This is a series of unrelated, disconnected one-shots.
The collection/fic title comes from the lyrics of the song referenced in this first story:
Rock it for Me, by Caravan Palace.
..
Cross the River and Roam the Shore
The waning crescent moon hung so thin and brittle in the cloudless sky that Marinette felt sure she would see it vanish before the end of the night. The brisk air stung her cheeks below the mask. Who told Mother Nature this was a reasonable date to usher in the cold? It was hardly November first and already Paris was creeping up on the freezing point. Luckily the suits were well equipped to protect their wearers from the elements. However… her unprotected cheeks were red and her nose felt like an icecube sewed to her face.
Involuntarily, she shivered.
Seeing this, Chat prowled back along the long townhouse roof toward her. "It's almost winter," he reminded her. "Perhaps I should bring along a jacket for the lady, next time."
Behind the mask, Marinette rolled her eyes. "Not necessary. However, I am considering earmuffs."
Chat crawled up onto the edge of the chimney Marinette had taken pause to lean against, and regarded her from above with concern. "You look like you could benefit from nosemuffs too. Your poor Ladybug nose…" With a wry smile he reached toward her face, but she turned away, pretending not to have seen. She could only spurn so many playful advances in one nightㅡsooner or later he was going to get the better of her with that attitude of persistence. Maybe he knew that too. "Not that it's unattractive!" he sputtered above her. "After all, red suits you! It's just that you look... cold. I didn't mean to insult my lady."
"Chill, Chaton." She elbowed his leg playfully. "I'm not insulted. Let's get going, we've still got thirty blocks left to go and I have statistics homework."
Chat gave a long sigh and dropped down beside her. "Me too. Ladies first?"
"No, you go ahead. I'll be right behind you." He quirked an eyebrow at his partner's odd request but she began shoving him toward the roof's edge. "I'll be right behind you! Promise."
She waited until he had disappeared beyond the ledge to fish her iPod from a hidden pocket on the outside of her leg, then set about untangling the earbud cord.
It was inspiring, the opportunities one tiny little pocket could open up once you discovered it. She must have squealed for ten minutes when she'd realized it was there. (Seriously. Ten minutes. Nothing in the entire world beat hidden pockets.) She'd excitedly shared the discovery with her stray cat a few nights ago and was totally let down by his reaction. Nonplussed, he had pointed out five (five) different pockets strategically placed around his suit, and dutifully demonstrated their depth.
(Five! Really big! Pockets!)
Marinette had scowled in return, assuring him that it was a girl thing to be robbed of pockets and therefore a girl thing to be excited by each and every precious one. When she was a designer, by god every dress would have two pockets or her name was not Ladyb… uhh, or her name was not Marinette. It was as easy to forget that Ladybug was not a designer as it was to forget that Marinette was not a fighter.
So engrossed was Marinette in her passionate feelings about pockets and their relationship with institutionalized sexism within the fashion industry as she poked her earbuds in, that she didn't notice Chat, who had stopped just one roof over to watch her with raw curiosity.
When she caught up to him he turned away from the moon, his face splitting into a grin, and said something to her. Probably something suggestive, she thought, from the shameless Cheshire grin he was directing at her. But she didn't hear it through the smooth new age jazz blasting in her ears. With a smirk she pointed to her earbuds, which flipped his grin to a pout. It was probably best that she hadn't heard him. Seriously, she could only spurn so many advances in one night. Sooner or later she was going to lose this battle.
Chat started talking again, his expression completely serious this time, something shifting deep in his eyes. Something fluttered alarmingly in her chest, and she swiftly looked away, eyes clinging to the barest sliver of moon. Yes, she was glad she couldn't hear what he was saying if he had that quivering look in his eyes while he was saying it. Oh, hell. She was going to lose this battle, wasn't she?
Gingerly, she pulled one of her earbuds out. "I'm just messing with you, Chat. What is it? Cat puns? Couldn't wait till my song was over?"
"I was trying to tell you it's the end of the route," he whined, clearly put out at having been wilfully ignored. "That's eleventh avenue down there." He gestured behind him toward the busy street below. Surprised, Marinette glanced over his shoulder. He was right, this was as far as they'd planned to go on tonight's patrol. "And I was wondering…"
He faltered, scratching his cheek until she caught his eye. "What?" she ventured suspiciously.
If she wasn't mistaken, his cheeks reddened, ever so slightly. Though it was always hard to tell in the frigid autumn air what was I'm cold and what was I'm nervous. "You know me," he smirked," shaking off the sudden bout of nerves. "Always curious. What…" He pointed to the iPod in her hands. "What are you listening to, Ladybug?"
