WhIP

by footfungus

nederlands verhalen over mijn otp

20. Ladybug Six

Seeking Shelters

GuardianKarenTerrier

Summary:

Eventually, Gabriel Agreste pushes too far.

Eventually, Adrien disappears.

Slowly, Ladybug notices that first, Chat Noir never used to be around so much, and second, there's definitely something wrong with him.

Notes:

I've been insisting I'm not writing this since.. watching the show, basically.

So hey, enjoy the first chapter of this fic I am adamantly not writing.

Chapter 1: Enough

Notes:

a note as of 10/24/18: this was begun well before season 2 was out, so while there might be some references to it later the fic's very much AU from the end of season 1. im also going back right now to edit the earlier chapters, but that's mostly for tense changes and typos and occasionally word choice, it shouldn't affect anything else.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"Kid," Plagg says quietly, hovering around Adrien's head for a moment before settling snugly into the boy's shirt collar. "You know…if it's something you have to do…not to get sappy on you, but I'm on your side. No one else's."

Smiling a little sadly, Adrien reached over to scratch behind Plagg's ears. "Not even Ladybug's?"

"Ladybug is on your side."

Sighing, Adrien tilts his head back against the window. "She's on Chat Noir's side."

"Ladybug is on your side," Plagg repeats.

"Sure." Adrien sighs again, this time deeply enough to briefly unsettle his kwami. Cupping a hand protectively over his shirt, Adrien says, "Look, it probably won't come up. School is like the only thing I ever really fought him on."

Plagg doesn't say anything this time, but they both know what he's thinking.

That's why it probably will come up.

It comes up. Of course it does.

Sooner than he'd thought, but not sooner than he'd prepared for.

His father says school's gotten too dangerous. He says it's been targeted by too many akuma attacks. It's not safe to be around his classmates, either- most of them have been akumatized.

(Somewhere deep down, Adrien wishes he was daring enough as himself to ask if he could still hang out with Marinette then, because the two of them haven't been yet. Hell, he's pretty sure he's seen Marinette protect some of their classmates from akumas, just by talking them through their emotions).

He doesn't say that. He doesn't say much of anything, though he tries- for this, he tries, because he can already feel the bars closing in and he doesn't think he can survive that again.

He barely gets a word in, and those he does are roundly ignored, spoken over, stomped on, to the point where a very paranoid part of him is constantly scanning his surroundings for an out-of-place butterfly.

Two hours later he's standing in his room, breathing hard, back to the securely locked door as he stares out the window.

"I don't know how much Camembert I'll be able to get my claws on, Plagg," he says quietly. He has some in the bag at his side, and he has some cash, but he's not sure how well he'll be able to spend said cash.

His kwami settles on his shoulder, nudging him gently, unusually affectionate for the little cat. "It'll be alright, kid. I wouldn't leave you."

Plagg being so openly sentimental is a bad sign.

Adrien's grateful anyway.

"Thanks, Plagg," he says quietly, and takes a deep breath. He doesn't really want to be alone. He won't be, not really, but it isn't the same as having Plagg with him and he doesn't know how much time he'll really be able to spend as Adrien. "You were my first friend, you know? You and Ladybug." He can't dismiss Nino, and even Alya and Marinette now, but he also can't think of them just at the moment. It's too painful.

Plagg headbutts him. "You're stalling."

"Yeah." Another breath. "Claws out."

He spends that first night on the roof of the school. It's too close, and it's a bad idea, but he doesn't know when he'll get to see it again (outside of an akuma attack, probably). Nobody will be looking for him yet and he'll leave before dawn. He stays transformed, anyway. Chat Noir's never slept transformed before, but it's apparently possible, and he spends the night huddled in the shadow of a higher part of the roof.

He's not well-rested when the sky starts to lighten incrementally but he's actually doing better than he would have had he stayed in his room. He checks the area thoroughly before taking off for a different part of the city.

He vaults off Marinette's balcony at one point, and spares a moment to wish it wasn't both too close and too well-used, because it looks very comfortable. (And it would leave him close to a friend). But it's not somewhere he can stay.

(He can hear Marinette singing Try Everything to herself inside and- why is she awake at this hour, but- the song makes him smile for the first time all night).

Adrien left on a Friday night. He won't be missed for a while, and akuma attacks are less frequent on the weekends- less stress to target, he and Ladybug both think. He had lessons and a photo shoot this weekend, but not until later, so he has plenty of time before anyone realizes he isn't where he's supposed to be.

He wonders how long it will take them to realize he isn't coming back.

Chat Noir lands on a distant rooftop and ducks into the shelter formed where several roofs meet and form a sort of nook. There are supplies here- a sleeping bag, food that he doesn't plan to touch until he has to, Camembert for Plagg, carefully-sealed cookies because Ladybug had once mentioned that's what her kwami likes.

It's sheltered. It's safe. He has a dozen more of these hiding spots scattered around Paris. They were supposed to be for if they needed some place to go quickly after a battle (and if Ladybug trusted him enough for it) but- they'll do for this, too. Chat Noir had never even had a chance to show Ladybug most of them, which he's thankful for, suddenly. She's going to know something is wrong- she knows him- but he doesn't really want her to know how wrong.

He'd had the foresight to leave books here (he'd left his phone behind, too easy to trace) so he curls up in the corner with the sleeping bag and starts to read now that the sun's risen enough to see. He should detransform, really, but- he doesn't want to be Adrien right now. Even the desire for Plagg's company isn't strong enough for him to want to face what he's doing here.

Eventually he manages to get some real sleep so that he's well-rested by the time he turns up for patrol that night.

(Is anyone looking for Adrien yet? -he can't think about that on patrol).

"You're quiet tonight," Ladybug notes, less than an hour after they start.

There's more than a little worry in her voice and it warms him to hear it. He smiles slightly as he looks up and admits, "I had a bad night."

Her answering smile is soft and still concerned. "Well, let's make this a good one, then." She reaches out a hand to pull him across a gap between buildings, entirely unnecessarily, and adds, "Race you to the Seine."

"Aw, Ladybug," he whines, smiling wider despite himself. "You know cats don't like water."

She only laughs at him before swinging away and then, well, it's a race.

She wins (they're pretty evenly matched, but she usually wins, even if he's faster on the ground) and he catches up to her on the riverbank, tucked out of sight from casual passersby.

"Here, kitty, kitty," she beckons with a grin from her seat on the ground, and he goes willingly, only to be startled when she reaches up and pulls him down to sit next to her.

"What-" he starts, and whatever he was about to say is swallowed in an embarrassingly loud purr as she reaches up to scratch gently behind his ear. He melts into her side and she wraps one arm around him, shifting so she doesn't have to stop scratching.

This- is weird. This is weird, right? Not that he has a problem with it, he very adamantly does not, but- this isn't really a 'casual friends' sort of position. Not that they're casual friends, but they're not not, either.

He's overthinking this. Is it that obvious to Ladybug just how far from okay he is right now?

Chat Noir leans heavily into her side and purrs louder as she finds a spot that makes him go boneless with relaxation. His eyes slide shut, and he thinks she laughs, but he's too comfortable (and comforted) to care.

He thinks, now that he can look back and compare, that he's always been a little touch-starved but being Chat Noir seems to exaggerate it. Being held- being pet- feels wonderful and that's something Ladybug had picked up on right away. Still, it's always been in more of a 'not shying away from physical contact' way, not... this. She's never outright cuddled with him before and he desperately hopes this isn't a one-time-only thing.

If she has any ladybug side effects besides an increased sensitivity to the cold, she's never said, and none of his curiosity-fueled ladybug research has helped him any there. She certainly doesn't have an off-putting scent (far from it), and if she has any kind of reflexive bleeding capabilities he really doesn't want to know, and he's tried bringing her flowers before since she's been nothing but supportive of his more feline traits but flowers are too easily misconstrued.

He has no idea how much later it is when Ladybug's hand falls away at last, though she doesn't take her arm from around him.

"Better, kitten?" she asks quietly, still hugging him close.

Chat Noir sighs and snuggles closer to her and she lets him. Maybe he's died and gone to heaven. "Y-yeah," he mumbles, hoping if he keeps his eyes shut she won't realize how furiously he's blushing. "Thanks."

"You, ah, looked like you needed it. Are you still up for patrol?"

He actually really doesn't want to move, but he wants to go back to his lonely rooftop even less, so he sighs again, and repeats, "Yeah."

Ladybug shifts away, but only to help him up, and when he looks up at her at last her gaze is searching. "Chat Noir, are you sure? We can always patrol tomorrow night..."

Despite wanting to stay by the banks of the Seine with Ladybug for the rest of forever, at a minimum, Chat summons up a grin and suggests, "We could do that anyway."

Ladybug rolls her eyes, but to his surprise doesn't actually say no. "Come on, kitten. Paris is waiting."

There's no akuma that night (honestly, there's no akuma most Saturday nights) but they patrol long past when they'd usually have gone their separate ways. In fact, the first light of dawn is in the sky by the time Ladybug says, "I had better get going."

He flinches before he can help it, tries to turn it into a huddle that he can pass off as being cold.

Ladybug lands lightly beside him and, wonder of wonders, wraps an arm around his shoulders again in a sideways hug. "We can patrol again tonight, Chat Noir. It's been too quiet recently."

No it hasn't, there was an akuma attack Friday afternoon, but if Ladybug isn't going to mention that then Chat Noir isn't about to point it out.

"Only if you're up to it too, my Lady," he says instead, tail flicking up to curl briefly around Ladybug's waist before dropping down again. "I have kept you up all night."

"Chat Noir, I could have gone home anytime," she chides gently, letting go of him. "I chose to patrol, too. Let's go before we're missed, I'll see you tonight."

She swings off before he can react to that, which is for the best.

Notes:

so I might be projecting some in this fic

I mean I never really ran away, but maaaaan was I prepared to if I had to

Chapter 2: Run

Notes:

honestly I've always assumed adrien has SOME level of social anxiety, and I'm basing that on my own experiences (I can be very outgoing and prone to jokes at work but ANYWHERE ELSE is a very different story)

i bought clothes in the making of this chapter that's like some kind of milestone in my life i never buy clothes

Chapter Text

"Tikki, he didn't make a single pun."

Her kwami sighs, perched on her headboard. The poor bug has been hearing variations on this tune for several hours now.

Marinette flops backwards onto her bed with an explosive sigh (it's the middle of the day, but she's been up all night). "He was so.. so… he was quiet! He's never quiet!"

"Marinette, you ask him to be quiet all the time."

"Yes but I don't mean it!" Marinette wails, yanking a pillow over her face. It happens to be her cat pillow. "Oh no! Tikki, what if that's it? What if he thinks I mean it? What if he thinks I-"

"I think if that were true he would have been quieter months ago," Tikki cuts her off, fluttering closer.

Marinette makes a noise like a dying whale. "Tikki I don't want that! I don't want Chat Noir to feel like… like he has to act differently for me to like him! He's my best friend! Sorry, Alya," she adds automatically.

Tikki laughs, but then assures her, "I really don't think it's anything to do with you, Marinette. He seemed to get better while you were together, right?"

Marinette groans again and buries her entire head under the pillow. Her voice is muffled, but her kwami can still make it out. "Tikki I pet him. I pet Chat Noir. I spent a very long time on a riverbank petting Chat Noir."

"And he was happy," Tikki reasons. "It really did seem to make him feel better. He sure didn't seem to want to move."

Safely hidden under her cat pillow, Marinette flushes. No. No, Chat Noir had definitely been very happy where he was. That is, cuddling against Ladybug, purring in content. He'd been so blissed out she's not even sure he knows he was purring.

…he'd been so unhappy before that. Subdued, nothing real behind his smiles, walking like a cat on tinfoil.

She'd just wanted him to smile for real again.

And then there'd been that flinch when she said she had to go…

"I've never seen him like that," Marinette says softly, into her pillow. "I've never seen him so…" She trails off. She has no idea how to describe her partner's behavior.

She can't say she hasn't seen him sad, because she has- it's there in a flash in his eyes, a quirk to his smile, an offhand comment, infrequent but omnipresent all the same and she knows something's up with his home life but she isn't going to pry. How can she, when she's the one who's said they can't know each other's identities? Chat Noir's made it clear he'd tell her if she asked.

But she's never seen him like this.

Marinette has a default state when she worries about her friends, and for the first time Tikki has to remind her not to sign her name.

He doesn't have enough books.

He's read three, and he's napped quite a lot (he's always tired these days, really, but it's hard to sleep), and he's scrawled a good third of a way through a journal slash sketchbook before his pen runs out of ink and he's bored. He didn't expect to be bored. It's such a mundane problem that it never occurred to him.

He could talk to Plagg, but… Chat Noir's still not ready to detransform. On some level he knows he'll have to but not yet, not yet.

He's not ready to go out amongst people again, either. He really never does well with people, especially strangers in groups- shoots and school are one thing, they're structured and usually have the same people; crowds are another. Especially now. Chat Noir really does not need to trigger any more stress right now.

He doesn't eat. Their food has to last, and he's used to feeling hungry, anyway.

He could switch hiding places- there are more books at the others- but he hadn't planned to until he ran out of food at this one. That might be a plan he has to change.

Not for the first time, he wishes he was less well-known as Adrien so that he could do something like go to the library for some more books, or go see a movie (not that he should be spending his emergency cash on a movie but it's still a thought. At least it would help pass some time). As it is he finally wraps the sleeping bag securely around himself and huddles into the corner for yet another nap. Or, well, what would be a nap if he could actually fall asleep. He spends a lot of a time in a dazed half-trance instead, staring blankly out at what he can see of the city skyline and trying very hard not to think of anything at all.

If Plagg were with-him with-him, he'd undoubtedly nag Adrien into some kind of activity, but it's just Chat Noir here right now and he doesn't want to think about how it's only been one day (it's been more than twenty-four hours now, is anyone looking?), or about how fast patrol is going to go after this, or especially about how he doesn't have patrol to look forward to tomorrow night.

But tonight he does.

He shows up two hours early.

To his surprise, Ladybug meets him after he's only been patrolling alone for maybe a quarter of an hour (he's really going to regret not having a watch).

"You're out early," she greets him from an adjacent rooftop, making him start.

They're a little too close to his hiding place for comfort, so rather than point out that so is she he grins and offers, "Tag tonight?"

Ladybug laughs. "Sure, but you're it."

Tag would probably be more fun with more people, but he'd never played at all before Ladybug suggested it one slow night and then had to teach him how. Since then she either teases him into it periodically or, more frequently, he suggests it himself.

(He's still not sure if he imagined the look of surprise that flashed over her face when he said he didn't know how to play).

For a while he thinks they're going to end up back at the river. Ladybug's moving quicker than usual tonight, and he's scrambling to keep up, before he nearly slams into her on the school rooftop.

She catches him before he can trip and laughs at him. "Kitten, you were supposed to catch me."

He makes a face. "I'm also not supposed to lose a game of cat and mouse. Why'd you stop?"

"Ah, well…" She lets him go and steps back, bringing up a hand to rub her neck. "I kinda… have something for you? And I was going to wait until after patrol, but then I realized if there's an akuma we'll both have to leave after and I might not get a chance, and… Yeah. Hang on a second."

She didn't have to add that part. Chat Noir's frozen where he is, eyes wide and tail flicked up.

"Y-you didn't h-have to," he starts to stammer out when Ladybug returns, but she cuts him off by shoving a bundle into his arms.

"I wanted to," she said firmly. "You're my partner and even if you aren't ready to talk about it, which is fine, I know something's wrong."

Chat Noir swallows, hard, unable to tear his gaze away from his gift. It's cloth, but he hasn't unbundled it yet. "I'm not your responsibility."

"You're my partner," Ladybug repeats, gently. "And my best friend."

"O-oh." He looks down at the cloth, clears his throat, whispers, "Thanks," and still isn't quite ready to open it.

And Ladybug waits patiently and doesn't push him. She can't know the precise reasons he's so stunned by a gift, but she knows when she can tease him and when she shouldn't.

He has to swallow a couple more times before he can move slowly to open it, because it's that or start crying and that would be embarrassing, but Chat Noir finally unfolds his gift.

It's a black hoodie. He turns it over and over, staring at it. It's too big for him, but that has to be deliberate; there are bright green paw prints on the front pocket and hollow cat ears sewn onto the hood itself, leaving more than enough room for his own cat ears to fit comfortably inside them.

The inside of the hoodie is ridiculously soft and it isn't black. The fabric on the inside is red with black spots instead.

Chat Noir chokes and starts tearing up despite himself. He hugs it close to him, shaking, and says breathlessly, "Thanks. I. Thanks, Ladybug." He smiles, watery. "This is, uh, this is the nicest thing anyone's ever given me."

People don't often give him things at all, or at least not meaningful things, if he's being honest and he's always tried to be honest with his Lady.

She steps back forwards, hesitates a moment, then moves forward another step to wrap him in a hug, hoodie smashed between them.

He hugs her back, burying his face in her shoulder, and spends several long moments breathing in deeply. He doesn't want to let go, wants to stay in this moment.

Ladybug doesn't let go either, keeps one arm around him and reaches up with the other to scratch lightly behind his ear again. He is still shaking and she sinks to the ground with them still wrapped around each other. He doesn't start to purr this time. He leans harder instead and curls up small.

She doesn't let go until he starts to shift restlessly in her hold, far later than she'd have expected.

She smiles at him as he shifts but doesn't pull away entirely. "Hey. You don't ever have to tell me anything you're not comfortable with, but also you can always tell me anything, all right? Promise." She grins and flicks his ear. "Even if you're calling me up to tell me, say, you're actually robbing the Louvre this time. Though in that case I am gonna need your reasons so I know if I'm helping you or bailing you out of jail."

She startles a laugh out of him before he complains, "It's not like he even tried, though! I mean, he made a terrible pun, grabbed it, and left. In broad daylight! Just 'hey, taking this, bye!'"

"Are you saying that's not how you would do it, then?" she teases.

Chat Noir makes a face. "I probably would and that just makes it worse."

"So you're actually Catwoman," Ladybug laughs, leaning back a little and pulling him with until they're both pressed comfortably together up against a high wall. "I think I'm the wrong superhero for you after all, kitten."

"I'm leaving DC for Marvel, then," Chat Noir says immediately. He ducks his head into her shoulder and inhales, grateful when she rests one hand behind his ear and the other on the small of his back and doesn't comment.

"We're supposed to be patrolling," he says into her shoulder, some time later.

"Yes," she agrees and doesn't move.

"Are, uh. Are we gonna?"

"Do you want to?" she asks cautiously. "I'm sure we'd hear an akuma, really."

He stirs a little. "We've helped other ways before, though. Stopped muggings. Other things."

"Helped cats out of trees," Ladybug teases, loosening her hold in case Chat Noir's getting uncomfortable. "We do still have police, you know."

"They can't be everywhere."

"Neither can we," she points out.

He sits up and she lets him go. "I do want to patrol. Can we go together? And not split up tonight?"

Sometimes they patrol separately, but not always, and Chat Noir has needed her much more than usual these past few nights. "Yeah, let's go together."

They stop three muggings and guide a girl walking home alone away from an alley where a man is lurking in the shadows, Ladybug's soft warnings falling on listening ears as Chat Noir scans behind them to be sure they're not followed.

"See," he says as they go back to check the alley. The man's long gone; not that they could have proved ill-intentions, but they could have prevented the risk. "That isn't something the police would have done."

"Yeah." Walking side-by-side, she knocks her shoulder into his. "Because no one was actually doing anything wrong. Just, she should be more cautious."

"And he shouldn't be lurking suspiciously in alleys in the middle of the night." Chat Noir has been carrying his hoodie all night, rather than actually putting it on. Ladybug hasn't mentioned it, even though the girl they'd just escorted had given them more than once strange glance, and two of the muggers had been distracted enough for the two of them to get the drop on them.

"Kitten, we are doing exactly that right this moment." She grabs her partner's collar, quick, as his ears flick towards the sound of scurrying rats. He's chased them before and it's hard to get his attention back when he does it.

"Yeah but we're superheroes," he says, still distracted. "We're allowed."

Something in that statement disturbs Ladybug, but she won't figure out what for some time yet.

Right now, she sighs and says, "He's gone, Chat Noir. We should be going too. I don't know about you, but I have to be up in…" She looks up at the sky. "…Around now."

Chat Noir's ears and tail fall flat. "Oh. Right." He smiles, and it's back to looking wrong. "I'll see you, then. Thanks again."

Ladybug wants to ask again if he's sure he doesn't want to talk about it, but he's gone before she can say anything else.

Chapter 3: Shelter

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

He doesn't land back at his current hideout so much as stumble into it. Chat Noir trips, manages a quick somersault, and smacks his elbow into the wall in the corner of his makeshift shelter.

And his ring beeps, five times, rapidly, which he didn't even know it could do, and he's Adrien again and not sure he's ever been so happy to see Plagg.

Even if his kwami looks furious.

"You," Plagg starts, and then stares at him, as Adrien clutches his Ladybug-given hoodie and ducks further into his safe corner. "I can't begin to- kid, you are gonna eat something, and then rest, and then we're gonna work together here to figure out something better for you than what we've got right now. Because this, this is not okay." Plagg gestures all around the rooftop corner they're sharing. As a temporary hiding place after a fight, it's ideal.

As a place to live, the most diplomatic way to to describe it would be 'lacking.'

Adrien shrugs and pulls the hoodie on. He was right, it's too big. It settles around him, a comforting weight, and he hunches into it and revels in the soft fabric inside. "I can't go back."

"And I would never make you," Plagg retorts, exasperated. "But you deserve better than this!"

"This is fine," Adrien argues, flipping the hood up (it is exactly as comfortable as it looks). "And I have this now, so long as I keep the hood up and stay far enough from ho- from the house, I can buy stuff." He flaps a too-large sleeve at Plagg.

"Chat," Plagg starts again, settling down on Adrien's knee and leaning back to look up at him. "You coulda done that already. No more days hiding like that, okay? That's… not good for you."

"I ran out of books," Adrien says, which doesn't actually address Plagg's point.

"Chat," Plagg says again, and dives into the supplies in the corner only to return with a roll and cheese. "Eat. Rest. We'll come back to this after."

"I'm not hungry."

Plagg stares at him again until Adrien flushes and looks away.

"I've been hungrier, anyway," Adrien mutters. "And our food has to last."

"Kid, don't worry about the food, we can get more food, the food is not a problem, trust me I am more than capable of keeping us both fed if I have to," Plagg says, dropping the roll and cheese (and it's Plagg's cheese, but Adrien needs to eat) into Adrien's lap and flitting into his hood in agitation. "But you need to be in shape to help Ladybug, right? So you gotta eat."

Adrien closes his eyes and wraps his arms around his knees, though he doesn't let the cheese or bread roll fall. Appealing to his sense of responsibility to Ladybug usually works. "I'm serious, Plagg, I'm not hungry."

"Well, you've still gotta eat," his kwami insists, now perching on Adrien's head inside the hood. One of the ears is more than enough to comfortably hide him. "C'mon, kid, just a roll or something? It's been way too long since you ate anything." It isn't like the kid stopped for dinner before he ran. He'd already been ready to run so it isn't like he stopped for anything.

After a long silence, Adrien sighs and picks up the roll. He picks at it, and it takes him half an hour to eat it, and he doesn't actually finish it much less even touch the cheese, but he does eat, and while Plagg's not thrilled he'll take what he can get right now.

"Okay," the kwami says, determinedly, from his perch in Adrien's hair. Where he's staying for now, because his human is bad at listening to him. "You need to rest, but then we're going… somewhere. I dunno. Not here. We're gonna go do something, we ain't doing… yesterday's not happening again."

"Okay," Adrien agrees, subdued, before settling himself more comfortably into his hoodie and against the wall. It's not long before his breathing slows and deepens- running around as Chat Noir takes more out of him than he likes to admit.

Plagg has had other Chat Noirs that have worried him, some of them even more than Adrien does, but not like this. The only damage he worries about Adrien causing is damage to Adrien. Plagg doesn't remember the last time he's been this concerned about his human for his human's sake.

Ladybug would help, she would help in a heartbeat, but his Chat Noir is too proud to ask her. Too proud- and, Plagg suspects, with a too deeply ingrained tendency to think that he doesn't deserve help.

Honestly, Plagg would have been willing to help the kid run even earlier than this; he just wishes they'd had a better place to run to.

When Adrien wakes again, too few hours later, Plagg slides down to his shoulder and says, "We're gonna do a solo patrol."

Adrien blinks at him. "Now? Plagg, it's the middle of the day."

The kwami nods. "Right, and you can't be out as Adrien, but it's not like anyone knows Chat Noir oughta be in school, right? So why not add daytime patrols?"

Also, Adrien likes being Chat Noir and he likes patrols, but Plagg doesn't say that.

"I…" Adrien frowns, but he's clearly thinking about it as he plays with the sleeves of his hoodie. "I guess I don't see why not."

Plagg cheers inwardly.

The hoodie stays when he transforms.

He doesn't know why- maybe because it's from Ladybug? It's never happened with any of his other clothes before.

He's happier to have it than he probably should be.

Chat Noir stumbles a few times at first, looking to the side to call a pun or comment to Ladybug before remembering she's not there, because he's not used to patrolling during the day. They do fight most of their akumas during the day, but Ladybug's with him then, too. It's not even like he never patrols without her, they do switch off sometimes, but they both prefer it when they can go together- backup is important.

Right now he hasn't interacted with anyone but Ladybug and Plagg in over twenty-four hours and he already misses his partner.

It still doesn't take too long for him to find his stride. After all, he and Ladybug patrol a lot; he could probably do this in his sleep, and they probably nearly have, during particularly busy weeks. Like the time Hawkmoth had, somehow, managed to send three akumas after them in a row.

Chat Noir's pretty sure that was Chloe's fault, somehow.

But it must have really taken it out of Hawkmoth- despite the fact that both Chat Noir and Ladybug had been so exhausted afterwards they'd nearly fallen asleep on each other in an alleyway, that they'd only barely scrambled away before their Miraculous timed out, he's never sent so many victims after them so rapidly again. Actually, though he feels incredibly guilty about it, Chat Noir sometimes wishes Hawkmoth would risk it. That had been the most time he'd ever spent with Ladybug and one of the only times in his life he's ever felt like he's exactly where he's meant to be. Even if that place happened to be swinging a staff around while a stressed-out student sought revenge for a ruined flash drive.

At first he thinks he's going to have to adjust his patrol, swinging around the school as it does- but, well, their school tends to have a serious concentration of akuma, and it's not like anyone knows Chat Noir should be in class right now. So long as he doesn't transform back in the area, he should be fine.

It's mostly a rather dull day but he does help find a lost dog (who doesn't much like him) and, laughing to himself the whole time, help get a terrified cat down out of a tree.

Akuma have been rarer recently as it is. Hawkmoth's had an effect he didn't anticipate- it didn't take long for Paris to notice the if/then effect of actively upsetting someone and then having them show up as an akuma shortly afterwards, so a lot of people have begun making an effort to be kinder and more polite all around.

Ladybug worries that this means Hawkmoth's going to change tactics soon. Chat Noir mostly thinks it's hilarious.

It's not until he's decided to go to ground for the night that he encounters anything like an actual problem.

There's a cat in an alleyway that he vaults over. He doesn't think much of it at first. There are plenty of stray cats around, he feeds them sometimes but they're good at taking care of themselves.

Then he sees the teenagers.

Three of them- no, four. He doesn't know them. Three are laughing and taunting the cat, who is trapped, hissing and spitting- they're trying to tie cans to the cat's tail and Chat Noir feels his own heart start hammering, because who does something like that?

The fourth teen. It's a girl. She's younger than the other three, not by much. Shouting at them. Chat Noir doesn't actually hear the words, his ears don't seem to be working right- she chases them off. Crouches down and cautiously, slowly, approaches the cat.

He watches her warily but lets her approach. She holds a hand out, holds it steady.

Chat Noir realizes he's holding his breath.

The cat bumps his head against the girl's hand. She smiles.

Then the abandoned cans rattle in a gust of wind, and the little cat bolts.

The teenager stays where she is, closes her eyes, looks tired and defeated.

Opens them, and looks determined, and Chat Noir never even sees the butterfly but the change from faded t-shirt and jeans to armoured black and silver pawprint-patterned scrubs- the cat ears and tail, silver as well, more organic than his own- the feathers that tangle into her hair and the poison green war paint, of all things, on her face- all that's hard to miss.

He calls Ladybug before he does anything else. It doesn't go through, but she'll know he tried to contact her and that's the important part.

Then he jumps down, though he doesn't really have a plan. But- this akuma was caused by other people mistreating a stray cat, right? There's at least a chance she won't want to hurt him.

She looks right at him and her face twists in a way he recognizes all too well, before she growls, "No. Not him. Ladybug, fine, but not him."

"You know," Chat Noir says, trying for calm and casual. "I don't much care for people going after my partner, either."

She hisses at him.

"Rude," Chat Noir replies, though he can't stop his tail twitching in agitation. "That's my line."

"Ohhh but I'm on your side, pretty kitty," she purrs now, prowling closer. "I'm Shelter, you see. Safety, and hope, and shelter from the storm-"

Her intonation makes it clear she's naming herself as Shelter, which, really Hawkmoth, but even as Chat Noir starts to say something (probably) witty back her next words drive it from his mind.

"...I just want to see all our strays in loving homes."

And that shouldn't make him falter, it shouldn't, it shouldn't, but it does and he misses his chance to dodge.

Not wanting to hurt him isn't the same as not wanting him out of the way.

And it doesn't take long for him to seriously question her definition of hurt- her tail's not a tail, it's a leash, a slip lead, the akuma- and she's lassoed him around the neck with it. The hoodie impedes it but Shelter's skilled; for a moment Chat Noir thinks wildly that at least his neck has some protection.

Choking, he claws at the leash as Shelter pulls it tight, forcing him to take several stumbling steps closer to her. It doesn't help. He still can't get enough air. Just as dark spots start dancing in his vision, something sparks down the leash and now his throat feels tight and irritated. The pressure eases, but doesn't go away, and Chat Noir gasps in air.

The leash is back to being a tail. He can see it. So what is he still clawing at?

It takes him longer than it should. It's a collar.

For a long, panicked moment, he can't seem to stop swallowing. He needs- he needs to get to safety, but that's-

"Excuse me. I think you have something of mine."

Ladybug!

The panic leaves him in a rush. He leaps around to greet his partner, and to call a warning, but all that comes out of his mouth is "Mrrow!"

Ladybug stares at him.

