

“Plagg!” said Adrien, changing from pink to red. “That’s… that’s wrong.”

“Whatever,” said Plagg. “You will owe me cheese when you go anyway.”

Adrien sat there, uncomfortable. His phone chimed again, and he glanced at the screen.

Nathalie: your father and I will be busy today. Dinner will be served at six.

Unthinking, he gave the command: “Plagg, Transformez moi!”

He leapt into the night. The moon was shining brightly, and it wasn’t really a patrol night. He couldn’t help it – he needed… people. He needed to be outside. It was going to be three months of being at home, and he knew he should ration his time outside – but he couldn’t help it.

Anyone with two ounces of sense would have told him to not think about one thing so much while he was transformed, because inevitably, he found himself outside her house. He looked at the brightly lit balcony and the pretty flags she’d hung up, with the little plants and all of the pink pillows, and watched to see her come out.

“Oui Maman!” she called loudly. She took a deep breath and lifted the large garbage bags that were on her side and trotted off to the alleyway of the bakery.

She looked really pretty at night, he realized. The streetlights bounced off of her jet black hair, her freckles in sharp relief. Not Ladybug, but –

She tripped.

Instinctively, Chat Noir swooped down. She was sprawled on the floor, and looked quite irritated. Naturally, he felt like pushing her buttons.

“You seemed to have a lot on your hands,” he said charmingly.

Marinette blew hair out of her face. “Save it, alley cat. Are you going to help or not?”

There she was. Not Marinette of many crushes, but Marinette.

He gave her his hand and pulled her up. “That was the one hundredth time today,” she groaned. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“I was only curious as to when you would be falling,” he said with another grin. She elbowed him.

“C’est génial!” he exclaimed sarcastically. “Is this how you treat the saviour of Paris? Very catty of you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Come on and help, if you’re going to laugh at me. Get that garbage bag.”

He obliged, but only because his curiosity was mounting. Maybe he could find out about her first kiss.

“Do you want a cup of hot chocolate?” she asked, once they were done. “Maman would have put some in my room. If you have the time, that is. I don’t know why a superhero like you is out and about anyway.”

“What can I say, Princess, you’re just good company.”

She rolled her eyes, but instructed him to meet her at the balcony. “It’s too hot inside,” she said. “And I don’t want you pawing through my things.” Naturally, he felt like doing exactly that but he managed to refrain. When she came upstairs, she had two mugs and a thermos of hot chocolate, along with an assortment of croissants.

“I thought you liked macarons?” he asked, as they settled down on a blanket with the plate between them.

“You should know less about civilians.”

“Not when they are civilians like you,” he said, leaning in and exaggerating his wide-eyed-ness.

She pushed him away with a laugh. “As Chloe would say, totalement ridicule! Keep to yourself, Chat Noir.”

“Alright, Princess,” he said, pretending to be contrite. “But you should know I know a lot more about you than you’d be happy with.”

She poured out two mugs of hot chocolate. Something about her was a little tense in that minute, and she said, “What do you mean?”

“Your friends think very highly of you, you know?” he said.

“And why are you talking to my friends anyway?”

“That’s for me to know,” he said importantly. “Sometimes, when you’re a superhero you hear things. Things you have to investigate. Terrible things, dangerous things. Catastrophic things, even.”

She burst into laughter. “You’re being ridiculous again!”

“There are some cataclysmic rumours about you, Marinette.”

She laughed more. “Is this the rumour that I kicked out the street cat? Because it’s about to be true.”

“Worse,” he said dramatically. “The gossip mill says you have kissed no one.”

“Mais oui, c’est terrible!” she cried. “How could they have found out?”

“Nothing escapes Chat Noir,” he said solemnly. “You’d better remedy it by kissing me so that you can say you kissed a superhero.”

“How do you know I haven’t already?” she said slyly. “You aren’t the only hero in Paris.”

“Who?” he demanded, at once. “Who, who, who, who?”

“It’s none of your business who I have kissed, Chaton,” she hummed with good cheer. “You’d not even be the first person to ask.”

“But I am so curious now,” he pleaded. “I must know.”

“First, you must answer something,” she responded. “Why are you out? There aren’t any akumas, and I don’t see Ladybug patrolling with you. You usually drop by after an akuma.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Without giving away too much of my identity – I have strict parents. And now that summer has started…”

“You won’t get a lot of chances to go out,” she finished.

“Essentially.”

“Hmm,” she said. “In that case… are you going to increase your patrols?”

He frowned. “I could.”

“You should,” she nodded. “I can barely stand to stay at home for a week without needing to go out. You should increase patrols. Ladybug wouldn’t mind.”

“It’s less about Ladybug minding and more about not really having anywhere to be with the costume on,” he sighed, ruffling his hair.

That gave Marinette a pause. She considered for a moment, drank from her mug of hot chocolate and then hesitantly suggested, “Come here.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Really?” he asked.

“No one has to know,” she said. “I won’t kick you to the alley, much as you deserve it. And… we’re friends. Of a sort. If you promise to be quiet and let me stitch, I don’t see why not. I might even tell you who I kissed.”

And then she smiled. Her freckles looked even prettier now, if that was possible.

Marinette is many things.

“Hmm,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “You surprised me.”

She frowned, but didn’t prod him. “I don’t really have much to look forward to either this summer,” she told him. “Alya will come over some times, but I refuse to go out with her and Nino. I hate being a bone in sandwich. And Adrien isn’t going to be there, so that’s doubly certain I’m not coming.”

“Adrien?” he questioned.

“Agreste? He’s my friend,” she sighed. “But his father is like yours, I suppose. Without him, there’s no real point hanging out with Nino and Alya. They’ll keep making doe eyes at each other. Everyone else has plans. I only have baking to do.”

“Super-powered baking, I’m sure.”

She laughed. “Finish your croissants, Chat Noir.”

“As the princess commands.”

She looked out into Paris. “You’re nonsensical,” she shook her head.

It was quiet as they watched the moon.

“Seriously, who was it?” he burst, finally, and she started laughing all over again.

She batted his inquiries rather smartly, he had to admit, and they talked about other things for some time – her preference for macarons, how she liked baking cream puffs, and whether or not she would make some for him. “Beat me at UMS and we’ll see,” she told him, which meant he was not going to see the cream puffs until the summer was over. When he left, she bagged the remaining croissants for him, with a slice of cheese.

Adrien got home in one piece, and instead of opening the bag with the croissant collapsed in his bed. “De-transformation,” he murmured, and Plagg reappeared.

“How was meeting your girlfriend?” smirked Plagg.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” said Adrien, but his ears were pink. 

His phone chimed and he picked it up to look at his messages.

+50 messages from WHO KISSED DUPAIN CHENG

THE CHIEN: well, ur all going to have to pull your weight and try to find out who marinette kissed and when. i gotta know cause i gotta kick his ass.

Adrien put the phone away again.

I might even tell you who I kissed.

Well, he could try. For Kim.

Chapter Text

“Kim?” he asked, continuing in his assigned office of the night – that is, to braid Marinette’s hair.

“No.”

“That other boy – The Gamer. He’s single, right? Max!”

“No.”

“One of the girls, then.”

“All of them have boyfriends or girlfriends.”

His fingers paused. Her neck fell back and she looked up at him with a cheeky grin, and he poked her bare shoulder, trying to press a bit of shame into her. “Homewrecker,” he commented.

“Sure.”

“That robot. Markov,” said Chat Noir, finishing the braid with a flourish and wrapping a hair tie around it.

“I’m concerned about how many of my classmates you know by name.”

“That wasn’t a no!” he exclaimed, jumping up from the stool and pointing an accusing finger at her. She burst into laughter.

“You have me,” she said. “I kissed Markov. It was sublime, a lot better than anything you could offer, Chat Noir.”

“You joke, but at least I have kissed someone, and it’s not a robot.”  

“Very funny,” she said. “Are you done with the macarons? Should I get some more?”

“Um,” said Chat Noir.

“You can say yes.”

“Then yes.”

She smiled and slipped downstairs. Chat watched her as she clambered down the stairs, and then her head popped up again. “If you’re cold,” she said, pausing for effect, “Freeze.”

He threw a leftover hair tie at her. She cackled as she went downstairs.

This was different from before. Now, he was coming specifically to be with her – and she was ready for him. There was something even more playful about them now. He just wished she was more like this around Adrien.

It wasn’t the first night they were doing this. He’d dropped by once or twice a week every day since he’d spoken to Ladybug about it. The first night they had played cards until one in the night before Marinette ushered him out. The second night, they had cleaned out some of her pots and planted some fresh plants. The third night, Marinette finally allowed him inside, but only after she had gone ahead of him and cleaned her room out of whatever she didn’t want him to find. He said he’d arrest her for drug trafficking.

And today, they were sampling a range of Marinette’s macarons.

He checked his phone at an angle she wouldn’t be able to see as soon as she left.

20+ Messages from WHO KISSED DUPAIN CHENG

Rose 🌸 : i feel like it might have been Kim, you know. he’s so obsessed.

TheLadyBlogger: answer the accusations, chien

THE CHIEN: if DC had kissed me id have told everyone and the world

“You know,” her voice carried from the trapdoor. Chat threw his phone away. It clattered on the floor. “I’m wondering if you’re obsessed with me. Why do you want to know anyway?”

“You see, I’m Ladybug’s trusty partner. If you’ve been kissing any supervillains or superheroes, I have to know.”

She snorted, crossing her legs and sitting down beside him. “Supervillains includes half of Paris, Chat Noir.”

“Precisely. Give me a detailed list of all the people you’ve been with.”

She started laughing openly. “What about you? Which of the supervillains have you been kissing?”

“Deflection!” he gasped.

“You’re nonsensical,” she said, laughing even more. She picked at a macaron and squarely ignored his gaping face.

“I’m just concerned for you. I don’t know your taste in boys.”

“Rest assured, I have an excellent taste in boys.”

Oooooooooooh.

“So you do like someone!” he said with relish.

Marinette paused mid-bite. She shook her head. “Should not have said that, should I?”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” he said gleefully. “Come on. Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me!”

“No.”

“Kim?”

“We’ve been over this.”

“Max.”

“I will gut you like a fish.”

He gasped. “Markov?”

She looked at him, exasperated. “You could have a macaron and be normal, you know?”

“Absolutely not. Besides, whatever boy you like is going to be running in circles just trying to find out who it is you’ve kissed. If you even have. I’m just doing him a favour.”

“You know what, I’m tired of all this accusations on my character,” she said loudly. “Who have you kissed?”

“I’m a superhero,” he said. “All the women I have saved –”

“I’m one of them. And I didn’t kiss you. Come on! You tell me, or should I tell Ladybug you’ve no practice whatsoever, despite all your flirting?”

“This is slander,” he said. “And if you had any sense of self respect, Madmoiselle Maladroite, you’d know not to challenge me. Kiss me yourself, if you have such doubts.”

“Alright,” she said.

His heart stopped.

“What?”

“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll show you I’ve kissed before.”

A slow smile spread across his face. “Will you?” he asked her, grinning. “It might be a lot more than you’re used to, since the only person you’ve kissed is Markov.”

He should have backed down then. Marinette had that steel look in her eyes that everyone in her class knew. “I’ll kiss you, Chaton,” she said. “But you’re not allowed to badger me about who I have kissed until the end of summer.”

“Vraiment?” he said, his eyes wide. “I mean – I – of course you would – who wouldn’t want to -?”

“Have a bit of fear, chaton?” she said, with a gleam in her eyes. “Afraid I’ll figure out you haven’t kissed anyone?”

The ember sparked instantly, which was clearly exactly what she wanted. She leaned forward, and instinctively, he leaned in as well. Out of nowhere, her hand came and gripped his wrist, pulling him forward.

Fuck.

The last thought his brain fired was that she looked so pretty in the yellow light.

It wasn’t very long – he tasted her lip gloss and smelled the bakery on her – his heart was in his throat, he felt her smile against him –

She leaned back. His nostrils flared.

“Yeah, you’ve kissed a girl before,” she said with a smirk.

“Why –”

He shouldn’t have. She was his friend. She was his friend –

Being kissed by Marinette was one thing. Kissing Marinette was entirely another. Her mouth opened slightly – and because he was trying to prove a point (or something) he sallied forward with enthusiasm. She fell to the floor of the balcony, he was above her, she smelled divine, unconsciously he had undone her pigtails, her hand was climbing up his back and around his neck –

He opened his eyes.

She was just as shocked as he was.

He scrambled out of her personal space. Marinette was flushed and pink and panting a little, which was causing his heart to do little cartwheels.

“Um –” he began eloquently. “I –”

“Ah – um – Chaton –” she tapped the corner of her lip with a finger.

He rubbed the back of his hand and found lip gloss. Instantly, he turned away from her, embarrassed.

“I’m sorry!” he burst out. “I should have asked –!”

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking just as pink. “I didn’t ask either –”

“No! No – I didn’t – I didn’t not want to kiss you –”

“Well – me too!”

He gaped.

She blushed from pink to red. “I mean – I also – I also didn’t not want to kiss you.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and in a half-hearted attempt at humour said, “Now that’s a glowing review.”

She stared at him. He stared back. Smiled at her nervously. And then she broke into laughter. “Mon dieu! Is that really what you think?”

“Of course I do,” he said, relieved she was laughing. “You said I didn’t give the impression of ever having done this.”

“Pas mal, Chat Noir. You weren’t bad.”

He cracked her a smile, even though his heart was doing flip-flops. “Merci, Princess.”

They turned away from each other, unable to look at each other properly. Marinette was fiddling with her pigtails, which meant she was nervous. He stared hard at his claws.

He stood up. “I should go,” he said, his voice sounding a lot higher than it should. “It’s late and I’ve embarrassed you enough.”

She looked up at him, making no move to get up. “You’ll come again, won’t you?”

Marinette was looking at him with such wide eyes. Marinette is many things.

“Alright,” he said, his throat dry.

And before she could wrangle more promises from him, he left. Into the night and into Paris.

Of course he turned back. Of course the yellow light of her room was still on.

Chapter Text

“Miraculous Ladybug!” shouted Ladybug.

Chat stumbled as the ladybugs repaired his bruises and arm that had been turned into a beam of light. Star Maker had nearly got him – nearly – and all because he hadn’t managed to jump out of his way in time.

Ladybug turned to him. She was standing at the rooftop overlooking the Champs-Elyeses. The sun was setting on her, and everything about her – everything – glowed. His heart was beating faster and faster.

“You alright, Chaton?” she asked with a frown.

“Oui,” he said, ignoring his heart.

“You’ve been off-kilter for a week,” she informed him.

He was off-kilter? She’d noticed? She’d said something…

He swallowed his feelings. Not now.

“You can tell me,” she said. Ladybug’s eyes were usually filled with compassion. It just wasn’t always directed to him.

He took a breath. “What if – what if you kissed someone, and you liked someone else?”

She looked confused. And then she smiled.

“No!” he ordered. “Don’t smile, this isn’t a good thing!”

Ladybug laughed, and his whole body felt covered in butterflies. “It’s just nice to see you flustered,” she teased gently. “Is this that girlfriend you were talking about? The girl you like, I mean.”

“Oh – oh, no,” he said. “Ka – we broke up. I meant you.”

She frowned. “You broke up?”

He took a breath, rolling his shoulders and seeing her eyes follow his every move. “Being a superhero is not compatible with falling in love.”

For a moment, she was somewhere else. The corners of her eyes held something he didn’t quite recognise. “Tell me about it,” she muttered.

Not knowing what to say, he turned away. Of course she didn’t react to the fact that he still loved her. Of course she didn’t. His stomach clenched uncomfortably, and he tried his best to dispel the feeling. When he looked at her this time, he gave her a crooked smile. “But of course you’re happy to see my heart squeezed.”

“I’m never happy about that, Chaton,” she said. “Who is this person, anyway? The one you kissed, I mean.”

“Er –” this was going to be harder. She was usually a stickler for this sort of thing. “I have made a friend.”

“Alright?” she said slowly.

“I have made a friend,” he repeated. “On this side of the mask.”

She looked confused. “But that’s a good thing, non? Friends are good things.”

He felt a weight lifting from his heart. “You think so?”

“Oui,” she nodded, and the breeze ruffled her pigtails. “Of course I do. Just be careful. Make sure you’re safe, and that no one sees you visiting them.” Then she smiled, nudged him with her shoulder. “And maybe don’t kiss them, if they’re only a friend.”

He laughed hollowly. “I’ll be careful. I promise. She’s brilliant, M’lady. You’d like her. She said I could visit her – since I was – since I was alone.”

Ladybug smiled. “I’m sure I would. I’m glad you’re friends with someone, Chaton. Wish I made any friends this side of the mask – but all I have is you.”

His heart soared. And then plummeted. And then soared again.

“I’ve also been transforming more – outside of – outside of patrols,” he added.

“Ah?” she asked, checking on her earrings, which had beeped three times already. “Any reason why, Chaton? Make it quick, we don’t have time.”

There it was – his heart dropped again.

“I just don’t get to go out a lot,” he said, skipping the part that he’d been able to tell Marinette so easily. “It helps that I have a friend to visit.”

She shrugged. “It’s your miraculous, Chaton. I trust you with it,” she said, swinging her yo-yo. “We’d best go. One last thing, Chat Noir – don’t ignore your friend. You should talk to her. She probably misses you.”

With that, she was gone. He watched her swing across Paris. She dropped into one of the alleys as the red glow of her transformation began to fall.

