DISCLAIMER: I don't own Miraculous or Batman; the former belongs to Thomas Astruc, Zagtoons and Method Animation, the latter belongs to Warner Bros.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Yes, seriously… an interesting little one-shot where it's Chloé who falls for Damian and not Marinette. Yes, it's borderline crackfic. Just thought I'd have some fun with this! This takes place sometime during Miraculous S3, but Miracle Queen never happened, so Chloé gets some redemption here. Oh, and the flourishing "finishing move" which he pulls on the bad guy here is his Injustice 2 Super Move, called "Holding Back" (you can see it in his character trailer for that game).
MAJOR THANKS to Darthkvzn for letting me bounce a funny idea off of him, as well as the folks over at the thread for Miraculous on SpaceBattles!
"Parisian Lady Meets Gothamite Gentleman"
By StellarStylus
Somewhere in Gotham City, there was a very important building: the corporate headquarters for Wayne Enterprises. And within that building, Bruce Wayne was watching his youngest son (and only biological son) Damian Wayne fidget nervously as the latter waited for his date to arrive.
Who would have thought that a business trip to France and a special reception at Le Grand Paris Hotel in Paris could have led to Damain falling for a young woman such as this one?
"Damian?"
"Yes, Father?"
"If I'm correct, then your date will be here any minute."
"Yes, Father."
"Good. Just remember who she is and what you're dealing with: One of the most important young women in France today."
"I know, Father, I know."
"Well, if you have everything, then I guess you're good to go."
"Thank you, Father."
"Oh, and Damian?"
"Yes?"
"Have fun."
"Thanks."
And with that, Damian Wayne boldly strode out of the office of his father, Bruce Wayne.
As he took the express elevator down to the lobby, Damian saw the well-wishes (read: the jokes and teasing) from his older brothers, Dick and Tim and Jason. He didn't even deign to reply to them, as he focused on what lay ahead of him.
Once the elevator reached the ground floor, he strode out into the lobby, and just as he made his way past the front reception desk, he saw a sleek black limousine pull up to the front doors.
The chauffeur got out and opened the rear passenger door, and its lone occupant got out.
She had her bright blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, large sunglasses down over her eyes which he knew to be bright blue, and she was wearing the latest fashion from the mysterious designer known only as "MDC." She wore a sleek black jacket with a faint hexagonal pattern over a yellow with a pattern reminiscent of bees or beehives, and finished off the look with black ankle boots. In short, she looked like she'd just stepped off the runway at a fashion show or out of the pages of a fashion magazine.
And as she walked into the lobby, she looked up at him and smiled. At first glance, anybody around them would have assumed she was just being smug and haughty, but Damian could tell that it was a sincere smile.
She walked right up to him and said with a French accent, "Mister Damian Wayne."
To which he smoothly replied, "Mademoiselle Chloé Bourgeois."
They just started each other down for another moment… before they both smiled and laughed softly.
He didn't resist when she closed the distance between the two of them and she gave him what the French called la bise, kissing him once on both cheeks.
All around them, everyone else just watched, and there would undoubtedly be images and reports hitting the Internet in an hour or so. (In fact, Chloé was counting on that… if for no other reason than to infuriate Lila Rossi and hopefully make the liar burst a blood vessel.)
"How are you doing, Damian?"
"Fine, thanks, and you?"
"Eh," she said with a shrug, "it's so-so. I'm spending the rest of the school year and maybe the summer too helping my mother at her fashion magazine. You know how it is."
"Indeed I do," he replied. Despite Wayne Enterprises and Style Queen Magazine not having any overlap in business fields, both youths could commiserate on the reality of helping one's rich and powerful parent with their big business.
"So," Damian said as she released him from that embrace and backed off a few feet, "that's a nice new ensemble you're wearing."
"Straight from MDC," Chloé said, sounding pleased. "It's one of a kind, and I paid them very well for this commission."
Of course, given the three letters which made up that brand name, Damian could easily guess who it was.
"And how are your friends and classmates doing?"
Now Chloé's expression dimmed just a little, torn between shame at how she'd treated her so-called "friends" and the situation which most of her classmates were now stuck in.
"Well, Adrien and Marinette send their regards, and Sabrina is keeping me posted on how the rest of the class is doing, now that 'Liar Rossi' has been removed from the school."