He stares back, claws twitching at his sides, tail lashing in frustration.

The leash akuma whistles by Ladybug's head. She steps aside without breaking eye contact with Chat Noir.

"Well," Ladybug says wryly. "At least it isn't mind control."

Chat Noir makes a face at her, then whirls to knock the akumatized leash away from them again.

"Just saying, kitty, you do have kind of a track record." A somersault brings her next to him and then back upright.

His rebuttal comes out as a low whine and he flattens his ears against his head. Ladybug laughs, wraps her arm around his waist and yo-yos them both to a rooftop safely out of range.

"No, it's never your fault," she says in his ear. "And I'm grateful. Seriously. But could you maybe also worry about your own safety for, like, five minutes?"

"He should be worrying about yours!" Shelter shouts up at him.

"He already does too much of that!" Ladybug shouts back, before turning to Chat Noir again. "Seriously, are you okay? I came as fast as I could."

"Miaou," he says, then curses, which comes out as a snarl, and settles on nodding at her. One of his ears flicks sideways and they step seamlessly apart and back together as the leash whistles impotently between them again. A frustrated growl echoes up.

Ladybug lowers her voice. "The akuma's in the leash?"

He nods.

"And it's her weapon. Which does..." She gestures to all of him. "This."

He nods again, rather more fervently this time.

"And the hoodie?" She asks, smiling.

He shrugs and grins back.

"I am trying to have a fight here!" Shelter howls from the alley.

"We'll be right with you," Ladybug calls back pleasantly. "Anything else, kitty?"

He shrugs slightly but shakes his head unhappily. Not only did he not prevent the akuma, he doesn't even have decent information for his Lady.

Not that she seems bothered. She grabs his wrist to slingshot them back into the alley. "Okay, then let's go!"

Shelter turns out to be very skilled. That at least makes Chat Noir feel a little better about his missed dodge, but considering he's reduced to embarrassingly plaintive meows when he needs to swiftly communicate with his partner right now, it really doesn't even out.

The leash sweeps under him in an attempt to knock him off his feet and he jumps over it, and then Ladybug jumps over it a second later, and it sweeps back in a parody of jumping rope before snagging the stray cat from before. The stray cat who has, against all logic, returned to the alley.

Chat Noir's not sure if Shelter's getting quicker, or if it just seems that way since it's not him, but in moments the cat has been collared and is racing off again.

"What did you just-" Ladybug stares after the stray. Chat Noir glances over as well, but isn't willing to take his eyes off their opponent entirely.

"He's going home," Shelter explains, surprisingly gently, when she sees the confusion on Chat Noir's face. "That's primarily what it does. It sends them home, or at least somewhere safe. Little guy might be a little panicked right now but it'll stop once he's home. I told you I was on your side." She frowns. "I didn't want to fight you, it should have worked, so why-"

Chat Noir's stomach drops as the girl's eyes flick from him to Ladybug and her eyes widen slightly.

He jumps in front of Ladybug and extends his staff defensively before Shelter can say anything else.

"Chat Noir." Ladybug's voice is quiet, the pitch she uses just for him. "That means she could follow us home. She could find out... where we..." She trails off, and he can hear it when she works it out.

"Aww, kitty," Ladybug says, sounding sad. "That's sweet. Really kind of worrying, honestly, but sweet."

Because he had panicked, hadn't he? Just for a short while. But he'd never wanted to go home or even to one of his hiding places, never thought of it at all.

Because he'd wanted- needed- to wait for Ladybug to arrive.

Shelter grins at them, a little viciously. "My apologies Ladybug. I guess I did have something of yours."

There's another flurry of dodging and twisted jump-rope. This really isn't Chat Noir's fight, not with two long-range fighters and effectively no voice, but it isn't like he can leave. He wouldn't anyway but he has a pretty good idea of what would happen if he tried right now.

Which makes it especially alarming when Shelter suddenly laughs and then turns to bolt out into the streets of Paris.

Ladybug sighs. "Is it just me, or do the ones who initially had a valid point seem to turn out worse?"

Chat Noir meows rather pointedly at her and gestures in the direction of the fleeing villain.

"Right. We could cover more ground if we split... up..." She trails off.

While she's still looking a little (a lot) lost, he leaps to a nearby rooftop. Little more anxiety, but doable.

Three rooftops later, however, finds blind panic driving him to his knees. He's been hyperventilating for what feels like forever when a hand on his back brings him out of it.

"Whoa." Ladybug crouches beside him, worried. "Wow, okay, don't do that. I was only gonna say let's stay together just in case. She already got you once, I didn't want to split up anyway." She helps him upright. "We need a plan. Do you think detransforming would reset whatever she did?"

Maybe. It's hard to say. He doesn't think he's ever actually had that option after an akuma attack; either he hadn't been in a position to think of it or he'd lost access to his Miraculous.

It's worth a try.

...except that he can't leave Ladybug.

He takes a deep breath, flips up his hood, and burrows into his hoodie until he's sure he's concealed.

"Chat Noir-" Ladybug yelps, far too late to stop him.

It doesn't matter anyway. "Claws out" becomes nothing but a tired mewl on the way out. It's a noise he could have gone without hearing himself make. "Cataclysm" doesn't fare much better, so timing out doesn't look like an option either, and he has no idea if Plagg's affected by this so no counting on him.

"Chat Noir," Ladybug sounds a curious mixture of guilty and relieved as she leans hard into his side until he leans back into hers. "You didn't need to do that. I would've waited back in the alley."

He shrugs and doesn't emerge from the hoodie. Even with actual words, he's not sure he could explain to his Lady that the last few days have been tiring and stressful and he trusts her enough that this was the option he was most comfortable with.

Why were his words even a target for Shelter, anyway?

Ladybug's looking down at the streets. "There's a lot of people heading for their homes. She's fast. I don't get it, though, she's actively getting people out of the way... okay, not that guy apparently, that is an impressive black eye...but most people are just going home." She stops and sighs as several howls echo around. "And there's that. I'm still not sure about that."

Chat Noir might have an idea. The girl had been trying to protect a stray cat, and the other teenagers had been taunting it instead, and then the cat startling so easily had given Hawkmoth an opening.

There's gravel on the roof they're on. Chat Noir crouches down and uses his claws to scratch out the word Empathy.

"You think she's trying to make a point?" Ladybug asks, dropping down so they're level with each other.

His claws aren't meant for this and it hurts, so he tries to drop any unnecessary words. Saved stray from bullies. Scared cat, ran away. Akuma.

"She was trying to help. I hate it when Hawkmoth does this." Ladybug gestures to the collar. "And that?"

He points to the word Empathy again, meows emphatically, and taps the word cat because he's pretty sure his nail beds are bleeding and the word's already there.

"Her strays can't talk," Ladybug translates slowly. "She's trying to make people understand." She groans. "And she didn't want to fight you at all, it just didn't work the way she wanted. You're collateral damage."

Chat Noir hisses because hey, he's not happy about that either.

"Sorry," Ladybug says sheepishly. "But come on, we'd better start trying to catch up with her while we plan."

He knows they need to plan, but honestly he just wants to curl up with Ladybug like at the river and the roof. He wonders what Shelter's powers are like for the people actually going home. The ability seems pretty intensely focused on safety, so heading for their rooms, maybe. Kitchens for the stress bakers. An art room for Nathaniel. If Nino's been hit he's probably holed up with his DJ gear. Max in his game room, Marinette with her sewing supplies, Alya closeted away with the Ladyblog open for editing and updating.

He misses them. It's not even been a full school day.

He wonders if Juleka and Rose went to each other, or maybe Ivan and Mylene. Probably not Ivan and Mylene, though, they aren't attached at the hips like Rose and Juleka.

Like he is with Ladybug.

Mostly he just wants not to be the only one.

Notes:

I kept telling myself I wasn't gonna do an animal rescue based akuma. I should really know myself better than that.

Chapter 4: Support

Notes:

please no one spoil season 2 for me ive had no chance to watch it
sorry for vanishing there, health problems kinda... cascaded

Chapter Text

"Chat Noir?" Ladybug says cautiously, pulling him from his increasingly morose thoughts. She's a rooftop ahead of him. She's been very, very careful not to get more than a rooftop ahead of him. "I hate to keep asking this, but are you sure you're okay?"

He shakes himself all over and jumps after her, nodding so sharply the bell at his throat jingles. It also makes the collar press against his windpipe and he suppresses the urge to growl.

"Okay," Ladybug says, but she doesn't sound like she believes him.

It's not like Shelter's hard to find. She's been collaring everyone she sees, after all, and it looks like the animals without homes to go to are congregating around her- a realization that makes Chat Noir twitchy. How close was he to doing the same? Ladybug definitely would have been suspicious about that. This... this he's hoping he can pass off as Miraculous-related.

It looks like Shelter's found their resident journalist, who as always is not showing an iota of self-preservation and instead is interviewing a supervillain. Again. At least for once the supervillain seems fine with this.

"If you don't mind me asking- what, exactly, is your end goal today?" Mme. Chamack is asking politely. That much he can say for her, at least- Mme. Chamack may not always be tactful, but she does her best to be polite.

"None of these animals have homes," Shelter's explaining to Mme. Chamack, waving a hand to encompass the milling dogs and cats. "That's all I want. I just want everyone to see how many of them are out here. All of you need to understand!" Shelter howls- actually howls, causing several dogs to send up a howl in response. "Do you know, have you any idea, how many animals are abused? Abandoned, neglected? This city can't even appreciate half of its own superheroes properly, much less care about all these animals, about people who work hard for these animals!"

Yeah, he's retroactively even happier that he'd helped that other cat earlier. He's… less happy about being lumped in with them.

He and Ladybug crouch on a rooftop, safely out of sight, observing. Well, she's observing, he's mostly pressed hard against her side and fighting the inside of his own head, but no one needs to know that.

Though the way Ladybug rests a comforting hand on his shoulder means she's probably aware.

"Huh," Ladybug says, softly. "You know, I kind of want to let this one rant a little? She's made it on the news for this bit and everything, people'll remember it."

Chat Noir tugs pointedly at his collar and responds with a low rumble.

She sighs. "Yeah, alright. No one's gonna miss this news segment anyway, even if they forget what happened." She paused. "Although, actually… you're totally coherent. This is more like Reflekta, and no one forgot that."

He blinks, then shrugs, because that's probably right. Maybe this akuma will actually have done some good.

Which would… kind of be an entertaining way to annoy Hawkmoth, so he'd normally be all for it, but. There's still the whole part where she's already damaged his ability to fight her; their possible strategies do start narrowing when they factor in the whole three-rooftop-or-so radius problem.

"…our mayor cares for nothing but himself and his spoiled brat of a daughter!" Shelter is still ranting. Mme. Chamack has to nudge her cameraman, who has begun letting his camera slowly lower in apparent disbelief.

"I think this is a record for how long they've done this without being attacked," Ladybug notes, amused.

Chat Noir nudges further into her side in response and she sighs. "Yes, all right. Lucky Charm!"

A very large dry erase board drops between them complete with red and green markers. Ladybug sighs. By now, 'what the hell' and 'why' are their typical reactions to Lucky Charms.

Chat Noir tugs it away from her and gestures between himself and Shelter. Ladybug narrows her eyes for a moment, looks between the two and the dry erase board and then down at the crowding strays, and nods.

Chat Noir scrawls WE GET IT on the board in somewhat shaky handwriting, claws not being great for holding a marker, as Ladybug slips down under the level of the roof to get just out of sight.

Moments later, Chat Noir lets out an angry yowl at an oscillating volume, a sound that makes Ladybug flinch further into the shadows even knowing it's coming.

Shelter whips around, gaze scanning- and as soon as her eyes lock on Chat Noir and his whiteboard, Ladybug dives.

She snatches at Shelter's tail as she flies past, has it in hands for bare seconds before Shelter flings it out of Ladybug's grasp with a growl- and directly into her attentive crowd of dogs and cats and kittens, at least a dozen of whom attack the whipping tail/leash themselves.

And shred it.

Ladybug's grabbing at the akuma before Chat Noir even makes it to the ground.

Butterfly purified, she takes the whiteboard from him with a nod and throws it into the air one-handed, impressively far, and as she shouts "Miraculous Ladybug!" Chat Noir relaxes into the familiar sense of her magic washing over and through him.

The collars on the gathered animals disappear. His collar disappears, and he brings a hand up to rub at his throat with a wince.

He's at Ladybug's side in time to help her catch Shelter as the woman stumbles and trips, disoriented as the transformation is removed.

"What…" she mumbles, shaking her head. Then she looks up, really looks at them, and her eyes widen and she'd stumble again if they weren't bracing her. "No, I… couldn't have…"

"It's not your fault," Ladybug says swiftly.

"Hawkmoth uses emotions against you," Chat Noir adds. His voice comes out much quieter and rougher than usual and he winces internally. "There's nothing wrong with feeling strongly."

The woman raises her head and scans around her. "Did I… are these all strays?"

"Uh, yeah, we're pretty sure," Chat Noir admits, letting her go to scratch the back of his head. "You sorta… sent the ones with homes, to those homes?"

"I've gotta…" She stares. "I work at a shelter, I've… I should get them there, this is over capacity, but I should…"

Ladybug shares a swift glance with her partner. Her earrings beep.

"Listen," Ladybug says. "We'll help you, but I've gotta run an errand, all right? Chat Noir will stay with you and help you get them to your shelter. I'll catch up with you."

Her earrings beep again, but she turns to Chat Noir before going anywhere. Prepared for a fist bump, he's startled when she pulls him in for a hug instead.

Head against his shoulder, she murmurs, "Chat Noir, you know you can come to me for anything, right? Miraculous related or not. We're partners. If you need me, I'll be there."

He swallows hard, then nods slowly as she pulls away.

She gives him a searching look when he doesn't say anything, but another beep from her earrings has her swinging away reluctantly, and he turns back to Shelter.

There's a calico kitten in her arms and Chat Noir is abruptly aware of the two grown cats twining around his ankles. He looks down at the black cat and white cat and snorts, then looks back to Shelter.

"So, hey," he says, awkwardly. "What's your actual name?"

"Oh! Oh, it's uh, it's Sarah." She shifts uncomfortably and the calico kitten head-butts her arm. "I'm… really sorry."

He shakes his head. "Again, not your fault."

"It kinda is, though?" Sarah says awkwardly, though she does begin to walk, pulling a slip lead from one of her pockets and leashing one of the terriers nearby with a practiced move. Most of the other strays are still following them, either because of some lingering akuma effect or because of something about Chat Noir or Sarah themselves. "I let my emotions get the best of me. I should know better."

Chat Noir shakes his head again. "You're human. It happens. We're just unlucky that Hawkmoth is around to take advantage of it." He stops for a second and turns to her, nearly putting his hands on her shoulders before thinking better of it- he doesn't really know her, after all. "And it is taking advantage. There is nothing wrong with strong emotions."

Sarah sighs. "I..I know that, but…"

"But it's hard when this keeps happening to people," he completes sympathetically. "Yeah, I know. That's why Ladybug and I are fighting." He steps back again and grins, gesturing widely. "And hey, look at all these guys getting to go to shelters! Man, you probably just managed to mess up Hawkmoth's plans even worse than we do, you know that?" His ears flick forwards and his eyes widen. "Oh! Oh, you don't even know the best part!"

He's walking backwards now, the crowd of strays still tailing them both. Sarah looks at him warily and says, "Best part? There were good parts?"

Chat's grin grows. "Well, you know how sometimes Mme. Chamack interviews people who're akumatized?"

She stares at him.

"You, ah," he sweeps his arm out to indicate the cats and dogs. "You kinda put out a call for adoption. A very, uh, enthusiastic one."

For the first time, Sarah smiles. It lights up her face. "That's... that's great. Oh, we're here!" She stops at the door and looks at him. "Um, would you mind waiting a second?"

He scratches the back of his head. "Sure, I'm still waiting for Ladybug to catch up anyway."

Sarah runs into the shelter, several animals trailing, and is back out sans animals in minutes. She's blushing heavily and clutching a pen, a journal and a poster. "I'd just, I'd just really love your autograph. If you don't mind."

"It's no problem," he assures her softly, signing both items. Then he hesitates. "Don't you want Ladybug's signature?"

Ducking her head, Sarah says, "I'm, ah, more a Chat Noir fan."

That's... new.

He stays to help Sarah get the strays into the building and settled in. She wasn't kidding, they're way over capacity, but it isn't long before volunteers and workers from other shelters and from animal hospitals show up and start to help as well. Some of the strays go to other shelters, some to foster homes, some- although not many, because it's too busy to do thorough enough background checks- are adopted on the spot. He's so busy that by the time he sees Ladybug he has no idea how long she's been there.

Or how long he's been there, for that matter. Long enough to be offered three kittens and five full-grown cats (he turned them all down, reluctantly) but that's not the best way of tracking time.

He actually runs into her when he trips over a puppy and she catches him.

"There you are," she says, laughing. "You know it's been hours, right? It's late. We should probably get going."

"Hours?" He blinks. "We? How long have you been here?"

Ladybug laughs again. "A while, kitten." She raises her voice and waves. "Hey, Sarah! I found a kitten I like, mind if I take him home?"

"Hey," Chat Noir says, trying hard to sound indignant. He's pretty sure he fails.

Sarah laughs and waves back. "That one's already yours, I think." Her smile softens. "Thank you both. For everything."

"It's our job," Ladybug says, though helping at the shelter actually isn't, and then she tugs Chat Noir back outside.

To his surprise, she walks with him in silence for a bit, then tugs him into an alley and hugs him again.

"Anything, Chat Noir," she says softly. "Any time."

She leaves before he can think of anything to say back.

He goes to a different rooftop hiding place this time, closer to the shelter, and switches back to Adrien when he gets there. He takes maybe three bites of a roll before falling asleep. Plagg can't even scold him, because he fell asleep first.

Plus when he wakes up (whenever that is, his internal clock is way off without a routine), he finishes the roll and a protein bar besides, and Plagg teases him but looks happy before suggesting patrolling again.

There's something in the alley again when Chat Noir leaps over it, so he turns and jumps down instead and finds a backpack. It's black and green and has 'Chat Noir' written on it in silver fabric paint.

There's no one around. He brings it back to his rooftop and cautiously opens it.

There's water bottles, protein bars, a Swiss Army knife, a flashlight, a Ladybug and Chat Noir coloring book with crayons, and a note that reads "Thank you. If you ever need anything, you know where to find me."

He stares at it for a very long time.

Chapter 5: Haven

Chapter Text

The thing about the patrols is, it doesn't really make sense to do them. Paris is a big city and there are only two of them.

The thing about the backpack is, it isn't from Ladybug. After all, Sarah-as-Shelter had adopted Chat Noir's colors, too.

The thing about the patrols is that Ladybug and Chat Noir are really doing them for Ladybug and Chat Noir, not necessarily for Paris.

The thing about the backpack is there's a newspaper tucked inside as well. Without a phone or any internet access, Adrien hasn't really had access to any news short of hearing it from Ladybug.

One of the magazines has one of his own photos in it, a relatively recent one that he knows wasn't released before he left, accompanied by a title and article that he numbly skims.

Adrien Agreste has taken an unexpected trip to America for a prestigious photo shoot, apparently. For an undisclosed amount of time.

He sets the magazine down slowly, letting the transformation go at the same time.

"Phew!" Plagg spirals once in the air and then dives into their food stash, coming back up with a piece of Camembert larger than himself. "That was exhausting, I'm gonna eat all of- whoa! Kid?"

Adrien's huddled back into his corner as far as he can go, hood flipped up and drawn in on himself, lost in the oversize hoodie. He says something, but it's too quiet even for Plagg's ears, and his face isn't visible beneath the hood.

Plagg flits into the hoodie, nearly dropping his cheese, and settles on Adrien's shoulder. "Kid? What's wrong with you?"

"Plagg," Adrien mumbles, raising a hand slightly like he's going to pet his kwami, then letting it drop instead. "It's- Father's- he's... " Adrien trails off.

Muttering under his breath, Plagg reluctantly trails back out of the hoodie to alight on the magazine Adrien left open. "Oh. Huh." He tilts his head at it. "He really doesn't want anyone to think you ran away, huh?"

"What's the point," Adrien mutters, curling in on himself even more. "No one's gonna care. Nino and Alya and Marinette are all going to think I'm a terrible friend, I just left without telling them."

Plagg rolls his eyes and flits upwards to be at eye level with Adrien. "Kid, they don't think that."

"But what if they-"

"Kid," Plagg repeats firmly. "They don't think that."

Adrien sags, playing absently with the sleeves of his hoodie. "But-"

"Nino got akumatized trying to make sure you could have a birthday party," Plagg reminds him. "You've heard Alya's opinion on your father. Marinette's met your father. They aren't gonna blame you, and you shouldn't either!" He reigns himself in, barely. Yelling at Adrien will always do more harm than good.

The thing is, Adrien does blame himself, and Plagg knows it. He just doesn't know how to stop it. Not for the first time, he wishes being his kwami gave him more of an insight into the kid's head- he's had other self-destructive Chat Noirs, but none of them were quite like Adrien. Humans are all so different from each other, and Ladybug and Chat Noir are much younger than he's used to this time around, too.

He wonders sometimes what made Master Fu make that particular decision. He can guess why these two kids, but not why they are kids. Most Chat Noirs and Ladybugs are- okay, not a whole lot older, given the span of human experience, but. More mature. Married with kids of their own, sometimes, in Ladybug's case. (That had never been safe for a Chat Noir).

"But what if-" Adrien starts again, fretful, and Plagg sighs.

This is going to be a long day.

"He's acting so weird."

Tikki flits around Marinette's head a moment before perching on her headboard. "You kind of are too, Marinette."

The girl rolls over and buries her head in her cat-shaped pillow. When she answers, her voice is muffled. "No m'not, Tikki. I'm just... worried."

"Yeah, but..." Tikki peers down worriedly as Marinette's hands curl into the pillow. "You haven't said a word about Adrien."

Marinette waves one hand in the air. "Of course I'm worried about Adrien! But his dad probably just took his phone. He'll contact Nino when he can." She sighs and repeats, "Besides, Tikki, of course I'm worried about Adrien, but I can't do anything for him. Chat Noir... Maybe I can help Chat Noir. I've never seen him like this, Tikki, it's awful. He's still trying to act okay, but it's so obvious he's not." She groans. "Remember what I was worried about before? What if I was right?"

"You mean when you were worried about his home life?" Tikki asks. "I... don't know, Marinette. All we can do is ask him, and I don't think he'll answer."

"I wish he'd trust me with this," Marinette frets. "I want to help him."

"You can't force trust, Marinette," Tikki reminds her.

Marinette sighs. "That's just it. I know he does trust me. So what on earth is going on that he won't talk to me about it?"

Tikki doesn't have an answer for her.

Marinette needs to get some sleep at this rate, because she's been out as often as she can since Chat Noir started acting strange, but after a few hours of lying awake she finds herself climbing out onto her roof anyway.

"Marinette?" Tikki whispers, darting after her fretfully.

"I finally get a night to rest and I can't sleep," Marinette says. "Now I'm worried about both of them." Not wanting to go back in, but not wanting to waste a chance to rest, she curls up on a chaise lounge and stares up at the few stars visible beyond Paris' lights. Tikki flits over and settles on her shoulder, silently joining her in looking up at the night sky.

They've been staring in silence for who knows how long before a familiar, amused voice says, "Stargazing? On a school night?"

Marinette startles upright and Tikki darts frantically into hiding before she's spotted. "Chat Noir?"

He's crouched on her balcony railing, tail curled out lazily for balance, still wearing the hoodie she'd given him, head tilted with curiosity and eyes bright.

...His eyes are too bright, actually. Marinette feels her own expression soften in sympathy and hopes it's not obvious. If he won't tell Ladybug what's wrong, no way does he want Marinette to know.

However, Marinette does want desperately to know, so she pulls her knees to her chest as she sits upright and says, "Couldn't sleep. What's your excuse, alley cat?"

Is she imagining it or do his eyes dim for a moment at that?

If they do, she can't tell because he looks away a moment later, scratching at the back of his head awkwardly. "I, uh, also couldn't sleep. So when I saw your light, I..." He stumbles to a halt, ducking his head and peering up at her through his fringe. "Sorry. I didn't mean to intrude."

There's a lump in her throat. She swallows once before saying, softly, "You're not intruding, Chat Noir. I was already awake, remember?" Struck with inspiration, she points at the closest light and adds, "Actually, if that's on, you can assume I'm awake. Feel free to stop by anytime."

He straightens a little, looking more stunned than such a simple offer warrants. "Really?! Um, I mean, thanks, princess."

Marinette laughs, though he looks so happy with such a small gesture that her heart hurts a little bit. Does he really have so few people to turn to? She regrets not going out as Ladybug if it makes the kind of difference to her partner that he'd come seeking her civilian identity when he barely knows her. It's not like she's sleeping anyway.

And Chat Noir looks so lonely.

"Come down off the railing," Marinette tells him at last, taking a step back before she thinks of something. "Oh- actually, I mean, still come down, but- let me grab something!" Before he can answer, she ducks back and swings inside. Grabbing an abandoned plate of macaroons off her bedside table, she pulls herself back out of the skylight.

"You are way more athletic than you have any right to be," Chat Noir tells her.

He's come down off the railing, but now he's hunkered down beside it in a pose that's more feline than it also has any right to be. After their fight with Shelter it leaves Marinette uneasy but she's not sure how to address that, so she laughs and plops down on the ground next to him. When he freezes she reflects on her certainty that he's touch-starved but outwardly simply leans slightly into his side as she offers him the macaroons. "Here, I made these earlier."

"Uh," he stutters. "Um, I mean, are you- are you sure?"

She laughs again. "I wouldn't offer if I wasn't."

"Th-thanks." The care he picks up the cookies with is almost reverent. It's definitely a lot more than her crumbly macaroons deserve, but it clearly means a lot to him so she doesn't comment.

After all she's trying to cheer him up. It's starting to seem like a lost cause, if he's seeking out Marinette on nights when Ladybug isn't available, but she can't help it. He's still her best friend whether he knows it or not.

And, speaking of that... "Nice hoodie, by the way."

He finally relaxes at that, although his tail still twitches more than strictly usual. "Oh! Thanks. It's, uh, Ladybug gave it to me." He fidgets, then darts a glance at her. "You... like to sew, right? I mean, uh, I get that impression."

"Yeah, I love to sew," she tells him, smiling. "Did Ladybug make the hoodie?"

"I think so?" he says uncertainly. "She didn't actually say so, but it's a little more... personalized than what you can find in the shops." Even as he says it she can see him fiddling with the sleeves, running his fingers almost convulsively over the softer red fabric inside.

Well, that's good. She'd been worried about his claws snagging the cloth- it doesn't look like that's a problem. It also looks like... okay, actually, it looks like he's taking a little more comfort from it than she'd intended. This is worrying. She'd wanted him to have a tangible reminder that she cared about him, but he shouldn't be relying on it.

It's a weekday. He should be home, with other people who care about him.

Marinette thinks about the suspicions she's talked about with Tikki and feels cold.

Chat Noir hasn't noticed her introspection, busy savouring cookies. She really hopes he's had more than that to eat tonight. Also- he's been out with her every night this week, and Alya had even mentioned he'd been out during the day more than once. When was the last time he'd slept? And how can she bring it up without revealing how she knows?

Wait, she actually has a perfect reason. "So Alya says she's seen a lot of you this week."

She's sitting close enough to feel it when he freezes up. "Yeah. I, uh had some free time, so. Figured I'd step up patrols."

She's sure he doesn't usually stammer as much as he has been the past few days, either. What is going on with him? She decides to try and press him further, but cautiously- it's no help to anyone if she scares him off now. "Free time? Wish I had some of that. School's been pretty crazy."

"Has it?" he says, tail lashing nervously.

Is he supposed to be in school during the day? She still doesn't know how old he is, but it would make a lot of sense if they were the same age. But if he is then he hasn't been to school in days.

She can think of a number of reasons for that but none of them are good. All of them leave her worried for her friend.

"Yeah," she says at last and sighs. "Well, no, not really. Not in terms of schoolwork or anything like that. But one of my friends got sent off unexpectedly, and no one's really happy about that. I think Nino's ready to go on the warpath again."

Chat Noir's tail falls still. Slowly he says, "One of your friends?"

Marinette nods. "Yeah, this boy I know. His father pulled him out of class unexpectedly." Uncharacteristically, she finds herself scowling. "You know, I used to admire his father? But he's not very kind to Adrien."

Plagg was right. This had been a bad idea.

But Adrien hadn't been able to sit still any longer, and once he'd seen the lights on Marinette's balcony he hadn't been able to help himself. Marinette is a friend. More than that, she's a friend who'd welcomed Chat Noir more than once, even helped him in a fight before- most of their class has proved themselves against akuma before but Marinette is probably one of the more impressive civilians, right along with Alya.

Mostly, though, he's lonely and she's a friend.

Even if their conversation has ventured into dangerous territory now he can't quite regret coming here. Marinette's offered a sympathetic ear and a place to go when he's feeling like this, and he'd be lying to himself if he said he could resist either one.

The least he can do is listen to her in turn, so his ears flicker towards her and he slowly resumes eating as she tells him that he's gone missing. Well. That he's gone.

"He would have told us he was going," Marinette is saying, eyes distant. Absently she plucks a macaroon from the plate. "He never mentioned it and he's not answering his phone, so he must not have known about it. He loves school- I doubt he wanted to go." She frowns. "And there's nothing in any of the programs in New York that even mentions him. I have no idea how they're keeping it so quiet."

"New York?" Chat Noir says, quiet himself, and realizes a split second later that he should probably have latched onto the 'he loves school' thing instead. It's going to serve him right if Marinette figures him out before Ladybug does.

Lucky for him she doesn't seem to notice the odd response, nodding in reply to him instead. "Yeah. I mean, they announced he was going to be in America, no one actually said New York, but the Gabriel brand always does their shows in New York, so I figured if it was anywhere it'd be there, but there's no sign of it and-" She sighs. "Sorry, I'm rambling."

It takes him a minute to find his voice again. "No, it's fine. You're worried about your friend, right?"

The smile Marinette gives him rivals Ladybug's. "Yeah. Sorry anyway though, I was trying to cheer you up and here I've been telling you my problems instead."

"You really have cheered me up," Chat Noir assures her, touched that she'd even thought of such a thing. It's true besides- he knows Marinette is shy around him as Adrien, even if he isn't quite sure why, and it means a lot to him that she cares enough to try and figure out where he is.

