Passion

Written by: JuliaFC

Language Betas: Khanofallorcs, Mystic_Raven20, brbcommittingarson

Concept Betas: Malauu_Ladynoir, Genxha and Rosehealer02

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by (c) Thomas Astruc, TS1 Bouygues, Disney Channel, Zagtoon, and Toei Animation. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Written for my friend EtoileLeadSama's birthday.

WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 EPISODES 1 AND 2 (EVOLUTION AND MULTIPLICATION) AND IS SET A FEW DAYS AFTER THE END OF MULTIPLICATION. IT'S MY PERSONAL TAKE OF THE 'PASSION' EPISODE!

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Part 1 — A Closet Call

It all started, like many other things, one morning when Adrien got out of his sedan and walked to his class.

For the last few mornings, he had tried to greet his friend Marinette with a kiss on the cheek, but today Marinette wasn't in yet. It looked like none of his friends had arrived. Sighing, he went through the school gates, but as he was walking towards the locker room, he suddenly felt as if someone had pulled him towards them. In a matter of seconds, he found himself wrapped in the darkness of the broom closet.

"What on Earth…" he started, but a hand covered his mouth.

"Shush! Don't worry, it's only me."

Alya. Phew. For a second Adrien thought it was an Akuma. Or even worse—Lila or Chloé.

"Uh, Alya, you scared me. What are we doing in the broom closet? I didn't think you were into me." He gulped, his thoughts going back to the time that Nino had thought Alya was into Chat Noir and how well that had gone down. But in the dim light, Adrien saw Alya's eyes shine with mirth.

"Yeah, as if I had any need to make out with you when I have Nino…" She laughed. "No, Agreste, I dragged you here for a much more important reason."

"I'm all ears!" Adrien said, folding his arms across his chest. Now that he knew that Nino wasn't going to get akumatised again because of this, he could concentrate on what she was saying.

"What are your intentions with Marinette?" Alya frowned when she saw him raising an eyebrow at the question. "I mean, I'm happy to see you want to kiss my girl on the cheek and how determined you have been to do that in the last few days. But I must admit that it feels weird." She sighed. "I don't want to get my hopes up for nothing."

Adrien let himself sit down on the floor of the closet, legs crossed, and rested an elbow on something he couldn't identify in the dim light, but felt hard against his skin. He passed a hand through his hair and sighed when Alya mimicked him and sat down on her haunches, getting back to his eye level.

"I should've known you would ask eventually." He finished passing his hand through his hair and when he reached his nape, he left it there, his trademark for showing his embarrassment. He was also sure that his face had gotten very red based on the heat that had suddenly reached it.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Alya's hands joining together in front of her face, and he heard her little excited whimper. "I can't believe it!" she whispered. "At bloody last…"

This caused more heat to reach his whole face. "Why do I get the impression that you were waiting for this to happen?"

She flashed him a crooked smile that showed the whiteness of her teeth. "Maybe because we were all waiting for it, Sunshine. Did you think none of us noticed that you have been drooling over my girl since the beginning of the year? It may not have been obvious to you, but it was to everyone else."

Adrien was sure that the colour of his face was now rivalling that of a traffic light. "Great…" he muttered.

"It's okay, don't worry. The important thing is that you now know." She put a hand on his shoulder and he gave her a shy smile. She smiled back and then raised a fist in the air, 'Yoohoo'-ing before raising a cunning eyebrow at him. "So now we need a plan. What you're doing doesn't seem to be working, so we need to—"

She looked so excited and ready to go off on a tangent that Adrien started feeling hot under his collar and put his hands up. "Woah, woah, easy now… I may have realised that," he gulped, " I have feelings for Marinette, but… I don't want to be pushy. I mean, she's in love with Buttercup after all."

As soon as he said that, Adrien bit his lower lip and his hand moved from his nape to cover his mouth, an even deeper blush spreading all over his face when he noticed Alya's dumbfounded expression.

"How do you know that?" She seemed to have problems breathing from how surprised she was.

His heart skipped a beat. "Uh, well, I don't know…"

She grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. "No, you do know. You must tell me. How did you find out?"

He gave her a sheepish smile. "Uh… N-Nino?" he muttered, sending a silent prayer of apology towards his mec. But Alya's glare caught him unprepared.

"Nino doesn't know about Buttercup. Stop lying, Sunshine."

He cringed. Shoot. His hand reached again for his nape; he looked up and down, and then he felt his face flush again as he opened his mouth a couple of times, no sound coming out. "Uh… it's just… she rehearsed her love declaration for Buttercup with Chat Noi—"

He couldn't finish because Alya's hold grew stronger on his collar. "SHE DID… WHAT?!"

Adrien gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing awkwardly. "Uh… s-she rehearsed—" Alya's frown stopped him in his tracks.

"I heard what you said the first time." She glared at him. "How do you know something like that?" She saw that he was trying to speak and cut him off. "Look, Agreste, I'm a nice girl most of the time, but I love Marinette. Not in a romantic way, obviously, but she's my BFF and I would outright die a painful death for her. I know everything about her, Adrien, including things that her parents don't know."

He gulped dryly. "Alya…"

"What you just told me is something even I didn't know. I, her BFF! So… who told you about it?"