In that moment his phone dinged. He’d assigned a different tune to the WHO KISSED DUPAIN CHENG chat, so he recognised it instantly.

TheLadyBlogger: im just so confused. im beginning to seriously think she has kissed a superhero or something, that’s why she’s not telling us.

He laughed, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Ladybug was right – he’d been on edge. He’d been plagued by the fact that he might have ruined one of his best friendships – outside of Ladybug and Nino. He’d been jittery during patrols, unable to look at his lady’s face, and not quite sure what to do with the fact that he wanted to kiss Marinette again.

He growled at the city. He had to see Marinette again. He couldn’t be wanting to kiss her when he saw her again.

He wished the up and down of his heart was less confusing. He fell to his haunches on the rooftop overlooking the city. His ring wasn’t beeping yet – he hadn’t really gotten to use his cataclysm today – he had plenty of time to have an existential crisis.

He was putting it to loneliness. He had been rejected by Ladybug too many times for it to be anything else. But that made him guilty about making Marinette out to be someone convenient. That he was lonely and she was there -

But going down that road of guilt inevitably lead down to the other one, which was the guilt about his feelings for Ladybug.

And if he kissed Marinette – if he kissed her again – what if she stopped wanting to be friends with him? What if she said no, that this wasn’t a good idea, that they should stop meeting?

Which was why he had only stared in the direction of her bakery, saying nothing to her, not visiting her for over a week.

He squared his shoulders.

It took all of five minutes to get there. For some absurd reason, Marinette was leaning against the railing, looking out into the night. He stood on the rooftop, watching her as she scanned the sky, waiting for something to happen.

“You know, if you fall, I’m not catching you,” he told her.

She jumped in her place, and what do you know –

He swooped ahead, caught her by the wrist and held her there. She had nearly toppled off.

“Don’t scare me like that!” she ordered.

“Alright, Madmoiselle Maladroite,” he teased, pulling her forward.

She huffed, snatching her wrist out of his hand once she had some balance. “You did that on purpose,” she said, jabbing a finger at him.

He wrapped a hand around her finger. “Only a little,” he said.

She was too close. He could see the pink spread on her cheeks, that half moment of a joke that she’d swallowed and stored under her tongue.

They jumped back three paces.

The quiet of Paris settled into the crevices of her mouth. She looked at him from across the balcony, still pink. “Would you like to come inside?” she asked abruptly. “If you – if you want to. You don’t have to –”

He gave her a half smile, trying to force his heart to calm down. “Okay,” he said, sounding mildly strangled.

He went after her. She had cleaned her room frantically, which only meant she’d been nervous all week. The sharp pinpricks of guilt were nothing to his overwhelming sense of jitteriness. He turned to her. They were staring at each other, awkward in the middle of the room.

“Er,” he said.

“Oh, God,” she groaned. “I made it all awkward.”

“What?” he said at once. “You made it awkward? I don’t recall your tongue in my mouth –”

“I kissed you first,” she wailed. “And then –”

“If we discuss who’s responsible, I will leave,” he promised her. “Marinette, come on. I don’t want to lose you as a friend just because –”

She waited expectantly.

Because he wanted to kiss her right now. Because she was his friend, and he wanted to kiss her despite the fact that he loved someone else. Because they weren’t sure if they made a mistake or not. Because they probably had.

He hissed. “Just because we aren’t quite sure of what we were doing.”

She chewed her lip. “Look – I – if it helps, I did enjoy it. Erm – the kiss I mean. Not that – I mean I do like someone else.”

He grinned at her. “Of course you enjoyed it. And I love Ladybug.”

“Well – well, that’s good then,” she said with a sigh. “We both like other people, and so what if we kissed?”

“Yeah,” he said. “So what if we liked it?”

“Exactly,” she nodded vigorously. “So what if we wanted to?”

“Merde, so what if we want to even now?” he added, unthinking.

“Of course!”

“We’re – well, we’re not adults. But we know what we’re doing. We can kiss who we like,” he said.

“Of course we can. We could kiss now, and it would be alright.”

“Could we?” he asked.

“I –”– she searched wildly in her thoughts –“–We – we could!”

And before she could take it back or complicate it, he planted his lips on hers. He drew her in on instinct, his hands on her waist, hers on his neck. Her hair smelled like flour and sugar again, of cooking and Marinette. She was everywhere – the pink of her room and her blue eyes, locking into him, settling into his skin.

This time when they broke away, she looked at him very intently. He was still holding her in his arms, and that strange, panicked urge inside him rose like a wave –

“I should –”

“No.”

She pressed her fingers to his lips and he took a deep breath again, his eyes fluttering close. He was aware of how he was still holding her.

“You’re not going anywhere, Chat Noir. Not until we talk about this.”

“Then you’re going to have to remove your hand,” he said in a strangled voice. “It’s unbelievably distracting.”

She blushed and removed her hand at once. In response, he dropped her out of his arms. They regarded each other once again.

“I still love Ladybug,” he said.

“And I still love someone else,” she responded evenly.

“Wait – love?” he asked, grinning again. “You didn’t say love, Princess -!”

“Focus, Chat Noir.”

“Right,” he said, contrite. He jumped to the chaise and sat like a cat, his ears alert. She laughed and sat down on her office chair, facing him. “We’re both in love with other people,” he began.

“Yes,” she said. “And not each other. We’re just…”

“Friends,” he finished.

“I like being your friend,” she said. “I – I like it. I don’t want it to end.”

“Neither do I, Marinette,” said Chat Noir sincerely.

“Then let’s not ruin it,” she said.

“We’re not! Not by kissing,” he said. “I mean – I want to kiss you right now. But you’re still my friend.”

“I want to kiss you too,” she admitted. “This is confusing. None of the people we love have kissed us, and this is confusing.”

It had been growing inside him for a while, and he thought it was best to say it out loud. He rolled the thought in his head. “Princess. We don’t have to not kiss,” he said.

“What?” she asked, alarmed. “Don’t be absurd -!”

“No – hear me out. We don’t have to not kiss. I like kissing you. You like kissing me. We like other people. There’s no…”

“Leading each other on?” she asked.

“Exactly,” he said. “Besides, it’s practice. What will you do when you kiss your pretty boy?”

Marinette blushed all the way down to her hair. “That – you – that’s not on the docket right now.”

“Look, all I’m saying is, it’s probably better to have all this in the open.”

She stared at him. “That we kiss?”

“No,” he said. “That we want to. There’s no point – having the feeling spilling out over at other times. That’s more confusing. We want to, and we’re friends, and we like other people.”

She thought about it for a minute and a half. “… D’accord,” she said slowly.

“We can just… keep that there. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that, right?” he asked her desperately.

“What if we kiss again?” she asked.

“Would that be so bad?”

Marinette shut her eyes, a soft, soft sigh coming from her. “No.”

“Then we can just… leave that there. We don’t have to act on it – not unless – not unless we want to. And we can just think of it as practice. Let’s not – let’s not kiss again without thinking it through and get confused again and stop being friends.”

She blinked. “I’d never not be friends with you, Chaton.”

“I’d rather not take the chance,” he said quietly.

“Alright,” Marinette said, her voice very, very soft. Naturally, her eyes looked like steel then. He didn’t know how she did that, said something with so much gentleness while looking like she could defeat the English without an army.

“Think of your would be boyfriend,” said Chat Noir with a grin. “You can tell him you’ve kissed a superhero.”

She snorted. “Sure, Minou. And you can tell Ladybug you kissed petite Marinette.”

He frowned. “You have no idea how impressive that is.”

“Right.”

She hummed to herself and got up from the desk chair to examine some of the fabric she had stashed near her sewing machine. He flicked his ears in anticipation.

“Marinette?” he asked.

“Oui?”

“Does this – we’re alright, oui?” he stared at his claws hard.

She turned to him and there it was, that luminous, Marinette smile. “Of course, Chaton.”

“Oh, good,” he said with a deep breath. “I just – I worried. Perhaps I pressured you.”

“T’inquete,” she said reassuringly, even though she looked quite pink. “You didn’t, and this doesn’t change anything between us. I practically goaded you into it.”

“Because kissing a pretty girl is just that difficult for me,” he scoffed. “I’m a real saint.”

Her ears went pink. She shook her head. “Silly cat.”

They didn’t kiss again, not that night. Chat Noir watched her stitch and heard her ramble about fabrics and smiled fondly as he teased her. Summer moved onwards.

WHO KISSED DUPAIN CHENG

Mylie <3: there’s no way Marinette would kiss a superhero and not tell us.

Chapter Text

“YOU LOSE” sang the computer loudly. Chat growled, banging his controller to the desk.

“HA!” said Marinette. “Gotcha! What are you going to do now, you mangy cat? And after you resorted to the lowest of techniques, too –”

He crossed his arms and glared, while Marinette danced around the room. “I am the champion,” she sang. “I am the champion! The one and only – bow before me, Chat No –”

He pounced on her. They rolled on the floor of her room, with him trying to wrestle the controller from her hand to the best of his ability.

She was laughing, she had the upper hand, and she looked so pretty that for a minute he backed away. He felt his cheeks become pinker, his eyes wider.

“Chaton?” she said in a soft voice.

He shook his head like a wet cat. “You look pretty,” he admitted.

And because it was Marinette and not Ladybug, she blushed right back. “Thanks,” she said. She worried her bottom lip for half a second, and then pressed her lips to his.

They fell into rhythm for half a moment. When she backed up, she asked, “Good?”

He breathed. “Brilliant.”

And she got off him.

“You want some croissants?” she asked. “I made them fresh. I knew you were coming.”

He nodded, unable to speak.

She got up, put her controller away and climbed down her room.

He’d come many times after, but they hadn’t really kissed. Not at first. God knows they’d wanted to. God knows he had thought about it.

It did help that they’d talked about it. He felt like he could think about kissing her without feeling guilty. He still felt guilty about Ladybug, but at least one half of the guilt was gone.

They hadn’t kissed again. At first, they worked hard at making things normal – they played UMS, they played Starcraft, they kept a few steps of distance between each other, they smiled from across the bowl of popcorn. Chat hadn’t realised how easy it was to be physically affectionate with Marinette until it wasn’t available anymore. He had never held back with Marinette, not in the same way he did with Ladybug. And then the half moments had begun to climb, those realisations that they’d have held hands naturally or he’d have teased her and flicked her shoulder, and she’d have shoved his hands away.

And then one day, she’d absentmindedly ruffled his hair. He’d started grinning slowly, which had her demanding why he was grinning.

“You just ruffled my hair,” he sang. “You broke first. I win.”

Marinette had gone a brilliant red, and had shoved him away. “I will kick you out, Chaton!”

And just like that, something had clicked. He tried to promise her that he would always remember that she broke first, and she’d practically jumped on him – “Remember this, then, coward!”

Of course she’d kissed him first. She was just competitive like that.

Once she leaned back, she was pink and she’d asked, “Good?”

Thankfully, he’d had the synapses to rub together and say, “Yeah.”

It was like a code word. Like something to bracket off their antics, something to finish it there and then. Something that kept the kiss there – a practice session, a bit of feedback.

His baton chimed. It was the WHO KISSED DUPAIN CHENG chat again. He grinned as he checked his messages.

Alix: how dare you accuse me this way

THE CHIEN: YOUR THE ONLY GIRL WHO ISNT DATING IT COULD BE YOU

TheLadyBlogger: he’s got a point, alix

Alix: like u couldn’t have kissed marinette before u and nino started dating

He nearly dropped his phone trying to hide it when he heard Marinette coming upstairs again. She had brought hot, flaky croissants with her, and she looked like a picture in the yellow light of the room. “Right out of the oven!” she said, her voice breathy.

For some reason, Marinette glanced at him twice as she set the tray down. He bit into a croissant, sneaking glances from time to time, and it seemed they kept missing each other – because the moment he saw her, she was elsewhere, and whenever he sensed her watching, he was trying his best not to think of her.

And then she looked right while he looked left – and there she was. Pink and white pyjamas, yellow light. His friend, one of his first friends. Marinette Dupain Cheng, who had just beat him five times at UMS, who promised him a home when he was away, who had let him kiss her, and kissed him back –

“What?” she asked.

“You have a bit of –”–he swooped to kiss the croissant in the corner of her lip–“–It’s gone.”

“Tease,” she said.

“Good?” he asked.

“Don’t try it with Ladybug, her lucky charm will become a knife.”

“Harsh,” he said. “I suppose you’re right, though. Ladybug wouldn’t like me being obnoxious, would she?”

Marinette hummed. “She probably has different tastes, Chaton.”

Chat sighed. “Don’t I know it.”

That was when he felt Marinette’s frown more than he saw it. “What do you mean?” she asked.

He sat with his legs in front of him, ran a claw through his hair, trying to pluck his thoughts out and present them to Marinette. “It’s been many years of rejections, Princess. I don’t think there’s a chance for me.”

She stared. “Why does it sound like you aren’t just talking about her?”

He plucked a string from her pyjamas, wrapping it around a single claw slowly. “I think I should face facts,” he said.

She glared. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but I think you should think again,” she said firmly. “You… everyone likes you, Chat. You’re the saviour of Paris. And I’m sure in your civilian life –”

“How do you imagine my civilian life, Marinette?” he interrupted her.

Her eyes darted to his face. “Someone carefree,” she said. “Funny. Reliable. A good friend. The bane of teachers existence. Not the best student.”

He laughed darkly.

Marinette tilted her head to one side. “I got everything right or nothing?” she asked.

He laughed again. “Guess.”

Silence. A moment. Two. “Hmm.”

“Hmm,” he teased.

“Hmm,” she repeated. “You’re confusing, Chaton.”

He looked at her earnestly. “As are you, Princess,” he promised.

Chapter Text

It was a beautiful morning. France was hot, Paris hotter – and although none of them were close to campagne, you could smell the harvest ripening. One month of summer had gone by and he was going to see his friends for the first time today.

Adrien had forgone his overshirt for a plain black one. He fidgeted, looking at himself in the mirror. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking at himself.

He looked… clean. Tidy.

He could do this. He could meet Marinette. After all, it wasn’t Adrien that had kissed her senseless just last night. He could be normal. He would be normal.

There was a knock on his door. It was the Gorilla, who didn’t say anything, just standing there.

“Nathalie isn’t coming?” asked Adrien.

The Gorilla grunted. Adrien gave him a sheepish sort of grin. “Could you not tell Nathalie something?” he asked. The Gorilla gave him a quizzical look.

Adrien ruffled his hair.

He was rewarded with half a smile. Not much of one, but a half one. Adrien took it as tacit approval.

They headed out into the city. He was dropped right at the gate of the zoo, with Alya and Nino already waiting. They kissed quickly upon arrival, and even with all his nervousness about meeting Marinette, he couldn’t help feel his heart swell like a balloon.

“Where’s Marinette?” he asked, ignoring the jump in his throat when he asked.

“You know her,” said Alya. “Late as ever. Although do we really know her?”

Adrien blinked. “What?”

“Her first kiss!” exclaimed Alya. “She’s saying absolutely nothing!”

“You won’t believe how constant it’s been, mate,” said Nino. “It’s all she’s thinking about.”

“I’m a journalist, Nino,” said Alya. “You know I can sense a story.”

“Babe, she’s here,” Nino informed her.

Marinette was running towards them at full speed. She was wearing white collared shirt, a blue overdress, and absolutely no pink. Her clothes made her look like summer – and then he spied the two pink hair ties in her hair.

Of course there was pink, he thought with his heart swelling.

“Mouth closed, pretty boy,” smirked Alya from his side. He shook himself and closed his mouth (which had genuinely been open).

Marinette nearly ran into them. “I’m sorry!” she panted. “Crisis – in – the bakery!”

“Easy, Marinette,” said Alya, swinging her messenger bag to her other side. She handed her a water bottle.

“Thanks,” gasped Marinette, taking a drink. “How are you – oh – um – salut Adrien!”

“Salut,” he said, finding himself a little tongue tied.

“You’re beautiful – I mean – I mean, it’s a beautiful day, non?” she asked anxiously.

“Oui,” said Adrien, trying his best not to look at her lips.

He might have misread her little half frown, but she didn’t say anything.

They trooped off to the zoo, where Alya promised them there was a new python that she was excited to see. Marinette slipped her hand into Alya’s, which made Adrien’s throat tighten up.

Nino shoved him with his shoulder. “Hey, you’re staring.”

Adrien, swallowed and looked elsewhere.

She was pretty.

This was a horrible realisation to have, as it intruded on everything they were doing that day. He saw her look thrilled at the aquariums, and he could only think about how he hadn’t ever seen her look at anything with wonder before this. She stumbled over her words around him and all he could think of was that she looked cute. Her nose scrunched up when she was confused, and he’d never noticed before.

He periodically shook his head to get out of the feeling.

She’s your friend, she’s your friend, she’s your friend.

Luckily, Marinette kept her distance. For once, he was glad she was so awkward around him – it meant he didn’t have to counter her awkwardness with his own nervousness. That just seemed like a bad combination. It was only when Alya and Nino seemed to want to be together that she fell in step with him and fiddled with her pigtails idly.

Oh. She was nervous too.

“Ça va, Marinette?” he asked her gently.

“Moi? Er – um – bien!” she said hurriedly. “No, I just – Adrien, are you annoyed with me?”

“No!” he said instantly. “Why do you – why do you ask?”

“Um – you don’t seem to be saying much to me,” she admitted, fiddling more than ever with her pigtails.