That he's actually sitting next to her is beside the point.

Marinette's shaking her head with a faint smile. "Well, I'm glad to hear that. I didn't mean to start talking your ear off about Adrien." She sighs. "The akuma are enough trouble, it's not something you should have to deal with."

He knows she doesn't mean that the way it sounds but it warms him to hear it anyway. His voice is gentle as he says, "It's okay. You're a good friend, Marinette."

"I wish I could be a better one," she says quietly, tilting her head back against the railing and closing her eyes. "We're trying to find a way to get a message to Adrien. We want him to know we all want him back here with us."

"We?" Chat Noir breathes, hardly daring to hope.

Marinette nods without opening her eyes. "We. Everyone's been trying to come up with something- our whole class. Even Chloe." She snorts. "Girl may be a bit of a witch, and she has no idea how to express her emotions, but it seems like she genuinely does miss Adrien. And Alya's trying to use the Ladyblog, she's been contacting any usernames she thinks might be him. We figured... even if he doesn't have his phone, and even if he can't check a computer regularly, we could drop messages. We just need to know which username is actually his."

He wishes he could tell her. But there's no way he can do that now without arousing way too much suspicion, and even if he could, what was he supposed to tell his friends when they reached him? He can't admit to not actually being in New York. It's not like he currently has computer access anyway.

He ignores the voice that whispers in the back of his mind that Marinette would let him use hers. Not only do all the other reasons still apply, he can't keep coming here. He knew that from the start, he just- hadn't quite been able to keep away, tonight. He can't make a habit of this.

He can't, no matter how much he wants to.

"You're all good friends," he says at last. He doesn't know what else to say.

"Glad you think so," Marinette says warmly, before stretching and sighing. "Ugh. I have to be up in a few hours." She pauses, then says hesitantly, "You're, uh, welcome to stay, though. I mean, I can't invite you in, my parents would kill me, but there's always the... " She stops with a look of dawning realisation. "Actually, you know what? You can come in. You'll know if anyone's coming, right? And anyway, my parents never come in my room without knocking."

There's a lump in his throat as he says, "Thanks, but I shouldn't." Superhero or not, Marinette could get in serious trouble for hiding him in her room. That she would make the offer at all is nothing short of amazing.

That she can trust her parents that much is amazing, but he knows by now that it shouldn't be.

Marinette gives him a searching look, then sighs and nods. "Okay. But know that the offer's open. And don't forget that I'll leave the light on for you."

"I won't," he promises, and hesitates, because she needs to go to sleep and he still doesn't want to go. There's no bodyguard to watch his every move, there's no one to know if he gives in and spends the night in Marinette's room.

But he'd know. And Marinette would know. Possibly Alya would know, though he's reasonably certain Marinette would be better at keeping a secret than that. He sighs himself and pulls out his baton, ready to vault away. "Thanks, princess. I won't forget." He salutes and throws himself over the balcony, throwing his baton ahead of himself.

He reaches his hiding spot and looks around tiredly. The pile of blankets in the corner looks less inviting than ever. He sighs and begins to pick up the books and journals he's left scattered around.

He doesn't change back.

Chapter 6: sanctum

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Plagg stares down at Adrien.

He's fallen asleep as Chat Noir again. Plagg had waited until the transformation weakened on its own, rather than ending it, because he knows Adrien won't sleep at all if he forces a change back.

This isn't healthy. This can't continue.

At least the kid has confirmation now that people are worried about him. Plagg still stands by his reasoning that Marinette's balcony is way too close to Adrien's father for comfort, but honestly, as far as Plagg is concerned the entire city is too close to Adrien's father. On some level, Plagg regrets that they can't leave Paris.

Recalling how warm and inviting Marinette's balcony had looked, Plagg sighs. Of course Adrien was going to go to it. No matter what he tells himself, he'll go back, too, like a moth to a flame. As starved for affection as he is, with a friend that offers him comfort and asks nothing in return? Plagg hadn't been sure Adrien wouldn't take her offer to stay immediately.

The kid's huddled into his hoodie again. Honestly, why does he bother to leave blankets here if he's just going to curl into a ball and huddle against the wall to sleep every night?

Plagg looks his charge over and finds himself frowning. The kid's posture is more feline than human, which shouldn't be transferring over to his civilian identity. Plagg's not sure what to do about that. Theoretically, it means Adrien's spending too much time as Chat Noir, but Adrien's also happiest as Chat Noir. Even if that wasn't true, he's needed as Chat Noir- and Adrien needs to be needed.

With a tired sigh, Plagg collects enough food for a reasonable breakfast and brings it to Adrien's side for when the kid wakes. There's no one to keep a strict eye on Adrien's eating habits now- Plagg is going to bully him into eating as frequently as possible for as long as he can.

This can't continue, but Plagg has no idea what to do about it.

"Chat Noir," Ladybug says. There's no akuma, patrol's been quiet, so they're just resting on the Eiffel Tower for the moment.

"Yes, milady?" He asks her, giving her a flourishing bow and hoping to himself that she's not about to call his bluff. He knows very well he hasn't exactly been at the top of his game on this patrol. He's strangely exhausted, and he can't stop thinking about his friends trying so hard to contact him- it makes him feel warm that they're trying, but it also makes him desperately sad that he has no way to reply. They deserve better than that from him.

It's a good thing there hasn't been an akuma tonight. He's not in the best shape to be fighting and he knows it.

"Come here, kitty," Ladybug says kindly, patting the floor next to where she's sitting, back up against a railing.

Chat Noir goes willingly, dropping down next to her with a groan that's not wholly exaggerated.

"You alright?" Ladybug asks him, nudging his side with her elbow.

He summons up a smile. "Yeah, just. Not sleeping well." That isn't strictly true, he's not sure he's ever slept so much as he has been recently, but he's certainly not sleeping well so it also isn't entirely a lie.

"Hmm." She leans into him. "Well, we can't have that. Do you have anywhere you can go to take cat naps, kittycat?"

He thinks of Marinette's offer. He thinks of what a terrible risk it would be, and how badly he wants to take her up on it anyway. "Uh, maybe. Not... really sure yet."

"Well," Ladybug says softly, draping an arm around him and tugging him into her side. "Let me know if there's anything I can help with, Chat Noir."

He can't tell her. She'd help, yes, but what would he even say? Hey, Ladybug, I'm homeless now? I'm actually rich and could go back anytime, but I've chosen to live on rooftops and talk to my kwami more than any other human instead. You know, like a crazy person. Yeah, that would go over well.

Rather than answer her, Chat Noir focuses on the feel of her arm around him. Though she's gentle, he can feel the controlled strength in her grip. If he ducks his head ever so slightly, he can fit his head beneath her chin, and- yeah. There he goes. He curls up tightly, head ducked beneath Ladybug's and her arms around him (when had she wrapped him in a hug), and this is the only place he ever really feels safe anymore.

When she reaches up to scratch gently at his chin, he melts into her with a purr, not wanting to think about his situation anymore. She says something but it doesn't register- he's too busy concentrating on just how nice it feels to be held, to be wanted. Ladybug had asked him to come sit with her; she'd wrapped her arms around him herself. Even he can't convince himself she didn't want to to do this.

A week ago he wouldn't have tried. Plagg is right, he is getting self-destructive. He just isn't sure how to stop.

"Hey," Ladybug says softly, and this time it gets through to him. He purrs and tries to press closer anyway and she gently pries him off to look him in the eyes. "Hey, Chat Noir. I can't patrol tomorrow night, but I'll check my comm, all right? So please, please comm me if you need anything. Seriously, anything. I mean it."

"Okay," he agrees, tail lashing, because he knows he won't. Hesitantly, he asks, "But you don't have to go yet tonight, right?"

Something unreadable flashes in Ladybug's eyes for a moment before her arms tighten around him again. "No, kitty, not yet."

"Good," he mumbles, before headbutting her lightly until she rolls her eyes and brings one hand up to scratch behind his ears. Sighing, he tilts further into her and closes his eyes.

It would be nice if he could just stay here forever.

He has no idea how long it's been before she's shaking him awake. "Chat Noir? Sorry, chaton, but I really do have to go. There are people waiting for me."

"That must be nice," he mutters and feels her pause. When he's more awake he'll be upset he said that, he's sure, but right now he can't bring himself to care.

He stretches and sits up, carefully not looking at Ladybug. He can be embarrassed in private back on his rooftop later. "Sorry, like I said. Not sleeping well."

She eyes him as she stands and stretches as well. "No kidding. I don't think I've ever seen anyone doze off that fast."

"I'm a master of my craft," he tells her, climbing to his feet.

Ladybug snorts. "Chat Noir. That makes no sense." She hesitates, then darts in to hug him again. "Be careful, kitty. I'll see you in a couple days."

Oh. Right. She said she has a prior commitment, so no patrol tomorrow night. "I'll be there," he says inanely and then watches as she beams at him before swinging away.

Chat Noir sighs and starts the long trek back to his lonely rooftop.

Adrien's day doesn't go well.

There's no akuma, at least, but by noon he almost would have welcomed one.

He never knew boredom could get this bad. He's read all the books here, he has nothing to write in his journals (he'd even brought extra journals but anything he actually wants to write down wouldn't be safe to record). He has nothing to do now but run around as Chat Noir, and Plagg is trying to convince him to limit that; on top of that when he'd gone to jump over the alley where he'd fought Shelter he'd startled and stumbled and fallen in.

Because there was another backpack.

Full of food. And the address of the animal shelter.

And of a homeless shelter.

He'd taken it, because he isn't so proud as to turn down free food when, frankly, his supplies won't last forever (he really does need to change roofs but he's reluctant to do so until he's actually out of food entirely), but. He isn't sure how he feels about being treated like a stray.

The fact that the assumption isn't wrong only makes it grate more.

He should probably avoid the alleyway for a while. If Sarah is already pointedly giving him addresses for shelters, then he doesn't want to run into her in person again.

He can't justify taking up a bed in a shelter, anyway. Other people need it more than him, people who didn't run away on purpose. People who wouldn't be rich if they went back.

He might be cold and hungry and lonely, but he still doesn't want to go back. He'd still be cold and hungry and lonely even if he did, anyway, he'd just be trapped as well.

He takes the backpack back to his rooftop but he takes a circuitous route just in case. He doubts Sarah is hanging around the alley waiting for him to show, and she shouldn't be able to follow the path he takes over the roofs, but it won't hurt to be cautious.

He tumbles into the protected corner and lets the transformation go. Plagg shakes himself and darts into the corner where Adrien left the Camembert.

"It's so draining to change back and forth this much," Plagg complains, already muffled by the cheese.

Adrien shakes his sleeves down over his hands as he trudges to his usual corner. "Sorry, Plagg. Chat Noir's a lot less suspicious than Adrien."

Plagg gulps down the last bit of cheese and looks over. "I get it, kid. But don't you think you should be Adrien sometimes?"

Adrien scowls as he flops down onto his blankets. "Not really."

Plagg doesn't say anything as he spirals closer before settling just inside Adrien's hood. Then he says, "Kid. You can't stay transformed forever."

Adrien shifts back against the wall without replying, crossing his arms.

"Kid, seriously." Plagg settles against his collar bone. "It's not healthy. It could seriously mess you up."

Shrugging, Adrien lets his head fall back. "So you've said. But really, Plagg, if it's between Adrien and Chat Noir, Chat Noir is needed more."

Plagg bites him.

"Ow!" Adrien starts to slap at him instinctively, but stops before making contact. "Plagg, why did you do that?"

"Because you're an idiot," Plagg informs him sharply, flitting out of the hoodie to glare at him. "Marinette just told you the other night that your friends are looking for you. They're looking for you, kid, not for a superhero."

Closing his eyes, Adrien concentrates on his breathing. Plagg's right, of course. He'd just... forgotten. Even now, he isn't used to the idea of having friends, much less friends who would worry when he went missing. If Marinette's already at the point of checking programs in New York, they might even start to realise he has gone missing, not left the country.

It won't be a good thing if they figure out what's happened, because Adrien can't go back and can't tell them that he's safe, but it means a lot to him that they'd try.

"Kid?" Plagg says quietly. "Hey, kid, you should eat. You've been running around all day, I know you didn't do the sensible thing and stop for food."

"Not hungry," Adrien mutters before he can stop himself. It's not true- now that Plagg's mentioned food, he's acutely aware that it's been at least a day since he's eaten, because he'd ignored Plagg about breakfast too- but he never has been very good about admitting when he was hungry.

Besides, food just doesn't seem interesting or important to him recently.

Abruptly, Plagg announces, "I think you should go to Marinette's."

Adrien jerks backwards so hard his head hits the wall behind him. Eyes wide, rubbing the back of his head, he stares at Plagg. "You said not to."

"That was before I knew you were an idiot," Plagg snaps, darting in tight, agitated circles. "Maybe she can talk sense into you."

"You said I was spending too much time as Chat Noir," Adrien points out.

"Yeah kid, that's still true." Plagg scowls. "But it does no one any good if you starve before it can even become a problem."

Adrien hesitates, then says, "Plagg? You've been really vague about this. I get it if it's some kind of kwami thing and you can't tell me, but... Why is it a problem?"

"You're picking up cat traits in both forms," Plagg says bluntly. "Not just when you're transformed. That can be permanent."

Adrien recoils- and hisses, he realises a moment after he's done it. His stomach drops. He opens his mouth, then shuts it when he realises he has nothing to say.

Because he's backed himself into a corner.

He has to spend time as Chat Noir, because he can't be Adrien now. He's been telling himself he could go back if he really needed to but- that's a lie. He's not going back and he knows it. It's been too long, it had been too long after the very first night; if he goes back his father will never let him out again and that's why he left in the first place.

"Kid," Plagg says. "Go to Marinette's."

Adrien draws in a breath. "Claws out."

"Marinette," Tikki hisses, flitting and darting anxiously. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Marinette holds up the skirt she's working on with a sigh, looking it over critically. She's not too happy with it yet, but honestly, she's only working on it right now at all to give her hands something to do. "No. But Tikki, what else am I supposed to do? We can't leave him like this. If he starts acting any more like a stray cat he's gonna go feral."

Tikki is suspiciously silent.

"Tikki?" Marinette narrows her eyes at her kwami. "Is there something I should know?"

"Probably not," Tikki says, voice small. "It's... only ever happened once."

Setting the skirt down, Marinette swivels to face her friend. "What's only ever happened once?"

"Um." Tikki sets down on her bed, fidgeting a little. "Chat Noir... well, actually Chat Noir can..."

"Can what?" Marinette demands. "Are you telling me Chat Noir could actually go feral?"

"Sort of?" Tikki squeaks out. At Marinette's incredulous look, she ducks her head. "It's only ever happened once! You know how you're more affected by the cold now?"

Slowly, Marinette nods, not taking her eyes off her kwami.

Tikki wrings her hands. "W-well, that's because ladybugs hibernate. Most of their traits aren't very noticeable in humans, but... Chat Noir tends to pick up cat traits. Those are more obvious. And... stronger."

"Stronger," Marinette repeats. "Stronger how, Tikki?"

"Marinette," Tikki says softly. "He chases rats. He purrs. He... his body language is changing too rapidly, and I haven't seen that in almost any other Chat Noir, and it's getting worse. It's probably spilling over to his civilian identity by now." Her wings droop. "It's possible Shelter accelerated it but something was going on before that. But... yes. Chat Noir can go feral." She pauses. "Wait, feral isn't quite the right word- "

Marinette interrupts her with a determined gleam in her eyes. "Okay, so how do we stop it?" She tilts her head. "Assuming we want to."

"Of course we want to," Tikki assures her, exasperated. "I know what you're thinking, Marinette, but it won't make him happier."

"Tikki, I don't think he's been home in days," Marinette says softly, setting the skirt down to pull her pillow from her bed and wrap her arms around it. "I wouldn't be seeing him so much if he had, and Alya wouldn't be posting so many pictures and videos on the Ladyblog." Chat Noir's been out at all hours for close to a week now. If he ever had a schedule, he's no longer following it.

"He still deserves to stay human," Tikki says, far more sharply than usual, and Marinette startles backwards a little.

"Of course," she says, chagrined. "You know I didn't mean it like that, Tikki. I want him to be okay. I want him to be himself."

"He needs to spend less time as Chat Noir." Tikki doesn't meet her gaze as she says it.

Marinette slumps and rubs at her eyes. "Great. How do I bring that up without it being suspicious?

"I have no idea," Tikki admits.

Before they can begin to brainstorm, there's a thump on the roof.

Marinette's eyes widen. "I left the light on for him. Tikki, hide!"

Tikki doesn't say anything else, darting beneath the chaise lounge instead. There's a tiny bed under there that Marinette made for Tikki to hide from her parents, and a variety of cookies in a sealed tin, so she'll be comfortable. (There's maybe also a variety of tiny furniture, but if Marinette wants to spoil her kwami a little that's her business). After the last time Chat Noir was here, Marinette had tidied up her room, too; she still has a lot of photos but they're mostly pictures of her friends in a group, now. There are still more than a few of Adrien alone because she couldn't not, especially when she doesn't know when she'll actually see him for real again, but she's managed to tone it down at least. She'd even made sure to swap her desktop background for one of the Ladyblog's backgrounds, an old shot of her and Chat Noir swinging down from the Eiffel Tower.

There's been no sound besides that initial thump so Marinette is cautious when she pokes her head through the skylight- it wouldn't be the first time an akuma has shown up at her home, after all.

But her gaze does only fall on Chat Noir, who's crouched against the balcony railing just past where the light can reach. He's still wearing the hoodie- his hood's up and he's twisting his tail in his hands. Marinette's heart goes out to him immediately, because somehow he looks even worse than he had the previous night.

"Hey Chat Noir," she greets him, hauling herself the rest of the way onto the roof and reflecting wryly to herself on the irony that this is what she'd meant when she'd told Chat Noir she'd be busy. She doesn't think he'd been aware of the look he'd given her at that but it had nearly been enough for her to relent and promise to patrol instead. He needs to connect with more people than just Ladybug, though, and... Well, he doesn't know he isn't, and that's the important part.

Besides, if he's here she can hardly miss him calling her on her comm.

Chat Noir nods at her quietly and moves from his crouch to a more human position, though he's still sitting on his knees. Marinette keeps her frown to herself, but Chat Noir's a chatterbox. He should already be talking at her.

"Are you feeling all right?" she asks him, taking a step closer and stopping immediately when he flinches back. She's never seen him do that before. "Chat Noir?"

"Fine," he says quietly. His voice is raspy. He clears his throat. "I'm fine, princess." He shifts his weight from side to side, still not looking directly at her, and licks his lips before rasping out, "Can I, um." He pauses. "Did you mean it, when you said I could stay here?"

Marinette's at his side long before she can stop herself, examining him anxiously for signs of injury. She doesn't see anything obvious, but his black suit can and does hide injuries, and Chat Noir himself always downplays them. "Of course I did- are you okay? Are you hurt? Come inside, I can help." She doesn't actually give him a chance to refuse, ducking under his arm and hauling on it to get him to move with her. Wide eyed and stammering, but not approaching real words, Chat Noir lets her.

She manhandles him through the skylight before he can react and sits him on the bed while she fetches her first aid kit (from beneath the chaise lounge- Tikki helpfully pushes it into her hands). "Tell me where you're hurt, kitty." Whoops. Lucky for her, he's in no state to notice that slip.

"I'm not," he says softly and Marinette pauses, back up at the bed herself, hands hovering over the now open first aid kit. He looks up at her from her bed, hands twisting into his sleeves. Green eyes glow out at her from the shadows beneath his hood. "Seriously, princess, I'm not hurt. I'm just-" He sighs. "Just having a bad night." He starts to get up, reaching for the skylight. "Sorry, I'm sorry about this, I shouldn't have come here. I'll go-"

Marinette reaches past him and shuts the skylight.

He stares at her.

"Injuries aren't always physical," she tells him gently. "Stay."

Chat Noir continues to stare at her, frozen in place. His eyes look a little glazed, actually- he might either be ill or starting to come down with something.

Her heart hurts. "Hey, when I said you can ask for help, I meant it."

He looks away rather than answer her, which is definitely a bad sign.

"Chat Noir," she says patiently and waits for him to look back at her. "Hey, it's all right, okay? If you need to stay, then stay. And you don't have to tell me why unless you want to." As badly as she wants to know, it does no one any good if she coerces it out of him.

"Okay," he says. His voice is very small.

What happened between last night and this one? He hadn't been doing well on patrol, that was true, but how did he get this much worse this quickly?

Or had whatever had him so down in the first place finally become too much?

"Wait here," Marinette says slowly, trying to calm her own worry long enough to figure out what she should do to make sure he's comfortable for the night. Because by now, she strongly suspects he isn't going home at night, and if that's the case she'll have to convince him to stay here. "Seriously, wait here and don't go anywhere. I'll be right back."

He only nods silently.

Ignoring the faint chill that shivers down her back at that, Marinette ducks out of her room to fetch a plate of leftovers she'd saved for him earlier and to grab extra blankets from the linen closet. Luckily, between the bite in the air recently and how badly Marinette dislikes the cold her parents won't see anything odd about her getting out some spare blankets.

She returns to find Chat Noir sitting in the exact same spot, staring at the floor and looking miles away.

Swallowing hard, she drops the blankets beside her desk chair and offers him the plate of food. "Hey, we had leftovers. Want some?"

His eyes flash sideways at her. He looks startled.

He really shouldn't. Not just because he should have heard her coming and normally would have, but because no one should look startled when they were offered food, especially in a bakery.

"Uh, I shouldn't," Chat Noir tries, before sagging at the look Marinette gives him. "Whoa, okay. All right."

"No one refuses my father's food," Marinette informs him smugly, dropping into her desk chair and holding up one of the blankets. "Sorry, I think it's too suspicious if I give you the bed, but no one's going to care about me grabbing the spare blankets." She sets them down on the chaise lounge, apologizing mentally to Tikki.

"I don't want to put you out," he says, still far too quietly.

"You're not," Marinette says, just as quietly. "I invited you in, Chat Noir. Please. Let me help."

He nods with that same disturbing slowness, then slides off her bed to land silently on the chaise lounge. Marinette hopes Tikki's well hidden.

She sets the plate Chat set down aside. She can give it back when he's settled.

She doesn't expect Chat to start burrowing into the blankets the way he does. She watches as he pushes and pulls at them, frowning, and holds back a giggle as he seems to get them right where he wants them with a sigh.

He glances up at the snicker that sneaks through.

"Sorry," she tells him, for once not meaning it at all. "It's just, you looked just like my uncle's cat for a moment there."

He doesn't laugh along like she expected him to. Instead he looks away again and mutters something too low to hear before hunkering down and saying, barely audible, "Goodnight, princess."

Marinette stares down at him without moving to give him back the food or to climb back up to her bed.

This isn't the Chat Noir she knows and she still doesn't know what's going on with him.

Eventually she does convince him to eat, although even then he only nibbles at the leftovers she'd saved for him before hunkering back into the nest he's made of the blankets. She can feel his eyes on her long after she's turned out the lights and climbed back up to the loft.

"You sure you're okay?" she asks at last, knowing the answer, knowing he isn't going to tell her.

"What if your parents hear you talking to me?" he asks instead of answering.

Marinette rolls over, hugging her pillow. "I tell them that I'm playing a video game. I yell back at them all the time and it wouldn't be the first time I've stayed up to play. Or I'm on the phone with Alya- same thing, wouldn't be the first time."

He blinks. "You've thought this through."

"Of course I have," Marinette huffs. "I made you an offer, I intend to honor it." She frowns at him. "I wouldn't have said it in the first place if I didn't mean it."

He blinks and his eyes reappear lower- he's settling further into the blankets. She really hopes Tikki is comfortable where she is, because her poor kwami's stuck there now; even with whatever's wrong with him Chat Noir isn't going to miss a kwami zipping past him at that range. "Thanks, again."

"You're welcome," Marinette says softly. "Now get some sleep." She rolls back over to set an example.

She rolls back to where she can see him five minutes later, unable to take it any longer.

Her eyes have adjusted enough to make out the darker lump near buried in the pile of blankets. He's still moving around a lot but then he really never does stay still.

Reassured, Marinette closes her eyes.

For about ten minutes. She can still hear him rustling around, obviously still wide awake.

"Hey," she says at last, shaking herself out of her half-asleep state. "Is it alright if I put on a movie or something? It'll cover any noise and I fall asleep with the computer on often enough that no one will think anything of it."

"Sure," he says, and even in the weak light from the windows she can see his tail flicking and his eyes flashing a little.

She hesitates, then makes a decision and gets up to rummage through her DVDs. She knows what kind of media Chat Noir would like to watch. She's sure of it.

She should probably at least try to downplay how sure of it she actually is.

"I have, uh, Disney movies, a bunch of different versions of Zorro," and if he ever finds out Ladybug likes Zorro she's sure she'll never hear the end of it, "And... well, I actually have a lot of anime, you're gonna have to help me pick if that's what you wanna watch."

Sure enough, both his ears flicker when she mentions anime. (That they don't when she mentions Zorro only makes her suspect he isn't familiar with Zorro. She might be biased). "I'm not that picky, really. Any of it sounds good."

"Don't you lie to me, I saw your ears when I said anime," she teases him.

Those same ears flicker flat when she says it, though. "I mean, I'm imposing, right? You should pick."

"You're a guest," Marinette says, but she brings over three different anime rather than ask him to narrow it down. "But all right. How about one of these?"

He glances over all of them, but she sees his eyes catch on the third.

"Fairy Tail?" she says, amused. "I wouldv'e guessed Boku no Hero Academia." She pauses, then adds, "Or Sailor Moon."

The grin's a shadow of his usual one, but it's there. "Hey, Paris has its own heroes now. And I've seen Sailor Moon a whole lot of times."

"Of course you have," she says, laughing, taking the DVDs back from him and setting the first two aside. She'll leave them out for another night (she's sure now that there will be another night). "You haven't seen Fairy Tail, then?"

He shakes his head. "Never got around to it."

"Ohhh, you're gonna like Happy." She taps the blue winged cat on the box art.

He eyes it and the grin becomes a little more present, a little more real. "Bet he's got nothing on Luna."

She laughs again. "Hey, Happy's got his own charm. Also, wings. Bet you wish you had wings," she teases.

He snorts, crossing his arms on the blankets and leaning his head on them, eyes glinting at her. "Hey. I manage."

"Chat Noir, you leap off buildings. I've seen you. Everyone has seen you." Of course, she does the same thing, but that isn't the point.

"It doesn't count if you don't hit the ground," he defends himself.

Still smiling, Marinette starts the DVD on her computer, checking first that she still has Ladyblog notifications active. At least that's not suspicious when she's friends with Alya. Besides, it'll probably help Chat Noir to have them, too. She gets back in bed, but hangs off partway to watch along with Chat Noir.

"Oh wow," he says around the second episode, laughing. "Are... is that the can can playing?"

Marinette's smiling herself, hugging her pillow, glad to have finally gotten her partner to laugh again. "Oh, yeah, there's a lot of repurposed classical music in this. They use that one a lot."

"When people are brawling?" he asks. His tail is twitching again, but in a relaxed way. "Also, are these characters ever not brawling?"

She shrugs and tries not to too obviously watch Chat Noir rather than the screen. "Not really, or at least not often. It's pretty fun to watch, though, it's like... good-natured sparring a lot of the time. I actually didn't really plan to watch it in the first place, but Alya insisted and it turned out I like Lucy and later Erza a lot, so."

"Huh," Chat Noir says almost absently, but his ears are forward and his eyes are glued to the screen. He's burrowed even further into the pile of blankets by now. It's good to be able to look at her partner and know for a fact that he's safe and, if still not necessarily happy, content.

It's not much longer before she notices he's begun to blink more and to open his eyes slower each time. His tail's mostly limp now and his ears are relaxed, making her think worriedly of Tikki's warnings, but that's hardly something she can bring up while they're watching anime in her bedroom.

"Sorry," he says at last, yawning before glancing at her almost shyly. "I didn't mean to keep you up. I can go."

She rolls her eyes, remembers at the last moment that he can see her just fine, then decides that that's okay. Maybe he needs her to tell him he's being ridiculous. "You can stay. How many times do you want me to tell you that you can stay?"

"It's..." He blinks, then sighs deeply. "Thank you. If you're sure."

"I"m sure," she says, trying hard not to get exasperated. Normally she'd understand; it has to be at least a little nerve-wracking to sleep transformed, with the number of times akuma have come for their Miraculous, but by now she's positive he hasn't been going home. This has to be safer than anywhere else he'd slept, barring the times he'd been with her.

...no wonder he hasn't been sleeping well. She wouldn't be.

She kind of wants him to go to sleep for entirely selfish reasons, as well. One of them is simply that she'd feel better if she could see him getting some sleep somewhere safe.

Another is that by now she's pretty sure he has nowhere else to go and she really, really needs time to process that. She'd known he was suddenly around all the time, she'd even thought to herself that he couldn't possibly have been going home, but she hadn't stopped to think through the implications.

He blinks at her a few more times, then settles in again with a sigh. Marinette would absolutely be lying if she said it wasn't at least a little cute. Mostly, though, she's glad he's finally getting some sleep. She can hear it when his breathing finally goes deep and even. He's not purring, not tonight, but at least he's finally getting some halfway decent rest that doesn't require Ladybug's presence. Technically. That he knows of.

This is going to be difficult.

Notes:

i am definitely personally biased about zorro
i have also never actually seen sailor moon (i had to look up the cat's name), but adrien has definitely seen it plenty

Chapter 7: sanctorum

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

She expects Chat Noir to be gone in the morning, but he isn't- in fact, he's still sleeping like the dead, even when she gets up to get ready for school.

When even her father yelling up to her doesn't rouse Chat Noir she makes the decision to let him sleep.

"Tikki, give me a hand," she whispers and her kwami doesn't make any objections as they latch the trapdoor from inside before climbing down. Hopefully her parents won't have any reason to try the trapdoor, because Marinette's never tried to lock it before this; she and Tikki had added the lock one night in a fit of paranoia but they've never needed it. This way, though, no one can stumble onto Chat Noir, and it isn't as though Marinette's worried about being able to get back in later; she's known how to break into her own room since she was six, and Alya had come up with three new ways at their last sleepover alone. With a skylight and as Ladybug it's even easier, though obviously with Chat Noir staying here she doesn't want to take that route if she can help it.