As Damian processed all this, he marveled at how she'd so easily said the given names of those two individuals as if it were nothing, especially after affectionately referring to the former as "Adrikins" and condescendingly referring to the latter as "Dupain-Cheng" for so long.
"You know what, Damian, maybe we shouldn't discuss this here in the open like this," she suddenly added. "How about we take this into my private office instead?" She jerked her head over her shoulder towards her limo still parked outside.
He smirked at her new and developing sense of humor. "Please, lead the way."
And so they walked back outside to her limo, and as they got back inside, Damian could see the inside of Chloé's limo all decked out beyond a few very plush seats. It was filled with computers and wires and other electronic gadgets, as well as binders and other printed papers spread all over the place.
"This is quite a setup you've got here," he said, contemplating this setup as he sat down and buckled in. "What, did you watch that movie The Lincoln Lawyer and decide to try it yourself?"
"Aggretsuko, actually," she said with a laugh. At his blank look, she clarified, "It's some anime that Adrien got me into. It's about a young woman office worker named Retsuko, and at one point she's dating this rich guy named Tadano who has his own limo all set up like this… trust me, it's much better than it sounds."
"I'll take your word for it."
(Later on, after he got home, Damian would go online to look up that anime series and get all surprised by how the characters were all animals and made him think of that Hello Kitty franchise. He was just wondering if Chloé had deliberately neglected to tell him of this little fact or if it had honestly slipped her mind when Dick, Tim, and Jason all walked into the room and asked him why he was looking at furries. The end result was a wild fistfight between the brothers which had to be broken up by Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth themselves and would go down as a legendary battle within the halls of Wayne Manor… but that's another story.)
Once they were all settled in and ready to go, Chloé gave instructions to her driver to just drive around wherever he decided until they had a definite destination in mind.
"So, what's going on with your class?" Damian inquired, resuming their conversation.
Chloé leaned back and sighed, staring up at the ceiling. "Well, let's see… in addition to the fact that Rossi is in really deep doo-doo for helping Hawk Moth, all these celebrities who she's lied about knowing like Jagged Stone are all burying her in lawsuits. It also turned out that Adrien knew all along that Lila was lying but decided to just stand back and let it all come crashing down on her… and, oh yes, Rossi also threatened Marinette in the girls' bathroom that one time."
Damian whipped his head around to face her. "What!?" He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Your best friend knew that the other girl was being threatened!?"
Chloé scrunched her eyes shut and sighed. "No, no, no," she sighed, shaking her head. Opening her eyes and turning to face him again, she elaborated, "Adrien didn't know that Marinette had been threatened by Rossi, otherwise he would have switched gears and been more direct straightaway."
"Still, why didn't he say anything?"
She sighed again. "Because he thought it was like dealing with the press and the tabloids, in that you let the lies and rumors go around until people get bored and move on. Oh, and of course his father is hardly Parent of the Year."
"True," he conceded. "And what about the rest of them?"
Chloé sighed and shook her head again. "The rest of the class is reeling from it, and some of them might be in trouble for doing the liar's homework for her. But Alya is really the one in trouble out of all of them, because she put all these lies of Rossi's on her own blog without even checking or doing her research first. I mean, honestly…
"Oh, and the faculty at the school have their own worries too," she added, as an afterthought. "Teachers like Bustier and Damocles are in trouble for letting her get away with a little too much, and I don't know if their teaching careers will survive."
"What do you think is going to happen to them?"
"I don't know, but I'll do what I can to help them." Noticing his confused reaction, Chloé turned to face him and said, "After all the trouble I've given all of them over the years, classmates and teachers alike, it's the least I can do for them. I mean, I've gotten so many second chances from them, so why shouldn't they?"
"How wise and mature of you."
"Hey, I'm just saying…"
Damian laughed.
Both of them smiled and shook their heads. Barely a year ago, if you had told anybody that Damian Wayne and Chloé Bourgeois were dating each other and serious about it, they would have laughed in your face. One of them was the heir to a multi-billion dollar American corporation and had also been trained as an assassin since birth, and the other was previously the spoiled brat of an heiress to a European luxury hotel chain and had never lifted anything heavier than a spoon.