Very carefully, he took her hands and held them away from her hair. “I am not annoyed with you. I doubt it would be possible to be annoyed with you.”

Her cheeks went from pink to red so rapidly, he wasn’t sure what he had done this time. She looked irretrievably tongue tied.

“You sure you weren’t her first kiss, Agreste?” came Alya’s voice from up ahead. “Because you’re giving my best friend a heart attack.”

Marinette glared at Alya from over Adrien’s shoulder. “Goose,” she said. “Forget her, Adrien. If you’re not annoyed with me, let’s go get some ice cream.”

He couldn’t help himself. He grinned ear to ear. “You know, that’s the most coherent sentence you’ve said all day.”

She blushed brighter. “It’s bound to happen once in a while.” And then, to his utmost surprise, she clutched his hand and dragged him to the ice cream stand nearby.

“Oi, bring us some mint chocolate chip!” Alya yelled after them.

“Butterscotch for me!”

Marinette was still holding his hand. He noted the exact moment when she realised she was doing so because she blabbered for two minutes about sweat and hand holding, and then managed to somehow stumble her way into ordering ice creams for everyone. She turned to him quizzically for only a minute, tapping a single finger to her nose – as if she’d stored information there. “You like chocolate fudge, oui?” she asked.

“Oh – yes,” said Adrien.

She leaned forward to take the ice cream from the vendor, and that was when Adrien saw something he really shouldn’t have seen.

He tried to look anywhere but her neck then, which almost instantly meant that he couldn’t stop looking at it.

“What?” she asked self-consciously.

“Nothing,” he said, far too fast. “We should – we should go.”

Her head tilted to one side. “Everything okay?”

“Perfectly fine,” he squeaked.

At the very least, she seemed to find him cute. Something tugged on her lips that looked a lot like fondness, but he didn’t want to test what it was lest it just be amusement.

She turned away from him, and again, on her neck, there it was: the bruise he had left last night.

“Merde,” he murmured under his breath. Alya looked at him curiously. Marinette had a bit of strawberry ice cream on the corner of her lip. He resisted the urge to kiss it away.

Chapter Text

He was on his way home with Nino when the penny dropped.

“Dude, did you notice something wrong with Marinette today?” Nino asked.

Adrien would never have a talent for a life of crime, he realised. How he had managed to hold it together to be a superhero was beyond him, really. As soon as Nino asked, he might have changed colour rapidly from pale to pink to some amount of red. “No, why?” he asked, a little too fast. It was lucky Nino was equally unsuited to a life of crime, for he didn’t say anything about Adrien’s too fast answer.

“Alya swears something was off about her today,” said Nino. “Okay, don’t tell her I told you this –”

“Tell who, Marinette?” asked Adrien, with a frown.

“No, Alya. Don’t tell Alya, because I’m not supposed to tell you this. But she thinks Marinette had a hickey.”

Every alarm bell in Adrien’s head was going off. “A hickey,” he repeated stupidly.

“She said that Marinette swears it was nothing more than a mosquito bite, but it was definitely there.”

“Um,” said Adrien, wishing he had coherent thoughts.

“You don’t think Marinette has a secret boyfriend, do you?” asked Nino.

He ignored the blaring signals in his head telling him to sit down, shut up, and not mess this up further. “She likes someone, doesn’t she?” he asked, as nonchalantly as possible.

Nino gave him a scrutinising look. “Yes,” said Nino. “She does. You don’t happen to know who it is?”

“No,” said Adrien honestly.

He really couldn’t place the look Nino gave him then.

They got done with patrols early that night. He hadn’t said anything to Ladybug at all, although she had given him a small, searching look from time to time. She laughed at all his jokes that night, which made his heart warm – he ignored the part of his tongue that felt jammed around her.

Being with Ladybug always made him want to visit Marinette soon after. His tongue felt unstuck.

He perched himself on the roof of her home. He knew she would slip out in a bit to have a look at the night sky as she always does.

And like a creature of habit, she did. Her hand gripped her mug of hot chocolate tightly, sliding the mug onto the floor as she hoisted herself from the ladder.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he said from his perch. Why was this so easy as Chat Noir? He had been tongue tied only hours ago as Adrien.

She jumped a little. “You little –”

“Can’t I have a cup of cocoa with the princess?” he asked, hopping down to her.

“No,” she said vehemently. “I’m angry with you.”

“Why?” he asked, a grin on his face.

“I met my friends today,” she said. “And guess what Alya found on my neck.”

“That necklace you made last week?” he asked innocently.

She pushed him away. “Chat Noir –”

“Okay, okay,” he said, raising his hands upwards. “Pax. Pax.”

She glared again, turning away. “One of these days –”

“You’re going to have to tell her we’re friends, you know.”

“Oh, I shudder to think what Alya is going to make of it,” said Marinette with an actual shudder. “Her brain will connect too many dots. Whether you’re my secret boyfriend, and if you were my first kiss, the timelines don’t match up –”

“Because your first kiss was so long ago.”

“You laugh, but it was during Dark Cupid,” said Marinette, sipping her cocoa. Immediately his own mind went everywhere, trying to come up with a decent person who had been a victim of that particular akuma, and if Marinette would have kissed them. “Either way, what are you doing here? I mean, I kept the skylight open but I thought you said you were busy this week?” She picked up the blanket she had conveniently kept on the lawn chair and spread it out for them.

He had had many shoots this week. “I’m very bored,” he said. “And it’s fun to speculate what little miss perfect has been up to.”

Marinette scoffed. “I’m hardly perfect,” she said, crossing her legs and sitting on a corner of the balcony.

“No?” he asked, swooping down to sit beside her. “Aren’t you top of the class?”

“Yes, but –”

“Class president?”

“That’s –”

“Didn’t you have your pieces selected by Gabriel Agreste himself?”

“Okay, that –”

“And Jagged Stone had you design a cover?”

“Now look here –”

“Yeah, you’re not perfect, Marinette,” he said, grinning slowly. “You’re brilliant.”

She huffed, ruffling his hair. “All of that is – all of that is just things I do,” she said. “I –” she struggled with her words. “I’m not… those things.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I mean – I mean, I am,” she said, stumbling again. “This is hard – I don’t know how to explain it. I am all of those things! I sew pieces, and I have designed covers, and god knows I like being class president. But I’m…” she paused again. “I also… like sewing. And I like Jagged Stone – I like his music a lot more than I like designing covers for him. I like… helping my classmates.”

He tilted his head to one side. “I think that makes you brilliant, Marinette.”

She went pink. “Thanks, Chaton.”

He searched her quickly. “You struggle with yourself too, don’t you?”

She smiled luminously. “Don’t we all?”

Marinette sighed, gathering her knees up. “I struggle with… what I have to be. There’s a version of Marinette everyone likes. She’s not really perfect, she’s… many things. But I think sometimes the version that everyone likes smooths those things over a little. They love me a lot, the people of my life – and I’m not pretending anything, ever. But I’m not – I’m not all of those things. Not all the time, anyway.”

She fell into her knees, cheek resting sideways, looking at him. Her eyes seemed bluer, for some reason. “This is hard to say.”

“No,” he said slowly. “I… understand.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. He wished for the first time, then, that he wasn’t Chat Noir. That in this moment, he was Adrien, and she was Marinette and when she told him that she struggled with people’s expectations of her – he could say he knew what she meant. He could tell her that he struggled constantly, too.

But because he couldn’t say anything, he put his arm around her. She curled up closer to him instinctively. He wished – he hoped – she understood. She looked at him sideways, her face so close to his, and without thinking, he kissed her.

When he leaned back, she smiled brilliantly at him.

“Good,” she commented with a smile. “Good. But if you leave me with another hickey -”

His heart strummed.

“No promises, Princess,” he said. “And don’t worry. I’ll prove to everyone you run a drug smuggling ring and then everyone’s expectations of you will fall to rock bottom.”

She laughed. “I’m telling you, Minou, I will have you in court. You have no evidence and the wrongful arrest will allow me to sue you for damages. Then I’ll retire to the North of France.”

“The north of France? Marinette, you’d die of boredom.”

“A small price to pay to take you down in court.”

He couldn’t help it, he laughed. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Look who’s talking.”

He nudged her. “You’re not going to be happy without me.”

“I’d be tranquil,” she challenged.

“Oh, cruel Marinette!” he cried dramatically.

“Serves you right, mangy cat.”

They both burst into synchronised laughter. Marinette sighed. “I have to finish a commission.”

“Alright,” he said, getting up and holding his hand out for her.

She pulled herself up and took a deep breath. “Mon dieu, it is hot. We’re having a terrible summer.”

“We should head for the beach,” he said with a grin.

Marinette grinned. “And how are you supposed to go to the beach in a catsuit?” she asked, opening the skylight to her room.

She clambered down to her bed, and he poked his head from the skylight to look at her.

“You know I have a water upgrade,” he teased.

She looked up to glare at him at him. “No, and you shouldn’t be telling civilians trade secrets.”

He slipped down to the ladder, landing cross legged next to her and gave her a toothy smile. “You sound like Ladybug,” he said in a sing song voice.

Again, she pushed his face away until he toppled backwards on her bed. “Now hush. I have to finish working.”

“Put some music on,” he told her. “I can always focus with a bit of Chopin.”

For a second, he thought her brow furrowed. A second later, he was sure he had imagined it.

Chapter Text

WHO KISSED DUPAIN CHENG? + 60 Messages

TheLadyBlogger: ok everyone calm down

Rose 🌸 : YOU started this!!!!!!!

TheLadyBlogger: yea but we don’t need to get too excited yet

TheDudeLahiffe: alya is right. Just because marinette isn’t saying anything more doesn’t mean we need to think circles around each other

nathdraws: What did she say, exactly?

Ivan: yeah, none of us know whats going on

THE CHIEN: i don’t know how im supposed to fight a superhero.

There had been no further conversation or any whispered words about hickeys. He’d had to be very careful from that point forward with Marinette, if he strayed even a little from her lips she glared at him with command that rivalled Ladybug’s. And after Alya was done probing everyone she knew for information, the subject had been dropped. Which meant that the WHO KISSED DUPAIN CHENG chat was once again active.

Until it was the most active thing on his phone.

It happened like this: Mylene had needed some help planning something nice for Ivan, which meant that Marinette was naturally working overtime for them. She’d made a new outfit for Mylene, had asked her parents to prepare a picnic basket, and they’d had a fitting today. Adrien had been invited to join them because they needed “a boy’s opinion.”  

Nino had already given him a run down of what was expected: “Don’t just say she looks good,” he muttered under his breath. “Say something substantial. Make it look like you worked for it. Her boyfriend gets the easy job of just saying she looks pretty.”

“Right!” said Adrien, determined. He was going to get this right! All of his friends were extremely pretty, after all.

Nino laughed at him. “Sometimes, I wonder why you don’t date someone in the class, mate,” he said, shaking his head.

Adrien grinned. “I wouldn’t have left anyone for you.”

“Alya wouldn’t have gone for you,” said Nino confidently.

Adrien laughed. They drove up to Marinette’s house, which was bursting with activity. As the car reached the house, a pink piece of fabric fluttered down from the balcony. Nino picked it up, exchanging a quick look with Adrien.

As they got closer to the room, the noise was becoming louder.

“She says she needs the pins!”

“Then why did you keep the pins somewhere no one can find them.”

“Who took my mascara?”

He’d never seen the girls like this. Nino seemed to be used to it, as he shrugged and climbed the ladder. They emerged to a scene of complete chaos, everyone was running everywhere, there was a forgotten tray of treats and cold lemonade drinks, Marinette was bent over Mylene, pinning the clothes tidily on her. There were pins in her mouth and a pencil behind her ear, and he couldn’t help it – she looked so cute.

When had Marinette crept into the forefront of his mind like this? It wasn’t like Ladybug, he didn’t feel overwhelmingly blinded by her – she just snuck into his brain. Left parts of her there.

And she didn’t even notice him or the girls, she was so preoccupied with her work. Rose, perched on the bed and looking over everyone spotted them first. “Adrien and Nino are heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeereee!” she yelled. Everyone turned to them, even Marinette, who seemed to have promptly tripped on something invisible and spilled all her pins.

“Hello everyone,” said Adrien.

“Salut,” came in a chorus.

“I’ve really missed you,” he said, and immediately regretted it. It had sort of spilled out – bubbled from his mouth before he could control it.

“Aw, we missed you too, golden boy,” said Alya, walking up to him and ruffled his hair. “How’s our girl looking?”

Adrien glanced at Mylene, distracted entirely by Marinette (who was gathering her pins haphazardly). He shook himself mentally, and narrowed in on Mylene.

Marinette had designed the loveliest combination of clothes: a new bandana with hot pink and black stripes, a plain white shirt and a denim jacket painstakingly embroidered by her. The last piece was the pair of jeans that had gone through some amount of embroidery themselves.

“You look fantastic, Mylene,” he said honestly.

Juleka mumbled something under her breath.

“She means, did Nino not give you the assignment?” asked Alya, looking quite threatening.

Adrien collected himself. “It’s really close to her personality, I’m glad you didn’t go a dress, Marinette. The contrast of colours is really working, and it’s extremely flattering for her hair.”

Marinette, who had just managed to collect all the pins, instantly dropped all of them again, going pink. Alya gave him a punch on his arm. “Good job, Agreste. And good job babe, you coached him well.”

Nino kissed her quickly. “Stop terrorising everyone.”

“I’d never,” said Alya. “Okay, girls, Adrien has given the go-ahead. Marinette, you’ll be done by the weekend?”

“If I don’t eat or sleep,” she nodded. “Just a little bit of embroidery left, and the sleeves need to be taken in a touch.”

“Well, can we help?” asked Rose, her voice carrying all the way from her corner on the bed.

“You look like a princess over her subjects, Rose,” said Adrien with a smile.

Rose dimpled. “I’m only the princess, Marinette is the queen.”

“That’s right,” said Juleka, clambering close to Rose herself.

Marinette had blushed red. “No, embroidery is a one person job. And no, I’m not a queen.”

“You are a little, Marinette,” said Adrien as sweetly as he possibly could.

Instantly, the blush on her cheeks spread onwards and onwards onto her ears and everywhere on her face. He smirked inwardly. She was so easy when he was Adrien.

“A queen who lies to her subjects,” said Alya dramatically in that moment.

“What?” sputtered Marinette, dropping the pencil on her ear. “No I don’t,” she added, a little too quickly.

“Who was your first kiss then?” Alya responded, at once. It was clearly a master plan – like a code word, all of the girls grinned and chimed in: “Tell us, tell us, tell us!”

“Not this again,” murmured Nino. “I worry sometimes –”

But the giggles and shouts were getting louder, and Marinette was clearly not being able to bat away the insistence with which everyone was demanding it off her. This had been an ambush.

“Just tell us if it’s a superhero –”

“Or if it’s a senior –”

“I thought we were done with this!” interrupted Marinette loudly.

“Come on, you can’t help our curiosity,” said Alya. “We are sorry for piling on so hard! But if you just give us a hint, we promise to leave you alone. We won’t even ask you how it happened.”

“Fine!” she said. “It was Chat Noir. Are you happy now?”

It took everything in Adrien not to grin then. To pretend to be shocked. To look surprised.

WHO KISSED DUPAIN CHENG

Alix: i can’t believe Marinette kissed Chat Noir. she is SO COOL

Chapter Text

WHO KISSED DUPAIN CHENG +50

TheDudeLahiffe: and she didn’t say when

TheLadyBlogger: no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i don’t even know why she told us, to be honest. we must have annoyed her enough. we should find out tho

adrienagresteofficial: I don’t think that’s a good idea.

TheDudeLahiffe: i gotta agree. babe, u already cornered her once

THE CHIEN: alya i don’t want to make her angry. remember that time when we were twelve and went to campagne

Mylie <3: oh god

Ivan: I’m with kim

julekaaa: yes pls

Rose 🌸 : she was angry enough today to begin with alya lets not

TheLadyBlogger: ??????? hello

adrienagresteofficial: ?

adreinagresteofficial: what happened when we were twelve

nathdraws: you really don’t want to know

TheLadyBlogger: ok whatever you guys are right. plus, im nervous about why she’s being so cagey. if someone’s identity is at stake i’d rather proceed with more caution

TheDudeLahiffe: that’s my girl. also the rest of us won’t get killed

markwrites: I have legitimately not seen a tarte tatin the same way since 

TheLadyBlogger: ???? WHAT HAPPENED IN CAMPAGNE

Adrien tapped his chin. He looked at Plagg.

Plagg paused with his slice of camembert. “Quoi?” he demanded.

Adrien shook his head. “Rien. Mais…”

“No, Adrien!”

“Come on, it’ll be fun.”

“Be quiet,” ordered Plagg. “Go see your girlfriend later.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” said Adrien automatically. “Come on, she’s upset.”

“So am I! I don’t see you dropping everything to get me camembert!”

“That’s literally all of my job, Plagg.”

After some coaxing, Plagg was finally convinced.

By the time he left for Marinette’s it was already quite late. Because it was Marinette, the light of her room was on. He peered through the window to see her stitching away. He tapped at the glass, and found she wasn’t paying any attention whatsoever. Frowning, Chat went upstairs to the balcony. To his surprise, the skylight was open.

He slipped down to her bed and she didn’t even notice. He then spotted the headphones in her ears, that intent expression on her face that just promised she wasn’t paying attention to anything in the world.