If she's lucky she can convince him to really stay. Honestly, the stress of hiding him from her parents still has to be less than the stress of worrying about her partner all the time, especially when she's more sure by the minute that he's been sleeping on the streets somewhere. It's the only thing that makes sense of his behavior, and it hurts to think that her best friend hasn't had anywhere safe to go. Besides, it isn't like she'll have to find an excuse to leave or someplace to hide from him in the event of an akuma attack- not when he'll already be leaving himself to go meet up with her.

This is going to be confusing.

Of course, this plan doesn't even begin to address the problem of his staying transformed too often and too long, but she's still working on a solution to that.

School is blissfully uneventful, which is a good thing considering every moment she isn't worrying about Chat Noir and where he's been staying- where he's been living- until now she's worrying about Adrien. She knows she's overreacting, there was an entire article explaining where he's gone, but she can't help herself. It doesn't help that she still hasn't been able to find any news on a Gabriel photo shoot anywhere in America. It isn't just New York- she's taken to checking other cities as well, making her way slowly down a list of most to least likely.

Marinette's entire lunch is taken up by checking in with everyone else who's trying to find a way to get in touch with Adrien, even Chloe (regretfully), but that's becoming usual for her. It's not just her, for that matter- Nino, Alya and Chloe are the most obvious about it, but their whole class has started to show concern. It's definitely a consolation that she's far from the only one who thinks something seems shady. Marinette had been assuming it was only her own overactive imagination that made her worry, and to some extent it probably is, but she's no longer the only one.

"No, girl," Alya tells her regretfully, before tilting her head at Nino. "He hasn't even contacted Nino, and it's been nearly a week. This isn't like him at all."

"His dad must have taken his phone or he'd have dropped me something by now," Nino says glumly, picking at his sandwich. He'd suggested going to Marinette's for lunch and he was still sulking that she'd come up with some very hasty, honestly very flimsy reasons not to. (There is not a health inspection today. She's quite sure he knows there isn't. He's been a better friend than she deserves by hardly ever questioning her terrible, terrible excuses). "And no one's gotten any pings on the Ladyblog."

"A week's not that long," Sabrina offers, but reluctantly, because for Adrien it kind of is. He can be surprisingly shy sometimes, and he doesn't always seem to know how to talk to people outside of class, but it definitely isn't like him to drop off the face of the earth like this- he enjoys being around other people his age too much. He'd been getting more and more outgoing by the day, anyway.

Chloe huffs and tosses her hair back. "Maybe not for the rest of these peons, but for Adrikins to not talk to moi? A week is ridiculous."

Marinette checks in with other classmates and even a few people in other classes throughout the rest of the day as well, but no one's heard anything. It's been long enough that she's getting fewer strange looks and more sympathetic ones when she asks. Chloe is actively sulking, although to Marinette's surprise she notes real concern in the other girl's expression when Chloe actually turns back to ask her if she's sure no one's heard from Adrien. Even the fact that Chloe is honestly willing to ask Marinette that is telling. Alya scours the Ladyblog again and Nino's asked around at Adrien's fencing class, to no results; Marinette didn't really expect otherwise but it makes her heart sink a little more every day. It's really not like Adrien to not find a way to contact at least Nino. He must not have any computer access at all.

She hopes he's okay. They all hope he's okay. She hopes, too, that he knows how hard they're all trying to contact him- she's not sure how he would find out, but Nino assures her that it would mean a lot to him. Marinette's finding out that for all she trips constantly, both verbally and physically, when Adrien is there she still prefers him to actually be there. She's not stuttering and blushing as she joins the rest of her class in checking on him (because by now literally everyone thinks it's weird that he'd be completely out of touch for this long) but at this point she'd prefer to be because it would mean he was here to be a stuttering mess at.

"It isn't like we don't know where he is," Rose tries. "There was an article about him leaving the country for a show, right? He's in America."

"Not knowing where is isn't the problem," Nino says. "Although we totally don't, by the way, has anyone actually figured out where in America Gabriel is doing a photo shoot? It's that we don't know why he isn't in contact with anyone."

"I mean, his dad does pull him for shoots without warning sometimes. And the location might not be public knowledge until after it's over," Juleka points out, but it's half-hearted at best.

Kim shrugs. "Yeah... but he tells us about those. He'd at least be getting homework from Nino, right? Something just seems off this time."

"And even if he was just pulled away unexpectedly," Max puts in, "He'd statistically be happier if he could stay in touch with us. You know he'd try to."

But as determined as everyone is to contact Adrien, herself included (herself leading the charge, really), he's actually not Marinette's primary concern right now. Normally he would be, of course he would be, and she mentally apologizes to him profusely, but- her Chat is in trouble. No matter how much she adores Adrien, her partner is always going to be her priority.

As soon as school lets out she hurries home, snags a quick meal to eat upstairs with an apologetic smile at her mother and a hasty explanation about having a lot of schoolwork, and breaks back into her bedroom.

Chat Noir's still there.

Chat Noir's still asleep.

Sure, she'd kept her friends from coming over for lunch just in case, but she hadn't really thought he'd still be where she'd left him. It's been nearly a day.

"Tikki," Marinette whispers, blinking, forestalling her kwami's dive under the chaise lounge. Hovering just where she can dart into hiding in an instance, Tikki blinks back at her. "How long can we stay transformed?"

"Not this long," Tikki says quietly. "Not under normal circumstances."

Marinette closes her eyes for a long moment, then opens them to watch Chat Noir again. He's curled up, tangled in the blankets in nearly the same position as when she'd left. He's neatly buried- his tail dangles out, and one hand, and she can just barely see his ruffled hair and one slowly flickering ear. "He... can change back, right?"

"Yes," Tikki affirms immediately, startled. "The transformation itself can't become permanent, as far as we know." She hesitates, then adds softly, "It's the traits that transfer over that will."

So much for Chat Noir not staying transformed for too long. He hasn't changed back in a minimum of twelve hours, and when she goes back over all the recent Ladyblog sightings in her head, she realises it can't be the first time. "Do you think he knows?"

"I don't know," Tikki says. "His kwami should have told him, but-" She cuts herself off and dives under the chaise lounge.

Chat Noir is stirring. Less than a minute later he sits up, yawning, hair messier than ever. He looks up at her and freezes.

"Hey sleeping beauty," she greets him, hoping quietly that if he heard anything he'll chalk it up to her talking to herself. Also, she should probably start talking to herself, if she can only figure out a safe way to do so- otherwise he's bound to catch her talking to Tikki at some point.

She knows she's still making plans like he's staying, but then, she knows she needs him to stay.

Marinette moves further into the room and hands him the plate she'd grabbed from the kitchen. "Got you some food."

"Food?" he says, voice still thick with sleep. "How long have I been asleep?"

Marinette takes a moment to lock the trapdoor again and quietly tip a desk chair over it, something she's very much not allowed to do but could pass off as being accidental (the chair, not the lock- she's allowed to use the lock. Or she would be, if her parents knew she had one). Granted, she's usually exceptionally good about keeping the trapdoor clear, but she's still accident prone enough for it to be plausible and she wants that extra bit of protection. If she's right Chat Noir hasn't had anywhere safe in days so she's determined to make her room as safe as possible for him.

As soon as she's done with that she takes a seat at her desk, pulling her backpack after her since it hadn't been entirely a lie that she had a lot of schoolwork. "You've been asleep all day, Chat Noir. Guess you needed it."

"All day?" he echoes, scrambling upright. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to stay so long, I'll get out of here."

Exasperated by his apparently abysmal level of self-care, Marinette levels a pencil at him. "Eat first."

Chat Noir blinks. Then blinks again. "Sorry, what?"

"Ear first," she repeats. "If you need to go, fine, but eat first." She hesitates, then adds, "And come back when you're done with..." She almost says patrol, but that's not supposed to be common knowledge. Sure, they don't go out of their way to stay hidden, but it's going to be suspicious if she knows their schedule when Ladybug's tried hard to keep it unpredictable. "When you're done with whatever you need to go do."

Poor Chat Noir looks bewildered as he sits slowly back down, accepting the food this time. "You want me to come back?"

"Yes," she tells him simply, hoping that such a plain answer will finally get through to him.

No such luck. "Why would you want me to come back?"

"You needed it," she reminds him. "If you still need it, or if you need someplace to go again, then yes. Come back." The way he's been acting on patrol recently, he'd better come back, because he definitely needs it.

"If you're sure," Chat Noir says slowly, looking hesitant still, but that's as good as securing a yes from him and she knows it.

To her surprise, it's only a few minutes later when she hears him set down his plate and move up behind her. "Huh. That's wrong."

Marinette scowls down at her book, suddenly feeling- well, only a little bit less charitable, really. He's still her best friend, whether he knows it or not, and he's still in some kind of trouble. He's still probably homeless, she isn't actually going to ignore him. She's not that cold. "Excuse me, I haven't finished solving it yet."

"Oh- no, I meant the equation. It's wrong." He reaches past her and traces one of the numbers. "It isn't solvable like this. I think it's a misprint."

Marinette blinks, then blinks again.

"I, uh... " Chat Noir trails off. When she glances back over her shoulder at him, his hood is back and his ears are pressed flat against his head. "Sorry, I should let you work."

"It's fine," she says automatically, mind working overtime. "I didn't know you liked maths."

"Well, yeah." Chat Noir's ears start to creep back up and Marinette feels tension she wasn't even aware of start to bleed out of her. "It's nice to know the answers won't, I dunno, change on you."

She's thought before that Chat Noir's likely her age, but it's never occurred to her that maybe he's like Adrien and enjoys going to school. Honestly, if she'd thought about it at all she'd probably have thought he was the class clown. But if he is like Adrien? Not having been to class in almost a week, if not longer, must be killing him.

Great, that's two of her friends who are likely upset about being pulled out of school. Then again, it isn't like Marinette actually wants to miss class herself; she just doesn't have a choice, more often than not.

"I've gotta, you know, do it myself so I'm sure I know it," she finds herself saying. "But if you want to, you could do the assignment too, and we could check our answers against each other?" She trips over her own words a moment later in a way she never usually does with Chat Noir. "I-I mean, if you want to! Only if you want to."

"I'd like that," he says, voice gone quiet again. He doesn't actually meet her eyes, but his ears flicker towards the math textbook. "Honestly, I would. Thanks."

"It's not a problem, Chat Noir," she says, just as quietly. "Here- pull up the other chair."

He glances at where it's resting on the trapdoor, then looks back at her and raises both eyebrows.

"Or not," she concedes, abandoning the desk altogether and gesturing towards the floor. "Or we could just sit on the floor." She flops down herself, rolling onto her stomach with the book out in front of her. She's glad Tikki's little hideaway beneath the chaise lounge is as well-hidden as she could make it- a necessity when her bedroom door opens upwards. Luckily for Marinette a fashion designer abruptly deciding to add bedskirts to a chaise lounge isn't terribly suspicious.

Chat Noir joins her, leaning over her shoulder to read and bracing himself with a hand on the floor. He's close enough that she can feel his tail lashing anxiously behind them.

She doesn't tense- she's far too used to sharing her personal space with him to tense- but she isn't really sure what to do. Chat Noir's always been so tactile that she suspects he might be touch-starved, and Ladybug would already be leaning back into him because it makes such a visible difference to him. Marinette wants to but she isn't supposed to know him that well. It's been hard enough to not act too comfortable around him; she keeps forgetting that Marinette has only met Chat Noir a few times, because she's so used to spending nearly all their free time together.

Nearly all her free time, anyway. Judging by his recent patrol habits, Chat Noir suddenly has entirely too much free time.

Marinette's completely comfortable letting him in her space- of course she is, it's Chat Noir, he's always been welcome in her space- but it's going to be suspicious if she doesn't keep in mind that he doesn't know that.

Worse, he's anxious and upset and she hates seeing him like that. She has from the very start.

Eventually, she settles for simply relaxing where she is and hoping to herself that he forgets they don't (technically) know each other that well.

To her relief, it works. Almost immediately Chat Noir moves to lie down next to her, but he stays so close she can feel the warm line of him all along her side. If it were almost anyone else (although Alya and Adrien both come to mind) she might push them away, but he's so tense, like he wants to move even closer but knows he shouldn't, that she can't possibly bring herself to do it.

Bracing herself against Tikki's silent disapproval (Marinette may not be able to see her kwami but she knows), Marinette tries to be subtle as she very slowly leans back into Chat Noir. She knows she's made the right decision when the tension finally starts to bleed out of his frame. His ears finally flicker fully back upright as he studies her textbook, and his tail stops lashing quite so much.

She's never been entirely certain how much control he has over his ears and tail. He'd said next to none, but then he'd corrected himself in the next breath and said he wasn't sure himself, since he has no problem taking his belt off and using it during akuma attacks but he definitely doesn't control it otherwise. They know his ears are functional, rivets aside. But... she definitely didn't notice his tail or ears being quite this expressive before. Tikki's right, his body language is changing.

Marinette wonders, a little uneasily, if that means her body language is going to change too. They're so in tune with each other's movement that it's not possible so much as it is likely she'll start adjusting the way she moves to better balance him. If she's not careful, the way they're always aware of each other is going to carry over to her civilian identity and out her before she has a chance to slip up.

None of that, though, is enough to make her move away.

It's a little surreal, sitting quietly in Marinette's room and working on homework as Chat Noir.

It's a lot unwise- he's not listening to Plagg at all, aside from coming to Marinette's in the first place; he's been Chat Noir for coming up on a full day now, but even with Plagg's warnings about permanent side effects ringing in his ears Adrien can't make himself regret it. He's still kind of on edge, but even so he's more relaxed than he has been without Ladybug's direct presence in a week. Longer. Now that he thinks about it, his behavior had been off even before he'd actually run away.

He's missed- he's not even sure what he misses. Not the schoolwork, not really; he'd done schoolwork even locked in his home and it had never truly been enjoyable there. But. It's different, with Marinette here. Her room isn't cold and echoing like his father's house. Honestly, Marinette's room is the polar opposite of his father's house; cramped and crowded and warm.

And he's not alone. Laying side by side on Marinette's floor to share the book, he can't possibly forget that he's not alone, especially when she lets him lean into her. (She doesn't have to do that and he kind of feels guilty, but also too grateful to stop).

Marinette hums as she works, which is oddly endearing. At first it's only improvised little tunes, things she doesn't seem aware she's humming; then it's bits and pieces of different Jagged Stone songs. Sometimes she switches into the songs from Fairy Tail, both the actual soundtrack and the reprised classical music. After a while, Chat Noir catches himself joining in, filling in the rest of the songs.

He tries to stop himself at first, but from the amused sidelong glance she gives him, Marinette doesn't seem like she minds.

"Mind if I turn on the TV?" she asks after a while, pushing away from the floor and stretching a little. Her hand brushes the tip of one of his ears and he fights not to lean into it. "I like having it on for background noise. And, well," her hand brushes his ear again, deliberately this time. "You need to know if there's an akuma, right?"

"Uh," he says, this time failing to keep from leaning into her touch. "I mean, I'm sure Ladybug would call me. If she really needs me." His eyes are falling closed again, so he misses Marinette's expression at that.

"Oh- of course she needs you, ki- Chat Noir," Marinette says softly, though she takes her hand away. "She relies on you. Anyone could see that."

He wishes she hadn't stopped touching him. "It's the other way around, really."

"Chat Noir," she says, and her hands are back on him, on both his shoulders as she hauls him around to face her. Startled, he lets her. "Chat Noir, you are needed. Come on, have you seen some of the fights Alya's recorded? Ladybug needs you."

He tries to pull away, stunned by the raw conviction in her voice, but Marinette doesn't just hold on tight- she pulls him into a hug and repeats herself. "Ladybug needs you."

"Okay," he says, voice small. He clears his throat. "Um. I don't mind if you turn on the news."

"All right," she says, and instead of getting up to go to the desk like he expects she reaches around him to grab her tablet and pull up a news app.

She doesn't let go of him.

"You don't have to-" he starts, and Marinette's arms tighten.

"Someone told me once you shouldn't end a hug until the person you're hugging is ready for you to end it," she says softly. He hears her swallow. "And Chat Noir, you're moving closer."

He has been. He hadn't realised.

But.. he doesn't really want her to let go, either.

He stays where he is as the news app comes to life, trying his hardest not to burrow further into Marinette's arms.

The newscaster's voice comes on in the background and Chat Noir tenses, then relaxes when he doesn't hear anything about an akuma attack. It's just news. It's just a news segment about Jagged Stone's latest album. There's nothing about akuma attacks at all.

He's not sure why he expected there to be.

Maybe because right now, he's comfortable; he doesn't want to move out of Marinette's hug, but he can't expect it to last. He can't expect this to last. Marinette has a life outside of him.

And nothing he enjoys ever lasts.

Notes:

did anyone else ever have teachers who gave them deliberately unsolvable problems, because I get why they did it but it doesn't seem very common
or nice

someone once told me that exact thing about hugs and ive never forgotten it

Chapter 8: Comfort

Chapter Text

Marinette really wishes she could talk to Tikki right now. She so badly wants to talk to someone about what's going on, and Tikki is naturally her first choice. Marinette never really thinks about how much she's come to rely on her kwami until circumstances mean that she can't.

Chat Noir's been here for nearly a day and he's given no indication that anyone is missing him. She knows he will shortly- because they have patrol, and Ladybug is definitely going to miss him, and- she's going to have to figure out how to prove that to him, actually, since she'd thought she'd made it clear and she can't exactly admit how she knows she hasn't. Right now, though, she can't stop feeling cold at the thought that maybe there's no one else to miss him. That maybe that's why he's been clingier than usual with Ladybug recently. She's so glad that she hasn't teased him about that, that she hasn't made a big deal out of it; it's clearer by the moment how much he needs it. How much he needs her. She doesn't feel very good about that; Chat Noir should have more people in his life that he can turn to than just Ladybug, and yet increasingly she suspects that he doesn't have anyone else.

Ladybug had noticed the first changes in him weeks ago and they've only gotten worse. After spending all day thinking about how he's been acting recently (except for the time she'd spent worrying about Adrien instead) Marinette's certain by now that Chat Noir's been sleeping on the streets, when he's sleeping at all; but for how long? She still doesn't know what had happened in the first place. She always knew something was going on in his home life but she's not sure how it got so much worse, so quickly.

He still won't tell Ladybug about it. He doesn't even think Ladybug needs him, even as it's obvious that he needs her. How can he think that? How can she make him stop thinking that? Yet again, Marinette really wishes she had Tikki available to bounce thoughts and ideas off of.

Marinette really wishes he'd trusted her enough to tell her. It's all too real a concern that he's too scared to tell her, and she hates that idea. She doesn't like seeing her partner scared. She doesn't like to see her partner as hurt as he obviously has been, either.

Surely Chat Noir's kwami is helping him. She can't ask as Marinette, though, and as Ladybug she's not supposed to know he isn't going home at night- well. She thinks of Shelter's power. He's not going to a house, anyway. He doesn't know he's still found his home.

That's very sweet, but deeply unsettling at the same time.

She does have to let go of him and go back to doing homework eventually, though. If she deliberately stays closer to Chat Noir than she had been before, well, that's no one's business but theirs.

To her surprise, he's visibly happier once they've been working quietly on math problems for a while. He's focused in a way she isn't used to seeing outside of akuma attacks- even on patrol, which she knows he takes seriously, Chat Noir's always been easily distracted. It's part of who he is.

"Hey," she says at last, loathe to break their comfortable silence, but knowing they'll both have to leave soon. "Don't take this the wrong way because you can hang out as long as you want, but didn't you have somewhere you needed to be?"

He startles a little, then rubs the back of his head sheepishly. "Uh... yeah. Duty calls, you know?" He's smiling at her, but it fades a little as he glances down and says quietly, "Is it... would it be all right if I came back here after? I, uh, I understand if it isn't."

"It's fine, Chat Noir," she says, smiling back at him and wincing internally because she's going to have to hustle after patrol to beat him back here. All the same, there was never any chance of her saying no to him.

Just to be cautious, they wait a good ten minutes after he leaves before Tikki darts out to transform her. Chat Noir's been early so often recently that it won't be strange if they don't arrive at the same time for patrol.

Naturally, he's waiting when she arrives. They change the meeting place every few patrols for safety's sake- Ladybug would have expected that she'd be the more cautious one, but Chat Noir had actually been the one to suggest that. This time it's not a landmark, just a poorly lit roof in a business area, but Chat Noir looks more uneasy than she'd expected based on about half an hour ago.

"Hey kitty," she greets him, silently relieved that she can finally drop the pretense that it isn't her best friend she's spending time with.

"Hey LB," he says, smiling and propping his baton across his shoulders as he walks towards her. His smile doesn't quite reach his eyes, though, and his ears are twitching again. She's pretty sure she catches him darting a glance over the roof but she decides not to press him on it. "Where to?"

She's been thinking about it the whole time they worked on math homework, so she says, "Wanna go spar?"

He blinks. "Really? We haven't done that in... since we were starting out."

Ladybug shrugs. "I know, but... It was kind of fun. I miss doing it." That's not a lie- something about throwing themselves around Paris, knowing the other is always there to catch them, will always be satisfying, but Chat Noir is the only opponent she can go all-out against short of an actual akuma. Sparring is satisfying in the way that absolutely nailing a design is satisfying. The fact that just like the math homework it's an activity where Chat Noir can turn the restless part of his brain off for a few hours and just focus on what they're doing is a minor detail.

"Okay," Chat Noir says, smile starting to creep into his eyes again as he sweeps an exaggerated bow. "Then follow me, m'lady, I know the perfect place."

Rather than tease him about that, she bows back, making sure to exaggerate it just slightly more than he had. "Lead the way then, minou."

He's fully relaxing into their easy back and forth now, immediately taking his turn to bow so low he nearly loses his balance. "Of course, m'ladybug."

"That was barely different," Ladybug says, laughing, but this time he turns to dive off the building onto the next roof and she swings after him.

She immediately notices the way he's moving and her heart sinks.

Chat Noir's always switched easily into running on all fours, she knows it's the most comfortable way for him to run and he's fastest that way but- she can't articulate how, but the way he's running now seems even more feline than usual. Maybe it's the way his legs bunch under him for every leap- but she's not sure if that's different or if she's just more aware of it now. Maybe there's more than that.

When she sees him extend his claws to grab a slightly higher ledge and scramble up rather than simply jump, she knows she's not imagining things. It's been over a day now- she hopes that he stopped to detransform and feed his kwami before coming to meet her, but she doubts he'd have risked not being able to change back in time for patrol.

She's not proud of herself for it but Ladybug's close to wishing for an akuma just so that Chat Noir has to change back for a while.

"Ta-da," he says at last, dropping off a street light to land in a crouch front of an abandoned- looking warehouse, balanced on the balls of his feet- for a moment, before he drops further into a far more feline crouch, tail curled around his legs. "No one's been here in ages, plenty of space inside to spar."

Ladybug doesn't want to ask him how he knows that.

"Come on, kitty," she says instead, sliding past him and tapping on the door. "How're we getting in here?"

"You wound me!" He mimes being stabbed, falling over and springing back to his feet. "Cat burglary is a specialty, LB!"

She raises an eyebrow. "Are you sure you ought to be spreading that around, kitten? We are supposed to be role models."

He grins as he crouches and does, in fact, pull a bobby pin from his pocket to start picking the lock. (It's wildly unfair that his suit has pockets, rarely as he uses them). "It's good to have hobbies."

"I worry about you," she tells him, more seriously than she means to, before crouching beside him. "It's only fair you share your knowledge with your partner, just in case."

"Are you asking me to teach you breaking and entering?" he counters, grinning, ears perked again.

"For the sake of the city," she says mock-solemnly, pressing a hand to her heart. "You never know when there could be a lock-picking akuma."

He snorts as the door snicks open. "Honestly, that would be so far from the weirdest thing we've faced."

"Fair enough," she agrees, slipping into the warehouse behind him. It's not completely dark- moonlight shines in through the more dilapidated parts of the roof- but it's large and empty and full of shadows. Her footsteps echo in the empty space. His don't- he's always been quieter than her (well, in one way), but now his footfalls are entirely silent, giving her yet another twinge of worry. "Ready for me to kick your butt?"

"Someone's confident," he says, grinning at her, before suddenly reversing on his heels, dropping down to all fours and bounding away into the darkness.

"Hey!" she shouts, laughing. "No fair, you've got night vision!"

"All's fair in love and war, Bugaboo!" comes echoing from the darkest corner of the warehouse. Before he's done saying it Ladybug's thrown her yo-yo after his voice, but he's long gone and it only bounces off a wall.

"Missed me, missed me, my Lady!"

"Chat Noir, are you in the ceiling!" Ladybug shouts, incredulous, because she only saw him for a second but Chat Noir's definitely headed for the high ground.

"All's fair!" he shouts again, and she throws her yo-yo again and just barely misses his tail as it whips out of sight.

She narrows her eyes. "Oh, two can play at that game, chaton." She doesn't recall her bandalore, letting it wrap around an exposed beam instead and then yanking herself after it. "You're good- but I'm better!"

Of course, that's hardly accurate; she's beaten Chat Noir before but only when he'd been affected by an akuma. They have never (and will never) genuinely fought one another, and in sparring they always come out even. This time's no exception but it still has a benefit she hadn't thought of.

Even sparring, he's moving differently, and she wasn't wrong before- she adjusts to it automatically, without consciously considering what she's doing.

Which means Ladybug has a new consideration.

If Chat Noir's starting to act more feline, is she going to as well?

She'd thought before that this would affect her too (beyond the obvious worry for her partner), but she clearly hasn't thought about it enough. After all, she doesn't have cat themed powers any more than he has ladybug ones, so she wouldn't have ever thought of it as a possibility, but they're not really individual heroes, are they? They're more than a team- they're two halves of a whole. They might be able to fight on their own, but given a choice, they'll always find each other.

Anything that affects Chat Noir affects Ladybug as well.

Complementing him isn't a conscious choice, it's who she is. She'd better find a way to have this conversation.

He's having fun, though, and because of that she can't bring herself to cut their sparring short.

It might be dark, but movement still catches her eye as he leaps to another beam. The fact that he's always been incapable of staying still works in her favor. She aims for the beam just in front of him and slingshots up, but he's moving faster than she'd calculated and she misses him by inches.

"Nearly, my Lady," he calls back, before leaping away into the darkness again.

"Game's not over yet, chaton," she yells, aiming for the next beam. This time she swings up into a high arc, then lets herself fall back the way she'd come.

Like she'd predicted, he's back on the beam they've come from- she snatches at his tail as she flies past, but he whips it out of her grasp at the last moment and her own momentum slings her past him as he darts off. He doesn't yell back this time, which puts her at a disadvantage- if there's one thing his recent behavior has improved it's his stealth.

She yanks herself back to the beam and balances there, listening, straining to hear Chat Noir, but that's really more his trick than hers. Minutes tick by as she scans the darkness for movement, for a deeper darkness, for any sign of her partner. Finally she sees a shift in the shadows, a possible flick of an ear, the barest twitch of his tail. She moves closer, but slowly, meandering, not willing to take a straightforward path when she knows he can see her just fine.

She gets to the beam just beside him before she senses him shifting his weight, preparing to jump.

She dives for the beam ahead of him just before he jumps and they collide in midair.

"Did you miss me?" Chat Noir purrs as they drop to the floor.

Ladybug groans, pushing him away so that they both sprawl on the ground. "The problem here is that I didn't."

"It's my magnetic personality." He stretches and crosses his arms beneath his head, closing his eyes and flopping limply. "Are we done?"

"Well, no, technically," Ladybug says dryly. "That wasn't a spar, that was a very brief game of chase." She pauses. "Which I won."

He snorts. "You did not."

She reaches out and gently shoves his side. Chat Noir rolls with it and goes sprawling on his stomach. "Did too."

"Did not," he says, not bothering to get back up. "That was a tie. At best."

"I caught you," she says, sitting up and looking down at him.

"We both went crashing to the floor. Pretty sure that doesn't count." He doesn't move.

Ladybug sighs and reaches over to ruffle his hair. He lets out a contented sigh that trails neatly into a purr, ears flicking against her hand as he presses into her touch. "I know your weak spots."

"No fair," he mumbles, but even as he says it he tilts his head further into her hands.

"All's fair, kitten," she reminds him.

He tilts his head back to blink at her, once, very slowly.

Before they can continue, his ears spring upright and he curses.

"What?" she says, instantly alert.

"Screaming," he says grimly, scrambling to his feet and offering her a hand. "Akuma."

"Of course," Ladybug groans, accepting his hand off and brushing herself off, and inwardly kicking herself for putting off talking to him. They won't have a chance after the akuma.

She feels a shiver of fear down her spine. Chat Noir's going to have to change back after the fight. She's not sure when she'll see him again; he can hardly come to her room if he's detransformed, and she doesn't know what effect being Chat Noir for so long might have on his kwami. Tikki said he shouldn't even be able to do this normally, for all Marinette knows her partner won't be able to transform for a while after the fight.

She should have brought up her concerns at the beginning of the night.

She'd wanted so badly to cheer him up again, though, and she still can't really bring herself to regret that.

Chapter 9: Fight or Flight

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

They arrive together on the scene and she hears Chat Noir groan.

"It's another retail worker," he says glumly.

Ladybug sighs. "That's the fifth time this month. You'd think people would be nicer to retail workers when they know how often this happens."

"You would think," Chat Noir mutters. "Clearly you would be wrong, but you would think."

"And this is with people doing so much better than they did at the beginning. The holidays are going to suck." Is she imagining it, or does Chat Noir flinch at that? If his family situation had been bad even before this, and there have always been hints that it was, it's possible the holidays were already a sore spot.

"What do you think it was this time?" Chat Noir asks, ears flicking towards the akuma. It's a man, presumably, although with an akuma it can sometimes be hard to tell. "Returns? Customer service?"

"Shoplifters," Ladybug suggests.

"I am not the complaints department!" the akuma roars. "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine!"

Chat Noir sighs. "Or just plain people being mean again."

"Do we bet on it being Chloe?" Ladybug says dryly.

"In a grocery store?"

"Good point." Ladybug studies the akuma from a distance, not willing to get in close until they have some idea of his abilities.

Chat Noir's ears flicker again and he scowls. "M'lady, I think he's sound-dampening."

"Oh, not again," Ladybug says. They've already had some evidence that they can't always use their powers if they can't say the words, and while they can certainly manage without Cataclysm if they have to the same can't be said for Lucky Charm.

"You can say that again," Chat Noir sighs. They keep watching for a moment in silence as the akuma walks down the street, throwing a sound-dampening barrier around as it goes. The man's still in a bright orange vest but his akuma outfit is actually surprisingly understated- except for the minor hoard of buttons and employee nametags on said vest.

