Gonna be cross posting all the one shots I've posted on tumblr. I'm super lazy tho so I'll just do it like one a day till I get caught up lol.
There's A Boy
Tom was leaning over the oven to put in the latest batch of cookies when Sabine wandered into the room with an odd look on her face. The sound of Alya's voice carried into the room with her, pouring at a hundred miles a minute from the speaker on her phone. "Tom?" she fretted.
Her husband wiped a lingering splotch of dough from his oven mitts onto his apron and kicked the oven door shut with his foot. "Yes, dear?" He eyed Sabine's phone, trying to make sense of Alya's babbling monologue.
Something, something, "meant to be." Something, something, "matter of time." Then Nino's voice. "Alya, calm down. You can't scream into the mic, dude, you're triggering a feedback loop."
"What happened?" he chuckled, but then stopped mid-laugh when he finally noticed the uncertain expression on his wife's face. She'd only stepped out of the kitchen for a minute or two to check in on Alya's Ladyblog podcast. What could possibly have happened in so short a time?
Sabine backed out of the podcast, realizing that nothing more that Alya said would be understandable. It was alright. She'd heard enough already to understand what had happened.
"What?" Tom worried. "Fill me in, hon. I'm starting to get anxious, here."
Leaning against the counter with a sigh, Sabine couldn't decide whether she wanted to smile or pout. "Some pedestrian caught Ladybug and Chat Noir kissing behind a billboard a few minutes ago. The picture is already plastered on every website and news station."
Those words filtered through the air between them and settled on Tom like a layer of flour. "Ah," he said. "I see." His mustache twitched.
Sabine toyed with the rolling pin on the counter where she was leaning, rolling it back and forth beneath one flat palm. "I think maybe it's time we talk to her about all this."
. . .
(Later that evening…)
. . .
"I'm home!" Marinette shouted as she burst through the front door, nearly forgetting to close it behind her. She had to double back. "What a day!" she lamented. "I'm exhausted. I'm gonna head up to my room and take a nap, if that's okay!"
She feigned a tired swipe of her forehead even though her parents weren't in here, hoping to get out of her afternoon chores in favor of burying herself forever underneath her bed. Of course they'd gotten caught. Only their third kiss and they were already caught. Oh, she was going to strangle that mangy son of a kitten. It was only as she was nearly through the living that Tom cleared his throat from his seat on the couch, startling Marinette and causing her to trip on the carpet. She'd walked right past them without even seeing them.
"Oh," she squeaked, concerned by the serious expressions on her parents' faces. "Hi guys. What's, uh…. Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Marinette," Sabine said warmly, and patted the space next to her on the couch. "Please come sit down. We want to talk to you about something."
"O-ooh-kayyy…" Her already soprano voice trailed up into an even loftier register, previously untapped.
Instead of sitting by her mom she stood awkwardly in front of them, thankful for the coffee table that remained between them as a buffer. The timing of this random confrontation in context with her and Chat's extremely recent screw-up was more than unsettling. It was terrifying. Was she shaking right now? She might have been shaking a little bit.
"It's about your extracurricular activities," Tom supplied helpfully.
Sabine rolled her eyes as Marinette visibly paled. "Please don't freak out, Marinette, but we know."
"You… know?" she squeaked.
"We've known for a long time actually." Tom scratched his cheek with a sheepish grin. "A year and a half."
"A year and… ? Butㅡbut Iㅡ"
"Don't take our calmness about this the wrong way," Sabine laughed. "We were very, very distressed when we first found out. But we've had a long time to talk it over, and we knew you kept it a secret for a good reason, and knew you'd tell us someday. When you were ready, of course."
Across the coffee table, Marinette's soul was leaving her body. All she could do was drag her hands down her face and utter, "Then why?" with as much energy as she had left, and hope they understood her utter bewilderment.
"Well, we were all set on keeping quiet forever," Sabine said carefully. "But…"
"But there's a boy," Tom whined.
"Oh my god," Marinette whispered to herself, and then slowly sank to her knees on the carpet and put her face in her hands. She was going to kill that fucking cat.
"It's okay," Sabine giggled. "We're not going to lecture you about boys, Marinette." (Tom huffed his disagreement.) "We just want to know him a little better. You could stand to bring him here more often, you know. We've only gotten to meet him twice at the most. The doors here are open; he has to know that. Bring him around for dinner!" Hell, she'd adopt the kid if that was legal.
Was that legal if his father was dissenting?
No, it probably wasn't legal.
At this point Marinette paused in her downward spiral to peek up through her fingers at her parents. "I can't do that," she said. "I'm sorry. We truthfully don't know each other's identities. That's not just something we tell reporters to get them off our backs. We really don't know." She wasn't sure what to make of the flabbergasted expressions on her parents' faces at her admission. They both raised their eyebrows and offered a quick furtive look at each other before Sabine leaned forward in earnest, both hands on her knees.
"Wait a minute," she wondered incredulously. "Do you mean to say that Chat Noir isn't Adrien Agreste?"
Aaand Marinette choked on her own spit.
Why was this happening to her? She wondered this as she literally choked, seeing her short, bizarre life flash brightly before her eyes. All her most colorful memories. First day at school. Meeting Tikki. Meeting Chat Noir. Kissing him behind theㅡ(holy hell, she knew that was a bad idea, she was going to declaw that whiskered idiot.) Her parents telling her they knew. Her parents telling her they thought that Chat Noir wasㅡ
"Adrien?" she screamed when she was finally able to breathe again, the word a shrill, irrational shell of her actual voice. "You think Chat Noir is Adrien? Why on earth would you think that?"
Tom and Sabine frowned down at their dying daughter with concern. "We thought it was just…"
"Obvious?" Tom finished. "And we thought that was why you were always fawning over Adrien. It made sense."
Sabine's frown deepened into a thoughtful one. "Are you absolutely sure that Adrien isn't Chat?"
"Well now I'm not!"
. . .
(Later-er that evening…)
. . .
When Ladybug dropped in beside him at their usual meeting spot, Chat whipped around so fast that he almost got whiplash. "Please don't kill me," he spilled out. "I am so sorry about that stupid picture! I should have listened when you saidㅡ"
"Adrien?"
Aaand he tripped, and walked straight into the wall as he tried to right himself. The world had just inverted for him. He looked at his lady like she'd grown some real antennae during their brief time apart.
Ladybug narrowed her eyes. "A-dri-en," she repeated, testing each syllable like she was stepping on thin ice.
"That," he wheezed. "Is. My name. Definitely my… Wow! Wh-wow-why? How. Whuhㅡhow do you know my name?!"
"I think the real question," Ladybug groaned, "is how did my parents figure it out a year and a half before I did?"