“Marinette?” he said, tapping her shoulder.

She jumped, her headphones popping from her ears. “Chaton, you scared me!”

“Sorry,” he said, contrite. “What are you doing?”

“Just stitching,” she said. “What are you –”

“It looks like angry stitching,” he commented.

She blew a gust of air from her mouth, looking irritated. “Preoccupied stitching,” she amended, and then sucked in a breath. “Just my friends. They were – I should never have said anything about my first kiss. Everyone wants to know who it was, because they are busybodies, and I –” again, she lost track of her words. “Anyway.”

“No, tell me more,” said Chat, crossing his legs and sitting on the floor.

She giggled. “Chat, I may have – alors, I was feeling short with them and I’m in a bad mood because I don’t like being short with people –”

“Yeah, you give that impression.”

And then she laughed. “Be quiet, Chaton!”

He pretended to have his lips zipped. She rolled her eyes.

“You could say it was me, you know,” Chat told her. “Your first kiss, I mean. You have kissed me.”

He was watching her reaction. Almost instantly, she blanched. A silence followed. Then: “That’s – that’s what I did. I said – I said it was you.”

He grinned gleefully. “Mais c’etait incroyable!” he crowed. “Are you saying the cat is out of the bag?”

Marinette released an ungodly noise. “You’re the worst. And now he knows.”

Oooooooooooooo. “Who knows?” he teased instantly.

She sank from the desk chair to the floor, not even bothering to stay in an upright position. Her face to the ceiling, her hands hiding her face, her ears redder than he had thought possible. “The boy I like.”

He crossed his legs and sat close to her motionless form. “You know, you’re keeping secrets from everyone,” he said with a prod of his finger. “You didn’t tell your friends you’d been kissing me, you pretended I was your first kiss, you won’t tell me who your first kiss is, and you won’t even tell me about the boy you like!”

She peeked at him from behind her fingers. “Why do you want to know?” she asked.

“Come on, tell me. If it’s someone truly embarrassing, I want to know.”

She finally got up, curling up closer to him. Unconsciously, he put his arm around her. Then:

“Truly embarrassing? What on earth does that mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he searched wildly. “That model boy. Adrien Agreste. That would be embarrassing.”

To his utmost horror, she went pink, and said nothing.

He paused, tilted his head, then said experimentally, “Adrien?”

She buried her face into her hands and looked away from him.

“Merde,” he said softly. “Vraiment?”

With her head still buried in her hands she nodded once.

“Oh,” he said, and turned away. His heart was sinking. “Adrien,” he repeated.

“If you dare laugh –”

“No, no, no, no, I would never!” he said, instantly backing away from her. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “I promise, princess. You’re my friend.”

“Okay,” she said. “And if you tell anyone –”

“Who do you think I am going to tell, Marinette?” he asked. “Ladybug? She definitely keeps tabs on your love life.”

“She ought to, considering at least two akumas were caused by my love life.”

He laughed, holding her closer. Why was all this so natural with Marinette, so thoughtless? “Come on, Princess. I know you’re in a bad mood. Tell me more about this idiot you call your crush.”

She twirled a strand of her hair between her fingers. “Don’t call him an idiot,” she said in a small voice. “He’s really nice.”

“Is he perfect?” asked Chat Noir quietly.

“Well – yeah,” she said. “But he’s – he’s –”

“Handsome?”

“Well – oui, mais –” she struggled. He decided not to bait her. “He’s kind.”

That took him by surprise.

“He’s smart, and good looking. But he’s – he’s a kind person. I judged him when I first met him, and there was a chewing gum involved,” she rambled. Which meant she was lost somewhere in her thoughts. “But he didn’t judge me! He tried to befriend me, and when he laughed, I thought my heart was singing.”

She looked brilliant, in that Marinette way. Like the memory alone was enough.

“He’s had a hard time of it,” she added, more to herself than him. “I don’t pretend to understand, not all the time. He doesn’t always tell us, you know? I think – I think only Nino and I notice sometimes. There was one time he came back from a shoot, and he was hungry. Nino just had to look at me – and I knew.”

He remembered that day. Marinette had disappeared mysteriously and returned with a box of pastries.

“I am trying to move on,” she said. “I know he wouldn’t ever like me –”

His ears thundered. “Hey – a moment! What do you mean? How can you know if you haven’t said anything to him?”

He wished he hadn’t said that. It was Marinette, the prettiest, most popular girl in his class and he would have to reject her because he still loved Ladybug. Even now. Even now.

“He wouldn’t,” she said. “I just – I have tried to tell him a few times, and I – I don’t think he’s noticed. At all.”

Her voice was so small, it didn’t sound like her. He didn’t like it, he didn’t like that Marinette Dupain Cheng could sound small. At that moment came that uninvited guest: guilt.

“Alya says I shouldn’t think about him so much. It’s been a year, and I keep getting mixed signals –”

“Hold on, what?” asked Chat, interrupting her again. “Mixed signals?”

“I don’t know – it’s hard to explain.”

“Try,” he said shortly, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice.

She sighed, running her hand through her hair. “I… he’d do things. That make me feel important, or special. Call me everyday ladybug, go through effort for my birthday. And then other times, it would feel like he’s not really thinking of me at all. He gets this far away expression sometimes, and I know it’s not me he’s thinking of.”

God, he’d been blind. In fact, he’d been practically English.

“You have bad taste in men,” he croaked.

“Hey!” said Marinette. “Adrien is –”

“Terrible,” continued Chat. “The worst.”

“Now, look here –”

But before she could finish, he kissed her. She fell back on the floor, and he crawled over her. “Just, trust me on this princess,” he said. “Your taste? Terrible.”

She made for such a picture, glaring at him from the floor. “Coming from the sloppiest kisser in the world –”

Again, he pressed into her. There was no question of finding rhythm anymore: they knew each other like conversations. Maybe she was really angry, maybe they were just figuring out new things to do together – but she kissed him so hard, their teeth clacked. And on instinct, like a movie, he laced his fingers into hers – holding her in place. She paused for a second, for half a moment, and he smirked, “Good?”

“Awful,” she said.

She was crawling into his mind, he realised. It used to be easier to not think about kissing Marinette, once. He was so distracted the next day, Kagami defeated him four times. And all he was thinking of was her little grin. “Awful,” she’d said, after telling him she was in love with him. The moment was filed in his brain forever, and he didn’t even remember making the entry for it.

WHO KISSED DUPAIN CHENG

TheLadyBlogger: imagine if ladybug finds out shes been kissing chat noir. no wonder she was being so secretive. let’s leave her alone for now. BUT if anyone finds out new info without looking, stay sharp

THE CHIEN: copy

Chapter Text

They were seven weeks into summer, six weeks to go, and Marinette was in love with him.

This was a horrible realisation to be wrestling with when Marinette was practically the only person he was meeting, even if she did not know it. He had managed to meet Nino a few times, the rest of the boys once – and the girls when they were planning Mylene’s outfit. Alya, Nino and Marinette had met him only twice.  

Marinette.

Adrien hated how everything made sense now. How stupid he had been to not notice, and how Marinette – Marinette Dupain Cheng – had liked him. Loved him, if what she had said had been something to go by.

And he’d been stupid enough to think she was star struck by him. When she never once got star struck around Chat Noir.

“What do you think are the chances of Marinette liking you back?” Max had asked, when Adrien had been the idiot who was surprised that everyone had liked Marinette at some point.

There was no universe in which Marinette liked him back, except maybe this one. Maybe this one, in which she paid attention to when he was hungry with Nino, where they thought about him consistently. It was this horrible universe, in which he had kissed her as Chat Noir while being in love with Ladybug.

He had a truly uncharitable thought, something he had to stop on its tracks before it reached its inevitable conclusion.

He wished he’d met her first.

The restlessness was building in him, that horrible feeling of being stuck in his feelings. He had finished his music practice, finished reading all the books available to him, finished practicing Mandarin, finished everything he could have possibly done to distract himself.

Plagg looked at him from his perch on the windowsill. He glared at Adrien. “No!”

“I didn’t say anything!” Adrien defended.

“You’re moping. You want to see your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he repeated for the hundredth time.

“Adrien,” said Plagg. “I don’t like this. You visit her almost constantly, you keep doing that horrible thing humans do when they are in love, and you keep promising me she’s not your girlfriend.”

“She likes someone else,” he said.

“She likes you,” said Plagg, swooping upwards and standing in front of them. “Which version of you doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” he said. “How can she like me? She’s Marinette Dupain-Cheng!”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“That’s nonsensical.”

“You’re nonsensical.”

Adrien huffed. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Look,” said Plagg, as patiently as he possibly could. “I don’t know what she’s thinking, but for some reason I know what you keep thinking. You need to talk to her. To Ladybug. To someone.”

“Why Ladybug?” asked Adrien, a little too quickly.

“Because you have been keeping things from her,” said Plagg, irate. “Because you aren’t in sync. It took another hero for the last akuma, and it wasn’t even a very big one! Because there’s an akuma right now, and you had better speak to her today.”

“Hey, what –”

The siren sound from the Louvre was loud enough for all of Paris at this point. Adrien spun to turn, and Plagg only sighed, polishing off the rest of his cheese.

“Transformez moi!”

It took all of five minutes for him to start leaping across Paris.

It wasn’t as though Plagg was wrong. He hadn’t given himself time to think about Marinette’s confession, and while he didn’t have to meet her as Adrien, he continued to meet her as Chat. He looked across Paris, across the rest of the city – some people cheered him on – and unconsciously, his eyes looked to the bakery.

God, he missed Marinette.

Ladybug swung in front of him. “What’s up, Chat Noir?”

Chat used a trademark smile. “A little of this, a little of that. And you, Buginette?”

“Another day, another akuma,” she said. “To the right?”

“You’ve called it.”

He leaped alongside her.

The akuma was multicoloured. The bright, ribbony red and pink costume, with the colours in her hand. “Why shouldn’t I be allowed to colour the walls?” she hissed brightly, with a grin that distorted her twelve year old features.

Her fist curled, rose, and threw: colours exploded in all directions.

Both heroes broke up in different directions. Ladybug ran right, he went left. His feet were light on Paris – the claws scraping off bits of the city as he bounded, the wind in his hair. From the corner of his eye, he watched civilians caught melt into colour themselves, painting the floor of the city.

He jumped to a lamp post, standing on top.

“Isn’t your judgement a bit coloured?” he yelled at the kid.

The kid roared, sending shots of colour to him instantly. Chat jumped across.

Ahead of him, Ladybug was a blur of colour herself. She finished the circuit and swung to the floor,

“I hate kid akumas,” said Chat Noir, with a grimace. Ladybug grinned brilliantly, in that way that made him feel like she could handle anyone and anything.

“I think it’s in that packet of colours, in her right hand,” said Ladybug thoughtfully.

“Very colourful,” commented Chat.

She actually broke into a smile. “No time to joke around, Chat Noir,” she said. “Head left.”

They crossed each other, and he cot a whiff of her hair. He wished his heart would slow down.

A trail of colours followed them. He was almost sorry to be fighting this akuma – Paris had never looked this colourful, not since Glaciator.

When he’d met Marinette on that balcony.

He swallowed his feelings, focussed, and saw the akuma standing in the middle of the empty space at the Louvre, growling. Ladybug looked at him from across the diameter of the perimeter they had unconsciously drawn and nodded.

Ladybug’s yoyo shot forward, a beacon that had him running. He forgot his feet were touching the concrete as he ran with single-minded focus. Ladybug neared – both to the akuma and him – and for a brief second, it was her face, just her face in his eyes.

And fuck, it was still her. It was still that brilliant girl, the one with a plan, the one who could see through him and know what needed to be done. That complete confidence he had in her was still suffused into his being, still just who he was. She would tell him to jump, and he would. She would tell him to run left, and he would. She could ask it of him, confident of everything – and what hurt, what really hurt was that lately she hadn’t been asking, and he hadn’t been able to give back.

Her yoyo wrapped itself around the twelve year old, and Chat slid across the concrete, his claws screeching.

“CATACLYSM,” he called, loudly. The black spots on his claws dotted his vision, but there she was in front of him – and the akuma turned, it’s weapons poised, aimed at Ladybug, and he didn’t even think about it, he jumped in front of her –

His cataclysm caught the colour mid strike.

Another was heading to his direction instantly, and it was only with her sense of presence that he was saved. She swung her yoyo into a shield, both of them stepping backwards as the barrage of colourful airstrikes kept hitting them.

“Ça va, Chat Noir?” she asked, her teeth gritted and her eyes focussed.

“Oui,” he breathed out. “But my cataclysm –”

“Maybe we get another hero?” she suggested, and his heart dropped twenty feet.

“No!” he said loudly and aggressively. “No – please, just call your lucky charm. Let’s see if we can get this sorted without more people.”

She looked at him, confused and concerned.

But she didn’t say anything. They backed behind a fire hydrant, dodging the colours as much as possible. He swung his baton like a shield, and she called –

“Lucky charm!”

What dropped into their hands was a sketchbook.

Her brow furrowed, and he had that inexpressible urge he got when Marinette frowned – to kiss her forehead, to wipe it away. But she was concentrating, her brilliant mind working overtime.

“I got it,” she said, smiling at him so brightly she might as well have lit the entire world by herself. “Chat Noir, run right. Get your baton between her legs.”

And he did. He did because she was the one who said it, because she had told him to do it. His heart was still just that – unerringly believing in her, even when he was tired of being ignored for other heroes, for her guardianship duties, for her responsibilities. And suddenly, they clicked.

She ran left, he ran right – she held on to the sketchbook like a shield, absorbing the barrage of artillery that was just colours, kept moving onwards as he jumped close to the akuma, slamming his baton between her legs. She slid forward, kicked the kid on her legs, and she tripped on the baton, dropping her colours. Thoughtlessly, he rushed forward and tossed it to her.

She broke it.

The little butterfly fluttered upwards. Chat bent towards the kid, who wasn’t quite sure what had happened and had just found half her wax colours in pieces, while Ladybug caught the akuma and purified it.

“Bye-bye, petit papillon,” she said kindly to the little white butterfly as it flew away.

“You okay?” she asked.

“She is,” replied Chat for the kid. “Just a little shocked –”

“I meant you, Chat Noir,” said Ladybug evenly.

He blanched.

“Go find your mother, sweetheart,” she addressed the kid. “Ask her for some new colours while you are at it.”

Chat stood up and looked at her. She tapped her nose twice and smiled at him, throwing her yoyo to one of the lampposts. He understood, of course, but that didn’t mean he was happy about it.

They met at one of the roofs of Paris.

“Everything okay?” she asked, ignoring her earrings beeping.

“You should go,” he said weakly.

“I’m here, Chaton,” she said, her voice not changing tempo or mood.

He opened his mouth, to say something. To say that it was hard to be around her, knowing he loved her, it was so hard that he wasn’t always matching her lately, it was hard feeling like she was making decisions without him, it was hard because he hadn’t seen his friends in months and hadn’t been able to tell her anything, it was hard because he was alone, and his father was gone on another business trip, and it was hard because he still slept with her on his mind, still, even now –

Her ears beeped again. His mouth closed, unable to say anything.

“Do you have trouble talking to me?” she asked, her voice gentle in a way that he hated. He was another problem she was fixing, another responsibility she had on her shoulders –

He nodded.

“Do you have someone to talk to?”

Marinette bloomed in front of him. She grinned at him in his head, teasing him.

Very slowly, he nodded again.

“I am here for you,” she said. “When you want to talk. I promise you that. I don’t want to – I don’t want to corner you. But please, talk to someone.”

He felt a lump in his throat. “D’accord.”

“Good,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Chaton.”

He didn’t want to cry.

“I know,” he said with false bravado, but his voice was wavering.

She smiled again. “Go to your friend. Marinette, oui?”

He nodded.

And she was gone. He had no way of knowing where.

Chapter Text

How he made it to Marinette’s, he didn’t know. He had given Plagg cheese, he had waited quietly, ignoring Plagg’s scrutinising expression, and he had transformed again. He was operating on autopilot, unthinking. He nearly crashed into her satellite dish, and of course, of course she was waiting for him.

“Hey,” she said worriedly. “Is everything okay? Ladybug passed by, she said it was a bad akuma –”

He ran into her. His friend, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, who loved Adrien Agreste and was always there for Chat Noir. She smelled like sugar and the bakery. Her hand touched the back of his head, and he could feel his throat closing up.

“Chaton?” she said gently. With her, that gentleness didn’t feel like a mistake. She was his friend. She was his friend.

“You got everything wrong,” he said, his voice muffled into her shoulder. “About my civilian identity. All of your guesses were wrong. Everything.”

She was silent.

“Okay,” she said, finally.

“What, ‘okay’?” he demanded, still clutching her like she was the only real thing in the world.

“Okay,” she repeated. “You aren’t carefree and a jokester. You’re someone else. I don’t know who, but I have a feeling I love him too.”

And the really fucked up part was that she did. She did, wholly and completely. He didn’t have to test her on this.

“What happened today, Chaton?” she asked. Her hand was stilling running through his hair.

He took a breath. Stepped back, looking at her brilliant face.

“I just – Marinette, you have to promise not to get – not to try to – to not get upset.”

She looked at him scrutinisingly. “D’accord,” she said. “Will you sit?”

He did. He took to her balcony chair and stared at his claws for a few seconds. Marinette waited one beat, two beats, three beats, and then took a deep breath. “Wait here,” she said, and ran down to her bedroom.