"The akuma's probably in one of those, isn't it," Ladybug says tiredly.

Chat Noir sighs again. "Oh, it definitely is."

They still don't move.

"I really did want to spar tonight," Ladybug says.

"I really think these retail guys kinda have a point," Chat Noir says, shrugging and scratching behind one ear.

It's Ladybug's turn to sigh. "Too bad, kitty. We can't let him get off steam like this; we're gonna have to go defeat him."

"I know," he says, and jumps off the building before she can stop him.

She watches, horrified, as he misses his target and smacks into a building. Apparently the past night and day haven't been enough to bring him entirely back up to his usual shape. Now she wonders if he'd missed any jumps in the warehouse when she couldn't see him.

"I'm okay," Chat Noir groans, waving faintly. "I'll catch up."

She ignores that to drop down next to him and offer him a hand up. "We fight together, mon minou, you know that."

He takes her hand and brushes himself off when they're upright. (Mostly upright, but she doubts his immediate crouch is a conscious decision). "Of course, m'lady, but I don't want to be a purrden."

Ladybug rolls her eyes and readies her bandalore, this time making sure to get a good grip on Chat Noir first. "Never, Chat Noir. Let's go."

She shortly wishes there was a way to hang onto him for the entire fight.

It's not just the missed jump, though that was hardly an auspicious start; he misses more than one jump. He runs into a glass door someone left open. It's not as bad as it could be- the missed jumps aren't consecutive, she didn't see the door either, and it isn't like they aren't still hyperaware of each other enough for her to compensate; but it is enough that she really doesn't want this battle to drag on any longer than it has to.

She uses her Lucky Charm while Chat Noir races in literal circles around the akuma, running on all fours and bouncing off buildings as he dodges and distracts. He hasn't been hit yet, but at that range it's only a matter of time.

The Lucky Charm drops a laser pointer into her hands. She blinks at it.

The laser pointer flashes red, then a specific nametag low on the akuma's vest, then all of Chat Noir.

"Oh for..." She blinks at it again, then resigns herself and clicks it on, aiming just ahead of her partner.

Immediately, Chat Noir zeroes in on it. Clearly pouncing on the light isn't a conscious decision going by the hurt look he gives her a moment later.

"Sorry, Chat Noir," she shouts, holding it up to show him it's the Lucky Charm.

She can't hear it when he groans, which is another reason to end this quickly. She hadn't even seen which attack had landed on him, which makes her fervently hope he isn't already hiding injuries. (Is that a cat thing, or a Chat Noir thing? Or is it both?)

She aims the laser pointer at the correct nametag and grins savagely as Chat Noir shreds it on command and the black butterfly flaps free. Lucky Charms are usually nowhere near this straightforward; she gets the feeling that it's compensating for how under the weather Chat Noir's been, which has the kind of interesting implications she's going to obsess over later.

Ladybug also kind of wants to keep playing with the laser pointer, because there's something fantastic about watching Chat Noir go pouncing after it, but she's trying her hardest to ignore those thoughts because they are bad thoughts. They are terrible thoughts and she's not going to entertain them a moment longer.

She definitely doesn't use her Miraculous Cure as early as she could have.

She's definitely going to remember his reaction to that laser pointer for later, too.

Chat Noir has reassuring the dazed retail worker in hand (she'd never even gotten the man's akuma name), so Marinette takes off for home before she can run out of time- and before her cat can beat her there. He'd never used his Cataclysm and she's not at all convinced he'll go do the smart thing and recharge.

There's something else that occurs to her as she swings back that makes her falter and nearly misstep (not a small thing when you swing from buildings), but she needs to think about it more. She needs to think about it a lot more.

She's shortly entirely certain that Chat Noir never detransformed at all because she beats him to her house by bare minutes. Luckily, sort of, Tikki dove under the chaise lounge nearly as soon as Marinette had detransformed- lucky because that means she isn't caught, but not the best because wow does Marinette already miss talking to her kwami more than she thought possible. Ladybug's not likely to pull a Chat Noir and stay transformed for, apparently, days at a time anytime soon if only because she'd miss Tikki too badly.

As it is, by the time the faint tapping of claws sounds at the skylight, Marinette's brushed her teeth and changed into her pajamas already and has a sketchbook out as a plausible reason to still be awake. It's not that late- the akuma had cut patrol pretty short- but she'd had that plan in place already, back when she had expected to be out most of the night.

"It's unlocked," she calls up softly, though a moment later the thought from before strikes her and makes her consider she probably didn't have to be too quiet. Still, it'll have to wait for tomorrow night.

Chat Noir thumps quietly through the skylight, bypassing her ladder entirely to land on her floor in a crouch.

"Hey kitty," Marinette greets, setting her sketchbook aside to lean way out of the bed. "You couldn't resist the call of someone else's homework?"

He straightens slightly with a grin. "You've caught me, Princess. I'm only using you for your maths homework."

"I knew it," she says simply, getting up to slide down her ladder. She hits the floor much harder than he had and almost stumbles, but rights herself at the last minute.

If she's right about sharing cat traits, maybe she'll luck into some gracefulness soon.

She winces even as she thinks that; for her partner's sake, she doesn't want to reach the point where they're both picking up feline tendencies. She doesn't even know yet if that's possible. She hasn't had a chance to ask Tikki about it, and she can hardly ask Chat Noir now; she's not even supposed to know that he should be changing back.

"Hey, Princess," he says, and she glances up at him.

He isn't looking back at her- his hood's back but his ears are pressed flat, and he's twisting his tail in his hands. He looks like he does when he has something he wants to ask her, but he isn't sure about how it's going to be received. She's been trying to get him to worry about that less, but she hadn't known it applied to people other than Ladybug. If he's doing it with Marinette too it's possible it's just something he does.

He's already stressed out again. Maybe the warehouse had helped, but if it had it seems like the akuma undid any good she'd managed.

"What is it?" she asks Chat Noir quietly, straightening up to be on eye level.

"Uh," he starts, and then sighs and drops his tail, glancing at her again. "Is there any way- listen, can I use your shower?" He reddens a little under the mask. "I, uh, haven't been-" He stops talking, staring at the floor.

Marinette's heart beats harder. Oh. Even now, he doesn't want to admit out loud that he has nowhere to go. Her poor kitty. "Of course you can, I'll show you where it is." She steps around him to the trapdoor.

He hesitates. "What if your parents see us?"

"Then I tell them one of Paris' heroes needed to use our bathroom real quick," she replies simply. "They aren't going to mind, Chat Noir."

"Oh. All right, if you're sure about that," he says, oddly shyly. "Um, let me get something first?" At her nod, he darts back up out the skylight, returning moments later with a backpack. He doesn't meet her eyes as he hefts it up to take downstairs with him.

She's not going to say anything about it- he looks nervous enough about her seeing it. She unlatches the trapdoor for him to follow her down.

Marinette was serious, she doesn't think this is something her parents will object to, but she's still glad to find that they're asleep. That's a conversation she's not yet mentally prepared to have. "It's just through here, I- huh. I can get you clean clothes, but do you need them?"

He glances down at his costume with a wry smile. "Not really, no."

Marinette hesitates, but it would be more suspicious if she didn't ask. "Want me to wash your hoodie?"

"Ah," he fidgets with the sleeves. "I guess? Will it- will it take long?"

Should she be concerned that he doesn't know how long washing clothes takes? "Not very, but it'll definitely take longer to wash it than it will for you to shower."

"Maybe not, then," he says quietly. "I'd rather have it with me."

"Okay," she says, deciding not to push him on this. "Whenever you're done you can just meet me back in my room."

"Okay," he says, and shuts the door.

He doesn't take long- she'd actually hoped he'd take a little longer, since she'd assumed he'd have to detransform to shower, and she'd hoped he'd take the chance to talk to his kwami. Maybe he hadn't detransformed. She's certainly showered at the beach with her swimsuit on before, after all, and they know the suits are waterproof; maybe he'd just showered as Chat Noir.

But she can hardly ask, and it's not long before he's back and latching the trapdoor behind himself, glancing around for somewhere to put his backpack.

Marinette waves him to the chaise lounge and the pile of blankets that's still there. "Do you wanna keep watching Fairy Tail, or is this more of a straight to sleep kind of night?" He'd slept most of the day. They'd just been through a fight, if a brief one; even brief fights are typically pretty draining. She's not sure how tired or not he's likely to be, but she knows she needs to sleep.

Chat Noir hesitates for a second, then sighs. His ears drop flat as he says, "I should probably just get some sleep."

"Okay," Marinette says cautiously. "Are you- you can stay up, if you'd rather. I'd better get some sleep myself, but you can use my computer, if you want. I don't mind." She doesn't mind now that she's cleaned up the desktop, anyway. Sure, he might be kind of a brat about being on her desktop background, but if that's something that will make him brighten up a little she doesn't mind.

"Only if you're sure," he says, quiet again.

"I'm sure, Chat Noir," she says gently. "I'm going to bed, but I've slept through worse than just having you here. I have sleepovers with my friend Alya, after all. She's usually up half the night updating the Ladyblog."

"I'll think about it," he says, sinking down onto the chaise lounge. "If I can't sleep."

Marinette nods and retreats back up the ladder to bed, leaving the light on for him.

Notes:

next chapter has some of Adrien's point of view for this part as well, but this was getting a bit long

Chapter 10: restless

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

He should go back to his roof. He should go talk to Plagg. He misses Plagg already, anyway, he doesn't think he's gone this long without talking to his kwami since he first became Chat Noir. Adrien likes having Plagg around- Plagg fills a hole in his life he hadn't been fully aware of until it was gone. Adrien hadn't been quite as lonely before his mother left, but even when she'd been there, it wasn't as though she'd been particularly interested in letting him get out and meet people either. She'd always been less restrictive than his father but that hadn't ended up mattering much, because they'd argue about it sometimes and maybe Adrien would find something new in his room, like his climbing wall or his video games, but he wouldn't be allowed outside more. He thinks she probably argued more with his father than what he actually heard- he takes after her, she can't have been terribly happy about being cooped up all the time, herself.

Maybe that's why she vanished before he did. It would be like his father not to acknowledge the reasons for what they are.

The climbing wall is only for one person and he's pretty sure those games were special ordered- when he looks them up himself, curious, he only ever sees them for sale as two-player versions. He doesn't know the words for how exactly he feels about that, but it's not... great.

It feels strange, even now, though, to think about his mother having been at all involved in that decision- those decisions. His mother had never been stifling the way his father still is. He thinks.

It's getting harder to remember already, what she was like. He takes after her; even if he didn't recall that himself, even if he didn't still have pictures, his father likes to remind him that he takes after his mother.

Adrien kind of wishes he would stop, but at the same time some part of him will always sit up, eager to hear more, whenever he hears that. His dad so rarely mentions his mother now, even though the photos and paintings are everywhere. Adrien's glad to hear he takes after his mom- he always was closer to her.

But often, when his dad says that, he doesn't mean it as a compliment.

(Adrien can't count the times he's heard 'you're too sensitive').

(Adrien wants to know what his mom would think of Chat Noir, but he's afraid she'd disapprove).

His mother had arranged playdates with Chloe, so that he'd have a friend, but that hadn't been enough. He'd been so grateful to have anyone at all that he could call a friend that he'd never been able to bring himself to tell her that it wasn't enough. (She'd tried). And- Chloe is... is Chloe, besides. She hadn't been outright cruel to him, the way he's learned by now she is with everyone else, but she had always insisted on having her way about everything. He hadn't even realised she was doing it for the longest time. He hadn't really realised it wasn't normal until he'd made friends with Nino.

If he wanted Chloe to stay his friend- and when he had no one else, he did- it was on her terms; that they played games she wanted to play, watched movies she wanted to watch. What Adrien wanted didn't matter. She might pretend that it did, but the way she reacted to even tentative disagreement said otherwise.

What Adrien wanted already didn't matter to his father. It did to his mother, but his mother is gone. Plagg was the one who encouraged Adrien to do what he wanted to do- Plagg was his first friend who didn't want Adrien to play a part for him. Chat Noir isn't playing a part. Chat Noir is who Adrien is, without all the demands, without the restrictions and constraints. Chat Noir is who he's always longed to be.

Chat Noir should be doing anything but what he does, which is to go nearly straight back to Marinette's. He swings by his rooftop long enough to grab his backpack (he'd been so worried earlier that Ladybug would investigate their meeting place further and see the signs of habitation), but he goes to Marinette's as soon as he has it. He leaves it on the balcony, wedged under the lounge chair. After all, while Marinette definitely knows already that he's not going home at night, she doesn't need to know that it's because he can't.

"Sorry Plagg," Chat Noir mutters as he heads for Marinette's skylight. She had said he could come back... well, he can always leave again if she didn't truly mean it. Marinette wouldn't have said that if she didn't mean it, though, he's pretty sure.

At least she's one of the least likely people he can think of to try and trap him anywhere. Marinette's worked with Chat Noir before, and she did so brilliantly. He doesn't have to worry about his ring while he's asleep, or about her asking questions about his identity. He probably wouldn't take this risk with, say, Alya, but Marinette he trusts to let him leave on his own terms, without any kind of interrogation or any expectation of repayment. (He would still repay her if he only knew how).

He's so grateful that she hasn't pushed him for an explanation. He wishes now that he'd gotten to know his shy classmate better as Adrien when he'd still had the chance. He still doesn't know her very well, but he knows that she's kind enough to offer him a place to stay when she's only met Chat Noir that handful of times, and observant enough to know when he needs to know that he's not alone. She's worried for him. She's worried both for him as Adrien, and for him as Chat Noir. He's torn- it's terrible that he's made her worry, but it's also wonderful to know that someone is worried, that someone is looking for him. His father still isn't, as far as he can tell. Somehow he'd always thought, deep down, that his father would come after him if he ever got brave enough to run away. That his father would care.

In spite of everything, it hurts to learn he doesn't.

When Marinette asks him what he wants to do, he hesitates. He can't not hesitate. It's strange- Nino asks him what he wants to do all the time, and he's never honestly thought his classmates would be different, but Adrien can't quite seem to get used to being offered the choice. Sometimes, when they were younger, Chloe had liked to offer him what looked like a choice at first glance, but rarely was it a real one; it nearly always proved to be her pressuring him to agree with her, or risk their friendship (and his only friend) otherwise.

That had worked more often than he's comfortable admitting.

Chat Noir tries to hide his relief at getting to take a shower but he doesn't think he entirely succeeds. Hiding his backpack turns out to have been pointless, too, since he needs it now. Once he's actually shut the bathroom door behind himself, he hesitates again.

He has to detransform to shower and Plagg isn't going to be happy with him.

He can't put it off for long- Marinette is waiting upstairs. He takes a deep breath and drops his transformation.

Plagg drops to the counter immediately, drooping. Adrien drops his backpack on the rug to scoop up his kwami, who's very obviously exhausted.

"Kid," Plagg says tiredly. "This is not transforming less."

"I know, Plagg," Adrien says, looking around until he finds a fluffy-looking hand towel to set Plagg down on. Kneeling to rummage through his backpack for Plagg's Camembert, he says, "I'm sorry. I'll spend time with you tomorrow, but please, I'd like to stay here again tonight. I'll spend time with you tomorrow, I promise." He hands over the cheese.

With a sigh, Plagg starts in on it. "Yeah... sure, kid. Besides, you need to transform to get back out of here, anyway." He eyes Adrien over the cheese wheel. "But remember what I told you, about traits holding over. Permanently. And I'm holding you to that promise."

"That's fine," Adrien says quickly, stripping off his hoodie and folding it neatly, setting it aside. Maybe he should have let Marinette wash it but he hadn't wanted to let it out of his hands, even into the keeping of someone he trusts. "I didn't mean to sleep so much today or I would have detransformed during the day." He doesn't say anything about Plagg's warnings. There's nothing he can say.

Plagg stops eating for a minute, then slowly starts again. Around crumbs he says, "You're sleeping a lot."

Adrien frowns as he starts the shower. "Yeah."

"You need to eat more," Plagg says.

"For the last time, Plagg, I don't like your stinky cheese."

"That's not what I-" Adrien can't hear the rest of what Plagg says over the sound of the shower.

By the time Adrien's getting dressed again, Plagg's fallen asleep. Adrien hates to wake him up but he isn't about to transform without giving Plagg some warning, so he tugs at the hand towel until Plagg startles back awake.

"Sorry," Adrien apologizes again. "I kinda have to be Chat Noir again, though, Plagg."

Plagg heaves a great sigh. "Sure, kid, I get it. Just don't forget your promise, okay?"

"I won't," Adrien promises. "Plagg, claws out."

Adrien feels better, less off-balance, as soon as he's clad in Chat Noir's familiar outfit again. He puts his hoodie back on before quietly opening the door and padding on silent feet back to the trapdoor.

"Marinette?" he says quietly, pushing it open and wincing inwardly as soon as he says it. Adrien calls her Marinette- Chat Noir calls her Princess.

Well, if he's staying here with any frequency, which he still doesn't want to commit to, he should probably get more used to using her name anyway.

"Come on in, Chat Noir," Marinette calls back, just as quietly. "Shut the door behind you- it's got a latch, but you don't really have to worry about that if you don't want to."

He's seen her latch it, so he does, too. "Thanks for that, I needed it."

She makes a tired, inquisitive sound. "The shower? Sure, no problem. All you had to do was ask."

Chat Noir thinks about how well asking for things usually goes for him and winces. "Well, thanks anyway."

"Sure," she says, and gives him the choice of going straight to sleep or using her computer.

He ends up taking the chaise lounge again, but Marinette's offer to use her computer is tempting. It would be risky. If he signs into any of his accounts, she might be able to check it and figure out that he'd signed in as Adrien Agreste, and that would be disastrous. It isn't like his classmates know he ran away. She'd probably think that getting him home again would be a good thing.

By now he thinks that if he wants to have a home again he'll probably have to go to Ladybug for help, but. He still doesn't want to tell her. Ladybug is braver than he is; she wouldn't have let anything like what's happened to him happen to her. She'd have been better at standing up to his father than he is. She'd have had a better plan- Ladybug always has a better plan than he does. That's part of why he's so willing to follow her lead.

That and he loves her, but he's at a loss for how to make that any clearer to her. He wouldn't do that right now, anyway; not when he'd be taking advantage of her clear concern for him.

The knowledge that she is concerned for him feels like a treasured item that he can hold onto, like one of Ladybug's Lucky Charms. (Or his own lucky charm, the lowercase one, the one hidden in a pocket of his catsuit- but that one's his reminder that Marinette is worried for Adrien too, that there are people who worry for Adrien still).

Chat Noir sighs and turns over on the chaise lounge. Usually Plagg distracts him or talks him out of these kinds of trains of thought, but he can't talk to Plagg right now, so he'll have to live with it.

"You all right down there, Chat Noir?"

He turns back the other way. "I'm fine. Sorry, am I keeping you up?" He should go. He should go, he could always sleep outside somewhere, this isn't fair to Marinette. She's already done so much more than he deserves.

She laughs, lightly. "No, that would be my own brain keeping me up. I can't stop thinking long enough to actually fall asleep. It happens some nights." Her head appears over the edge of the bed. "I don't suppose you do want to watch anime again? Or if you don't want the light, I could put on a podcast. I fall asleep with them on sometimes, just for the distraction."

He raises an eyebrow, despite knowing she can't see it. "For the distraction, or for another excuse in case your parents hear you awake when you shouldn't be?"

"Well, both," she admits, laughing again. "But it really does help. What do you think?"

He twists again, this time turning around in the blankets and shoving them into place. "Well, the light from a screen won't bother me, I have night vision." He's actually reasonably sure night vision isn't supposed to work the way his does. He doesn't know for sure, because it's one of the things Plagg mutters to himself about instead of explaining.

"Do you?" Marinette says, almost absently, and he pauses.

"Uh. Yeah," he clears his throat. "But I don't want the light to keep you awake, so a podcast sounds fine."

"Sure," she says, and fetches her phone out from under her pillow. "I've got a few of them- okay, medical history, mythical creatures, stories about murders, or Dungeons and Dragons?"

He blinks up at the bed. "You have a wide variety of tastes."

"Pick one, cat, I didn't ask for commentary," she retorts, and he reels back a little, amused.

"Okay, okay," Chat Noir says, and then pauses again, tail lashing.

"Chat Noir?" Marinette says uncertainly a minute later.

"I'm trying!" he says. "I have no idea which one, okay? They all sound pretty equally interesting."

"All of them?" she says skeptically.

"You like all of them," he counters, a little hurt.

"I... okay, that's fair," she says grudgingly. "Okay, then I'm just going to load up one of each and hit shuffle, sound good?"

"Yes," he says, relieved she isn't going to push for him to choose one.

He quickly discovers he has regrets when the murder podcast is what comes up first. Turns out the podcast hosts are eager to discuss murders that have gone unsolved because no one had known the victims were missing initially.

It's stupid- even now, he's lucky. Even before he'd given in and gone to Marinette he'd been safe, safer than most people could hope to be. He has such a huge advantage over others in being Chat Noir, and he'd had another advantage in that he'd planned ahead, even if that planning had been a direct result of being Chat Noir. He has defensible places to sleep even if he can't stay here and food stashed away even if he hasn't been eating very much; he has it so much better than so many other people. He's sleeping somewhere warm and safe right now, after all. (Or not sleeping, as the case may be).

Tomorrow, though, he'll have to keep his promise to Plagg. Which means he'll have to spend the day hiding on his rooftop, with nothing to keep himself occupied. (Well, he has a coloring book. He is still not sure how he feels about that). He's not at all sure spending however much of the night listening to two strange women enthusiastically discuss murders before spending the next day alone is wise.

But Marinette likes this podcast, or it wouldn't have been one of the options.

Chat Noir has the blankets where he wants them, but he starts pushing them around again anyway, just to give himself something to do.

After a few minutes of that he hears Marinette pause the podcast and he freezes in place.

"Chat Noir?" Marinette says sleepily. "I can change it to one of the others."

"It's fine," he manages, wide-eyed. He didn't think she'd hear him. "I don't mind."

"Chat Noir." He hears rustling from up by her bed. "I've heard all of these before, I can change it."

"I don't mind," he insists again, heart in his throat. He knows Marinette is being honest, that she won't mind if he asks to hear something different, but knowing and believing seem to be two very different things. She's been kind enough to let him stay here. He won't risk that, not when it's simple enough to just not argue with her.

Notes:

this chapter fought me; first of all i had a friend like chloe and it was terrible and it honestly did some damage, and second my family situation has always been radically different from adrien's so that was difficult to write

the podcasts aren't named because they're mostly marked explicit and that seems strange for marinette, but they're some of my favourites- sawbones, my favourite murder, adventure zone, and spirits

(i got told i was too sensitive a lot as a kid. it sucks).

Chapter 11: overwhelmed

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Marinette frowns, listening to Chat Noir insist he doesn't mind, and wishes again for Tikki. Something's wrong. He definitely hadn't been any less restless listening to My Favorite Murder- he'd been more restless, if anything- but he won't admit it, or pick a different podcast.

Slowly, she goes over the past half hour in her head. He hadn't wanted to pick a particular podcast to listen to in the first place. He'd actively resisted making a choice, in fact.

Now that she's thinking about it, that's not a new tendency. Sure, by design she has to do a lot of their planning mid-fight because of Lucky Charm, but it's pretty common for her to direct where Chat Noir uses his Cataclysm, too. She hasn't ever thought about that very much- it's what works for them. She's their strategist and he's their heavy hitter. But this is different. There's no reason for him to be reluctant to tell her a preference for a podcast. It's just a podcast; it's not even really to listen to, it's just to help them fall asleep.

Is he... is he just not used to having a choice?

The thought strikes her with a nearly physical pain. It feels intrinsically wrong, to think of anyone denying someone as free-spirited as Chat Noir the ability to choose. Someone has, clearly- she doesn't think he'd be over here with his eyes downcast asking quietly to use her shower if he had a choice in the matter- but this is different, worse. He almost seems frightened of disagreeing with her.

Is that what happened? Did some simple disagreement get him kicked out of his house?

She's still so unsure of what's actually happened to him, is the thing, and she doesn't want to pressure him into telling her. She thinks it's probably only a matter of time before he tells Ladybug, anyway, and she's been waiting for him to decide to come to her for help on his own.

Which, yes, technically, he already has. But she's waiting for him to go to Ladybug.

Maybe she shouldn't be. Maybe, if he's this reluctant to upset even someone he technically hardly knows, he does need her to ask. She's been telling herself that she hasn't because she knows him, she knows he's going to come to her eventually, but maybe she doesn't know him as well as she's thought.

She wouldn't have thought her partner would let others order him around, even if he lets her do it; it's a little different when they're fighting for their lives, and she listens to him, too. Before the last few weeks, though, she wouldn't have thought of him as shy or skittish or scared either, and he's been all those things and more recently.

If she's right she still isn't sure what the right thing to do is. She's even more determined not to simply choose for him, but she can't force him to give her an answer, either.

But Chat Noir is her partner and her best friend. She knows him, even if he doesn't currently know her.

Slowly she says, "Okay, that one's not working." She reaches over and flicks on her light so she can look down at him, wincing a moment later when he flinches away from the sudden light source, but she needs to be able to see him. He's not exactly where she thought he was- he's still on the chaise lounge, yes, but he's curled tightly at the foot of it, half-buried in the blankets he's piled up. "Sorry, I should have warned you. It's easier on my eyes than having just the phone be bright."

"Got it," he says, looking up at her and blinking.

She swallows unnecessarily. "R-right, so. Medical mysteries?" His tail twitches, but he only shrugs. "Mythical creatures?" His tail twitches again and his head tilts slightly so she silently ranks Spirits above Sawbones. "Dungeons and Dragons?"

His ears pick up and she smiles.

"Dunno," Chat Noir says, still looking up at her. "Whatever you like, really."

"Adventure Zone it is," Marinette says brightly. She still doesn't know exactly why he'd shown the most interest in that, but she knows that he did. Hopefully by the time she gets to the bottom of whatever's going on with him he'll be comfortable enough to actually tell her his choices.

She's definitely going to be better about asking for his input during fights, Lucky Charm or not. It doesn't matter how her powers want to be used if it's hurting her partner.

She starts the podcast and turns off the light and smiles when she doesn't hear anywhere near as much rustling from below. She still hears some, but then, she already knows he has a lot of trouble staying still. He can do it if he has to, but he definitely doesn't like to.

About ten minutes in she finally hears his breathing even out. Smiling, she shuts her eyes again; now that she knows he's not lying unhappily awake, she can sleep, too.

This time, she's already sure he'll still be there in the morning.

Chat Noir doesn't sleep through Marinette's alarm this time. Instead, he startles so badly he falls off the chaise lounge, landing in a tangle of limbs and tail and blankets.

He doesn't remember her alarm being this loud.

He doesn't remember any alarm being this loud, actually, or this sharp, or this piercing. It's not just irritating, it's debilitating. He can barely think over the shrieking drilling directly into his head.

His ears are pressed as flat back as he can make them, but he still has human ears under his hair as well, and he can't cover both with his hands, so he breathes a sigh of relief when Marinette stops her alarm.

Then he realises she'd rolled right back over.

"Oh no," he mutters under his breath. "No, Marinette, please, don't hit snooze." His ears can't take that again.

He realised the moment the alarm woke him that his hearing had sharpened, but it strikes him far too late just what a bad sign that is.

He's still Chat Noir, and his hearing's gotten sharper even than the transformation usually makes it.

He has to detransform and talk to Plagg as soon as possible.

He doesn't want Marinette to wake up and find him gone, necessarily, not when she's been so kind to him and shown him a level of comfort he doesn't really deserve, but he also doesn't want to suffer through that ungodly noise again. He only has a few minutes so he compromises and scrawls out a quick note, hoping that a combination of writing with his off hand and while he still has his claws will keep his handwriting from being recognizable.

His claws are different, too, even from the night before- and he'd been scrambling up walls with them the night before. They're longer and sharper and make it more difficult than he'd like to hold a pen. Luckily, while he hesitates to call himself truly ambidextrous, he's still practiced with his off-hand frequently- he'd been bored when he was younger and decided to see if ambidexterity was something you could learn. It is, and having a magical suit that enhances natural abilities doesn't hurt, either.

He writes in a hurry and winces a little at how messy a scrawl he leaves, but it's for the best that it looks nothing like Adrien's neat handwriting, anyway. He doesn't write more than I had to go, I'll be back before he finds himself staring at the page, lost for what else to say.

He has more to say, he knows he does, but he doesn't have the time to articulate it unless he wants to suffer through another alarm clock screech. He settles for that and his signature- he'd like to doodle a cat the way his Lady uses her namesake as a signature, but he's having enough trouble with the pen that he ends up just writing CN before realising he doesn't know how to leave without waking Marinette.

He hadn't considered before that her bed is just below the skylight.

He hesitates, torn. If he goes out through the trapdoor he risks running into her family, who he can already hear moving around. They have a bakery, after all, naturally they'd be early risers. He's so grateful to Marinette for letting him stay here, though, and more than once at that. He doesn't want to risk rudely waking her up.

Wincing in pained anticipation, Chat Noir pulls his hood up and over his ears as far as it can go, then buries himself under every blanket Marinette's loaned him and puts his hands over his cat ears. He's never entirely understood how his hearing works in this form but he is certain that the cat ears are what pick up sounds more clearly.

It's a small stretch of forever before the horrible noise sounds again. His intention was to wake Marinette at the same time as the alarm, but that turns out to be poorer planning than he'd thought- the shrill shrieking has been an irritating noise since he first became Chat Noir, but now it's an incapacitating one.

"Please get up," he chants under his breath, tail lashing in agitation as he tries to press his ears flat to an impossible degree. "Please get up, please get up, please, please."

The alarm stops.

He breathes a sigh of relief and burrows out from his shielding blankets, then groans when he sees Marinette's still in bed. She must have hit snooze again.

He still doesn't want to wake her, but the sound is more shrill and painful to him with each repetition, and aside from that if she doesn't get up soon her parents are likely to come looking for her. Maybe he can get out the window without waking her. He's usually very acrobatic as Chat Noir; it's worth a shot.

He has to be extremely careful as he scrambles up the ladder onto her bed and as he gets his legs under him to open the skylight, but then he loses his footing as either his good luck gives out or his bad luck kicks in. For a moment he thinks he'll still be able to catch himself on the skylight, but he loses his balance and falls right on top of Marinette, instead.