But sometimes, the universe could bring together two of the most unlikely people in such a way that nobody could see coming.
Life was strange like that.
"What are you thinking about, Damian?"
Oh, shoot, she must have caught him staring into space and deep in thought. "Oh… just thinking about how you and I first met."
"Oh yes, it was quite a night," Chloé said, smirking. "Just when I thought I couldn't stand listening to Lie-la Rossi blabbering on any longer… BAM! Just like that, the Joker crashes the party, and then you show up no more than a minute later."
Damian flinched, but tried to hide it. "Wait, what? With all due respect, Chloé, what makes you think I'm Robin of all people? That's ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!"
Chloé rolled her eyes as he lampooned her trademark expression — or rather, her mother's trademark expression — but still smiled a little as she made a "tch!" sound. "With all due respect, Damian, you can't fool me this time. I know it was you. Same height, same hair color, same voice… and you made that sharp comment about being trained to be a fighter since birth, when you'd made a similar comment to me not ten minutes before about being trained to kill since you were old enough to walk."
Turning her head to fully look him in the eye, she said, "I know that the Miraculous heroes like Ladybug and Cat Noir might somehow be able to throw people off with only the domino mask, but I'm guessing that somehow comes with their powers. No offense, Damian dear, but you don't have a glamour charm of your own or whatever you call it."
Damian wanted to make a retort about how she of all people would know that, seeing as she'd given herself away from the very start on live television, but he bit that back.
Besides, he was still working through the fact that somehow she knew about his double life and his activities as the superhero Robin.
As if she could read his mind, he gently took his hand in her own and reassured him, "Don't worry, I won't tell anybody." Then grimacing a little, she said, "I know I already blew it as a superhero myself, using the Bee Miraculous like that, I'm not going to ruin it for everybody else."
Damian was impressed. He'd heard all the horror stories about Chloé Bourgeois, ranging from how she'd routinely treated the hotel staff back home to how she'd tormented her classmates in the past (and had gotten many of them akumatized by Hawk Moth), but he saw very little trace of that spoiled brat in the young woman now before him. Oh, she was still a little rough around the edges and was certainly
Recent events must have acted as one heck of a wakeup call for the Bourgeois heiress, he mused.
…Besides, given the way he himself had acted in the past, Damian couldn't really cast the first stone on that one.
He must have gotten lost in thought, because then he realized that Chloé was still rambling on about the impromptu superhero-versus-supervillain fight at Le Grand Paris.
"…And then you jumped into the fray!" Chloé gushed. "Omigosh, the way you just beat up the Joker like that! First you threw out all those explosive batarangs, then you just tore into him with your sword and ruined that ridiculous clown suit of his, and then all those batarangs finally come back around to hit him in the chest, and then BOOM!" Here Chloé made some kind of exploding gesture with her hands. "It was perfect, utterly perfect!" she sighed.
Damian raised an eyebrow at her dramatic retelling of how he'd finished off the Joker (as Robin).
"Well, thanks, Chloé," he said at last.
"And I helped too!" Chloé added, flicking her ponytail with a twist of her head and splaying her hand against her chest. "Hawk Moth must have been preying on the chaos, because he sent an akuma to the fight… and I managed to stop Lie-la Rossi from grabbing one and getting herself akumatized!"
"Yes," he said slowly. "You certainly did your part… by knocking her out with that ice bucket."
"What!?" Chloé said crossly, turning to face him again and putting her hands on her hips. "So I hit her over the head once or twice, so what!?"
"Only once or twice?" he questioned her, crossing his arms over his chest to match her own expression. "You must have hit her over the head at least seven times before I finally stopped you!"
"Eh, she had it coming," she smirked, dropping the act. "You know, what with being a terrorist collaborator and all that."
"Whatever."
"But… now I'm dating you, so it all works out in the end!" Chloé exclaimed, all smiles again.
"Heh, indeed," he remarked. "What a pair we make: the Princess of Paris and the Wayne Scion… as well as the Heir to the League of Assassins."
"Ugh, don't remind me," Chloé said, looking a little put out by the reminder of the history behind his mother's side of the family. "No offense, Damian, but your mother's side of the family creeps me out. Please, just tell me one more time that I don't need to worry about your grandfather or any of his minions coming after us."