In a moment of insight that continues to surprise him to this day, she emerged with a comb and a few hair ties. She handed them over to him.

“What?” he asked.

“Just, do my hair,” she said. “As you speak. It’ll help.”

The worst thing was that it worked. All of the things came out, the things he found got stuck at the base of his throat when he was with Ladybug – that he had been feeling increasingly useless, that he didn’t bring anything substantial to the table, that he couldn’t stand being at home now, that she felt more like his boss than his partner, and that he was so, so sorry Marinette – but she was his only friend he could meet right now.

And she listened, quietly. He couldn’t see her face, which made it easier.

When he finally stopped, her hair were braided into a Dutch braid, and she turned around. He blinked at her.

“What?” he asked.

“Come down from the chair,” she ordered.

It was her, so he obeyed. He crawled down, crossing his legs. Paris looked so endlessly beautiful at night, and there was Marinette Dupain-Cheng, rivalling it in beauty. Her head fell into his lap and looked up at him.

“What?” he repeated.

“I trust you,” she said.

His heart felt like it came out of his throat.

“You’re my friend, Chat Noir. You’re the only one besides Alya I can… be myself around. I hope you can do the same with me?”

“You have no idea,” he said fervently.

“I know I can’t convince you that you’re Ladybug’s best partner, not when she can’t convince you herself. But you are my partner.”

“You are too, Princess,” he said, his voice feeling like a whisper.

“Good,” she said, teasingly flicking his nose. He grinned at her even as he twitched his nose.

“You should tell her,” she continued. “Ladybug, I mean.”

He looked away, out at the city. “I don’t… I don’t want to be another responsibility for her. She’s more perfect than I am, with her costume on – but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t grate.”

Marinette frowned, in the way that promised him this was going to be an argument for later. “Hey,” she said. “Stay the night.”

“What?”

“I mean it,” she said. “You said you don’t like being home. If you’re not going to be missed, stay the night. Go back early tomorrow.”

He had a morning shoot, but he could make it. Plus, it was late – and his stylist had been complaining about his dark circles already.

“Okay,” he said.

It was a night spent very quietly. They watched Une Vie de Chat together on her bed, and he made jokes about cats almost constantly. She snorted some of her juice up her nose at the tenth consecutive joke, and he couldn’t help it, he burst into laughter himself. They fought over the morality of laughing at your friends. Fought about fighting.

They didn’t kiss that night, and in retrospect, that should have given it away. Kissing isn’t half as dangerous as laughter. What was even deadlier, perhaps, was the way in which they fell asleep, curled up together, pressed into each other. He slept thinking of her. He woke up smelling of her.

Chapter Text

Her arm was thrown over his chest.

She slept with her mouth slightly open like that, her pigtails ruffled, and her arm thrown over him. Her pyjamas were another surprise: the thing spaghetti straps revealed something he’d never paid attention to before: the layer of muscles that she clearly had over her upper body. He wondered where she got that from.

This was the second time he’d stayed over.

She’d asked it of him, of course, and he hadn’t known how to say no – so he had not. They’d watched another movie (this time a Japanese one. He’d been the one to suggest it), and as the end credits had rolled, she’d fallen asleep. He’d put her in the bed and readied himself for leaving when she’d laced her fingers into his hands and pulled him closer.

And then he’d slept. He’d slept like nobody’s business, like he’d never had a night of sleeping before this.

He watched her.

“Go back to sleep,” she said, without opening her eyes.

He grinned. “I thought princesses woke up early.”

“That’s why I’m not a princess,” she mumbled, turning over against him.

“Come on, Marinette,” he teased. “Wake up.”

She grumbled even as she did. Yawned and ran her fingers through her hair. “What time did we finish?” she asked.

“Midnight,” he said, crossing his legs and sitting on the bed.

“Good movie,” she said with a sigh. “Where did you hear of it?”

“Kimi No Na Wa?” he asked. “I just like Japanese animation. And I’ve seen some of Shinkai’s other work.”

“Shinkai’s other work,” she repeated. Paused. Took a beat. And then, with dawning realisation: “You’re a dork.”

He blushed. “What gave it away?”

“Mon dieu,” she said, with a bigger smile. “You really are! That’s why all those jokes and everything. What else do you do? Besides wander in like a stray in my room.”

He flicked her nose this time. She scrunched it up, and he resisted the urge to kiss her. “I play the piano. But that’s neither here nor there.”

She giggled, and then sighed. “I think Maman and Papa are gone today, they told me they were going to be visiting my Nona. What do you want for breakfast?”

She crawled to the ladder of her bed, and sleepily stepped downwards. He heard the tell-tale thud of her missing the last rung and nearly tripping over. He was searching for something to say. “Well?” she asked, bending over in search of her slippers.

He flicked his ears. “Um – I could – I should –”

“I have some croissants, but we could always make some omelettes,” she said absently, ignoring the little struggle in his heart. “There’s a lot of cheese in the house. I actually like American cheese in French omelettes, but don’t tell my mother that. We have a bit of gruyere, too –”

“Marinette, I’ll just be in your way,” he interrupted.

She frowned. “How so? Do you not like eggs or something?”

“No,” he said. “Er – that is -”

“Then come,” she said simply. “On y va. It’s too early for breakfast in my opinion but we should eat.”

Unable to make an argument he followed her downstairs. She hummed to herself as she prepared the coffee and he beat the eggs with a fork. “Do you think you could shred cheese with your claws?” she asked thoughtfully. “No, let’s not take any chances. I have enough catastrophes on hand without that.”

He grinned at her beatifically.

“What?” she asked.

“You made a pun,” he sang.

Instantly, she went a bright, tomato red. “You are so annoying.”

“Of course,” he said, contrite. “Here – eggs.”

He watched her as she caramelised onions, prepared a few herbs and readied the cheese. “Hey,” he said, something dawning on him. “What’s a secret about you?”

He didn’t miss the tops of her ears going a bit pink.

“What do you mean?” she asked, evenly and focussed on the egg spreading uniformly in the pan.

“I watch anime,” he recited. “I’m a dork. What about you?”

“You know my secret,” she sighed, sounding strangely relieved. “My first kiss.”

He pondered. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice perfectly neutral.

“Does it bother you? How your friends kept picking up on your life and what had or hadn’t happened?”

“Why are you asking all this?” she asked, her face still turned away.

“I don’t know,” he said, honestly. “I just want to be better friend. I can’t keep coming to you crying about how I feel about Ladybug to not… want to know how you are?”

Finally, she turned.

And he gave her a half smile, the smile of a half-joke.

She looked pink and a little embarrassed, and she opened her mouth once, even twice. Gathering her words, she began: “I can be more honest to you than I can to others. Except maybe Alya. But I… I do worry sometimes. I’m not a good liar, and I need to keep things private.”

“You do?” he asked.

“My life isn’t an open book,” she said very quietly. “I wish – I wish it was. But I find it hard to tell people of the things that bother me – because I’m expected to – I’m expected to do –”

“You’re Marinette of many things,” he offered.

She gave a half laugh. “Oui. Sort of. I feel – I think sometimes I find it really difficult to rely on anyone else. And I overthink everything, anyway –”

“Even me?”

“Even – even you,” she said. “I’m sorry – I don’t –”

“No, it’s alright.”

“It is?” she asked anxiously.

“Marinette, you’re – you know I trust you too?”

She was quiet.

“The omelette might burn,” he added.

She jumped to her feet, sliding the omelette out of the pan and dropping some of the herbs in the process.

He carefully side-stepped her and reached the stove, adding a bit of butter to the pan. The butter crackled as he spun the pan around. “You’re, um, – you’re allowed to make mistakes.”

He dropped the egg mix into the pan, spreading it as evenly as he possibly could.

“As someone who makes more mistakes than I can count, and the verified symbol of bad luck. You’re – you’re allowed to be – not on top of things.”

Wordlessly, he added cheese.

“We trust you, you know,” he said with a grin. “With all your responsibilities and everything. Ask for help sometimes.”

She nodded. “D’accord.”

“D’accord.”

Her arms slipped around his tummy from behind. “I should talk to Alya, non?”

“Ideally.”

“I will.”

“Good.”

“But you have to talk to Ladybug.”

“You busybody.”

She grinned brilliantly. “Eat your omelette.”

“You first.”

Chapter Text

TheDudeLahiffe: bro are u free to meet up today after fencing

adrienagresteofficial: Yeah, I think so. What’s up?

TheDudeLahiffe: alya and marinette are having a “conversation” and the last time marinette said she was having a “conversation” with kim, they spent like three hours together and he looked wrung out

adrienagresteofficial: Uh.

TheDudeLahiffe: nothing bad, its just sometimes marinette has a lot of things to say and she wants to take her time with it

adrienagresteofficial: Did Alya do something?

TheDudeLahiffe: tbh i warned her because i knew marinette wasn’t happy with how much she was asking about her first kiss yk

but alya sometimes gets things in her head and she has to have her answer

adrienagresteofficial: I get it. When do you want to hang out?

TheDudeLahiffe: ur done with fencing right? i’ll find you

Of course Marinette had had a long conversation with Alya. He could sense it already, her brain running in circles until she had blurted out all her feelings. He’d got Nino to himself out of it, and they’d managed to get some ice cream together. Then Nino got a call from Alya for ten minutes.

“Hey, is it alright if Alya and Marinette come and join us?” asked Nino anxiously.

“Of course,” said Adrien. “Only – we’ve finished with our ice creams.”

“That’s alright,” he said. “I think Alya wants to give Marinette a bit of space.”

“How did it go?” asked Adrien neutrally.

“Uh… okay, I think? I’ve seen how Marinette gets when she wants to get something out of her system. She overthinks, you know?”

Adrien nodded. “I know.”

“Right. But if its important enough, if its something she has to say, she’ll just ramble for hours. Alya says – Alya said she was sorry.”

“Yeah?” asked Adrien.

“She can be a bit pushy,” said Nino fondly. “She likes everyone being the best. Everyone And Marinette second guesses everything.”

“Is that what Marinette said?”

“Marinette said that she felt uncomfortable being put on the spot about her life with other people,” sighed Nino. “Which – you know – fair. She said it would have been alright if it was just them, since they’re best friends and all. But it was harder because everyone was involved in the speculation.”

“Marinette doesn’t like being speculated on.”

“No one does,” said Nino.

Adrien thought about the papparazi he’d had dodged just to get here. “Yeah.”

“Alya feels bad,” said Nino.

“Well, they’ve talked it out,” Adrien reminded him. “You’ll see. They’ll be fine.”

And they did seem fine. They were laughing about something, when Marinette looked towards Nino and himself and went pink in the face. Alya grinned but said nothing. For what it was worth, Alya looked very contrite. Adrien watched as Nino held Alya’s hand and squeezed gently, which made him like Nino all the more.

“How about some ice cream, Agreste?” said Alya, because she did look hungry.

“I’ll get it, Alya.”

“Marinette –”

But she’d already gotten up and disappeared.

Alya was looking at Adrien searchingly. She opened her mouth once and then closed it again.

“What’s up?” he asked, a little suspicious.

Alya probably knew of Marinette’s crush on him. So many things made sense now.

But she didn’t insist on Adrien going to help Marinette, which was confusing. She just smiled to herself, and said nothing. “One of us should help her, right?” he prompted her.

“Oh, absolutely,” she said. Again, there was that tell-tale gleam in her eye.

No wonder she was always laying the groundwork for Marinette and himself to hang out.

Yet this time, it didn’t come. Even Nino waited.

“Uh – I’ll go,” said Adrien, confused.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Alya release a breath and grin at the same time.

But she was grinning too much and there was no time to ask her anything, so he followed Marinette instead. She looked really happy, like she was extremely satisfied with how the conversation had gone. She also looked strangely affectionate, which was an odd reaction to have for a fight, but Marinette was always strange and oddly affectionate.

They walked in step, and she gave him a brilliant smile, instantly blushing red. “Oh – Adrien! Ça va mieux? Er – ça va – ça va bien?”

“I’m alright,” he said, trying to keep up with her as she nearly broke into a run. “Nino said you and Alya were having a ‘conversation’?” he emphasised.

She nodded. They reached the ice cream vendor and she rattled an order for herself and Alya. “I just – I was a little bothered by the whole first kiss thing.”

“That it was Chat Noir?”

“Oh, no, never,” she said immediately. “I’d never – no. It was – er something stupid – not that Alya is stupid! Or me – I just – ah, Mon dieu.”

Adrien smiled. “You don’t have to explain it to me, Marinette. Is that why you’re in such a good mood?”

She let out a breath. “Yes! No. Sort of. I have a friend visiting tonight – I think. That’s a normal thing to say, right?”

He laughed. “Of course it is.”

He’d better keep his half of the bargain, then.

She agreed to meet him at the Eiffel tower. Her back was against him when he arrived – she was leaning against the railings and watching the setting sun.

“Bonsoir, My Lady,” he said from behind.

She turned around, the orange marmalade of the sun around her, and smiled. He felt like his heart would jump out of his chest.

“Bonsoir, Minou,” she said cheerfully. “You wanted to talk about something?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. That careful, gentle cheerfulness – she was the mark of everything professional, of everything that was going to sort this out. Abruptly, he changed tack.

“I wanted to know how you were,” he said, his voice as neutral as he could make it.

She visibly recoiled. “Me? Er – are you – are you sure you don’t want to talk about yourself?”

He shook his head.

“Um,” she said, looking strangely flabbergasted. “I’m – I’m alright.”

“Are you?” he asked. “You’ve been Guardian now for a while, and you’re such a stickler for rules I don’t doubt you haven’t told anyone who you are. Plus – you and I – we’ve been off.”

“What do you mean, ‘off’?” she questioned, grabbing the one ledge he’d left her to not talk about herself.

He looked her hard in the eye. He was grasping in the dark for words that had been stuck in his throat, so he just said what he would have liked to hear himself. “Ladybug… I have a friend, a really good one. She sometimes gets really overwhelmed with responsibilities and the scrutiny she’s under. I know she gets stressed – and she’s just a teenage girl. And I don’t know you, but I know you’re just a girl under all of this. I trust you, I always have, almost blindly. If you’re worried, or scared… or stressed – I still trust you. Even though I feel more in the dark lately than before.”

Absurdly, it seemed to have worked – she looked teary, which was an odd look for her. He didn’t try to lean in and hug her, he just waited, waited for her to feel her way back to him.

“I – I trust you too, Chaton,” she said, her voice small. “I know it may not feel like it because I have to keep more secrets from you –”

He shook his head, his eyes feeling strangely wet, too.

“Is there something scaring you?” he asked.

“Papillombre – he –”

Again, he waited. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “Chaton, I’m scared because so much hinges on me winning. On having the right plan.”

“I know,” he said.

“And you – you’re my teammate, but I –”

There was something strange going on here, something he couldn’t put a finger on. She was keeping something from him that was actually worrying, and he didn’t know how to tease it out of her.

So he waited again. She took a breath.

“I’m a little scared that you trust me so,” she admitted. “I’ve gotten things wrong.”

“Something specific?” he asked lightly.

And she blanched. In the silence that followed, he tried and tried to piece together what she was thinking without knowing where her mind was taking her. The maze of her brain wasn’t something he could successfully navigate, because what emerged was an incoherent sort of hug. She spoke into his ear, “promise me you won’t wear white.”

“I won’t,” he said, his hand on her shoulder. “Er – I do wear white as a civilian a lot, though…”

She laughed wetly. “Don’t. That’s what got us here.”

He leaned back from her. “You’re going to have to explain, my lady.”

“I don’t know if I can,” she said. “I just – look, there’s this timeline – this timeline in which we knew each other’s identities.”

“Alright,” he said.

“And trust me when I say it’s a bad one.”

He thought about it. “Okay,” he said finally.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” he repeated. “I trust you. You don’t have to give me the details. I know – I know I’d have loved to know who you were either way, no matter how bad the timeline was.”

Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“I think you should tell someone,” he said. “Not me – I know something is worrying you about this. But you should talk to someone.”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know how long I can keep this up,” she sighed. “It’s… it’s lonely knowing all of this.”

He grinned. “Make a friend on this side of the mask. It really helps.”

She shoved him. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Seriously,” he said. “I’ve heard all the girls like Adrien Agreste.”

And she laughed, after many days.

For some reason, nothing really needed to be said after that. They watched the rest of the sunset in silence, and when she said goodbye, she kissed him on the cheek. Her face seemed pinker than normal.

He swung into Marinette’s room. The skylight was open and her lamp was on. She was curled up in a corner of her bed, snuggled into her blankets. As soon as he landed there, she twitched in response.

“You just kept your skylight open for strays?” he teased.

“I was waiting for you,” she mumbled, turning around. “You’re late.”

“And you’re fantastic,” he said.

“Quiet, Chaton.” She hummed to herself. “I spoke to Alya today.”

“I spoke to Ladybug today.”

She smiled very sleepily, then. “You first.”

Even in the dark, he could tell she’d been wanting to ask him all evening.

He laughed. “It went… better than I was expecting. I think you inspired me, Marinette.”

In the glow of the yellow light, it looked like she was blushing pinker than usual. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a good listener,” he said. “I just… listened more. I’ve been having so much trouble saying something, it was easier to do that.”

She was smiling at him with so much fondness, it made his heart ache. “Who’s gonna listen to you then?” she grumbled with a half smile. “Me, that’s who.”

Again, he laughed. “How was it with Alya?”