"Whuh?" Marinette springs upright- partly upright, anyway, he's still on her legs and groaning. "What's happening, is- Chat Noir?" She brushes her hair out of her face and blinks sleepily down at him. "Are you okay?"

"I was trying not to wake you," he mumbles, pushing himself up and off her, crouching against the foot of the bed and wrapping his tail around his knees. At least he can relax a little bit knowing that he won't have to hear her alarm again. "Sorry, I'll just, uh, go."

Marinette's brow furrows and she reaches for him, clearly still more than half-asleep. "Chat Noir, are you okay?"

"I'll be fine," he says, pressing further backwards and warily eyeing the cell phone beside her pillow. "I just have- things to go do. Superhero things to go do. Right now. Urgently."

Marinette blinks at him, frowning. "Okay?"

He may have forgotten that not everyone sets the same increments of time for snooze alarms.

It's only when Marinette's phone alarm goes off again that Chat Noir realises his hood has fallen back and the noise is even less muffled than before.

Eyes slamming shut in pure reaction, he yanks the hood up and over his ears again in a sharp motion, cringing away and pressing his back hard against the foot of the bed as he does. He claps his hands over his feline ears with an involuntary whimper. He feels the bed shift, and he hopes she's turning off the alarm, but he's surprised when rather than saying anything Marinette covers his human ears with her hands.

"I turned it off, Chat Noir," she says, very, very softly- softly enough that he wouldn't have been able to hear her through the muffling hands and cloth before this morning. "I'm sorry, I didn't think of it." She pauses, then says uncertainly, "You slept through that alarm yesterday."

"Must be a new ability," he manages, cautiously lifting his hands again. "Everything is very- loud today."

When he opens his eyes again, Marinette's face is very close and very worried.

He shuts his eyes again, before jumping when someone slams a car door somewhere outside. He can feel himself flushing with embarrassment.

Marinette moves one hand up to one of his cat ears, stopping frequently enough and moving slowly enough that he could duck away if he wanted to. He's not sure if he wants to or not, honestly. He wants to get somewhere private and talk to Plagg, he wants noise to stop being overwhelming, and he's frustratingly sure he wants Ladybug; but he doesn't think he wants Marinette to leave, either.

"Am I too loud?" Marinette asks, quietly and keeping her voice pitched low. "Is it higher pitches, or the street noise?"

He forces himself to shake his head and Marinette's hand skims over his hood. "Both. High pitches, but the street noise is... not great right now."

"Okay," Marinette says, gentling her voice even more. "If you need to leave, go ahead, but consider this first? I'll loan you a couple pairs of headphones and you can stay here? I might have some earplugs somewhere, too. You can put them on and stay in here- there's some street noise, I know, but it's not too loud in my room. It's definitely quieter than outside."

He should say no. On some level, he even wants to say no; he needs to talk to Plagg, after all.

But he can still hear every slammed door and shout from outside, and it's still early. That's only going to get worse. His roof might be well-hidden, but it's certainly no protection from noise. He'd never considered needing protection from noise.

Marinette's father calls up that it's time to get up and Chat Noir flinches again before he can help it.

"Okay, okay," Marinette says hastily, "Hey, it's all right. I'm going to go around you in a second, okay, but then I'm going to hand the headphones up to you. They're the bulky kind, sound cancelling, I use them when I'm designing- never mind. I'll hand them up. You can stay here with them or leave with them, entirely up to you. All right?"

He forces himself to nod again.

Marinette maneuvers herself around him to get to the ladder rather than asking him to leave. He feels guilty about that, but he's still too stressed and overstimulated to uncurl from his protective huddle. Even when Marinette keeps her word and hands up two separate sets of headphones a few minutes later, he stays where he is and she sets them on the bed beside him.

He can hear her getting ready for school. He hears her changing- she trusts him enough to change while he's here, apparently. Not that he's capable of much right now, and he certainly wouldn't invade her privacy like that even if he could bring himself to uncurl from the tight ball he's tucked himself into by now, but still.

He hears her exhale quietly before opening the trap door. "I hope you feel better, Chat Noir."

Even though he flinches again when she shuts the door, he hopes so, too. Maybe this really is just temporary; maybe it's like adjusting to his night vision had been back when he first became Chat Noir and he'll adjust to it within a day or two.

Of course, right now a day or two sounds like an eternity. He'd at least made it up here when he'd first woken up, nearly made it outside, but now everything seems louder and sharper and more painful by the minute. It takes him a good ten minutes after he hears Marinette leave before he can relax enough to snag the headphones and drag them on, pressing them on over his hood- of course they aren't designed for his cat ears, but if he tucks that set of ears beneath his hood and then uses the band of the headphones to press them even flatter it helps.

It takes him something like another half an hour before he thinks of detransforming.

In his defense, he's still in Marinette's room; he's still in Marinette's bed. Under usual circumstances this is one of the last places he should be dropping his transformation.

These are not usual circumstances.

He needs to talk to Plagg, and soon, and he's increasingly sure that he's not about to be going outside any time soon. He's still flinching whenever the bell rings out downstairs in the bakery. It started gradually, and if he's lucky that means it'll peak sometime today and then his hearing will either decrease again or he'll become accustomed to it, but he knows better than to count on his luck.

He burrows as far under Marinette's blankets as he can, turning around until he's completely buried, and uses her cat pillow to give himself the impression of something to hide behind. It's stupid and he knows it, but he's found even just the illusion that he's hidden, even when he knows it's objectively not true, makes him feel calmer. As hidden as he can get while he's still here, Chat Noir shuts his eyes, exhales, and says, "Claws in."

"Hey kid," Plagg greets him, sounding surprisingly worried.

Adrien barely bites back a whine. Even his kwami is too loud. Even with the headphones and the hood on and without his cat ears, the world is still too loud.

He's changed back and it's only barely helped.

"I tried to warn you, kid," Plagg says, ducking under the covers with him, gentling his voice. "You can't stay Chat Noir forever. The transformation's magic and magic doesn't come for free."

"I know," Adrien whimpers. "Sorry, Plagg, you did. I just..." He stops. His own voice is loud in his ears, too, so he waits a minute before continuing. "I didn't listen. I'm sorry. I thought... that dropping the transformation would help. It won't, will it," he ends, defeated.

Plagg ducks into the pocket of Adrien's hoodie, settling there, his voice pleasantly muffled by the fabric. "No. Not anymore. I told you, not all changes are reversible. Even if you were to give up your Miraculous today you'd still have the enhanced hearing and the night vision, probably other cat traits as well."

"I'm sorry I didn't listen to you, Plagg," Adrien mumbles again.

Plagg sighs loudly and Adrien flinches. "Stop apologizing kid. Yeah, you did a dumb thing, but you didn't have all that many options. Honestly?" He stops, waiting until Adrien makes a faint inquiring noise. "You want my opinion, you're still better off than you would have been staying. That house is a cage and we aren't meant for that."

"You're not mad?" Adrien says hesitantly.

"Not at you," Plagg says, but changes the subject before Adrien can ask what he means. "Anyway! Guess you'd better stay here now, huh? At least for a couple days before you start to adjust a little more. It's probably not a good idea to go running around outside until then unless it's unavoidable."

Inevitably, the idea of a sound-based akuma enters Adrien's mind and he groans. He'd take the recent sound-dampening one back over that. Sound-dampening sounds wonderful right now.

"Hey, at least you're with a cute girl," Plagg teases. "It could be way worse. Imagine if you'd ended up with that rich brat."

Adrien groans again. Chloe's shrill chatter isn't exactly a delight at the best of times, but right now it sounds like the kind of torture he's pretty sure is banned under the Geneva conventions.

"Still." Plagg darts out and circles the bed once before diving right back into his pocket. "Things could be worse."

"Kind of stuck here Plagg," Adrien mutters in response. "And I can't be Adrien when Marinette comes back."

"I mean, you probably could? Sounds like she'd be thrilled. Looks like it, too, have you seen her pictures?"

Adrien hasn't really looked that closely, because too many of Marinette's pictures are of his friends, but Plagg doesn't need to know that.

"Plagg." Adrien lifts his head enough to glare at his kwami, eyes reflecting eerily beneath the blankets. "She can't know. She's a good person- she'd want to get me home."

"So tell her you don't want to go home," Plagg retorts, exasperated. "You just said she's a good person. She won't make you go."

"It's a little more complicated than that, Plagg. Humans have laws."

"Some of those laws are dumb," Plagg grumbles. "No wonder you'd rather be a cat."

"I wouldn't rather be a..." Adrien trails off, able to hear the lie in his own voice. He's kind of horrified with himself. Sure, maybe his life wasn't perfect, but it hadn't really been that bad. That was why he hadn't gone to the shelter, after all. (Well, that and there was no way he wouldn't be recognised instantly). Lots of other people had it far worse than he did. Was he really so unhappy, so ungrateful, that he would be willing to give up his humanity rather than go back to his father?

"Kid." Plagg kicks him, very lightly, in the stomach. "Stop that, I can hear you overthinking from here. Your dad sucks- there's nothing wrong with wanting to leave."

"I mean... don't get me wrong, I don't want to go back," Adrien mumbles. "But I was realising you're right, and I just. What kind of person does that make me, that... staying on the streets sounds better than going home?" His voice is forlorn. "People want to be rich and famous, Plagg. Am I ungrateful for abandoning that?"

Plagg doesn't answer right away, which Adrien is grateful for, because it means the kwami is really thinking about his response.

Finally Plagg says, rather gruffly, "Kid- Chat. You're not in some competition, you don't need to prove you had it better or worse than anyone else, all right? You don't owe anyone an explanation anyway. Besides... you wouldn't be going home if you went back."

"What?" Adrien says blankly.

Plagg leans hard into him, the way Chat Noir leans into Ladybug when he has the chance. "Think about it. That akuma, Shelter, sent people and animals to their homes, right?"

"Y-yeah," Adrien says hesitantly.

"She got you first," Plagg says bluntly. "Well, you and that cat. So you tried to get home."

"I tried to get to Ladybug," Adrien corrects him.

Plagg's response is pointed silence.

"O-oh." If Adrien still had his ears and tail, they'd both be drooping. He's sure he's turning red as it is.

"Yeah, kid," Plagg says dryly. "Oh." Plagg curls up in the hoodie pocket, very obviously making himself comfortable. "Anyway. Still too loud?"

"I- think so?" He's had no trouble hearing Plagg even with the headphones on. Reluctantly, he starts to remove them, before swiftly slamming them back into place when he hears more than one conversation down in the bakery. "Y-yeah. Still definitely too loud."

"Well," Plagg says. "Your girl's gonna be at school most of the day, and there's no patrol tonight. She already said you could stay here. Maybe if you try adjusting while you're mostly human it'll be easier when you have to change back later?"

"Maybe. Mostly human," Adrien repeats. He's just not going to deal with the 'your girl' comment right now.

He feels Plagg shrug. "I did warn you, kid. You've been Chat Noir more than long enough to know that the magic changes you, and in Chat Noir's case especially a lot of those changes aren't human."

"Yeah," Adrien says tiredly, thinking of the traits that had carried over even from the beginning. The night vision had been the most obvious, but he'd also found himself more prone to chasing things, and with more of a tendency to want to nap in patches of sunlight. He still finds that more relaxing than anything but being around Ladybug. Even the way he's hiding behind the cat pillow right now he suspects is more a feline trait than a human one, although it isn't that far off from hiding under the blankets as a kid, so he can't be certain.

He also craves the comfort he gets from Ladybug petting him or scratching behind his ears or half a dozen other things she doesn't have to do for him but does, but he's not entirely sure he gets that from being Chat Noir and he definitely knows he doesn't want to ask Plagg to confirm or deny it. He doesn't need to know for sure whether or not that's entirely on him.

"Kid?" Plagg says. "Seriously, bakery girl tossed your backpack up here, too. Grab a book or something and chill for a while. As a... well, as human as you're likely to get."

"Plagg," Adrien says. "Do you have to keep doing that?"

"Doing what?" Plagg asks, trying to fake ignorance and doing a poor job of it.

"Reminding me," Adrien says, even as he reaches out from his self-imposed blanket barricade and tugs the backpack in with them. Marinette had left it at the edge of the ladder, out of the way but easy to reach even from his protective huddle. She'd even left a neatly bagged cheese danish on top of his backpack.

"Reminding you of what?" Plagg asks as Adrien breaks off half the danish for his kwami.

"That I'm," Adrien hesitates, awkwardly trying to fit half a danish into his pocket. "Not human. Anymore."

"Chat," Plagg says, flying back out with the danish. "First of all, eat the whole thing, would you? I've got cheese in your pack, still. Secondly, so what?"

"So that's..." Adrien sighs and sets the broken off half of the pastry down on the bag Marinette had left it in, looking unhappily at the half he'd broken off. "Not generally considered a good thing, Plagg."

Plagg flies up in front of Adrien's face and flips in midair, apparently just to make a point. "By who? What does it matter? It helps you out in the long run, right?"

"I'm hiding in a classmate's room because the street noise is too loud," Adrien says flatly.

"Hey, I said in the long run." Plagg snatches up the abandoned half a danish and zips back and forth in front of his chosen. "Seriously? It's a cheese danish, kid, will you just eat already?"

Adrien sighs and takes a bite of his torn half of the danish before setting it down where Plagg's half had been. "I'm still just not that hungry, Plagg."

"Are you kidding me?" Plagg tosses his own half of the danish into the air and catches it again. "Kid, I haven't see you eat a full meal in days. And I mean a full meal by your standards, which frankly, were always suspect. Gabriel lied to you about portion sizes. Will you just eat the danish!"

"I'm not hungry!" Adrien shoots back, defensive and hurt.

"Kid!" Plagg returns, frustrated. "There is no way you aren't hungry right now, you fought an akuma last night and you have barely eaten in days. Come on, have you ever known me to shove food on you?"

"Yes!" Adrien glares at him, even as he winces away because Plagg is starting to raise his voice- Adrien hadn't really realised before that they've been communicating in whispers. Even with Marinette's headphones on, their conversation hasn't been at all muffled to him. "You try to get me to eat your disgusting Camembert all the time."

"Yeah, and I've been trying to get you to eat something else," Plagg says. "For the love of cheese, kid, you are not eating enough. You weren't eating enough before and I thought when no one was restricting your diet you finally would be, but no! You're an idiot who's eating even less!" He tries to shove the danish into Adrien's hands again. "Stop making me be the responsible one, I hate it!"

"I'm not!" Adrien says. "I told you, Plagg, I'm just not... I haven't been hungry."

"Kit," Plagg says, which is a new one. Kit, not kid, and Plagg seems entirely unaware he's said it. The kwami sinks down onto Marinette's bed tiredly. "Chat. Please. Please eat. You're- this isn't healthy, do you get that yet? Do you even know that you're not supposed to be tired and hungry all the time?" He sounds frustrated. He almost sounds defeated.

Adrien's been tired and hungry as long as he can remember. His schedule has always been too busy to rest without cutting into his time as Chat Noir, and that's not something he's willing to give up; his diet has always been tightly regulated, and no one has ever accounted for the way that he spends most of his nights running across the city's rooftops now, or that he isn't eating any of that cheese himself, or that most any time he's out of direct contact he's out fighting akuma. He can' t blame anyone for that. They don't know about the calories he burns or the sleep he skips out on as Chat Noir, after all.

So maybe he's not completely sure whether the hunger and exhaustion preceded ever getting his Miraculous. Modelling requires a busy schedule and a controlled diet; that's not necessarily anyone's fault, it just is. He's sure it was meant in his best interest.

He used to be sure.

It stopped seeming like it was for his benefit longer ago than he'd like to admit.

Plagg said please. He's not sure he's ever heard his kwami say please before, and Plagg said it twice, and called him kit.

"Okay," Adrien says quietly, and picks up his half of the danish again. To his own surprise, this time, once he starts eating it he does discover he's hungry. He finishes it quickly and his eyes are drawn to Plagg's half the danish.

Plagg glances up at him, sighs, and snatches the danish to drop it into Adrien's hands. "Listen to me, you need this more than I do."

"But-" Adrien glances down at it, then back at his kwami. "But you should eat, too."

"I'll get some cheese out of your backpack later," Plagg assures him. "If we do turn out to be low, I can phase downstairs and find something, there's a whole bakery. They won't miss one pastry." He makes a face. "It's no Camembert, but it'll do."

"You shouldn't steal from Marinette's parents," Adrien says softly, and finally takes another bite.

Plagg lets out a sigh of relief. "Listen, it's great that she gave us a place to stay, but I will absolutely go steal from her parents if that's how to get you to eat. You're tired like this all the time because you're malnourished, you idiot!"

"I'm not," Adrien protests. "I had a diet plan, Plagg."

"Yeah, I know, I've seen it," Plagg snaps.

Adrien blinks. "You have?"

"Cats are curious!" Plagg darts into the air, hovering at Adrien's eye level. They've probably gotten crumbs on Marinette's bed, which Adrien feels bad about, but he'd have had to leave the safety of the blanket cocoon they'd built to avoid it and he's not sure he can manage that just yet. "And you know what? It was just barely above freaking starvation levels even before accounting for Chat Noir." He scowls. "Your family's rich and you've been going short on food since before we met, kit, and that's ridiculous. I figured you'd eat more once we got you out of there, but no, you're conditioned to think that's normal! Well, it's not! It's not normal! You need to eat!"

Plagg is doing a strange whisper-shout by now, aggravated and angry but still conscious of Adrien's oversensitive ears. Adrien can only stare at his kwami- he thinks that's the most he's ever heard Plagg say in one go, and it's definitely the most upset he's seen him.

And Plagg had called him kit again.

For all that he's rude and abrasive, Plagg cares. Plagg didn't hesitate to help him leave when he couldn't stand another minute in the Agreste mansion. The only other person he can count on the way he does Plagg is Ladybug.

"I'll try to eat more," Adrien promises meekly, once he finds his voice again. Before Plagg can respond, Adrien raises one hand and continues. "I'll try, okay? It's still... it's hard for me to convince myself it's okay. That no one will be, well, mad at me." His voice trails off into a whisper at the end. He's always hated being yelled at, and he could always count on being yelled at by someone if he overate.

Plagg ducks back into his hoodie pocket and presses himself against Adrien. Softer than Adrien's ever heard him, the kwami says, "No one should ever be mad at you for eating enough, kit. Kid. It should never have happened."

In response, Adrien finally finishes the rest of the danish. He's immediately hit with a feeling of guilt, knowing how many carbs are in a cheese danish, but he does his best to shove that guilt aside. He trusts Plagg, and Plagg wouldn't be so insistent about this if the kwami didn't genuinely believe Adrien wasn't eating enough.

Once he's done Adrien resettles himself under the pile of blankets and readjusts the headphones with a sigh, reflecting that at least if Plagg's right he might be able to look forward to not being so tired all the time in the future. At some point during his frantic morning Marinette must have put the blankets from his chaise lounge up here, too, because there are a lot of blankets to huddle under.

Not his chaise lounge, Marinette's chaise lounge. He cringes a little when he realises he's thought of it as his. This isn't his room, isn't his place- Marinette's just been kind enough to share her space with him temporarily. He shouldn't forget that none of this is his.

Adrien drags a book out of his pack, too, but he ends up simply staring at blurry words on a page, completely unable to concentrate. He's not tired, or not any more than usual, but he's contemplating the idea of sleep as a way to pass the time when Plagg speaks up again.

"You should tell Ladybug."

"What?" Adrien says.

"You should tell Ladybug," Plagg repeats. "This isn't a permanent solution, and she's obviously already worried about you."

"I can't tell Ladybug," Adrien says, an icy hand of fear closing in around him at the thought. "This isn't her problem."

"You're partners, it kind of is," Plagg returns. "Anyway, she'd help you, wouldn't she?"

"It's not her problem!" Adrien doesn't raise his voice- it's a hard thing for him to work up to, and he wouldn't want to risk it with his hearing right now, anyway. The sentiment still comes through.

Plagg grumbles. "You know what? One argument a day's enough. You keep up actually eating like a normal human person and not an automaton, and I'll let it drop. But I think you should tell her."

"You're the one who keeps pointing out that I'm not a- a normal, human person anymore," Adrien says, nettled.

"Details," Plagg mutters. "Just remember what I told you, kid." He cuts off any further arguments by curling up in Adrien's pocket and beginning to purr.

To his frustration, Adrien feels his eyes start to burn. It's rare for Plagg to purr and Adrien's pretty sure his kwami is only doing it now specifically to comfort him. It's working, too.

Despite his best efforts not to, Adrien falls asleep like that.

Notes:

france actually has laws about underweight models, which is awesome, but i didnt know that when i started writing this and it's been in the background from the beginning

also, gabriel is a rich jerk, and ml's paris has a terribly incompetent mayor, im not sure how useful the laws would be for adrien, assuming gabriel 'magical terrorism is totally a good and healthy coping mechanism' agreste concerns himself with laws at all

Chapter 12: revelations

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

This time, Marinette goes home at lunch. She has to; she's spent so much of the morning worried for Chat Noir that she's going to have to ask Alya and Nino for class notes later. She's honestly lucky that they assume she's so distracted only because she's still worried that no one's heard from Adrien.

Marinette had thought Tikki's warnings had prepared her, but they hadn't. She had expected changes, sure, but she hadn't truly thought that any of them would be so abrupt or so noticeable, and Chat Noir had been- not fine last night, he hasn't been fine in a long time now, if ever, but he hadn't been cringing away from every new sound in the horrible way he'd been doing when she woke up. And what if it's more than that? What if there were other, less visible changes? After all, even this change isn't visible, it's the effects that are.

She hated leaving him in such distress this morning, but she isn't really sure even now how else she could have helped.

Marinette stops outside the bakery's side door, fretting long enough that Tikki pokes her head out of her bag. "Marinette? What is it?"

"It's just," Marinette sighs. "I don't want to startle him or anything, you know? He was so sensitive to any noise at all this morning." She looks down at her kwami, grateful that she can talk to Tikki right now. "Plus I'm really hoping he took the chance to talk to his kwami and I definitely don't want to risk running in on that."

Tikki... hesitates.

"Tikki?" Marinette says cautiously. "What is it?"

"Nothing," her kwami says.

And then an unfamiliar voice says, "She's starting to think you should tell him. She's not wrong."

"Plagg!' Tikki exclaims.

"What?" The other kwami says irritably, coming around the corner of the bakery. "You think I'm not encouraging the kit- the kid to tell Ladybug? He's a wreck!"

"You're not supposed to be here!" Tikki hisses, darting out of Marinette's bag. "You're not supposed to see my chosen yet!"

Plagg waves an agitated paw through the air. "We've already seen each other, and mine is currently asleep in your kid's bed because he's an idiot! If he won't look for help on his own, I will, and I don't care about your rules!"

"Those rules are important," Tikki insists, just as agitated. "You can't just break them on a whim."

Plagg sinks down onto the pavement, and even sitting at her feet and looking up at her he exudes a presence that makes Marinette want to be careful. She's never gotten that sense from Chat Noir, so it must be purely Plagg. "It's not a whim."

Cautiously, Marinette breaks in. "Chat Noir is sleeping? Again?" She hesitates, then kneels down to be closer to level with her partner's kwami. "Is this because of the cat traits thing?" She knows cats sleep a lot. Maybe that's all that's going on with Chat Noir. Maybe it's nothing too terribly serious, although a feline sleep schedule would likely wreak havoc in a civilian life.

But then, Chat Noir's clearly abandoned his civilian life, for reasons she still doesn't know.

"It's not," Plagg says, cutting off her speculation. "It's a 'the kid is being stupid' thing. He listens to Ladybug. Tell him to eat already." He scowls. "Tell him to eat a full meal, not just... not just pick at scraps!"

"What?" Marinette says, stunned, thinking frantically back over every time she's eaten with Chat Noir recently. It's been more times than she'd really realised, especially counting when he's eaten with her as Marinette, and he had been reluctant to finish any meals recently. She hadn't thought about that, because it's not like he only eats with her, except right now she's suddenly very sure he does.

Marinette feels a sinking sensation. She should have thought of this. She's known exactly where Chat Nor is for the past day and a half and she's hardly seen him eat; she should have noticed that. Her dad would be so disappointed in her. He would have noticed and found a solution immediately.

"What?" Tikki whispers, sounding just as upset as Marinette feels.

Plagg scowls and kicks at the pavement. Marinette's not sure if he doesn't feel like floating or if he's that tired. Transforming Chat Noir all the time has to be hard on him, too. "Stupid kit let himself be convinced it's normal to be hungry all the time. He doesn't understand that he isn't supposed to be."

"That's... awful," Marinette says, already planning the food she'll be bringing him later. Already she wants to feed him again, but Plagg's also asked her not to wake him, so- "Wait. That's why he's sleeping so much?"

"Yeah," Plagg says, drooping. "It's not the transformation, though that's not helping. It's malnutrition."

"Oh," Marinette says, taken aback. That's more serious than she expected. "Oh, no. Plagg, there's more pastries down on the desk, I only left the one up by you because I didn't know how long Chat Noir would be up there- most of them are just cheese danishes because he said you like cheese, but there's a few others, maybe there's something in there he really likes?"

"Worth a try," Plagg says.

"Plagg?" Tikki says, dropping to the pavement herself. "Are you- I haven't heard you call one of your chosen kit since that thing with Arthur."

"We don't talk about that," Plagg mutters, before shaking himself. "I said kid, not kit. The kid's being an idiot. And I should get back before he wakes up, but you should tell him." Plagg takes off again nearly before he's finished speaking. Watching him, Marinette sees the kwami phase through her bedroom window.

Chat Noir's asleep as a civilian in her bed right now. It's strange, thinking that. "Tikki?"

Tikki's staring after Plagg, but turns immediately at Marinette's voice. "Marinette. He definitely said kit."

"Is... that bad?" Marinette says slowly, because that is definitely not the most concerning thing Plagg said. She'd known Chat Noir was thin, and though it hasn't been long enough to know if he's losing weight she's sure he's losing weight, but that he isn't- can't be- getting enough to eat had never occurred to her. It should have; he's been with her for days and she's seen the way he's been picking at his food.

Marinette's heart aches. Chat Noir came to her for help, trusted her with it, and she isn't doing a very good job of looking after her partner so far.

Tikki sighs and flies back into her purse. "No. It's not bad. But it's not really normal, either. Plagg's not- he's not usually very affectionate. It's strange for him to be this clearly attached." She frowns. "The last time... the last time he did this, it was because they didn't have anyone else."

"Oh," Marinette says quietly. Well, it wasn't like she thought Chat Noir was just at her place for a sleepover. "So that Arthur you mentioned, he was the last one?"

"No," Tikki says, a little absently. "We should go somewhere else to talk in case he wakes up... no, though, King Arthur wasn't Plagg's chosen."

"Sure, let's head back," Marinette says, then, "Did you say King Arthur?"

"Yes," Tikki confirms, even as Marinette turns to start walking back to school. Hopefully she'll get back in time to see if Alya's had any luck contacting Adrien through the Ladyblog. "It's a bit complicated and Plagg was going by Cath Palug at the time, but he doesn't talk about it much and I don't think there's much information available anymore. Plagg used to call his chosen then kit, and I honestly don't know what happened to them, but Plagg hasn't called anyone kit since."

Marinette blinks. "Cath Palug?"

"Yes," Tikki affirms. "But like I said, there's not any real information out there on it. There are bits of legends and poems that were never finished; I've always suspected Plagg himself was responsible for how little I can find." There's a rare scowl on the kwami's face as she adds, a little bit petulantly, "He won't talk to me about it at all."

"Cath Palug," Marinette mutters, trying her hardest to commit the unfamiliar name to memory, before shaking her head. "So it's not something Plagg does?"

"Not usually." Tikki ducks further into her bag. "And not if his cat has someone else to turn to."

"Oh," Marinette says softly. Then, finally, "Do you really think I should tell him?"

"It's up to you, Marinette," her kwami says seriously. "But I think you should consider that when he needed help, he went to you. And that he went to you twice, as both Ladybug and Marinette."

"And I know he doesn't know it's me," Marinette says. "Chat Noir would have said something by now if he did."

"You sound sure."

"I am sure, Tikki." Marinette smiles, sadly. "He's my best friend. We know each other." She sighs. "And that's why I can't tell him yet. I get that Plagg's worried, I'm worried too, but if I tell him now I'll be cutting out half his support system."

"Marinette," Tikki says. "You can't be Chat Noir's entire support system. That's not good for either one of you."

Marinette shrugs. "It's better for Chat Noir than having no support system at all. And you're the one who said Plagg wouldn't be acting like this if they had anywhere to go." She sighs again. "I'm going to have to figure out how to convince that cat to eat more, without letting him know we talked to Plagg."

"Are you sure about this?" Tikki asks anxiously.

"Yeah," Marinette says. "Don't worry, Tikki, I wasn't planning to try and take care of Chat Noir all by myself for any length of time." She has to stop for a moment after saying that. She doesn't want Chat Noir to need her to take care of him; they're partners, they're supposed to take care of each other. She hadn't ever planned to become responsible for his actual well-being, except that she also hadn't expected him to ever need it. She's sure he's her age- she'd expected him to have more of a support system than, apparently, her and her alone. She helps him as Ladybug, yes, but that's different. He's her best friend, after all. She clears her throat. "I have an idea, but I haven't had a chance yet."

"Okay," Tikki says simply. "I trust you, Marinette."

"Yeah." Marinette frowns, thinking of Chat Noir cringing against the foot of her bed this morning, terrified and trembling and trying to cover his ears. "So does he." She'd better live up to that trust. Hopefully, what she's planning will be a help.

Preoccupied now with new concerns, she doesn't remember to ask Tikki if the kwami knows whether Ladybug and Chat Noir can share traits.

The rest of school is uneventful, probably. Marinette can't honestly pay enough attention to the rest of the day to know for sure. It's more than the distraction of the morning now; she fights not to startle whenever anyone drops anything, and even the scratch of Alya's pencil beside her grates on her nerves. Every time Chloe speaks Marinette thinks she's going to have a headache immediately, but that's not really new.

Alya takes one look at her after class and tells her to go home. "You look like you're going to fall over. You know you'll be the first to know if I hear anything, right?" Her voice gentles, takes on a strange tone that Marinette doesn't recognise. "You know the Ladyblog was always a long shot."

Well, it isn't like Marinette can tell her it isn't Adrien she's worried about, or at least not entirely. (It's been a week, and there's still no more information on a Gabriel show in the US. Where is he?) "Thanks, Alya. Sorry, I haven't been sleeping well."

