AN: I do not own Miraculous Ladybug or any of their characters, but I adore them anyway!

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He laid back on the bed and tried to come up with a list of his options. He needed to let Marinette know that he knew, but he was concerned she would be upset. And it would only be fair for her to know who he was too, since he knew her secret. He wasn't able to get very far in his ruminations, before unconsciousness took him. He woke up to the blaring of an akuma alarm. He shook Marinette.

"Wake up!"

Marinette rolled away from him.

"There's an akuma. We need to go."

Her eyes barely fluttered.

"Where's your kwami? You need to transform."

Nothing.

Suddenly, a red kwami with big blue eyes and black polka dots floated up beside him.

"Let me help, Chat Noir." Her chirpy little voice surprised him.

The kwami flew over to Marinette and squeaked out, "You're going to be late for school, again Marinette!"

Marinette sat up ramrod straight in bed.

"Sorry, it's really an akuma. You know what to say!"

Marinette called out, "Spots on!" and was bounding out of the hatch on her roof as a cloud of pink engulfed her. The last thing Chat Noir saw was a red foot with black spots pulling up through the hatch.

Whoa!

Even knowing, that was a lot to take in. Still, time to go. He bounded out of the door and chased after her, headed to the akuma. The akuma was, thankfully, only a few blocks away. When it had been cleansed and the city set to rights, the duo met for their customary fist bump. Ladybug smiled at her partner. "Man, it was like you were right on my heels on the way over here, Kitty. I don't know how you got to me so fast…" her voice trailed off as it dawned on her exactly why Chat Noir had been right behind her. Her face turned white.

"You didn't go home last night, did you?"she whispered.

Chat Noir shook his head. "Sorry. I really didn't mean to find out. I've got to go now, or I'll have to face something worse than an akuma at home. But don't panic! Everything is going to be okay. I'll see you at school."

With that, he gave a two fingered salute with his trademark smile and vaulted off into the city.

He focused on just getting home. When he did, he began his regular routine, but his mind was whirring. Marinette was Ladybug. That seemed so, well, duh! And he'd been spending tons of time with her. That was very gratifying. He knew that Ladybug had always said they were friends, but this, this was proof. She really was his friend, twice (three times?) over it turned out. And he loved her. Which was a great relief, actually. He'd never thought about it before, but of course he loved Marinette. But she loved someone else. He couldn't help but wonder who had managed to steal her heart. Regardless, now was the time to worry about her. Knowing LB, she would be freaking out that he had discovered her identity, worried that she had put them at risk, scared that she had given Hawkmoth some kind of advantage over them. Time to work on a plan to keep his partner from having a melt down today, before they could properly talk it over.

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Marinette was not freaking out. She was totally not freaking out. Chat Noir knew who she was. She trusted him not to go blabbing to anyone, but… Uhggg!

She really wanted to know who he was and she wanted him to know who she was. It would be nice to have someone who knew all about her and understood how bizarre all of this was, but, was it smart? And he had always respected her wishes about their identities, and she's the one who went and totally BLEW IT! What had she been thinking? Now Chat Noir knew that Ladybug was Marinette and…

If he got akumatized Hawkmoth would know both their identities and start targeting their friends and family, and…..and….and…..

Well, she really couldn't come up with what terrible thing would happen then. Which was weird, because normally she could really work herself into a tizzy about a worst-case scenario. Seriously though, Hawkmoth already targeted her friends. She couldn't count the number of times Alya had been taken hostage, used as a sacrifice, or otherwise threatened by an akuma. She had definitely saved Adrien a shocking amount of times as well. And clearly had Dad had been akumatized as well. So maybe it didn't really matter? Still, she felt this was uncharted territory and it made her nervous. Maybe Chat Noir would have some insight into it that could help them out.

Tikki said, "That's impressive, Marinette! You didn't spiral down into nonsense! Now let's get headed to school!" And off they went.

When she got to school, there was a note stuck to her locker door. She opened it up.