"Uh…"

"And don't you dare say 'Nino,' because if I don't know something there's no way in hell that Nino knows." He smiled sheepishly at her, but her glare didn't falter. "Nino and I tell each other everything."

He started looking at the floor, his hand firmly on his nape and his face so hot that he assumed the dim light in the broom closet was coming from there. He felt ready to spontaneously combust, his heart racing so madly in his chest that he feared it would come out of his ribcage.

"You better start talking soon, Agreste, because, from my point of view, right now, there are only two reasons why you may know this. Or rather three." Her gaze became even more intense, scanning his very soul as she continued, "Reason number one is impossible because I really can't see Chat Noir telling a civilian, and one he's never really interacted with, no less, about what he does with another civilian; as much as he jokes around, he's a very private person." She uncurled one finger as she said that, and then grabbed another finger to unfold it as she continued, "So there are only two other options. Either you're Marinette, which again is impossible unless she managed to snatch the Fox Miraculous from Monarch just to play a prank on me…" She gingerly touched his shoulder. "Nope, as expected, since I touched you even before and you didn't dissolve…"

Here it comes, thought Adrien, his gaze dropping as all blood drained from his face. She grabbed his right hand and scrutinised his Miraculous very carefully, rubbing it with her thumb a couple of times before her gaze met his again. And the way she looked at him, he knew that she knew.

"Oh my God…" she whispered and all he could do was smile sheepishly at her as the gleam of panic in her gaze grew. "This is insane!"

Adrien snapped his hand from her hold and put his other hand on top of his Miraculous, as if trying to protect it, his breathing becoming increasingly erratic. "Uh, Alya," he muttered, his right hand moving nervously to comb through his golden mane again. "Gosh, this isn't good. You shouldn't know this. Please don't tell anyone. Please don't put it on the Ladyblog. Please, Alya, Ladybug will kill me stone dead!" He joined his hands in a praying gesture and moved them in front of his face, as he held his breath.

Alya paled. "So it's true." Her eyes widened and she took two big breaths when Adrien lowered his head and nodded. "Oh my God. Okay, I'll try not to panic." Her gaze showed clearly that her attempts weren't working though.

He raised his head and looked at her with a big pout on his lips. "You won't tell anyone, right?"

"Who do you think I am? Of course I won't. I know that your identity is a secret for good reasons, I would never tell anyone, even under torture." She folded her arms over her chest, straightened her bust and glared at him when she saw how his shoulders slumped and heard his big sigh of relief.

"Thank God. I should've thought you'd keep the secret, you were Rena Rouge after all…"

As he said that, he felt Alya's hand grab his shoulder. "Who told you that, now?"

He gave her a crooked smile. "This time it's not a lie, Alya. Nino told me, the day he was akumatised. He told me that he was Carapace and you were Rena." He gulped. "And how much Chat Noir annoyed everyone." He pouted at that, his shoulders drooping dejectedly. "Especially Ladybug."

"Aw, he was upset, Adrien, he didn't really think that." She put a hand on his shoulder and smiled at him as he looked at her. "And Ladybug doesn't find you annoying, you know that. You're her rock, especially now that it's only you two left. She needs you!" She squeezed his shoulder a little more until a shy smile spread on Adrien's lips. However, she was surprised when something black zipped out of his shirt and flew right between their faces, making Alya get eye contact with a pair of green eyes that shone brightly in the dim light of the closet.

"Yeah, glad that now you can also tell him that, Foxy. I'm sick and tired of all this teenage melodrama. And he won't believe me half of the time."

"You're Plagg, right?" She frowned.

He mimicked a little bow. "In the flesh, nice to talk to you finally," he said with a little smirk that let two of his teeth shine through, two little white pearls in front of an ocean of black.

"Nice to meet you too, Plagg. But if you don't mind, we have more important things to discuss now. Like… how are we going to get these two idiots together." Alya sighed at Adrien's gasp.

"Hey! I'm here, listening!"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Yes, I know. And good thing you are, maybe we can get this thing moving at last." She noticed that he wanted to object with something and growled, but then continued, "I know, I know. You don't want to be pushy. Oh this is so frustrating! You and Marinette need to have a good talk with no distractions and interruptions. AGH!" she muttered, tapping a finger to her lips. "It won't be easy, but we'll just have to find a way."

All Adrien could do was just widen his eyes, gulp and nod.

To be Continued…

Author's Note:

Hello there! I'm sorry if I disappeared for a while. I'm on a holiday at my family's home in Italy and as usual, when I'm with my family, life is hectic and I have no time even to breathe. I haven't been able to write one word since I arrived here.

This story was for my friend Ana's birthday and is complete. I'm going to post it once a week to bridge over the holidays. Please let me know what you thought of this chapter in a comment! I hope you liked it! I'm always open to dialogue, I don't mind ANY type of feedback! To all of you who will write a review or a comment on this story, thank you so much! You always make my day!

As usual, if you read this and you're not part of our wonderful Discord server already, but you enjoy reading, writing and talking about Miraculous, please join my favourite Discord servers, Miraculous Fanworks (for people on FFN, discord dot gg slash mlfanworks) and Miraculous Discordance (discord dot gg slash QwgKdUhJNJ). I will wait for you on one of these servers; I promise I won't bite!