“She understood,” said Marinette with a yawn. “So fine, I guess. My conversations don’t have the fate of the world strung in the balance, you know?”

“You’d be surprised,” he said, dragging her close and snuggling up to her.

“Turn off the lamp,” she ordered.

“Dictator,” he commented, getting up to turn the lamp off.

She’d already fallen asleep when he returned.

Chapter Text

There hadn’t been any akumas in some time, which meant he’d had more time to do things he hated – such as shoots. Things between him and Ladybug had been easier – she had been more careful while talking to him, but less gentle, which just helped. More time patrolling and during shoots also meant less time with Marinette. He hadn’t seen any of his friends in such a long time. He felt like he was going to go mad very soon.

It was late evening, and he was waiting to see if his father would join him for dinner.  

He wondered what Marinette was doing.

He’d been watching the evening sky from his window, and of course she occurred to him. It happened like that too often. She just… appeared in his mind lately, with her little smile, that touch of fondness he couldn’t place anywhere except himself – and it floored him. And then he’d think about what she was doing, and because he was an idiot, he had her day memorised. This was the time she was baking for things she might eat in the mornings, after which she would sew deep into the night. After which –

Nathalie knocked on his door.

He waited for her to enter, as she always did, and of course she did. She had a tray for dinner with her.

“Your father –”

“Won’t be there for dinner,” finished Adrien, swinging his legs off the window seat. “Thanks, Nathalie.”

She nodded once, very briefly. Didn’t really say goodbye as she left.

Adrien made up his mind.

He wolfed down his dinner – whatever woeful salad had been given along with breads and cheeses (Plagg sampled some of them). Without waiting, without pausing to let the food settle – he called, “Transformez moi!”

And he was off. Across Paris’ rooftops, hoping Marinette had made croissants, and maybe she would ask him to stay the night – he’d discovered he slept better when he was with her. She was always soft in his arms, something that was so much of a novelty, that he never told her how much he enjoyed it.

It was that irrational part of him that promised him good things didn’t last. And that part of him was simply not compatible with Marinette’s entire existence.

He peered through the window.

She was humming to herself, he noticed. She had that spellbinding way about her, that told him without a doubt she was listening to American music. She spun around her room, dancing across the length of it, and extracting something from her chest.

Chat swung up to her skylight. Her voice warbled emotionally, “I love you, always forever, near and far, closer together!”

He grinned, dropping on to her bed.

“Everywhere, I will be with you,” she continued. Her accent was truly atrocious.

“I’m touched,” he said with a grin.

She stopped on her tracks, and looked for him. She glared at him openly, with her nose scrunching up in that way that he wished he could have memorised. “I should have known,” she said crossly, throwing her pillow at him, which he easily dodged.

“Good evening to you too, Princess,” he said, swinging down from her bed and on to the floor. “Your superhero is here.”

“My headache is back too,” she said wryly.

“You wound me,” he said.

She pushed him half-heartedly. “Ah, you can’t ruin my good mood. You won’t believe it, Chat Noir, but we’re going to have a party!”

His heart fell. “A party?”

“Yes,” she said enthusiastically, twirling around again. “My classmates and I – we thought we hadn’t all met in some time, so –”

“Right,” he said, his mouth inexplicably dry. “A party –”

“It’s more for – for Adrien,” she said, and went pink in a way that he had never seen before. “He’s not been allowed outside for all of the summer, so we came up with a decent excuse for him to be there. I have to convince his father, and I – I’m nervous.”

His heart felt like it was in his throat then. “You – you’re going to speak to his father?”

“I have to try,” she sighed. “Nino told me that if we don’t meet him soon, he’s going to go crazy. I trust Nino on this.”

He had no idea how they were both so good at noticing these things. He didn’t even know when Nino and Marinette had the time to pay attention to him. But he felt like he was going to cry, and that would have been a dead give away, so he pivoted elsewhere. “And are you going to flirt with your boy, princess?” he asked.

He was teasing her, of course, but he felt warmer than he really should have.  

She went red. “Oh, god – god no,” she said. “I – I get too nervous around him.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t laugh, okay,” she muttered. “When I speak to him – I just – what if I say something wrong? And I always say something wrong, and then he thinks I’m an idiot – which I just know he does – and then I trip, fall, break something, get suspended from school through a convoluted chain of events –”

“Woah, Princess,” he laughed, holding her hands to her sides. “Come on, ease yourself into the anxiety. You’re driving too fast.”

She took a few deep breaths from her nose. She pressed her forehead to his chest, sighing deeply. “I just panic when he’s in front of me,” she said to his chest. “I wish – I wish. I wish I could just say something to him. I wish it was as easy as it was talking to you.”

He really wished he had kept his mouth shut, then. He was a glutton for punishment, and he liked flirting with her, and most of all, he liked playing with fire. He leaned back, lifted her head up to him. “You really want to talk to the model? You could just dance with him. Or kiss him. No speaking.”

Marinette blanched. “Aaaaaaaaaaarghhh,” she announced to the world, stomping off.

“Okay, okay, Marinette, I’m sorry,” he said hopping after her, but she had already clambered up to her bed and was making her way to the balcony. He reached her and she was glaring, holding a small trowel in her hand like a weapon – “if you tease –”

“Okay, okay, I promise not to,” he said with a laugh. “But you have to admit –”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

“Okay, OKAY!” he yelled.

“You’re going to give me a panic attack!”

“What, because I said Adrien Agreste might kiss you?”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

“Marinette!” he barked. “Come on!”

She buried her face into her hands.

“What are you worried about, anyway?” he asked. “You know this is very easy, don’t you? Wear red. Dance with him. Kiss him. You’re an excellent kisser. Cat’s honour.”

“Not when Adrien is involved!” she said, her voice becoming increasingly high pitched.

“And what if he dances with you?” he demanded. “Are you just going to have a panic attack?”

“Yes,” she promised.

“Come on, Princess. You have to be calm.”

“Easy for you to say,” she said. “What if Ladybug kissed you?”

This time, he blanched visibly. “That’s not on the cards right now.”

“Whatever –”

“Practice with me.”

“What?” she snapped.

“Come on, practice with me. Dancing. We’ve already covered kissing.”

“I –”

“Pretend I’m Adrien,” he said, and he wished he hadn’t, really. He was digging himself deeper.

She chewed her bottom lip, which meant she was thinking about it, at the very least. And then slowly, very slowly, “Okay.” The trowel in her hand clattered to her side.

He switched his baton open and played a composition he really liked. Nothing like a solo piano to set the mood, really. Nothing like an idiot like him, choosing to fall in love with Marinette Dupain-Cheng, as if it hadn’t been the easiest thing in the world.

Marinette tripped forward with the music, and he steadied her. “Come on, pretend I’m Adrien,” he said charmingly.

“You are nothing like him,” she murmured, holding his hand very gently. He had to be careful of his claws. “He’s not going to want to –”

“He will, Marinette,” he promised, encircling her waist.

“I doubt it,” she said, in uncharacteristic insecurity. “I already ruined my chances by telling everyone you were my first kiss –”

“Ouch,” he said, beginning to step with the music. “You’d think I would increase your market value.”

She harrumphed, allowing him to guide her. “Alya doesn’t even know we’re friends, you know?” she said conversationally. He spun her around.

“Why not?” he asked.

“She’d want to know if we hadn’t been kissing all this time,” and she looked so pretty, her hands were so soft, her expression so forlorn. They spun on the music, soft as the evening glimmered.

“You know we have been kissing all this while, princess?” he said. She glared at him, and he could count all the freckles on her nose. It occurred to him that dancing was just as dangerous as laughing.

“Yeah, but not like that.”

He leaned back, stopping in their dance. “What’s ‘like that’?” he asked, teasing.

She went pink. Opened her mouth, and shut it again.

“Kiss me, like you would Adrien,” he asked of her. Why did he do that? Why did he ask everything of her?

She looked like she was close to another panic attack, but it was Marinette Dupain-Cheng. She wasn’t even afraid of akumas.

Her eyes squinted, as if she was trying to see Adrien in him.

She rushed forward to kiss him, endlessly brave. And because he was being Adrien and not Chat, she he caught more of her jaw than anything else in her nervousness. “Ouch,” he said, recoiling instantly. His hand instinctively went to his lip, which was throbbing.

“Oh God –”

“No, Marinette –”

“I can’t even aim right –”

“Marinette,” he said, removing his hand from his lips. “Easy. You just need to be calmer.”

She took deep breaths. The music tinkled again.

“Hold on,” he said. “Let me lead.”

“Adrien would never –”

“Yes, he would,” he interrupted her. “Adrien would, as would half the class and most of Paris. It’s you, Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

For some reason that shut her up. The piano kept playing in the background, and he urged her forward again. “Come on, Princess. Can’t you pretend I’m your perfect model boy for half an hour more?”

Gingerly, she held his hand. He took her in his arms again, and the music played. She was quiet as she looked up at him, the stars glimmering brightly over her, and he couldn’t even look away.

“What do you think Adrien would do next?” he asked her very softly.

“He’d – he’d tell me I look pretty,” she said.

“You look very pretty, Marinette,” he said, incurably honest. He spun her out this time, and very slowly, Marinette spun back into him.

“And now?” he asked.

“He might – he might –” it got stuck in her throat, whatever her suggestion was.

“Shut your eyes,” he told her. He chose to help her then, and leaned in – not like they had before. Not like a game, and much more like a promise. Her cheeks were endlessly soft, she sighed very softly as the pad of his thumb brushed across her cheeks. When he leaned in, she smelled like vanilla and passionfruit, which meant she had been baking again.

Her lips opened to his very slowly, and he couldn’t help wanting more. He couldn’t help pressing into her more and more, tasting the passionfruit that had no-doubt been baked into macarons that she was making for him, another him, another him that she was in love with.

When he stopped she looked at him, her eyes searching his. The usual “Good?” died in his throat as she watched him. She was looking at him like he was a puzzle she couldn’t figure out, and he wished – he wished he’d been wiser in giving his heart away to another girl, another girl who didn’t quite love him.

“Something like that?” he asked instead.

Inexplicably, she hugged him. “Maybe,” she said. “Though I doubt it.”

The night churned forwards. There was only a month of summer left.

Chapter Text

Of course he was nervous.

The invitation for the party on the barge was brief, but only because his father had relayed it to him. It was a very short conversation, one that Adrien wasn’t even sure should have made him happy as it did, except that his father had mentioned Marinette by name.

“Madmoiselle Marinette convinced me that you need some time from your shoots,” his father had said. “However, Adrien –”

“I promise to be back in time,” swore Adrien, his heart already swelling at the thought of it. “And I will be careful –”

His father had nodded once. “Alright. Bonsoir, Adrien.”

And that had been it. Adrien had done this best to not put a toe out of line for a week, even telling Marinette he couldn’t visit her as Chat for some time.

When the evening came, he had dressed up early. He knew Marinette had prepared a new outfit for the event, but since he hadn’t seen her in a while, he had no idea what the outfit was. He hoped to god she didn’t look too beautiful. It had been hard enough when they had gone to the zoo together.

At the very least, he had been exposed to Marinette once as Adrien. He could do this. They’d even practiced, after all. That was before he had known Marinette was in love with him, but even so…

When the car drove up to the barge, and he saw the lights glittering, he felt his stomach flip-flop twenty times over.

The boat was lit with many stringed lights. The soft sound of Luka strumming the guitar reached him, and the low murmurs of all of his classmates laughing amongst themselves. Alya and Nino were curled up together, while everyone else had already paired off somewhat. He even spotted Kagami amongst everyone. She was sitting next to –

Marinette.

Red.

The off-shoulder red top showed the splash of freckles across her shoulder blades that he almost wished he didn’t know existed. He’d seen them when she was in her pyjamas sometimes, but this was different. Thank god for the tiny gold chain around her neck, he could pretend he was looking at that instead of the (surprising) muscles across her back. She had clearly only made the blouse, because her jeans were her regular ones – but the fabric complimented her so well.

“Adrien!” said someone. 

“Adrien!” exclaimed everyone else soon after.

There was a scramble as everyone tried to elbow in for a hug or a hello, all of which was duly returned. Kagami kissed him on the cheek.

It was the beginning of August and the start of cooler weather. Three weeks of the summer vacations left, and they would meet again. Here were his friends, who had missed him enough to plan this for him.

He looked at Marinette, who had held back somewhat from this onslaught of people meeting him. “Marinette, how did you do it?” he asked her very honestly.

“What can I say?” she said, and she looked pinker than ever. “For once, I did not fall apart! C’est genial, non?”

“You’re magnificent, Marinette.”

She blushed so brightly, he wondered how he had never noticed it before. “Marinette did everything, Adrien,” Rose said. “She even made me a skirt,” she added, twirling in place with her new pink skirt.

“I think it looks fantastic,” mumbled Juleka.

“Marinette is brilliant,” said Ivan.

Of course she brushed it off. “It was all you guys,” she said, waving her hand. “It would have been impossible if all of you hadn’t made time for this.”

“I can’t believe you all did,” Adrien said earnestly.

“We didn’t want to miss a chance to see you,” said Kim. “Plus, Alix bet me I wouldn’t make it.”

“Easiest way to get the idiot to show,” said Alix firmly, folding her arms.

Adrien laughed, and so did everyone else.

“Come on, Agreste, settle down. We were playing a game.”

It didn’t help that Adrien had never played UNO before this. Luckily, the house rules of UNO had to be re-explained no matter where you were, which is why when fights broke out on whether someone could end their pack with a Draw 4, he could sit back in confused silence and try to keep a track of the rules.

The music played softly in the background, while Luka annihilated everyone in UNO somehow. Kagami and Marinette played together, as Kagami was also relatively new to the game. At some point, Juleka and Luka’s mother brought food (naturally, from Marinette’s bakery), and everyone loaded up small plates and played an invented game from Marinette’s house.

“It’s very simple. You have to shut your eyes and taste, and see if you can recognise the ingredients,” she said, and she looked luminous again.

“Oh, you have such an advantage!” said Alya loudly.

“Marinette will judge,” said Kagami sedately. “How else will we know it’s fair?”

“Good point.”

And Marinette burst into laughter. She promised to be a fair and wise judge, to be impartial to all. He noticed she was wearing a small pink bow in one of her pigtails.

Nino was the one to nudge him. “You’re staring again, man,” he said very quietly in his ear.

Adrien looked away from him guiltily.

“It’s alright mate,” said Nino. “We’ve all had a crush on Marinette.”

Fuck –

The earth under his feet fell away.

He had a crush on Marinette.

The game was in full swing, and he had a crush on Marinette. Marinette, who was conducting everyone through the game and was in love with him. Everyone burst into laughter when Kim decided there was nutmeg in the croissants, and he had a crush on Marinette.

He didn’t know how he passed the evening after that. They laughed while eating, and sang soft songs as Luka played his guitar. Someone suggested dancing, which had Luka bringing out a small speaker and promising the playlist he had made was perfect for the evening’s harmonies. Kagami and Marinette chose to sit it out, giggling in the background. Adrien sat down next to them. Inexplicably, when Marinette smiled at him and asked him why he wasn’t dancing, he once again found himself impossibly tongue tied.

“Why don’t you both dance?” Kagami asked for them.

“What about you?” asked Marinette, because of course she did.

“I have a leg injury from fencing,” said Kagami smoothly. She met Adrien’s eyes briefly, and he really had to commend her for being a master tactician. He couldn’t recall any leg injury from fencing whatsoever.

But Marinette wasn’t pacified. “We’ll give you company, Kagami –”

Kagami rolled her eyes. “Marinette –”

“You want to dance, Kagami?” interrupted a fourth voice.

Luka held out a hand to Kagami, who instantly took it.

“I thought you had a leg injury,” said Marinette.

“It’s healed,” said Kagami, without missing a beat. “Careful in your shoes.”

Adrien noticed then that she had short, flat heels on in place of her usual flats. Marinette blushed, brushing a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Um – would you like to dance, Marinette?” he managed to choke out somehow.

She nodded. Thank god she was as tongue tied as he was, because it was too beautiful a night for him to have the synapses to rub together.

“You’re a bit taller now,” he said nervously.

“Kagami made me,” said Marinette. “My feet are a death trap on a regular day –”

He laughed. “You look really pretty, Marinette,” he said. “Red. It’s new for you.”

“I have a friend who really likes it,” she said, with a fond smile that ached in his heart.

God, he wished he could muster the courage to kiss her, just the way they had practiced. But he held back – he held back, because it was her, and she was beautiful, and she didn’t know he was Chat Noir. She was Marinette Dupain-Cheng, and she was brilliant.

He had to leave before everyone else. The car drove him away from the barge, and the last thing he saw was Marinette instructing the others on how to take down the lights. Alya and Nino were packing up, planning to leave early as well. Marinette promised to stay and clean up. She had kissed him on the cheek when he left, looking as brilliant as ever.

As soon as he reached his room, he leaned against the door.

“What?” asked Plagg instantly.

Adrien sighed.

“Just go,” said Plagg, resigned.

He perked up. “Really?” he asked.

“Yeah,” grumbled Plagg. “I cannot take so much of sighing. Go.”

He didn’t need to be told twice.

Chapter Text

She finished stacking the rest of the décor into a little box. He watched her from the rooftop.

Juleka yawned and mumbles something too far away for him to hear. He watched her go into the boat, presumably into her room.

“How are you getting home, Marinette?” asked Luka.

“Oh, I –”

Chat Noir hopped down from the roof top, a few feet away from the barge.