The question caught her off guard. His tone was so hopeful. Yet… As she appraised him, he seemed tense. Guarded. Cautious. Ah, so that was it. Chat was afraid she wouldn't answer him. After all, it was a fairly personal question.
After a thick moment, she handed him the iPod so he could look at the album cover. After all, she had promised herself she would answer more of his questions. She had promised him that. It was time.
"Caravan Palace?" he read. "I've never heard of them."
"It's electroswing," she explained, plucking the iPod back out of his hands before he could peruse the rest of its contents. He looked a bit thrown by the term, so she slid down onto the brickwork and offered him one of her earbuds.
He sat too, accepting the earbud the way a cat might accept a fish. Marinette skipped to the next song in the album so he could hear one from the beginning. Oh, this was her running favorite! Rock It For Me. "It makes for good exercising music," she reasoned, trying to make sense of the Pollack splatter of emotions fighting for control of his facial muscles.
Finally, he seemed to give up trying to pick an emotion and turned toward her, biting his lip. "It makes for good dancing music too," he added, then looked down, struggling with his next words. Marinette heart stopped; for a brief moment she was totally certain he was going to ask her to dance. But instead he looked back up at her, tentatively for once, face half hidden behind his unruly mane of hair. "I'm… surprised."
That threw her off. "By what?" In their ears the song gained momentum, strings sliding upward and brass beating a rhythm into their bones.
"Your taste in music." His smile began to return, slowly but surely. "You're always full of surprises, Ladybug."
For some reason this flustered her. A simple patrol had become something intimate. "And you, Chat Noir."
They lingered there above eleventh avenue for longer than they normally lingered, past the end of their patrol. Only when the clock ticked past midnight did Chat reluctantly remove the earbud from his ear and hand it over. Marinette accepted his offer to help her to her feet, and noticed only as they were leaving that her prediction had come true. The last faintest sliver of the crescent moon was gone. And she dared to entertain, just for a moment as Chat saluted and back flipped off the building onto the fire escape below, that something else had vanished as well. Something far more dear.
But, like the moon, that which they had lost would return again as something new.
.
.
The new moon passed and by Monday morning the hair thin crescent of sunlight had reappeared on the other side of the moon, waxing imperceptibly near Venus in the soft pink daylight. Adrien had been distracted all weekend. He'd hoped to exorcise it from his system before school on Monday, but that was a foolish, futile thought. How could he focus on school when he'd gotten yet another tantalizing glimpse beneath the mask of the one he loved?
Answer: he couldn't.
"Would you stop that." Nino stole his pencil from him and hit him on the head with it before handing it back. "I'm never gonna finish these statistics problems before next period if you keep fidgeting like that."
"Sorry, Nino. I can't help it," Adrien pouted. "I'm just…"
He trailed off, thinking of Ladybug. Thinking about the kind of girl that would like electroswing and also being Ladybug. The kind of girl that would rebuff him so smoothly, yet take a moment to blush when she thought he wasn't looking. The kind of girl that would save Paris by night and turn in her homework on time come Monday.
His own statistics homework unfinished and forgotten in his backpack, Adrien scanned the cafeteria, wondering at the odds of his lady turning out to be someone he knew. The odds of his lady attending the same school. Really, there were only so many schools in Paris. The odds weren't astronomical. A quiet insistent whine droned at the back of his throat as Adrien scanned the sea of heads, trying to calculate the odds of Ladybug being in the same room as him right now. The odds of him meeting her eye from across the room and recognizing her for who she was. He tore his eyes from the cafeteria, looking instead to the double doors next to his table, contemplating escape from this torture. Maybe he should just take the day off to clear his head.
A group of people straggled in through the doors at that moment, and at the tail end of the crowd were Alya and Marinette, the last of which waved shyly as she caught the full brunt of his intense gaze.
Before he could react his phone rang.
He fished it out of his pocket, and saw with some surprise that it was Nino calling. He turned to his left, where to his knowledge Nino was sitting, only to find that the seat had been vacated. He answered the call a second before it went to voicemail. "Nino?"
"You are so distracted it's not even funny," Nino laughed on the other end of the line. "You didn't even notice me leaving!"
Adrien groaned, pressing his face into his hand. "I'm sorry! It's justㅡI had a weird weekend. There's this... thing I can't stop thinking about."
"Uhuh." He could practically see the smug look on his best friend's face. "She must have really thrown you for a loop this time."