"I can tell," Alya says firmly, giving her a one-armed hug before shoving her gently in the direction of the bakery. "And I'll send you today's class notes later, all right? Go get some rest."

Marinette goes.

Halfway home, she ducks into an alley, closes her eyes, and concentrates.

Someone's alarm is going off down the street. Somewhere across from the alley, two people are arguing in low voices about where to go for coffee. From somewhere else entirely classical music is playing softly.

"Tikki," Marinette says.

Her kwami pokes her head out and glances around, frowning a little at the alley. "What is it?"

"When you said that staying transformed can affect Chat Noir permanently," Marinette says, choosing her words carefully. "Does that apply to Ladybug, as well?"

Tikki darts out, flying in an agitated circle, and Marinette backs further into the alley so that she can be sure they aren't visible. "You can't start doing that, too, Marinette! That's not what we meant earlier!"

She hadn't even thought of that. It should be less tempting than it is. Chat Noir listens to Ladybug so readily, though, that she's sure she could convince him to eat enough, maybe even to tell her what's going on. Maybe. He hasn't told her yet, but he had gone to find a place to stay when she'd asked him about it. He's been honest with her about finding a place to sleep at night.

"I'm not planning to," Marinette says, determined, shoving away that temptation. It might help in the short run, but it would make things worse in the long run. "It's all right, Tikki, I'm not going to do that." She smiles and holds a hand out to her kwami. "I'd miss you too much, anyway."

Mollified, Tikki settles on her outstretched hand. "Then what are you asking?"

Marinette lifts her gaze and stares out of the alley, not really seeing anything. "Tikki, there are two men across the street arguing about what cafe to go to."

Tikki tilts in her hand, confused. "Are you worried about an akuma? He doesn't target every argument."

"No," Marinette says, and pauses. "Well, I wasn't until now, anyway... but Tikki, I shouldn't be able to hear them from here at all."

Tikki floats into the air again, frowning thoughtfully. "Are human ears really that bad?"

"Yes," Marinette says, frustrated. "Or at least, they're supposed to be... but Chat Noir's aren't."

"I did say human," her kwami says with a shrug.

"Mine aren't either," Marinette says, before Tikki's words catch up with her. "Wait, what?"

"I did say human," Tikki repeats patiently, and then blinks at Marinette's expression. Marinette's not sure what her expression right now is, herself. "Why do you look surprised?"

Marinette's not actually sure why she is surprised. It isn't as though she isn't more than familiar with Chat Noir's eyes, and they're definitely not human. Even if they had been the things the two of them do as Ladybug and Chat Noir are, quite literally, superhuman; aside from that Tikki had already warned her that her partner would be picking up some not exactly human tendencies if he continued to stay transformed.

Marinette just hadn't... applied that to herself, it seems. "Tikki. Can... listen, if Chat Noir starts to, uh, change- does Ladybug, too?"

"What do you mean?" Tikki asks slowly.

"Tikki, I can hear the men across the street," Marinette says, again. "Yesterday, I wouldn't have been able to. And this morning, Chat Noir couldn't handle any loud noises at all, even though we were running and fighting and shouting to each other just last night. I mean, you've warned me what staying transformed does to Chat Noir. What effect does it have on Ladybug?"

"You haven't been staying transformed," Tikki says, sounding honestly confused.

Marinette sighs and wishes she could trust the wall was clean enough to risk slumping against it. She had thought this conversation would be easier than this. "Of course not, how could I? People would notice." She has to stop a moment and breathe then, swallowing hurt at the thought that no one had noticed Chat Noir doing just that. Even she isn't sure exactly when he'd started trying so hard to be Chat Noir all the time. She should be, but she's not; she only knows that it was within the past few days. She also knows, though, that he'd been having trouble long before that.

She still doesn't know where he'd been staying before he'd landed on her balcony. When she combs back through the Ladyblog's archives and combines them with what she knows now it's blindingly obvious he hadn't been going home.

For a second her imagination presents her with the idea of Chat Noir sleeping in a box in an alley. She winces and shakes her head, but not before her mind helpfully suggests a 'free to good home' sign.

"So what do you mean?" Tikki asks, dragging Marinette back out of her increasingly depressing thoughts.

"What do you mean, what do I mean?" she asks her kwami. "Chat Noir and Ladybug are a pair, right? Isn't that why I'm affected, too?"

"Marinette," Tikki says, darting and circling in front of her, beginning to look agitated again. "I really don't know what you're talking about."

She doesn't sound like she does when she's keeping Miraculous secrets. More to the point, when Tikki does have to keep secrets from her chosen, she tells Marinette so- she doesn't lie or mislead. Marinette doesn't think either of their kwami are prone to lies or misdirection, actually. They dodge questions, sure, but they're not usually actively dishonest.

"You really don't," Marinette says. It's not a question. "Has this never happened before?" Then, hastily, before Tikki can ask her to explain again, she says, "Chat Noir's not the only one affected when he stays transformed. I wasn't sure before, but it's changing me, too."

She doesn't like the wide-eyed look (well, more wide-eyed than usual) that Tikki gives her.

"No," Tikki says. "No, it hasn't happened before." She sounds almost wondering.

"Never?" Marinette says. "I guess I just assumed... I mean, we're partners, right? We're meant to be partners. I thought, because the magic links us..." She trails off. Tikki's shaking her head.

"The magic links you as partners," Tikki says. "It links Plagg and I as two halves of a whole, and that bleeds over to you two a little bit, but not enough to share traits!" She shakes her head, hard, but not in negation. "That shouldn't- Marinette, that hasn't happened in thousands of years!"

Marinette slumps against the wall after all. She can always wash her clothes.

She'd been assuming, all this time, that she and Chat Noir were so in-tune with each other entirely because of their Miraculous. She'd assumed this was a natural extension of that.

She'd assumed so many things. She shouldn't have assumed.

If their bond isn't the magic, then it's just them. They're just- like that, all on their own. Marinette definitely feels some way about that, and strongly, but she isn't sure yet what exactly it is that she feels, just that it isn't necessarily a bad feeling.

"Tikki," she says. "Is Ladybug ever kind of, I don't know, hyperaware of Chat Noir? Where he is, what he's doing, that sort of thing?"

"Yes," Tikki says, and Marinette has a moment of relief before her kwami says, "It's something they can do in battle. They're aware of each other when they're fighting together- they kind of are when they're fighting each other, too, but that's a little different."

Marinette swallows, thinking of Chat Noir mind-controlled, brainwashed, puppeteered. She hates how often he's thrown himself directly into harm's way for her, and she hates fighting him. The two of them aren't meant to fight each other. Not, Chat Noir and Ladybug aren't meant to fight each other, but the two of them, specifically, aren't meant to fight each other. "What about outside of battle?"

"A little, sometimes." Tikki's still staring up at her. "Never a lot. Enough to find each other in a war zone, that's happened before, but then it's usually pretty specific to a short time period- long enough to find each other, then it kind of... snaps back to normal." She tilts her head. "And really that's me and Plagg that can do that, not our chosen."

"Have you ever done that for us?" Marinette asks immediately. "Made us more aware of each other?"

Tikki shakes her head immediately. "I've never had to. You never have any problem finding each other." She freezes.

"No," Marinette says grimly. "No, we don't, do we?" She finally starts walking again, though she digs out her phone to hold up to her ear so that talking to Tikki looks a little less odd. "I almost always know, if not how to find him, how to contact him. But it's our weapons that do that, so I assumed it was you."

"It's not. It's kind of strange, actually," Tikki says. "Your weapons don't act quite right."

Marinette's stopped walking again. She forces herself to keep going, because they'll never get home at this rate. "What do you mean? You've never mentioned that before."

Tikki shrugs, as much as a creature without true shoulders can shrug. "They're very versatile- more than they should be. There's no reason they should let you locate each other, but they do. They shouldn't be communicators at all, honestly, but they are."

Marinette blinks, processing that. "Wait, they're not usually communicators?"

"No, thankfully." Tikki glances up like she wants to fly over to Marinette's shoulder, but that would be noticed in a way that their talking to each other hasn't been. They still probably shouldn't be having this discussion in public but Marinette couldn't put it off any longer. She should start carrying headphones so she can talk to Tikki less suspiciously. "Can you imagine if Hawkmoth had all the abilities the two of you do?"

Marinette shudders. "I'd prefer not to, actually. You mean it's not just because he can already contact his akuma?"

Tikki shakes her head.

Marinette still has questions, but they've reached the bakery, so Tikki hides again and Marinette stops pretending to be on the phone. She ducks in past her mother with a smile and a wave before darting upstairs.

Notes:

sometimes, as teenagers, we make bad decisions

cath palug, while a fascinating legend, is only important to the story as far as being the name of a past chat noir; the legend itself isn't important to the story, but you can find it easily with a quick google search.

Chapter 13: family

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Marinette knocks again twice, waits, and reaches up to open the door, but it opens from the other side. She doesn't see anyone at first but then Chat Noir shifts into view, kneeling next to the trapdoor.

She hadn't really thought he'd greet her untransformed but she can't help but feel disappointed anyway. It's stupid, because she's the one who's told him not to tell anyone, but she'd never wanted to know before. Until this moment, she hadn't realised that she wanted to know now.

Plagg had made good points, though.

Right now isn't the time to be thinking about it. If she tells him she'll tell him as Ladybug, so that they're on equal footing. For now she grins at him as she scrambles the rest of the way into the room and kicks the trapdoor shut behind her.

She regrets it when they both flinch at the slam. Her parents don't yell anything up, because they're both in the bakery, but she can feel their disappointment all the same and now she's sure Chat Noir's head hurts from the noise just like hers does.

"Sorry," she says hastily. "Sorry, I didn't mean- uh, are you feeling better?"

He sits back on his heels and nods, tail flicking. Marinette has a moment of panic that he's still being so quiet before he speaks. "Yeah, much. It's still-" He winces, raises a hand, lets it drop to his side. "My hearing's still a lot more sensitive than before, but it's not painful like it was this morning. I'm adjusting- adjusted, I think."

Marinette thinks guiltily of how quickly she'd gotten used to it. Sure, her concentration at school might have been adversely affected, but between Chat Noir and Adrien it isn't like she wasn't already having trouble paying attention. It's a good thing she's a good student; she already wouldn't have been able to keep her grades up and be Ladybug if she weren't.

"That's good," she says finally, realising Chat Noir's waiting for a response. "So, uh." She hefts her backpack and glances at him. He's not looking at her, he's twisting his tail through his hands.

She really should have picked up a laser pointer. He'd clearly benefit from a distraction. She'd go on patrol with him, but she's not sure how to discreetly suggest that, and she's not sure it's a good idea if his hearing's still bothering him, as well. She's glad there wasn't an akuma today- she doesn't want to fight without him.

"I don't have math homework," she says at last. "I have physics, though."

His ears flick up, then flatten again immediately as he winces. Marinette does too- she hadn't thought about how reactive his ears are. That can't be helping. No wonder he was detransformed earlier. She's glad, and a little flattered, that he feels safe enough here to risk detransforming.

"I like physics," he says at last.

Marinette laughs as she digs out papers and spreads them on the floor, recreating their setup from the day before. She moves the chair over the trapdoor again, too. "I thought you might, since you liked math that much. Same as before?" She glances at him over her shoulder.

He shrugs one shoulder and ducks down next to her again. "Sure."

They work much more quietly this time, Marinette both aware that he needs the quiet and wary of revealing her own overly-sensitive ears. It's obvious that whatever bled over to her is nowhere near as significant as what happened to him but it would still be difficult to explain for someone presumably entirely human.

She frowns down at her pencil. She wishes Tikki had been clearer about that. It wouldn't have changed anything in the long run, but it would have been nice to have some more forewarning. She doesn't think Chat Noir was warned thoroughly before whatever's happening to him now, either, and he's clearly a lot more susceptible to changes than she is.

She hopes. She's learned a lot about ladybugs in a short time and their abilities don't translate into human quite as well as cats do. There's definitely some overlap- she didn't use to get cold quite so easily or be affected quite as badly, and flowers used to look a lot less edible- but nothing like what's happening to Chat Noir.

He finishes the work before her and stretches with a yawn, flipping over onto his back in one fluid movement. She smiles at the line of warmth along her side as he shifts closer, much like he does on patrol. "I'm checking my work against yours when I'm done, you know."

"I was counting on it," he says, nearly in a purr. She rolls her eyes, knowing he won't see it. "My work is purr-fect."

She starts to open her mouth to tease him, then hesitates when she thinks better of it. She shouldn't be so familiar with him so quickly.

Or should she? Does it matter, now, if he figures her out?

Chat Noir sits up again, hooking his arms around his knees and turning to look at her. His tail twines around his feet, apparently entirely outside of his control.

His tail's always been expressive, but it's definitely gotten a lot more so. Marinette determinedly keeps a frown off her face.

"What?" he says. "Were you just about to say something?"

"Just that you're awfully confident," Marinette says softly and against her own better judgement, looking back down at her homework. She misses his usual confidence. She wants him to have it back, but she doesn't know where it's gone.

His tail falls flat. She can tell without looking that he's rubbing the back of his neck. "Sure."

Marinette sits up, too. She can't concentrate on her physics work now. "Is your hearing better?"

He snorts, and this time he doesn't look like he's afraid of being rude, at least. He's always been polite but he's never been this jumpy; she isn't sure how to convince him that it would take a lot more than that for her to kick him out. As far as she's concerned he's earned the right to be a little rude several times over.

She sighs. "I realised as soon as I said it, okay."

"I know what you meant," he says. "It's kind of yes to both, anyway. It's better than it was, but it's not so overwhelming. I think it's just... like this, now."

"Does that happen often?" Marinette asks, propelled by curiousity even though she's sure he would have told Ladybug before now if this happened with any frequency.

His tail starts twitching again. "Not really, no. It happened with my night vision when I first became Chat Noir."

She actually hadn't known that. She probably should have, but, well, if it was when they'd first gotten the Miraculous he might not have even known to mention it. She doubts it was a confidence thing- he'd been much more confident than her, in the beginning. He really is her confidence.

She needs to tell him that more.

It's becoming clear that she really just needs to spend more time with him, period, and she doesn't think splitting his time between Marinette and Ladybug is the way to do it. At the same time, Tikki's right; it's not good for either of them if Marinette tries to be his entire support system.

"Well," she says finally, "If your hearing's not acting up as much, I actually have something I wanted to ask you." She's still a little unsure of it, even after spending most of her way back from their last patrol considering it from every angle, but he doesn't need to know that. By now she's concluded that this is the best option, dangerous as it could be, and it is a lot less serious than considering whether she wants to tell him who she is. She thinks this might be safer than they'd expect anyway.

Marinette isn't really a huge fan of lying to her parents when she doesn't have to, after all, and she so frequently has to.

Chat Noir glances at her, wariness flaring in the depths of his eyes. "You do?"

"Calm down, Chat Noir," she says gently, pained that such a simple statement would make him so instantly wary. "I only wanted to know if you'd like to meet my parents." Her parents will love him. She wouldn't consider this otherwise, for his sake. People like Chat Noir but he doesn't seem to know it.

He startles so badly that she's sure if his tail weren't a belt it would be bushed out. "You- w-what?"

"Would you like to meet my parents?" Marinette repeats patiently. "I know they'd love to meet you, and I don't want you to feel like you have to hide away up here. I'm not ashamed of you or anything." Marinette's papa has actually mentioned more than once how much he likes Chat Noir. He's nowhere near Ladyblog levels but he's definitely a fan.

"I..." Chat Noir's tail lashes nervously. "I didn't think you were, I just, w-won't your parents be upset?"

"That I have a superhero with me?" Marinette raises an eyebrow, admittedly maybe enjoying this more than she should. "I've been thinking about it, and I think they'll mostly be relieved."

"Why would they be relieved?" he asks, sounding baffled.

Marinette stares at him. "Chat Noir, I don't know if you've noticed, but the city hasn't exactly been safe since we- since the akuma attacks started. My parents will be thrilled to know I'm with you; you keep people safe."

"You'd arguably be in more danger with me, though," Chat Noir counters softly. "I don't want to put you in the way of an akuma."

"You won't," Marinette says just as softly, reflecting inwardly and a little guiltily that he has no idea how true that is. Neither Marinette nor Ladybug needs any help to end up targeted by an akuma. She's well aware that she's been the cause of several while she's only ever heard of him causing one, and that one hadn't been entirely his fault- Ladybug's the one who missed the statue's unveiling. He'd still shouldered all the blame. "Please, Chat Noir. My papa's a fan of yours."

Oh, he looks so surprised. He shouldn't be so surprised to hear that. It hurts. "He is?"

"Of course he is," Marinette reassures him. "Maman's more a Ladybug fan, but Papa protects people, too. He loves you." Marinette herself has been worried about that, because one stupidly self-sacrificial person in her life is enough, but Chat Noir looks so stunned to hear he has fans. She'll have to ask Alya to rearrange the Ladyblog so it has more Chat Noir content if this is what hearing that people admire him does to her partner.

"Oh," Chat Noir says, ears pressing flat. He still doesn't really look like he believes her.

"Well?" Marinette says.

He blinks at her and rubs the back of his neck. "Well what?"

"Do you want to meet my parents?" Marinette repeats patiently. "I won't make you come down if you don't want to. I should still tell them you're here, but honestly, I won't tell them that either if you really don't want them to know."

"It's..." He shakes his head. "No, it's fine. If... if you're sure."

"Of course I'm sure." Marinette picks up the chair from over the trapdoor and rights it. If this goes well it'll be nice not to have to worry about blocking the door after this. Sure, she can still get out easily via the roof, but as far as her parents know she'd then be trapped up there. They take fire safety very seriously. "Do you want to go down together, or do you want me to talk to them first?"

"U-um." His ears press flat. "Maybe you should tell them first. You know, warn them."

"Warning them implies you're a bad thing," Marinette says dryly. "You're not. I'm serious, they'll be happy. You'll see." He actually does look overwhelmed, though, so she sighs and adds, "I'll go ahead, but don't you go sneaking back out. Papa is going to be very excited to meet you and we wouldn't want to get his hopes up like that."

"Right," Chat Noir says weakly, glancing around and then moving to the chaise lounge. "Right. Um. I'll just, wait here, I guess?"

"I'll come back and get you," Marinette reassures gently. She hesitates at the door- she wants so badly to go to him and ruffle his hair, but she's not his Lady right now, she's just a friend. If he's not asking for her to pet him, with words or body language or both, she can't.

She hadn't thought that would bother her quite so much. She's always thought it's been for his benefit alone, but she's starting to see that she likes being in physical contact with him, too. Maybe that's another trait that's bled over.

Maybe it isn't.

"I won't go anywhere, Princess," Chat Noir says quietly, before looking away and tugging his hood up over his ears. She can see him nervously running his hands over the softer fabric inside his sleeves.

Oh, kitten, what am I going to do with you, Marinette thinks as she goes to find her parents.

They're both in the kitchen, laughing and batting at each other as her papa tries to cook and her maman gets in his way deliberately at every turn. Smiling at the fun they're having, Marinette clears her throat and says quietly, "Papa, Maman? I have something to tell you."

"Oh!" Eyes going wide, her papa immediately sets down the bowl he's holding and her mother turns off the oven quickly. "Oh, sweetheart, of course. You can tell us anything. Let's go sit down in the living room, okay? I'll bring in some cookies."

"Thanks, papa," Marinette says, a little startled at the enthusiastic response. "But, um, this shouldn't take that long? I just wanted to tell you Chat Noir is here."

"Is he now," her mother says, rather more calmly than Marinette expects. "Well, of course he's always welcome. Tell him to come down and join us. Is that all you have to tell us, Marinette?"

There's a strange emphasis on the word all that makes Marinette wary. "Um, mostly. He kinda doesn't have anywhere to stay tonight? So I might have told him he can stay here?"

"Of course he can," her papa says. "He's a hero, honey, we can't be safer than having him here with us. Except Ladybug being here too, of course!" He laughs heartily, louder than he usually is, and her mama elbows him. "And I'll feel better knowing that our heroes are both somewhere safe at night, as well."

Marinette smiles uneasily back, heart beating hard. "I thought he could always stay on the couch." She'd much rather have him where she can see him, but she knows she should be sensitive to how her parents might feel about that, and it isn't as though they could know that he's always kept her safer than anyone else ever could.

"Nonsense," her mother says. "He can stay on your chaise lounge, as long as the two of you don't have any objections to that. It will be much more comfortable for you both. And you can talk in privacy."

Marinette stares at her, stunned.

"He's a hero," her mother repeats gently. "He protects Ladybug. If we can't trust Chat Noir with you, who can we trust?"

Marinette had known her parents liked Chat Noir but she'd had no idea they trusted him this far. She's not sure she knew they trusted her this far. "I'll, uh, I'll go let him know. Oh! He's got- his ears have been really sensitive lately, so not too loud, okay?"

"Of course," her father says. "Dinner's already nearly done for tonight, but does he have any favorites we should know with him staying with us?"

"Uh," Marinette says, for a couple of reasons. Ladybug knows his kwami is fond of cheese, but Marinette doesn't know that. Beside that, she'd only asked for tonight, and that's not the question her papa had answered. "Not that I know of? I'll ask." She backs away, still a little unnerved by her parent's knowing gaze, and escapes back up through her trapdoor.

"Hey," Chat Noir says. "Uh, if they said no, I can just go." His ears are still flat beneath his hood and he's fidgeting with his tail in his hands, carefully not meeting her eyes.

"Oh, no, they love you a little more than I anticipated, actually," Marinette says, still dazed, because that had gone a little stranger than she'd planned for. "They want you to stay with me. I only asked about tonight but- they said you can stay as long as you need, I think."

Chat Noir's head snaps up as he nearly falls off the chaise lounge, his hood falling back with the sudden movement. "They what? They do? They did?"

"Yeah," Marinette says slowly, still feeling out the conversation in her head. She feels like there was a second conversation happening that she hadn't been entirely aware of. "They said I'll be safest with you here, and they like knowing you're somewhere safe, too."

"Oh," he says faintly. She doesn't miss the look of surprise or gratitude, or the way his already intense eyes shine brighter for a moment. "Oh, wow. Your parents are pretty awesome, huh."

"They really are," Marinette says fondly, shaking her head to dispel any lingering anxiety and offering Chat Noir a hand up. "Let's go introduce you to them."

"Honey, look," her father says as they come into view. "Our Marinette found a stray."

Marinette giggles before she can help it. "Can we keep him, Papa?"

"Oh, I don't know," her father teases, waving them to the table. "Don't you know that once you've fed a stray he never leaves?" He settles his hands on his hips and grins widely at them both. "It's very nice to meet you, Chat Noir. I'm quite flattered that you'd want to stay here."

"Nice to meet you too?" Chat Noir says uncertainly. It hasn't gotten any less strange to hear him sound uncertain, no matter how far out of his comfort zone she pulls him. She misses her confident, overzealous partner.

It's a little surreal to sit down to dinner with her parents and with Chat Noir in full uniform joining them, but it's worth it to see how much he brightens over the course of the meal. He's quiet as he has been recently, but her papa won't let him stay out of conversation, and with each exchange he looks a little more like himself.

"Chat Noir, if we ask anything you're not comfortable answering, just tell us and we'll back off," her papa says before they even start eating, and Marinette doesn't miss the way Chat Noir's ears perk up at that. He had been worried about it, then. "We'd like to get to know you, but only on your terms."

"Okay," he says quietly, staring at his plate. He hasn't eaten very much, even though he's clearly enjoying the meal. He's eating more than he has been recently at least. Her dad's cooking is hard to resist, and he has to be hungry. If she can't quite meet Plagg's demands yet she can at least help with this. Chat Noir can't get away with picking at his food too much- her dad keeps not-so-discreetly putting more on his plate and Chat Noir doesn't like to offend people.

He's been doing badly in so many more ways than she'd realised. She'll always hate that she didn't notice something was wrong sooner.

"So Chat Noir," her mother starts, and Marinette winces inwardly, worried about what kind of questions her mother may have for her superhero partner. "Do you have any hobbies you can share with us? It's okay if you can't for privacy reasons, but we were wondering if there was anything you might want to do while you're here."

Chat Noir blinks, very transparently surprised to be asked. "I"m, ah, not sure actually." He hesitates, then says more quietly, "I like fencing, but I haven't had very many chances to figure out what else I might enjoy."

That's more than he's ever told Ladybug. It still doesn't offer any clues to his identity, because anyone who's ever seen Chat Noir fight (so all of Paris) knows that he likes fencing, but that he doesn't know his own hobbies? That's news. That's deeply worrying news.

That means things went horrifyingly wrong long before she ever met him. That means she hadn't even noticed how badly he was hurting for so long. He's her partner; she should have known.

Tikki's still up in her (their?) room, but Marinette can hear the scolding her kwami would be giving her all the same. If it's been going on since before they met, she'd have had no way of knowing, since it isn't as though there would have been a sudden change in his behavior- at least, not until relatively recently. Tikki would be right, but emotions don't often listen to reason, so Marinette still feels guilty.

Her parents, however, take this news in stride. "Well, I guess that means we should try and figure out what else you like to do, huh?" her papa suggests, not so subtly adding yet more food to Chat Noir's plate.

He still doesn't eat much of it, preferring to push it around with his fork, but his ears flicker in gratitude. "That would be very kind of you."

"Why don't you and Marinette play some video games after dinner," her mother suggests. "After all, she needs an opponent other than her papa."

Chat Noir, to Marinette's surprise, looks uneasy at the suggestion. "Ah, I wouldn't want to cut into family bonding time."

"You won't be," her papa says firmly. "But if you don't want to, then don't worry about it. I'm sure you and Marinette can find plenty of things in common, after all."

There it is again- her parents exchange another knowing look that Marinette can't quite read.

She's sure that's important, but whatever it's about is still less important than Chat Noir.

"Well," her mother says. "You're welcome to simply join in family time, Chat Noir. We'd love to have you. If not video games, perhaps board games?"

He hesitates.

"Don't let them fool you," Marinette tells him. "Alya and I have been trying to beat them at Pictionary all year. We still can't get close."

"But you're a designer," he says, apparently startled into a reply. "You're a great artist."

Marinette blushes at her maman's chuckle in response to that. "M-maybe, but they're an unbeatable team. That's more important in Pictionary." She blinks. "Wait, have you not played?"

"Um," he starts. His tail lashes once, nervously, wrapping around a chair leg.

"Oh, then we have to," her dad enthuses, pushing his chair away from the table. "Marinette told us your hearing's very good, Chat Noir, so we'll keep that in mind."

"Why do-" Chat Noir starts, looking overwhelmed, but he stops talking as soon as Marinette opens her mouth.

She frowns and shuts it again, glancing at him. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Oh." He blinks. "Uh. Why do we need to keep that in mind? Is Pictionary loud?"

Her dad laughs. "It can be, but we'll be careful. I assume you two are partners, then?"

Marinette manages not to jump, but barely. "W-what?"

"Because we are," her mother clarifies, standing to press a hand to her father's shoulder and smile at them. "If we're a team, then you're a team. I bet it's easy for you to beat us."

Marinette relaxes again. The game. Of course. "I don't know, it feels like Alya and I have been trying for ages."

Her mom shrugs. "Alya's not a superhero. Clear the table while we get the game, would you, dear?"

Chat Noir gets up to help as soon as her parents leave the room and she tries to wave him back down. "You're still a guest, you don't have to help."

"That's exactly why I should help," he counters, carrying dishes to the sink. "Your parents aren't under any obligation to let me stay here. This is the least I can do." He frowns down at his plate. "Seriously, I wish I could do more."

She takes the plate from him and sets it back on the table. "If you really want to make my papa happy, you'll eat more of his food. He's very proud of it."

"Oh," he says. His ears pin back for a moment, then flicker upright. "Really? Even if it's while we play?"

"We're not exactly formal here," she says gently, because she has a building suspicion about just how carefully polite he is, and about its possible connection to his apparent inability to go home. "He'll just be glad you're enjoying his food."

It's not long before her parents come back with the game (although it is longer than finding it warrants) and her dad grins happily at Chat Noir when he sees he still has food, though to her relief he doesn't outright comment on it.

Marinette moves to sit beside Chat Noir, explaining the rules as her mother hands out pencils and paper.

She's glad that her hearing sharpened, too. It's easy to remember not to shout when he's not the only one that flinches. Her dad still gets loud a couple of times, but he always tones it down immediately with guilty glances in their direction. If her parents notice that they're both flinching they don't mention it. Marinette should have claimed she had a headache, or made some other plausible excuse, but she hadn't been thinking of herself.

She does notice, though he's trying his hardest not to call attention to it, that Chat Noir has to angle his claws very awkwardly to hold the pencil. His lines are shakier than they might be otherwise and she doesn't think he can hold it comfortably for very long.

Of course, right now he doesn't need to. She only needs a few lines from him to make a guess.

For the first time Marinette thinks she might actually win against her parents. They're still formidable, only needing the barest sketch to get across a concept, but she and Chat Noir sometimes don't need that much. Sometimes she barely puts the pencil to paper before he says the correct answer. She'd worry more about that if she hadn't seen her parents play similarly. It's still suspicious, but up against her family, only a little; she doubts Chat Noir will know it's unusual at all, and her parents are used to her and Alya, and even if they can't win against her parents she and Alya still make a good team.

It's easy to see where Chat Noir's going with a picture. It's not unlike knowing where he's about to be in battle, which seems like it should be a weird comparison to make in a board game, but somehow it isn't. Marinette just- knows where he's about to be; they're used to thinking in sync several steps ahead. When she watches his hand start to move, she can visualize the next several strokes.

When she draws a single diagonal line and Chat Noir blurts out "Skis," her dad laughs and concedes defeat.

"You two are a team to fear," her mother says, laughing as well. "Sit back down, Chat Noir- winner gets dessert."

"That's not a real rule," Marinette accuses, unable to stop grinning. "You've never offered me and Alya dessert."

"You and Alya have never won," her papa says dryly, opening the fridge and searching around the back, behind everything else, before pulling out a cake.

Not just any cake- one with red and black frosting, decorated with ladybugs and paw prints.

Marinette and Chat Noir both stare at it, speechless.

"I've been practicing making one like this," her papa admits, placing it on the table proudly. "This isn't what I'd planned for, but-"

"Papa," Marinette manages around the lump in her throat, scrambling out of her chair to throw her arms around him. "Papa, it's amazing!"

"I'm glad you think so!" He beams at her, returning the embrace. "Because I'm going to want both your help when I make a Chat Noir themed one!"