“My friend is here,” said Marinette, with a grin that could have brightened all of Paris.

Luka raised a languid eyebrow. “I didn’t know Chat Noir was your friend.”

“Keep it to yourself, would you?” she asked anxiously.

Luka gave her a small salute.

Marinette ran to Chat Noir then – a predictably stupid move. As she tripped in her heels, he caught her quickly. She burst into laughter in his arms. “I’m sorry!” she said. “I can’t stand heels –”

Chat Noir grinned. “I know. Take them off.”

“And how am I supposed to walk, Chaton?” she asked.

“You’ve got me, Princess.”

She laughed, but listened to reason. The shoes came off, dangled dangerously on her littlest fingers. She hopped on the rampart close to the river, and waited for him to help her clamber on his back.

He hoisted her up in no time. “You ready? Where’s your bag?”

She snuggled closer to his shoulder. “You’re such a goose,” she said, shaking her head. “Bag’s with Alya.”

“Come on, Princess. Let’s get you home.”

He used his baton to hop onto one of the roofs of Paris. It was dark and Paris was alight. Marinette’s eyes were round as she regarded the city.

“How did it go?” prodded Chat.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Marinette, her forehead falling into his shoulder. A stray hair tickled his ear. “I have no idea what Adrien thinks of me.”

“I could tell you,” he said with a grin. “I know what he thought.”

“Right, of course you do,” she repeated, and he felt her roll her eyes. “You know what Adrien was thinking.”

Chat paused to look at the stars. “Of course I do. If you give me a minute, I’ll tell you.”

He could feel her tense up, instantly alert. “What did he think, then?” she asked.  

He swallowed his feelings. “He thought you were… incredible.”

“He thought I was incredible?” she chanted. He was glad he couldn’t see her face. “Adrien?” the incredulousness in her voice was almost damaging, if he hadn’t been the one to repeatedly call her his good friend.

So he swallowed his pride and went on: “Definitely.”

“He said… there’s nothing like your smile,” continued Adrien, thoughtlessly. “And he didn’t know how you managed to get this party done as well as you did.”

“Oh?” she asked. “Chat Noir –” he felt her muscles tense with his jump. The moon flickered in and out of existence as they made their way.

Why was this so much easier when he was in costume? Where were these words when he was himself, when she was standing a foot away from him, when he knew she liked him – no, loved him? Why couldn’t he say anything to her? That he had a feeling he was falling in love, that he hadn’t felt like this since Ladybug, that he was Adrien, and that Adrien was supposed to be in love with Ladybug – but he couldn’t help saying yes to Marinette.

“Sorry,” he said, giving her a sideways grin. “He noticed you had freckles all over your shoulders. And that they made you look even prettier. He liked the way you manage to make everyone feel so comfortable.”

And she was frowning from behind him, he could feel it – he had complimented her, and she had to contradict him, because she was Marinette Dupain Cheng.

“I didn’t –”

“Marinette,” said Chat Noir, putting her down. “Hush.” He spun around to look at her.

She pressed her lips together, facing him.

“He thought you were wonderful,” he continued, wishing he couldn’t see her brilliant blush against the lights of Paris. “He still doesn’t know you like him as much as you do. He thinks you’re the most brilliant girl in the world, and the chances of you liking him back –”

“But –”

“Marinette –”

The moon glittered again.

“And did he say anything else?” she asked very slowly, very hesitantly, playing into the pretence they’d constructed. The moonlight making her hair silver, her smile brilliant and somehow matching him.

There was that wall again, that insurmountable distance he felt like he couldn’t walk past. But she looked pretty, she’d always looked pretty, and if nothing else – he had managed to say that to her as Adrien.

Falling in love with Ladybug had been just that: falling. Endlessly and forever, like she was the only centre of gravity. Falling in love with Marinette had been him, making a choice. It had been walking into it, eyes open, head clear, decision sound. And still being unable to say anything, because she was Marinette Dupain Cheng, and she was his friend.

So he swallowed as she watched him, her eyes round. “He thought you looked really pretty,” he said.

“He did?” she asked, with half a laugh.

“Cat’s honour,” said Chat, matching her laugh.

She giggled. “Enough stories, Chaton. Let’s go home.”

Marinette changed into pyjamas very soon after, and he had no excuse to look at the freckles on her shoulders anymore. He kept his eyes trained on Paris, even as she leaned on the railing right next to him.

He grinned at her, blowing her a kiss. She blushed irrepressibly, shoving him away. Why this girl, why this night, why this moment, why him, and why her? He had no idea, so he did nothing except look away, trying his best to not look like he was aching to drag the strand of hair that had escaped one of her pigtails and tuck it behind her ear.  

Abruptly, Marinette kissed him.

She didn’t lean in this time, but her aim was sound, and his heart was in overdrive. Why was it so easy, to fall in love with Marinette like this? Did she just make it easier? Falling in love with Ladybug had never felt this easy, this comfortable, this much like having fallen in love with your best friend.

She leaned back, her eyes sparkling and the corner of her lip turned upwards. “Good?” she asked.

He nodded, his throat feeling like it was going to collapse any minute.

Distantly, they heard something falling.

Alya stood on the street, Marinette’s bag on the road. Her eyes were as wide as coins.

Chapter Text

There was a disaster waiting to happen on the group chat.

Alya hadn’t said anything, not at all, but all the way across Paris, he could feel her thinking.

Of course he had scarpered on Marinette’s instructions. Alya’s mouth was open as she stared, and he had hesitated briefly. But Marinette hissed, “Go, Chat Noir, I’ll talk to her!”

And he had slipped down from Marinette’s balcony, gingerly made his way to Alya, picked up the spilled contents of Marinette’s bag and handed them to her. All while Alya continued to stare. The second disaster: he saw Nino nearby, also staring very plainly at him.

Since then, nothing. No one on the WHO KISSED DUPAIN CHENG chat had said anything. Alya hadn’t said anything to him, and naturally, he hadn’t met any of his other friends –

However. Nino was a weak link unlike no other.

TheDudeLahiffe: bro did u happen to say something about your crush to marinette during the party

adrienagresteofficial: No. Was I supposed to?

Nino, you didn’t tell Alya anything, did you?

TheDudeLahiffe: no no i would never. youre my bro. i was just wondering if u were planning to keep it to yourself or not

adrienagresteofficial: … Not yet. Why?

TheDudeLahiffe: good, good. tell me if you plan to, ok?

adrienagresteofficial: Should I be worried?

TheDudeLahiffe: no not at all!! im pretty sure marinette likes you, but i gotta check some things out

adrienagresteofficial: Okay.

He had to admire Nino’s love for his best friend, that despite what must have been some pretty vehement warnings on Alya’s part, he had chosen to give Adrien the relevant information.

One week later and he hadn’t visited Marinette for fear of being caught, he had no new news, and he was going to slowly go insane. Ladybug had been unusually friendly during patrols and akumas, which made him oddly suspicious, but there were no posts on the LadyBlog talking about Chat Noir dating the bakery girl. On the other hand, Ladybug knew Alya, and maybe Alya had said something? Maybe this was Ladybug very gently letting him down from the expectation that he could be with Marinette as a superhero?

To stop himself from over thinking everything, he had to visit Marinette, and the only sliver of time he found was after one of his fencing lessons, under the presumption of buying a croissant.

When he entered the bakery, he almost wished he hadn’t come.

She was standing behind the counter, busily decorating macrons. She was wearing jeans and a pink blouse, an apron that said “I’m a Bakery Girl,” in pink letters, and a frown as she bent over the macarons. There was icing in the corner of her lip, and he had to restrain himself from kissing it off her.

“Marinette?” he said softly.

She jumped a mile. “Ad – Adni – Adrien?” she said, and he could feel her heart over working.

“You seem busy!” he said with a smile.

“Oh I – you – I mean, oui! I am – but not – not too busy for you! How can I help you?” she said, tripping over herself again and again.

“Just some croissants,” he said. “How are you?”

“Um. Moi? Bien! Bien.” She jumped to her feet, selecting the hottest croissants for him and putting them in a box. “Erm – trois ou deux?”

“Deux,” said Adrien. “You don’t look so good.”

Her lashes fluttered as she began folding the cardboard bakery box. “Just having a difficult time with a friend,” she said.

“Oh. Alya?” he asked.

“No! no,” she said. “I mean – sort of. We’ll sort it out tonight, she’s coming over. We’re not fighting, there’s just a misunderstanding.”

“Oh,” he said, frowning, as she placed the croissants in a box. “Who, then?”

“Um – um. A friend,” said Marinette. “An excellent friend. He’s just not visited for a while.”

He blanched. “Um. An excellent friend?”

“The best,” said Marinette, with that soft, luminous smile that filled his heart to the brim. “He should come around soon. I just miss him.”

He had to stop himself from brushing the hair out of her eyes, and kissing her right then. “He will come soon, I am sure,” he managed to say. “Er – how much?”

“Oh, hang on. Let me get to the register.”

He complimented her on her apron, which made her blush brightly. She smiled at his small box of croissants. “Date tonight?” she asked, looking at the two croissants.

“Only if you come,” he blurted out.

The world fell apart.

“Er –” he said, panicking. “Erm – that is – that is – if you want to? I mean – I mean, I would like to – but if –”

She blinked, her lips open.

“I – Marinette –”

Another blink.

Fuck –

“Mari –”

“You mean it?” she interrupted.

The blood was roaring in his ears. “Oui,” he said, very, very quietly.

“I – oh – Adrien –” she looked ready to cry. “I want to, of course I want to, but I can’t right now, I’m too – I’m too confused –”

“No – I – I don’t want to mess up our friendship, forget I said anything –”

“But I can’t!” she wailed. “Why didn’t you say something two months ago –”

“Marinette!” he interrupted. “I won’t pretend to know what is going through your head right now. But I – look, the offer is open. Just – don’t stop being friends with me?”

Marinette closed her mouth and blink. “I’ll always be your friend, Adrien,” she said with that same conviction that had floored him as Chat.

Just like that, she lifted a weight from his heart.

“That’s all I need to know,” he said. And because Chat Noir had possessed him, he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.

She looked ready to spontaneously combust.

He backed out of the bakery quickly. Summer was coming to a close.

Chapter Text

He messed up Chinese that day. He messed up his English practice too. He even forgot that he was supposed to have dinner at a specific time. He forgot his patrol, and ran into messages by Ladybug, which made him nervous. Around ten, naturally there was an akuma that took an hour to defeat. It was only over when he finally cataclysmed the akumatised object. Ladybug looked stressed herself, barely had a moment to say bien joue and then disappeared elsewhere.  

Why, oh why, did he have to ask Marinette out now, when he'd been kissing her as Chat Noir? He looked at where Ladybug had scarpered, his ring was beeping, he was out of cheese, and he was primed to make bad decisions.

Of course what he did next was stupid. He’d forgotten Alya was going to be at Marinette’s that day, he’d forgotten he shouldn’t be anywhere near her house until that was done. But when he saw the window of her room open and the skylight closed, he couldn’t help it – he tapped before noticing she was deep in conversation with Alya.

“Alya!” said Marinette loudly and out of nowhere. “Can you go down and bring some macarons? I made some fresh.”

Alya blinked at her. “Don’t think you are getting out of the question, Marinette,” she said, marching down the trapdoor.

Marinette hurried to the round window and swung the window open. “What are you doing here?” she hissed.

He swooped in close and kissed her on the lips. “Good?”

“Alya is going to jump to so many conclusions.”

“Oops.”

“Go!”

“I just came for a bit of cheese,” he said. “Plagg’s hungry and I have around two minutes more.”

Marinette palmed him something that was not quite camembert, but it would do. “Be quick,” she said, unthinkingly kissing him. “Go.”

“I’m gone,” he promised. She turned away from him as soon as he said that. He swooped up to clamber on the ledge of the rounded window. “Detransformation.”

Plagg glared at him. “I hope you know how dangerous this is,” he said.

“Shh,” he hissed, handing him the small box of assorted cheeses that Marinette had given him. The trap door was creaking opening, which meant Alya was back.

“Now,” said Alya, with a definitive sound of a plate being thunked on the floor. “Sit. Explain.”

He heard Marinette walking to the window, quickly looked outside left and right. She didn’t notice Adrien sitting on top of the window.

She must have been stupid too, that day. She didn’t shut the window.

“Chat Noir and I are – friends. We have been since summer started.”

Adrien cringed.

“Yeah, you looked very friendly,” drawled Alya.

He would have given anything to see her face then. “I know,” came her muffled voice. “It was – oh, you don’t even want to know how it started.”

“Is he the one that gave you that hickey?”

Adrien had to bite down his laughter.

“Yes,” she said. “But –”

“God I knew it wasn’t a mosquito bite. You could have pretended it was a curling iron, you know?”

Marinette didn’t have a curling iron, did she?

“Have you ever seen me use a curling iron?” she echoed his thoughts. “Anyway, that’s not important.”

“Hmm,” said Alya, pondering. “What about Adrien?”

He was intruding. “Plagg, hurry,” he said under his breath.

“Patience,” said Plagg. “I suppose a good brie would do.”

“Then take it.”

“Be quiet, Adrien,” said Plagg in a sing song voice that was going to have him strangled the minute they returned home.

Marinette was whispering something under her breath that he couldn’t overhear.

“What?” demanded Alya.

“He asked me on a date today,” said Marinette. “And I didn’t say yes.”

Adrien’s heart stopped.

“Because…?” said Alya slowly.

“Yes,” wailed Marinette. “I can’t help it! I think I like Chat Noir, and I don’t know what to do about that, because we said we would be friends.”

It was the third time she’d caused the world to fall from his very feet.

On his left, Plagg danced around the cheeses. “A brie, then,” Plagg said cheerfully, choosing a cheese and taking a sniff of it.

Adrien swallowed his heart. “Can you just finish –”

“Marinette, easy –” came Alya’s voice.

“No, it’s not!” said Marinette loudly, and he heard something crashing.

Plagg huffed. “Half of cheese eating is in the smell –”

“What happened to ‘this is dangerous’?” Adrien said under his breath.

“Shh,” Plagg mocked him.

Alya was laughing.

“Why are you laughing?” came Marinette’s anguished cry. “Can’t you see my whole world is falling apart?”

At least he wasn’t alone.

“No, I know, I know. I was just wondering. Was he really your first kiss? You said you became friends when summer started.”

“This again –”

“Come on, there’s no harm in me knowing now. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to! I promise, I won’t press.”

Plagg had finally started eating the brie. Adrien felt his heart slow down. Naively did he think that the most dangerous parts had already been overheard, that he knew what had happened now. He could detransform, go home, maybe he could speak to her as Chat Noir, kiss her for the thousandth time –

“For heaven’s sake – yes, it really was him. But you can’t tell anyone, or Ladybug will murder me. It puts a few people’s identities at stake if someone else finds out.”

“Mon dieu,” said Alya. “You’re not lying.”

She wasn’t. Alya was right.

“And you’re not… misremembering or something?” he heard Alya ask. “Like maybe it was some other superhero.”

“You know what, you can think what you like,” said Marinette. “Safer for everyone.”

“How many superheroes have you been kissing?”

“No more,” came her firm voice, brokering no further discussion.

“Done!” announced Plagg, finishing the slice of cheese. “We should really go, Adrien, you shouldn’t eavesdrop.”

Adrien gave him a look so dark, it could rival his father’s. “Transformez moi,” he said dryly, waiting for his transformation to wash over him.

It was much later, when he fell into his bed, staring at the ceiling that he thought about what she had said. And thought. And thought.

Chapter Text

She had to be mistaken. Life was never this easy.

It was the only explanation. He didn’t remember being a victim of Dark Cupid, but he wasn’t close to Marinette then. Not as a friend, either. And she couldn’t have known Adrien was Chat Noir, because she was confused about her feelings for both.

“If you’re so worried, just ask her,” Plagg had said.

How could he? She would scramble to make another story, because he had noticed that she did that when it came to her first kiss. She had been lying about something or the other in relation to the first kiss all throughout, and what was worse was that he had known when she wasn’t making a story. When she told him her first kiss was during Dark Cupid, she had said it so absently, so confident he wouldn’t remember. When she told Alya, she had again said it so firmly, knowing very well that Alya wouldn’t risk anyone’s secret identity, not even for a scoop. It was that unerring confidence Marinette sometimes had, when she looked at a choux pastry and knew exactly how much longer it needed to cook.  

Which was why he had no idea how, but she was wrong somehow this time. She had to be mistaken about the timeline for her first kiss. She had to be mistaken about something.

“Do you – do you remember those photos from that interview with Nadja?” he asked Plagg.

“Why would I?” said Plagg, busying himself with camembert.

He shouldn’t say it. He shouldn’t say it.

“Didn’t Ladybug kiss me?”

It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. Life was rarely this easy.

Of course it made sense. It even made sense why she had lied so consistently about her first kiss, now. Of course she was protecting someone’s identity. It just wasn’t someone else’s.

It was just too easy.

He tapped on the skylight once, and Marinette emerged. “You’re back!” she exclaimed. “I thought I chased you away for good this time.”

“It takes a lot more, Princess,” he said. “What were you doing? Did you speak to your friend?”

“Yes,” sighed Marinette, clambering on to the balcony. He held her hand and pulled her up. “But she needs more explanations. I have no idea whether I managed to convince her we are friends.”

“Are we friends?” he asked her, now that she was standing in front of him.

Marinette blushed. “I – Chat Noir!”