"Don't worry, my dear, they wouldn't dare," he reassured her, leaning in for a deep kiss.
"Charmer," she muttered after they separated.
"Besides," he added, "all I'm saying is that being connected to an ages-old secret society of top-notch assassins has its perks." He said this with all the aplomb as if it was one of the most normal and acceptable things in the world.
She snorted softly. "Well, when you put it like that," she said sarcastically, but some of her mirth returned as she could tell he was joking.
Well, hopefully.
"So, you don't want me to have anyone killed for you?" he asked her cheekily.
"Ew, no," Chloé replied, making a face.
"Not even that Rossi girl?"
Chloé paused for a moment. "…Let me get back to you on that."
Damian smirked. Chloé stuck her tongue out at him.
"So!" Damian said cheerfully, trying to change the subject. "Where shall we go first?"
"I don't know, but I have only two conditions in mind," Chloé said firmly.
"Oh?"
"Condition number one: Try to find some place least likely to get attacked by any supervillains or any members of Batman's rogues gallery?"
Not unreasonable, Damian thought to himself. "I'll see what I can do," he said, nodding. "And the other thing?"
"Condition number two," Chloé continued, now smirking a little, "try to find some place where you and I can have a little alone time together."
Damian felt a grin creeping across his face at that. "Oh, I can think of a few places," he said, in a coy tone to match her own.
"Well, then lead the way," she said enchantingly.
As Damian gave instructions to their driver to take them to some place which Chloé had never heard of before, she sank back into the seat… and snuggled up by his side.
"By the way, did I tell you yet about my plan to make it up to all my former classmates at François Dupont?" she asked him.
"No, what's that?"
"I figure I could set up a field trip or summer vacation trip for them, so they could come to New York City. If it's a field trip during a school semester, maybe we could arrange for a trip to Style Queen offices — and doesn't Wayne Enterprises have a satellite office in New York?"
"Yeah, that we do. Let me guess, you'd rather do it there than here in Gotham City?"
"Well, nothing against your hometown, but I am legitimately concerned about the safety here due to the crime rate…"
Feigning offense as a Gothamite, Damian playfully said, "Well, I'll have you know that despite my hometown's crime rate, and the fact that we have so many supervillains that we need our fair share of superheroes, I'll have you know that our crime rate is no worse than that of New York. Really, as long as we stick to the 'good side' and safer areas of Gotham City, it's feasible." And then, because he couldn't help himself, he cheekily added, "What, you really think I'd endanger the lives of your friends and classmates like that?"
Chloé smiled again. "No, of course not," she told him with a smile. "Of course I trust you, Damian."
Damian chuckled. Gently cupping tilting her chin up, he looked into her deep blue eyes and said, "You know, when you put your mind to it, you really are one smart cookie."
Chloé smiled, chuckling along with him. "I have my moments."
And so they started a passionate kissing session which lasted as long as the rest of the car ride (and the knowing yet discreet chauffeur took his time so his young charges could take advantage of it).
AUTHOR'S NOTES: So yeah, after seeing all the "Maribat" (Marinette/Damian) stories out there, and thought I'd have a little fun with it with this cute little parody where it's Chloé who falls for Damian instead. Still… maybe there's potential in here for something serious? Just imagine scenes from the life of Chloé Bourgeois as she works for her mother in New York City but takes occasional-to-frequent detours to Gotham City to meet up with Damian. As far as I know, this is the first-ever Chloé/Damian story out there! (And what do we call this pairing, anyway? "Chlomian"?)
Originally, I was going to make it so that somehow Chloé and Damian first meet at some gala being hosted by the Bourgeois family to which the Waynes are invited, and then there's a whole big fight… but I didn't think I could do it justice and every attempt I made just felt forced, so I decided to skip ahead to an "aftermath" of sorts where Chloé is already in America and meeting up with Damian.
Thanks again to Darthkvzn for letting me bounce a funny idea off of him (namely, the idea of Chloé neglecting to tell Damian that the characters in Aggretsuko are anthropomorphic and him finding that out later, and then his brothers find him like that), as well as those on the Miraculous thread at SpaceBattles (for helping me figure out whether or not it would truly be safe for anybody to have a field trip in a crime-beleaguered city like Gotham City).