"What? Who?!" How did he know aboutㅡ
"Your mystery girl," Nino shot back. "Come on, don't play dumb, I know you have one. Just promise me I can meet her whenever you guys work it out."
"We'll see." He wondered what Nino would say if he knew Adrien had yet to meet her himself.
"Crap, gotta go. Just got to the library and I'm getting death glares. See you in class!"
Adrien tossed his phone aside on the bench and almost jumped when he looked up. Marinette had taken a seat across from him without him even realizing it. Dang, he really was distracted. "Marinette. Hey."
"Uh. H-Hey," she stammered, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I just wanted to say… uh…" She lost her train of thought and pointed aimlessly at his phone. "I like your ringtone." She blushed, unable to meet his eyes as she confessed, "That's my favorite song."
"Oh… Really?" He leaned forward on one elbow. The cafeteria cacophony seemed to dim around them, the colors behind her blurring until he could see nothing but herㅡthe uncertain tilt to her head, the dense fibers of her cotton jacket, the pinpoint freckles on her pink cheeks. "It's my favorite song too." He neglected to mention he'd only first heard it three nights ago, on a rooftop downtown.
She shouldered her backpack, like she was going to stand, but didn't make any real attempt to do so. "You probably already know, but the band's tour is ending with one last show in Paris next week. I got tickets ages ago, but Alya just hates electronic music of any kind and she'd be thrilled if I found someone else to go with…" Marinette punctuated the end of the statement with an audible question mark, and tapped the table nervously.
"I'd love to," he blurted, a little too loudly. A few seats down, two freshman shot them rude glares while a third snickered. It was Adrien's turn to flush. Marinette wanted him to go with her to see Caravan Palace in concert? This… couldn't just be a coincidence.
Could it?
What were the odds?
"Really?" Marinette sounded incredulous at his quick acceptance. "Wow, this'll be… fun." She giggled. Then giggled a little more before the self-consciousness returned full throttle. "Sorry," she squeaked. "I just haven't met many people that actually enjoyed them. Just one other, actually."
Adrien blinked. "Same," he agreed. "Just one other."
Marinette stopped her tapping and shot him a quick, furtive look, a sharp glint in her eye that he wasn't used to seeing there at all. A brief moment. They locked eyes, questions burning, unvoiced, but only barely. Adrien furrowed his eyebrows, silently calculating the odds that out of all the girls in Paris, Marinette Dupain-Cheng was the one behind Ladybug's mask.
Marinette cracked before he did. "Okay, so I'll text you about uh, the time. And everything," she rambled. "Or actually, I'll see you a bunch before then so maybe I won't have to. Or you know, I'm not even sure I have your number saved!"
"I'll text you tonight," he assured her, halfway to a laughing fit. "I'm pretty sure I have yours. We can square the plans away after class. And… thanks, Marinette."
Marinette nodded, and tripped over the bench as she scrambled backwards off of it, then practically sprinted from the cafeteria. Adrien watched her go with detachment, his mind racing. His phone started to ring again but he didn't hear it at all, instead reaching into his backpack to pull out a tiny red notepad.
Glancing behind him to make sure no one was near, he flipped through the pages and pages of detective work. He didn't feel bad about keeping this notebook. Ladybug had explicitly allowed him to seek her secret identity.
He remembered that conversation with stark clarity.
"I'm not going to tell you who I am, but I certainly won't stop you from trying to figure it out." After that bold proclamation, she had winked.
It was a challenge. Catch me if you can.
Adrien flipped all the way to the points system near the back of the notepad. He scanned the list of names, dozens of them: all the possible suspects out of everyone he knew, and next to each of them a running tally of Lady points (aka, qualities or moments that lent any degree of credence or suggestion to their being Ladybug). Most had few to no marks; some had even had marks taken away, their place on the page marked by erasure scars. Some had as many as five or six points, but Adrien scanned right past them toward Marinette's name. There she was at the bottom of the last page. He sat back in his seat, tapping his pencil on the page, lost in thought.
After a long minute he leaned forward and scratched three more tally marks at the end of her stretch of tallies, barely squeezing them onto the end of the line. He sat back again, staring at her name, at the long trail of points screaming Lady, Lady, Lady. All twenty-two of them. Lady.
He closed up his notebook and threw it back in in his backpack. Maybe he'd forgotten to do his weekend statistics homework for two weekends in a row, but he didn't need to be a mathematician to know that the odds that Marinette was Ladybug were high.