He grinned at her irrepressibly.

“You –” she struggled. “No! One thing at a time. I need to tell you something.”

“Yes, Princess?” he asked innocently.

She glared at him. “Adrien asked me out.”

“Oh?” he said, flicking one ear. “Félicitations. When are you both going out?”

She looked at him again, blue eyes meeting his. Blue. Blue eyes, like –

Not now.

“I didn’t say yes,” she said.

He smirked. “Didn’t you?”

“And it’s – you – don’t grin –”

“Tell me why, Marinette.”

“If you tease –” and her nose scrunched up, in exactly the same way –

“How could I?” he asked her.

“You will, because you love Ladybug –”

“You’re going too fast again, Princess.”

“This can’t be happening,” she said, her hand on her forehead, pushing her bangs back. “I cannot –”

“Cannot what?” asked Chat.

“You mangy cat,” she pronounced. “I don’t like you. I don’t.”

Chat dragged her close, hand on her waist, eyes meeting hers. “Oh, definitely. I don’t like you either.”

He kissed her, tasting luck.

It couldn’t be this easy. It couldn’t be this easy. It was never this easy.

Chapter Text

Marinette leaned back, searching his eyes.

Life had rarely ever played so well, but it was her. It had to be. That light in her eyes, when she was determined about something. Those moments when it looked like she could take on the world unscathed. Always having a plan. Always helpful, always kind. Always her.

He didn’t know how to ask her. He looked back into her eyes – blue, blue like hers – and she buried her face into her hands and made a sound that crossed between a groan and a cry.

He hadn’t been expecting her to sigh lovingly, of course – it was Marinette, after all – but he did not expect the anguished cry.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa –” she said, pushing him away –“AAAAAAA-”

“Marinette?”

But she had stomped away from him, in that way of hers. She opened the skylight and tripped onto her bed –

“Woah, Marinette,” he said, leaping after her worriedly.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa –”

“Hey, you’re going to hurt yourself,” he said, slipping down to her bed. But she was already sliding down her bed and into her room.

“Noooooooooooo –”

“Princess –”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA –”

She dodged behind the partition screen panel and fell silent. He stood in front of it, arms folded. “You know, hiding isn’t going to help anything.”

“You be quiet!” she said, her voice shrill and high. “You confusing – horrible –”

“Hey, how am I confusing?” said Chat.

“You confused me!” came her voice from behind the divider thingy.

“That’s hardly my fault.”

“You said ‘oh, Marinette, it’s okay if we want to kiss, we just have to be friends!’ Now look what’s happened! I’m in love with you and Adrien, and my life is over.”

Chat chuckled. “What does this Adrien have that I don’t?”

She poked her head out from the side of the partition panel, glaring. “If you’re going to badmouth one of my best friends –”

“Aren’t I one of your best friends?”

“Yes, and look how much I defend you against the Ladybug fanatics,” said Marinette, ducking behind her partition panel.

“What?”

“Those insane people who like Ladybug more,” came her muffled voice. “Personally, she’s overrated but that’s neither here nor there –”

“You know, I like Ladybug more too,” he said conversationally, waiting for her reaction. “She’s rather brilliant. Don’t you agree?”

There was a silence from behind the partition panel.

“No,” said Marinette finally. “She gets things wrong too often, and she’s still no closer to catching Papillombre, she’s always -”

“Hmm,” interrupted Chat. “She’s got a lot of responsibilities, I’d say. Imagine being her, Marinette: you become the guardian of a dozen or so demigods at the age of fourteen, you have to worry over your identity and everyone else’s, and juggle school. It’s not like Chat Noir is much help – there’s no one quite like her at her job. Besides looking fantastic in red.”

Marinette peeped from behind the panel. “You think so?”

Chat looked at her, his eye knowing. “Absolutely.”

And if she was thinking anything, she didn’t let it be known.

It had to be her.

“You – I – Chat –” she glared again. “Okay – you can’t kiss me for some time! I need to –”

“Understand your heart, oui?” asked Chat, smirking again.

“If you smile at all –”

“Oui, oui, I know,” he said. “Can I come there now?”

Very slowly, she nodded.

He hopped over the panel, landing right next to her. He sat right by her, and without looking at her, said softly: “A last one, then, Princess? You might choose Adrien after all this, and then where will I be?”

She paled. “Don’t – don’t joke –”

“Alright, alright,” he said, his hands up. “I won’t.”

He put his hands on his knees and hummed to himself. From the corner of his eye, he saw her looking at him, scrutinising, thinking, being Marinette.

Summer wrapped itself around them, the last of it, the final two weeks.

Her hand inched to his.

Very gently, he laced his fingers into hers.

“You mean it?” she asked. “You like me too?”

“Of course I do,” he promised. “You can be confused between me and Adrien all you want, but I’m sorry if I ever confused you about that. Of course I like you. I like everything about you. I’d ask you out tomorrow if I knew you’d say yes.”

He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but at the very least he felt like he had said the right thing.

“Last one,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Before I think.”

She pulled him forward and leaned in, her hands raking through his hair.

It had to be her. That girl, the one with a plan, the one with all the responsibilities in the world, the one who was determined to help everyone, the one who looked at a problem and found solutions, the one who could balance a million different things at once in her head. That girl, the one who laughed the way the stars twinkled, the one who’s nose scrunched up in confusion and frustration, the one who sewed late into the night, the one who stumbled and tripped over herself, the one who watched him without him knowing.

Marinette.

When she leaned backwards, he smiled at her teasingly. He didn’t say anything, not then, just promising to return, whenever she wanted him. And then he let her go.

Chapter Text

The sky bled pink on the last morning of August.

It reminded him of her room. The day was beautiful, almost too beautiful, in ways that shouldn’t have affected him. Summer was over now, which meant less free time, more time in school, shoots that he hated and time with friends that he didn’t.

Most of all – it meant Marinette.

He’d kept his word, trying not to see her while she promised to clear her head of her feelings.

He looked up at the sky and smiled.

The first day of school began with hugs and kisses and greetings. Nino tackled him out of nowhere and told him he’d missed him, and Alya had ruffled his hair. Marinette stepped forward really shyly and said “Bonjour,” in a voice that told him very clearly that she would rather do anything than be here, and he couldn’t help going as pink as she was before saying, “Salut Marinette! Er – er, good summer?” 

She looked ready to combust again. “Oui,” she said.

“Good, that’s good,” he said, swinging his arms awkwardly. Alya looked between them with a pleased smile, one elbow on Marinette’s shoulder, watching intently.

“What’s going on?” asked Nino, nonplussed.

“Nothing you need to worry about, babe,” said Alya, taking his hand and dragging him away. “Give them a minute.”

Marinette was a rabbit caught in headlights. “A-Alya –!”

And without warning, something happened to Adrien that he couldn’t explain. “What, can’t spend time with me?” he blurted out.

She jumped back, her face burning like the setting sun. “Adrien –”

“Marinette?” he asked, stepping forward again.

“Are you – are you flirting?” she whispered, horrified.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Bit obvious, isn’t it?” he said wryly. “I should be better, but then I don’t think my competitor will be, either.”

Somehow, the words were slipping from his mouth easily today. After all, his competitor was himself.

“Competitor?” she asked.

“You said you were confused by someone else –”

Of course she frowned. And in retrospect, that should have given it away. But in that moment, the akuma alert sounded.

And he saw the panic in her eyes as the multicoloured supervillain (Princess Popular!) and she hadn’t yet thought of an excuse. It occurred to him that if it was her - then her excuses had always been terrible. Was she just bad at lying? If she was Ladybug, how had she even managed to hide it for so long?

He turned to her with a smirk. “Let me guess, you have to go?”

Again she narrowed her eyes at him. Without a word dodged the supervillains laser shot in their direction. She threw herself perfectly over her hands and knees, her body in perfect form. He abruptly remembered the muscles on her back.

But he had more pressing matters on his mind. He ran to the bathroom, barely having a second to whisper “Transformez-moi,” before he could head back into battle.

“Hey, stop giving people a headache on the first day of school,” rang a voice from the centre of the courtyard, clear and sharp, addressed to Princess Popular.

Of course it was her. Marinette was standing up straight, eyeing the akuma appraisingly, a bunch of small elementary school kids hidden behind her.

He hopped up close to them and whispered reassuringly. “That bathroom, there,” he pointed. “Let me and Bakery girl handle this.”

Marinette hadn’t noticed him behind her. The supervillain turned to face her. “Ha! Marinette Dupain Cheng. I should have known it was you!”

Naturally, she took aim, and naturally he unceremoniously scooped her into his arms and ran to some of the benches behind which Alya was hiding. “Some day you’re having at school, hmm?” he said conversationally as he ran.

“Not now, Chaton,” she moaned.

And he deposited her near Alya. Standing as heroically and charmingly as possible, he turned around, suppressed the urge to wink. “Marinette,” he said with a nod. “Madmoiselle LadyBlogger. Take care of yourself, both of you. Be careful, Marinette.”

And he left. Very Adrien like of him, he thought. And Alya had clearly noticed something, because she was grinning like an idiot.

But they had bigger problems to sort out. The akumatised villain was shooting lasers that made everyone her fan, and honestly, how had it not been another version of Chloe being akumatised? However that was neither here nor there.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Marinette heading to the empty closet while Alya tried to film the supervillain. Chat Noir squared his shoulders. If it was her, she’d be here in two minutes. They’d have this sorted out in five.

Chapter Text

They had it sorted out in four minutes. One quick grin to his lady later (he noticed she blushed. She blushed), they both scarpered. He carefully avoided her route to an abandoned closet, and headed for a cupboard instead.

The rest of the day went fairly unremarkably, all things considered. Timetables were distributed, new books, the class president was unanimously voted in as Marinette. She really did try to wriggle out of it this time – but Rose said she was busy with her flowers, Mylene said she had no time with activism, none of the boys wanted to try, and Alya always prioritised the LadyBlog over all other things.

The akuma herself had been ushered into mandatory counselling. Because of her, Adrien was forced to reach home early, and spent his evening with his Chinese tutor. After dinner he decided to play piano (of his own volition! His father would be proud). His fingers touched the notes of the Chopin composition almost unconsciously.

“You’ve been strange,” said Plagg suspiciously.

“Have I?” asked Adrien, continuing to play.

“Yes,” said Plagg, his voice firm. “You’ve been sighing and singing and smiling a lot. What’s wrong.”

Adrien grinned at him. “You should know, you little liar. I know you know who she is.”

“Who is?” asked Plagg, a little too fast.

Again, Adrien only smiled. “Plagg – Transformez-moi!”

And he was off. He vaulted the rooftops effortlessly, crossing home after home to find her on the balcony. She noticed him this time, jumped back three paces and glared. “Isn’t it a little late to bother me?” she demanded.

“I have patrol with Ladybug,” he said slyly. “I just thought I would check in.”

Her eyes widened like coins, and he suppressed the grin inside him. “Oui, oui. Je suis bien! Okay?”

“You sure?” he asked, deliberately being very gentle.

“Yes – and don’t flirt!” she warned.

“I would never,” he said, with as much sincerity as he could muster. But because he couldn’t resist himself, he added, “My opponent should worry about that –”

Before she could say anything to combat that, he vaulted off.

He met Ladybug at their usual rooftop, and she looked flushed and panicked. “When did we plan patrol for tonight?”

“Don’t you remember?” he asked innocently. “Right after the Princess Popular attack.”

She glared at him. “I feel like you’re lying, but let’s finish this early if we can.”

“Right you are, M’Lady.”

He pretended not to notice the tops of her ears going pink.

She turned around, swinging her yoyo, her arm tense and almost ready to throw it. Adrien couldn’t help it – gently, very gently, he said, “Marinette?”

She turned.

Pink.

Her face was pinker than he’d ever seen it, slowly shifting from pink to red, and even with tinges of purple. A slow grin broke onto his face as he looked at her, and she glared. “You – I mean – what did you say?”

He only smiled wider in response. And she glared even more, which in turn made him smile more.

“You insufferable –”

“Obnoxious,” he prompted.

“Obnoxious –”

“Furstrating.”

“Frustrating -!”

“Egotistical.”

“Ego– you don’t have an ego.”

“I will now,” he promised.

And she glared again. “Bien. Egotistical –”

“Catastrophically sexy.”

“For heaven’s sake, Chat Noir!”

“Oh, come on, Princess,” he said.

“This is a disaster,” she informed him. “You have no idea what the consequences could be! You don’t know what its like to be a guardian –”

“And Marinette,” he added.

She glared at him. “Marinette isn’t anything –”

“Yes, she is.”

Again, she huffed.

“Marinette?” he said softly. “Tell me what’s bothering you. I know I haven’t been the best friend, and I haven’t noticed you handling all of these things together… but I want to be there for you. More.”

She buried her face into her hands again. “You don’t – you don’t understand. I have a bad feeling – And this doesn’t help anything, you know, it’s not like I don’t have feelings for Adrien even now – I need more time –”

“Claws in.”

“HEY!”

“Evening, Plagg.”

“Is this a joke,” deadpanned Plagg, once the transformation was gone.

“It is!” said Marinette, her fingers on her eyes, tightly shut. “Transform back!”

“No,” said Adrien firmly. He handed Plagg a piece of cheese and waited for her breathing to even out, for her to calm down. The last of summer’s tendrils released them, slowly receding from the ankles and fading into the darkness of Paris. Without opening her eyes, her fingers still pressed to her face, she said very softly, “Adrien?”

He carefully pulled her hands down from her eyes. “Salut, my Lady,” he said.

Again, she blushed brilliantly. His heart sang.

“Ha!” he announced. “You really weren’t lying. I was your first kiss. Alya is going to go crazy.”

“I’ll kill you myself, Chaton.”

Chapter Text

He was staring ahead. He wasn’t going to look back.

“Oh, no, Alya,” came her voice carryingly.

“Marinette, you’re being silly.”

He wasn’t going to turn around.

“Dude,” said Nino from his side.

Thank God. Adrien instantly turned to him, smart enough to turn just enough to catch a glimpse of him. She looked at him sideways at the same time. He smiled at her from the corner of his mouth. She blushed. She blushed.

He was never getting over that.

“You know what Alya, let’s go,” said Marinette abruptly.

“Ooo, finally,” said Alya. Both girls stood up in that instant. Marinette walked past his desk and smirked at him. He pretended to look somewhat contrite.

When he turned around again, Nino was staring at him, unimpressed.

“Quoi?” asked Adrien.

“Is something going on between you both?” he asked bluntly.

“Me? Marinette? Never,” said Adrien. And just for good measure: “She’s a good friend, Nino.”

“Yeah, right,” said Nino sarcastically. “Look – it’s just. The thing is, I was sure she liked you.”

His heart was beating a mile a minute. “And that’s changed?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Look – don’t, don’t tell anyone,” sighed Nino. “Especially Alya. But you’re my best friend, and best friends before girlfriends –”

“Nino,” said Adrien, stopping him on his tracks.

“Right. Look – you remember when we had the party on the barge?”

“Yes,” said Adrien.

Nino squared his shoulders, preparing to give him some truly dark news. Adrien became briefly – very briefly – alarmed.

“We saw Marinette kissing Chat Noir on her balcony,” he said, a ring of truth that he had clearly been practicing.

Adrien blinked.

“And look it might be nothing!” continued Nino. “After all, Chat Noir was her first kiss. Maybe they have a thing going. But you know – before you lose your heart or something –”

It was a struggle not to laugh.

“Are you laughing?” demanded Nino.

“No, no,” said Adrien. “Marinette and I – not that I don’t appreciate the warning, Nino, but you know. We’re friends.”

“You sure?” asked Nino. “You’ve been different. She’s been different. She used to stutter and stumble when she was around you. And you keep smiling at her.”

“I’m allowed to smile at my friends!”

Nino frowned, crossing his arms and facing him.

Adrien took a breath. What was he going to tell Nino? That Marinette was still worried about Papillon, that she was worried because there was a timeline when they knew each other’s identities and everything had gone wrong, and that she had asked they keep this to themselves for now?

Nino looked at him, still sceptical. Maybe a kernel of truth would do. “Alright, alright. We did find out we liked each other. But we can’t do anything about it.”

“You can’t?” asked Nino, alarmed.

“Nothing that we can tell everyone,” said Adrien. “My father won’t approve.”

“Oh,” said Nino, realisation dawning. “Compris. That’s fine then.”

Adrien smiled to himself, blessing Nino and his golden heart to its very core.

Marinette and Alya walked back into the classroom. She looked at him and smiled briefly, and he smiled right back. As she passed him, she slipped a note in his hand. He unfolded it quietly, away from Nino’s eyes.

8:00 PM?

He swung into the balcony and landed directly on her bed. She looked up at him from her desk chair. “Did the cat drag an Adrien Agreste in?” she asked with a grin. “I swore I gave him a note to come visit.”

Chat Noir slid down from the ladder. “He’s here somewhere, I’m sure.”

Marinette got up and walked to him. She was blushing again. She was blushing again – and it was because of him –

She kissed him.

“Everything okay, Chaton?”

He looked at her and sighed. “It is now.”

Marinette shook her head. “Idiot.”

“Will you kiss me again if I let you call me that again?”

“Goose.”

“That’s another then,” he said, and leaned in again.

Marinette sighed into his lips, and he forgot Papillon, he forgot timelines, he forgot everything. The world could end then and there for all he cared. Summer had ended, and onward marched September. Autumn was already on the rise.