It's going to be okay! Stay calm! I know you wanted that to be a secret, and I PROMISE I will keep it a secret. It was totally an accident. I'll tell you about it later. Our enemy has no advantage. I would have come to your aide no matter what, no matter what you were wearing, so it's not like he has extra leverage. And he doesn't know. I'm the only one who knows, and I was already keeping a pretty big secret myself. It's going to be okay.

It was unsigned, but it was pretty obvious that it was from her partner. That was really pretty thoughtful of him, even though she'd already decided that she was going to shove the whole situation to the side of her mind for the day anyway. And it turned out to be pretty easy to do, too. Her classes went fine, great actually. Alya was disappointed about missing the early morning akuma attack but had been able to secure an interview with a witness that saw it, so she was in a decent mood. It was always interesting to Marinette to hear what happened from someone else's perspective. Nino seemed really tired and was trying not to nod off most of the morning. Adrien kept glancing at her and sending her little smiles, so all in all, it was pretty easy to focus on her surroundings, instead of fretting over her gigantic mistake this morning.

When she came back from lunch, there was a ridiculously cute post card taped to the tabletop at her spot. It had a black cat dangling from a set of bars in a playground with the caption, "Hang in there!" on it. She couldn't help but giggle, it was so classic Chat Noir. On the back it just said, "You're doing great! I'll see you this evening and we can talk then."

How did he even know how she was doing? Was he skipping school to vault over here and try to cheer her up? Or, and she really was trying to repress the thought, did he go here? It wasn't like she hadn't noticed that they had corresponding assignments. And what had his parting words this morning been? DON'T THINK ABOUT IT! Just then Nino and Adrien entered the classroom and Marinette realized she couldn't just keep standing in the aisle wondering about her ridiculous partner. She sat down and readied herself for class, but as class wore on, she realized she might have overlooked something this morning. Her big fear with her identity getting out wasn't because Hawkmoth would be able to target her friends and family magically. It was that he would be able to come at them as his civilian self-and they would never see him coming. The temperature in the classroom seemed to be dropping dramatically. To the point where Alya nudged her and whispered, "What's wrong? You look like you've just seen a ghost. You've even got goosebumps."

Marinette looked down. Her arms were covered in gooseflesh. And she couldn't shake the sudden fear. She stood up quickly. "I'm sorry Miss Mendeliev, I think I'm going to be sick." Grabbing her bags, she hastily left the classroom. Adrien looked at Alya. Alya raised her shoulders in the universal expression of, "I don't know." But Adrien knew. The panic had finally hit. So he claimed that he was needed to confer with his bodyguard on a critical safety issue, and hustled out of the class. (AN: French schools must be WAY more lenient than Texas Schools. And cooler.) He'd just made it to the stairs when he saw her sitting under the opposing staircase.

"Hey Marinette, what's going on? I got the impression when you left class that you weren't really sick?"

"You're right, I'm not sick, but my stomach is all twisted up in knots. I did something really stupid this morning, and now I'm afraid that everyone I care about is in danger."

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Can you just sit with me for a few minutes? I've attracted akuma's before so I'm working really hard to be in charge of my thoughts."

Adrien's brain went on standby. Ladybug had almost been akumatized before? That did not bode well for him. Or the city of Paris. Or earth, for that matter. Adrien's look of surprise was not lost on Marinette. "You've attracted akuma's before?" Marinette just nodded.

"You know, I think we're the only two in our class who haven't been akumatized. I guess I never even thought about them coming after you. I didn't know people could resist them."

"I take it that means that you've never had one come after you?"

"Not that I know of."

Marinette hummed, and Adrien found himself wondering what it meant. He desperately wanted to just tell her, right now, but between them being at school and her working hard right now to control her emotions, he figured it was better not to. So he sat, and waited. She managed to pull it back together very quickly. No wonder she'd been able to ditch prior akumas. He wondered if this was a Ladybug thing, or a Marinette thing. He suspected the latter. He really needed to talk to her. To tell her. To reassure her. But now was not the right time. He would just have to wait for it.