Marinette turns quickly in her father's arms and fights back a snicker at her cat's slightly dazed blinking at the cake. "Chat Noir? You, uh, you okay over there?"

He shakes himself all over and looks up at them both. "Ye- sorry. Uh. It's amazing, really, it is. But you don't... you shouldn't..." He stops, closes his eyes, and breathes deeply a few times before bright green fixes on them again.

Marinette very carefully doesn't move, and more surprisingly, neither do her parents. Strays may stick around if you feed them, but they also take a lot of gentle encouragement to make somewhere their home.

She wants him to stay. Apparently, amazingly and all unlooked-for, so do her parents.

But it has to be his choice.

"There's paw prints on this one, there's no need to make a separate one," Chat Noir says finally. His claws flex, gripping his sleeves.

She really doesn't think his claws were that pronounced last night. At this rate he's likely to need a scratching post.

"I like making them, Chat Noir," her father says gently, releasing her to cut the cake. The piece he gives Chat Noir is no larger than what he gives everyone else, but he also cuts much larger pieces than he normally would. "Really. And I can hardly make one and not the other, hmm?"

Marinette's chair is closer to Chat Noir's than strictly necessary when she takes a seat again. They'd jostled closer during the game, heads bent low together over their shared scrap paper, and then it had been easy and comfortable to simply not move away. If her parents see anything odd in Chat Noir being more in her personal space than she allows even Alya, they're not saying anything about it.

The cake's the first bit of food she's seen him finish in days.

Notes:

marinette's parents are fun

also, while im going back and editing this: this is probably at least partly influenced by how very, very little my parents cared about mixed-gender sleepovers by the time i was in high school. both my best friends were dudes and my folks were okay with me spending the night at their places, or spending a weekend camping with them, because they trust them both; trust is factoring pretty heavily into marinettes parents decision.

Chapter 14: decisions

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It's getting late, and Marinette can tell that's Chat Noir starting to get restless again, so they excuse themselves after that and head back up to her room. As soon as they're inside, Marinette flops onto her floor with a relieved sigh and uses her foot to push the desk chair back towards the desk. "Huh. It is a relief to know we don't have to hide anything now." Guilt slips through her for a second when she says that, but she keeps it out of her voice and body language. She'll have to tell him at some point but she's not ready for that yet. She isn't sure he's ready for that yet.

For the first time, she wishes that Chat Noir would ask Ladybug about their identities again. He hasn't for some time now, because she didn't want them to know, but now she isn't sure if he's stopped asking out of respect for her wishes or for an entirely different reason.

Chat Noir also drops to the floor, cross-legged like a kid in a story circle, and leans back against the chaise lounge.

Marinette really hopes Tikki's well-hidden.

"Your parents are so nice," Chat Noir breathes, tilting his head back. His eyes slide closed, but he's smiling, his ears and tail both twitching. It's the happiest she's seen him in a while.

She'd been planning to try and ask him more about what's going on, but at that peaceful expression her resolve breaks. She has to ask but it doesn't have to be now. It doesn't have to wipe that smile off his face.

Even if he's just given her another clue.

"I told you they'd like you," she says instead. He sat down close enough to where she's laying that when she turns her head, her hair brushes his knee. Out of the corner of her eye she sees him absently tapping his knee with his claws. They're not retractable, at least; she doesn't want to think about how retractable claws would work- or not- with hands that are anatomically (mostly) human.

Marinette sits back up but doesn't move away. "Hey, feel free to tell me no, but can I see your claws?"

Chat Noir stills for a moment, but then offers her his hand. "Sure, just, careful. They're... sharper than they used to be."

He isn't kidding. Marinette blinks down at his gloved hand, surprised that she's never thought before about how his claws have to be going through- whatever their suits are made of. They've never encountered anything else that can rip their suits.

Tikki has implied that Chat Noir's hearing will be just as good as a civilian, now, and Marinette's own hearing had spiked without her transforming at all. Marinette wonders if Chat Noir still has claws when he's detransformed, too, now, and if so how they might be able to hide them.

She turns his hand over and traces his claws, acutely aware of his restless shifting against the chaise lounge. They're rough and uneven, more jagged than the cat's claws she remembers from their time at the animal shelter. "Forgive me if this is rude, but I think you need a scratching post."

He tenses, but his hand stays carefully still in hers. "I usually just use nail trimmers on them."

"Well, we can try mine, but I think they'll still have all these rough edges," Marinette says. "That can't be comfortable."

He glances away from her. "I guess I just assumed I was still getting used to them."

She has to remind herself she's not supposed to be familiar with his claws at all. "Do you mean they haven't always been like this?"

"No." His fingers flex once, claws well away from her skin. "They've always been sharp, but.. "

"You were having trouble with the pencil earlier," she recalls.

His ears drop flat. "Yeah. That part's new."

He doesn't say anything else, but Marinette's mind is racing ahead. This is an actual problem. Heightened hearing might be hard on them, but they can adjust to it the way they have all the other changes to their lives since getting their Miraculous. It's not the same as having trouble writing. She saw how awkward his hold on the pencil was earlier.

Marinette feels a sudden foreboding. It's not the same as having trouble drawing, either, and the hearing hadn't affected her until hours after it had him. "How new?"

"A few days," he admits, and she deliberately doesn't relax, and then feels guilty and selfish for it. "Well before the hearing thing. There was an akuma... I don't think they ever went entirely back to normal."

He must mean Shelter, but she knows his claws didn't catch on the fabric of his hoodie after that. They must have grown since then.

He can't keep staying transformed.

She can't explain how she knows that without telling him she's Ladybug, but he can't keep staying transformed. It's changing him, permanently, and in ways that are detrimental to him. The change to his hearing hurt him and if he can't adjust to having claws they'll affect the rest of his life. Even if he does adjust, if what Tikki said is right, he'll still have claws the rest of his life. It isn't as simple as saying 'spots off,' they aren't going to change back from this.

She has to tell him.

She has to tell him, but she isn't ready yet.

They have patrol tomorrow night. She can tell him on patrol tomorrow night. That gives her a day to work up to it. She's not worried about his reaction, precisely, but she doesn't want him to feel pressured to tell her, and... and if he doesn't want her to know who he is, if he's dropped the subject because he no longer wants to tell her, then she won't be able to have him here all the time.

She wants him here. It's not just because she worries that he has nowhere else to go, either (though that's definitely a factor); she wants him here. It's been fun, watching anime with him, listening to podcasts, playing Pictionary; even just having him quietly working on homework assignments stretched out alongside her. She likes hearing him breathing in the dark with her at night. She likes knowing he's safe, that all she has to do to check on him is to look down over the side of her bed. She's been calmer, happier, knowing where he is, knowing that he's safe.

She had hated not knowing he was safe.

If he doesn't want to tell her, if he doesn't continue to stay with her- no one has come looking for him. He's carrying a backpack full of essentials. He hadn't been eating. He very definitely doesn't have anywhere else to go, and as much as Marinette loves Tikki, their kwami alone can't exactly give them something like a stable home life, or a support structure that isn't a mysterious demigod. Plagg is trying, but he still came to find her.

That image from before, Marinette's runaway imagination conjuring visions of her partner sleeping in a box in an alley, rises up behind her eyes again and she has to blink it away.

"Are you okay, Princess?" Chat Noir says, and she realises with a start she's just been staring silently at his hand for some time now. She lets go, gently so that his hand doesn't simply drop.

He folds his hands in his lap and gazes at her. It's not the slow blink he gives Ladybug, but it's beginning, terrifyingly, to verge on it.

From his point of view he's only known her for a few days. He shouldn't be reaching that level of trust that fast, even if she has given him food and shelter- those are basic needs. Some fundamental part of her best friend's life had gone very, very wrong.

"I'm fine," Marinette assures him hastily. "Just let me, um, let me find my nail trimmers and we can try them."

They don't work.

Marinette had expected that, but if his drooping ears are anything to go by, Chat Noir had hoped otherwise.

"Okay, so we're going shopping tomorrow," she says.

He blinks at her again.

"I was serious about the scratching post," she says, exasperated. "Since the clippers didn't work." She also needs new clippers. She'd tried them briefly on her own nails, safely out of his line of sight, and they'd only scored the faintest lines. She certainly can't cut her nails with them anymore. Her nails don't seem any sharper or longer, just tougher, but they have definitely changed. It's possible she could still cut them with a little more time and effort but she's not sure she wants to find out.

"You really think that'll help?" Chat Noir asks doubtfully, lifting one hand in front of his eyes and angling it to inspect his still-jagged claws. He bites at one of them, then winces a second later and drops his hand as he seems to realise what he's just done.

It didn't have any visible effect anyway.

Marinette still doesn't comment on it. "It can't hurt. Besides, you've been cooped up in here for a while now, I'm sure you want to get out some."

Some unidentifiable emotion flashes through his eyes before he drops his gaze. "Sure. But are you sure it's a good idea for you to bring me with?"

She shrugs at him. "I mean, you don't have to come if you really don't want to, and certainly if you have other plans I don't want to interfere." She feels a little guilty alluding to plans she knows he doesn't have, but if all goes well she won't have to keep doing that for long.

"I'd like to go," he says quietly. "Might draw attention, though."

"That's all right," she says firmly. "Unless you don't want to draw attention?"

She's surprised when he hesitates. She's always thought that he enjoyed it when people paid attention to him. Actually, she's still sure of that, but... maybe it isn't just that no one's looking for him.

Maybe it's that he doesn't want to be found.

"Chat Noir?" Marinette asks slowly. "Do you want to avoid attention?"

He won't look at her as he says, "A little bit, yeah."

She studies the careful, tense way he's holding himself. He's actually still, when he's almost never still. He means it. "Well, we can probably think of something. It'll be more fun if you can come in with me but if we have to you can... wait outside, I guess?" Her voice falters towards the end, because she doesn't want him to have to wait outside.

This would be easier if she could transform or he could detransform. Maybe she shouldn't wait after all, but she really isn't ready yet. Once she tells him, she has to tell him that he can't keep staying transformed like this, and once he knows that she risks him leaving.

She won't stop him if that's what he wants, but she doesn't want him to go. He's welcome here. He has food and shelter here. He has support here.

He has her here.

"We'll think of something," she repeats. "For now, I'm not really tired yet. Wanna watch more Fairy Tail?"

He does, as it turns out, although it doesn't take long before they're both hypothesizing different ways to fight each enemy as if they were akuma. That's more fun than she expects. Since it's hypothetical anyway, she claims the right to strategize as she might if she had fire magic, and once Erza is introduced Chat Noir starts making suggestions for different ways to utilize her weapon summoning. Marinette feels a little disloyal for thinking that it's a lot more fun than watching it with Alya, who tends to take it a little too seriously.

Marinette hasn't even been able to point out that she doesn't need it to make sense to enjoy it anymore, not with some of the more inspired akuma they've seen. There have to be people having more normal problems in Paris but Hawkmoth seems to enjoy gravitating to the weird ones. Mr. Pigeon is honestly more implausible than some of the enemies she's seen in anime.

After a while there's a soft knock on the underside of the trapdoor and Marinette opens it to find her mama bearing extra bedding and a knowing smile. Marinette's pretty sure by now that her parents know Chat Noir's already spent the night, but astonishingly they don't seem to mind, so she thanks her mama and gives Chat Noir the bedding.

He's curled up on the chaise lounge by now, blinking across the room at the Fairy Tail guild. She hands him another blanket and tries not to grin too obviously at the way he tugs it into the bedding he already has, kneading at it without taking his eyes off the screen.

She gives him another pillow, too, but keeps the second blanket for herself. She really does get cold easily and he has the spare bedding she usually uses. She fights back a laugh when Chat Noir settles himself lazily behind the pillow, tail draped over the side of the chaise lounge and twitching occasionally.

She wants to go to him. She wants to scratch behind his ears and feel him curl up against her and purr until his voice runs out. She wants to see him as peaceful and happy as he'd been that night at the riverbank. Marinette can't do any of that, though.

But Ladybug can, and by the time she drifts off to sleep she's determined to tell him on patrol tomorrow.

Notes:

you can in fact get heavy-duty human nail clippers if normal ones just kinda slide off your nails trust me on this
some of them actually do look distressingly like dog nail clippers but whatever works

Chapter 15: foster kitten

Chapter Text

It's actually kind of convenient that he can turn the sound down far enough to keep from waking Marinette up once she's fallen asleep. He doesn't need it very loud at all anymore to hear the DVD clearly. After the alarm clock, he doesn't think he'll be willing to turn the volume up past a certain point ever again.

At least the hearing's going to be useful now that it isn't so debilitating. Chat Noir drags the blankets back around himself after adjusting the sound and winces a little when his claws start to catch. He disentangles himself carefully, then drags the sleeves of his hoodie down far enough to cover his hands- Ladybug used good fabric, but at the same time she'd found a lining that his claws don't catch on. He smiles a little as he cautiously runs a hand across the softer inside lining without his claws snagging even once.

Marinette's probably right about the scratching post. He hadn't expected to have quite so much trouble with the pencil earlier, even after having to cut his note short before; like his hearing this change is happening faster than the others have. He wouldn't have thought of a scratching post himself but Marinette seems to take his increasingly feline traits into consideration just as naturally as Ladybug does. It's one thing for Ladybug to take his powers in stride; it's another thing altogether for a classmate to shrug and offer solutions. They'd both offered such easy acceptance.

For once he isn't tired, which is nice. It probably means Plagg was right about him not eating enough, which he likes less, but it isn't like he could have turned down Marinette's parents.

Chat Noir finds himself smiling again, tail lashing once against the blankets before he can keep it still, when he thinks about Marinette's parents and dinner and game night. No wonder Marinette is so nice- her whole family is amazing. For the first time in a week he can very nearly relax. He's not hungry anymore, he doesn't have to find somewhere to sleep outside, and for once he isn't lonely even without Plagg. He can hear Marinette's breathing clearly over the still-playing anime. It's at least a few hours still before she'll be up again, and he's still reeling a little that she'd been talking like it was only natural they'd spend the day together- the nature of their powers means that even Ladybug's never offered him that. Marinette didn't hesitate for a second. Chat Noir sighs and settles deeper into the blankets, stretching slightly until he can push them where he wants them.

For a few hours he's comfortable enough, curled up under the blankets to watch the flickering screen with his eyes half-lidded. It takes him a while to realise he's purring quietly to himself. He's purred outside of Ladybug's company before, but until now it's only been when he's trying to self-soothe. It's never seemed to work on him as well as it would a real cat. He's not sure why, but Plagg's purr is a lot more comfort than his own when they're by themselves.

If his stomach is starting to twinge unhappily he can ignore it in favor of having a soft bed and a roof again. His purr rumbles to a stop a few times as he grows increasingly uncomfortable but he tries to make himself capture that content feeling again.

A few hours later, however, finds him twisting frantically out of the tangle of blankets. He's gotten too nauseous to stay put. He scrambles up the ladder and makes it to the balcony, barely touching the ground on the way; he's too frantic to get outside. His good mood dissolves completely- by now he hurts too much to maintain it.

At least he's able to get outside without waking Marinette this time.

He doesn't even realise he's not transformed any longer until Plagg says, "In my defense, kid, if you'd started eating normally back when I first asked you to this wouldn't be happening now."

Adrien starts to say something in response, whines, and goes back to leaning heavily against the railing and breathing hard.

"Kid?" Plagg flickers closer, hovering just above Adrien's shoulder. "Seriously, are you okay?"

Adrien reaches up to Plagg with one hand, but shakes his head. He hasn't actually thrown up yet, but he's not willing to speak and take that risk, especially since he didn't really think through bolting outside. If he does end up vomiting it's going to be into a potted plant and that's not fair to Marinette.

Plagg settles on his shoulder with a whistle. "Man, I knew you weren't eating, but this is worse even than I thought."

Adrien gives him a look, as best as he can from their positions. It's probably not much of a deterrent since the railing is holding him up more than his own strength is.

"Come on, kit," Plagg says. "It isn't like you even finished that dinner. What happened?"

Testing his voice and deciding shakily that he probably can risk it now, Adrien says, "It was probably the cake that did it. After the past few weeks, I mean."

Plagg doesn't say anything for a minute. Adrien knows that Plagg knows that this started a while ago, a long while ago, but he wasn't sure before whether Plagg realised how much worse it had already been getting before they'd left. Now that he can look back at it from more of a distance, Adrien thinks that he might have been waiting for someone at one of the shoots to notice, or even for his father to say something. Even, more realistically, for Nathalie to notice and pass a message on to his father.

Of course none of that had happened.

Though Nino had started trying to get him to stay with them for lunch around that time. And Nino and then Alya and then Marinette as well had suddenly had larger lunches than before, and they'd kept trying to say they'd brought too much purely by accident, but Nino had been handing too much food over to Adrien for that to really be plausible. Adrien still feels guilty that he hadn't been able to bring himself to eat most of it.

It strikes him painfully that he really misses Nino.

Alya, too, and weirdly enough he even misses Marinette- it's wonderful that he can stay here, but it's still Chat Noir she invited, not Adrien- but Nino was his first real friend outside of the mask. He's not about to forget that any time soon, if ever. It's too bad that running off to Nino's home would have been too obvious. It's the first place his dad would look.

It's the first place Nathalie and his bodyguard would think to look, anyway. He's not sure his father has been paying enough attention to even know that Nino and Adrien are still friends. That, and Nino got akumatized for Adrien. His father would probably use that to further reinforce pulling him out of school and away from his friends.

Guilty as he feels about it, Adrien always recalls that Nino got akumatized for him with some level of wonder. He'll always be grateful that Nino cares that much about what happens to him. That makes him feel guiltier still, right now- he should have figured out a way to let Nino know that he's okay. He hadn't thought of it in time and now there's not a good, safe way to tell him without also letting slip that he hasn't been in America at all.

Marinette would let him use her computer, though. She'd respect his privacy, too. He just- he doesn't know enough about tracking data to feel secure contacting Nino from here. He's still too close to the mansion to take that kind of risk. Besides, if anyone can figure out something's gone wrong from a text message, it's Nino. He's good at knowing when Adrien's only pretending to be okay.

Adrien swipes at his eyes. He shouldn't be tearing up over this.

"You know," Plagg says, when it's been long enough that Adrien's forgotten what they were talking about. "You could have said something. No one was gonna make you eat the cake, kid."

Adrien swallows. His stomach does feel more settled now that he's been out in the fresh air a while. "That would have been rude."

"Hey, here's some food for thought- you can be rude," Plagg suggests, flying off his shoulder again to do a flip in the air. "Take it from me, it's fun sometimes! And I don't think you could have done much to upset anyone here, really. They like you."

"They like Chat Noir," Adrien counters. His stomach roils again at the thought of being anything less than polite to Marinette's family, so he does his best to ignore that part of Plagg's comment. Instead he shuts his eyes for a moment and tries not to look at his kwami.

Plagg doesn't just roll his eyes, he darts further away so he can roll his whole body and then hovers back. "They like you. Even if you were worried about being rude, you could have just said you weren't feeling well, you know?"

Adrien shrugs, entirely unwilling to look too closely at why he doesn't want to do that. "It's fine. Look, I'm feeling better already. We can transform back and go to sleep."

Plagg crosses his arms and stares down at Adrien.

"What?" Adrien says, defensively.

"Lemme see your hands," Plagg demands, dropping back down.

With a wince, Adrien holds out both hands, rotating his wrists slightly- his hands sometimes feel weirdly sore after transforming back, like they aren't quite the right size or shape, but it's worse this time. He's already sure he knows why but he also doesn't think Plagg is going to let him get out of this conversation without acknowledging it.

"Yeah, those are claws," Plagg says, dropping lower again and circling Adrien's left hand. "Those are- this is gonna get hard to hide soon, kid."

"Hide from who, Plagg?" Adrien mutters, curling his hands back in and then dropping them to his sides, his mood dropping even further. It doesn't have much farther left to go. Adrien slumps against the railing and sinks down. "We left without a real plan and now we're stuck anyway. What does it matter if they're permanent? At least Chat Noir has a place to stay!" He hiccups and brushes angrily at his eyes again. You're too sensitive, he thinks to himself bitterly, not noticing that it whispers through his mind in his father's voice. Adrien shakes his head, trying to will back his good mood from earlier with no success.

Silent again, Plagg spirals down and drops onto his knee. He waits there for the tiny hitches and hiccups in Adrien's breath to even out, occasionally absently kneading at the fabric of Adrien's pants. Adrien's breathing almost normally again before Plagg says, finally, "You should ask Ladybug for help."

"How's she gonna help with this, Plagg?" Adrien asks tiredly, drawing his knees up, careful not to dislodge his kwami. "I told you before, there are laws. They aren't on our side. As soon as I admit who I am I'll have to go back to the mansion and I can't, Plagg-" His voice spirals higher and then, embarrassingly, breaks.

"Kit, it won't come to that," Plagg says, flying from his knee to his hood and headbutting him in the chin. "You and Ladybug are both smart. You can come up with a plan together. And if, if, it looked like you were gonna end up back there, we'd take you and we'd run, okay? We're magic, remember? You're magic. We can keep running as long as you need us to."

Adrien hiccups one last time, then says, hesitantly, "We?"

Plagg snorts. "Have you seen how much Ladybug's been fretting over you?" He tugs at the hoodie strings. "Like she'd let you go back to anywhere you ran from in the first place. Listen, it doesn't have to be immediately," the kwami ducks down and circles Adrien's hand again, brushing along the new sharp edges of his nails until Adrien flinches and draws away, "But it's gonna have to be pretty soon."

"I'll-" He really doesn't want to admit to Ladybug that he ran away from anything, much less that he ran away from home. He's less and less sure that she'll be surprised but he doesn't want to have to tell her. It's his problem; he shouldn't make it hers. "I'll think about it, all right, Plagg?"

"No," Plagg says flatly. "You should tell her. But I'll take what I can get." He curls into the hood again, pressing tiny paws against Adrien's neck. "You gonna be able to sleep now, or should we stay out here longer?"

Adrien glances up. He's not sure what time it is, he didn't think to check before bolting outside and he still doesn't have a watch, but it's definitely still the middle of the night. "I'm... not tired, really."

"Yeah, well, I'm voting against patrolling this time," Plagg mutters, settling on his shoulder again and kneading at it absently. Adrien relaxes against the railing. "You could head back in and relax." He hesitates a second, then mutters, "She's asleep, you know. You could stay detransformed."

"Plagg," Adrien hisses, bristling slightly.

"What? You fell asleep in her bed detransformed earlier!"

"Not while she was in it! Plagg-" He presses a hand to his forehead, then winces when he forgets to be careful enough of his claws. He's not used to accounting for them outside of the suit. "It's not like we went somewhere random, Marinette knows me and she's really smart! Probably the only reason she isn't suspicious already is some kind of magic!"

Plagg is silent.

"Plagg?" Adrien says, suspiciously.

The kwami sighs. "Yeah, okay. You two were right about that, there's magic keeping your identities secret. It's pretty strong, or all your classmates would definitely know by now, but it's got limits."

"Do those limits include not working right if we're detransformed?" Adrien asks.

Plagg mutters to himself.

"Plagg!"

"Yeah, all right, they don't work as well if you're not in the suit," Plagg snaps, finally. "Maybe no one's noticed you two showing up in closed buildings, but yeah, she could definitely figure it out when you're sleeping in her room."

"Then why do you want me to do that?" Adrien says, voice cutting off on an angry hiss towards the end. He has the strangest phantom sensation of his ears flattening back and has to force himself not to reach up and check for cat ears- those would be really impossible to hide.

"Because this is a better home for you!" Plagg bursts out, surprisingly heatedly, darting back out of Adrien's hood to wheel agitatedly in front of him. "They feed you and they include you and they pay attention to you and it's better!"

"Plagg," Adrien says, shocked and honestly a little choked up at the uncharacteristic outburst. Or- no, actually, Plagg's been sounding like this a lot lately.

His kwami is trying to get him adopted. Adrien wasn't ready for that revelation. He's not sure he'd ever be ready for that particular revelation.

"Plagg, that's- it doesn't work like that," he says at last, even though Plagg's eyes are narrowing at him and Adrien knows the kwami is well aware that Adrien fervently wishes that it did work like that. "I'm not actually a stray cat and neither are you. We can't just- wander into a new family!"

"Humans and their stupid laws, I know," Plagg snarls, turning over in the air twice and then diving down to cling to Adrien's sleeve. "What, you think your dad follows all the laws? He doesn't. He broke laws about you. You've met Marinette's parents like three times and they're already better guardians than he was!" Tiny claws flex as Plagg tacks on a low mutter about stray cats. Even with enhanced hearing Adrien doesn't catch all of it, but evidently Plagg doesn't think the description is that far off.

"He's still my father, Plagg," Adrien says, because he can't ask Plagg what laws his father broke. He can't. He'd be handing Plagg the argument and he knows it, and besides that, he doesn't want to know. Running away means he has to acknowledge that his home life had gotten that bad but there are still some things he's not willing to think that hard about just yet.

Plagg snorts bitterly. "Yeah and you were running away from him from the day we met. You think any of your friends had to run away to go to school? Come on, kid, you're not dumb."

Adrien curls in on himself a little bit, because that's too close to things he's not willing to put a name to. He's aware that none of his friends have ever had to break out of their house to go to class. He knows none of them have ever had to schedule an appointment with their parents. He knows that wasn't right. He's just- not sure he can actually say as much about it out loud. His throat locks up when he tries.

"Oh for- running was the right thing to do, kit," Plagg says firmly, looking up at him. "No one's entitled to keep you caged up." He sticks out a tiny paw and waves it around the rooftop. "And hey, guess what! This family doesn't want to!"

"I get it," Adrien says. "I get it, okay? But I can't-" His voice breaks and he clears his throat. "I have to talk to Ladybug, first." He doesn't say that he will talk to Ladybug, but it's not a lie, either. He wouldn't compromise his identity without discussing it with her.

He leaves out the part where he's not sure whether he plans to bring it up at all.

"I will take what I can get," Plagg grumbles, settling down again. "But okay, I get it, kid. You wanna transform and head in again, or are we staying out here a while?"

"We can go back inside in a while," Adrien says, tilting his head back. Being on Marinette's balcony, hidden behind the railing instead of a wall, feels a lot different than the previous rooftops had. It feels safer. It already feels dangerously like having a home. "I miss you, Plagg."

"Yeah, yeah," Plagg says, headbutting him affectionately. "I miss you too, you sap."

They don't stay out much longer after that, but by the time Adrien transforms to sneak back in again his previous good mood is slowly creeping back. He still doesn't entirely believe Plagg's right but he knows his kwami wants to help. Adrien can't deny that they are happier here, at least.

But he's spent too much time feeling like he's hiding in Marinette's room already. Living as Chat Noir had sounded like a good idea at first but it hasn't been proving very tenable. Even without the added complications spending so much time transformed is giving them, Adrien can't go to school. Staying would have been worse- he can't go to school either way, and this way he's still free- but he misses his classes and his classmates with an ache that's very nearly a physical sensation in his chest. It's not like he can enroll in classes as Chat Noir.

He would be willing to, though, he realises with a pang. Every minute he spends as Adrien he risks being caught and dragged right back to his father. He'd be willing to stay Chat Noir forever before he'd go back. He's already finding it hard to care that it's changing him- he doesn't have that much left to lose. He gave too much of it up willingly in exchange for freedom.

But he does have people he loves as Adrien, if not as many as he'd like. He can't justify abandoning them with no explanation- not when he knows how that feels.

He can't stay missing forever.

Chapter 16: furore

Notes:

shinobicyrus was a huge help for this chapter!

Chapter Text

The night's patrol proves to be a much longer time to wait than Marinette had anticipated.

Chat Noir is up before her, or possibly hasn't slept, so the first thing she does when she wakes up (without an alarm clock- they'll have to figure something out for school days) is drag her partner downstairs for breakfast. An actual breakfast, not just whatever scraps he usually picks at.

(She's very careful when she wraps her hand around his wrist, but her nails don't seem to have changed enough to be noticeable).

He still won't eat very much, and when she hands him a muffin she notices that he's fiddling with the wrapper more than he's actually eating, so with an internal sigh she makes sure to stash considerably more cookies than usual in her purse. She thinks she hears Tikki giggling by the third box she manages to cram in but that's okay, Tikki understands.

Her parents are naturally already up but when she says she wants to take Chat Noir shopping, they exchange a quick look with each other before her father goes into the other room only to come back with twice her usual allowance.

"I insist," he says, pushing the money first into Chat Noir's hands, then into hers when he won't take it. "You do protect us without asking for anything in return. It's the least we can do."

Ten minutes later, outside with Chat Noir hunching into his hoodie and pulling his hood down, Marinette numbly counts out their cash once again. She isn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth but even for her parents this is getting kind of strange.

One look at Chat Noir's weirdly self-conscious huddle, though, and she forgets all about it. "Come on, I know a pet store that's out of the way. And it's never crowded so if you keep your hood up no one will notice you." They really should have thought of the hoodie sooner. He wears it all the time now, she's not sure why they didn't think of it unless it's just that she's grown so used to seeing it already.

He's also already tried to transform with it on once before and that still worries her. By now they're both pretty certain that there's an element of magic to keeping their identities hidden, because nothing else makes sense; she knows there are plenty of people she's spoken to as both Marinette and Ladybug that should be able to make the connection but who somehow don't. Alya alone should be able to figure it out several times over. Ladybug's shown up in more than one closed building and she knows it. She knows, because she's asked him, that Chat Noir's experienced the same thing. It's part of why they're usually cautious transforming around even around each other, even out of line of sight; they don't know exactly how deep that protection runs.

Right now she's counting on the fact that he can't ask her why she hasn't suggested he detransform and wear a mask without also admitting to her why it won't work to keep him from realising it's kind of weird she's never asked, which is a horrible recursive kind of logic that makes her head hurt, but so far it seems to be holding.

She likes that he likes the hoodie. She likes less that, of the things he does have in that backpack of his (and there don't appear to be all that many to begin with), none of them seem to be any other clothes. As though he'd known from the beginning that he was going to be Chat Noir so often that he wouldn't need any other clothes. As though his plan had always been to abandon his civilian identity entirely.

Most stores would still probably object to his keeping his hood up but the store Marinette takes them to is the one attached to Sarah's shelter, and while she's really relatively sure the staff there knows it's Chat Noir in the first ten minutes (his mask is still fairly obvious to anyone looking directly at him) they also leave him his privacy. Marinette's glad. She'd only really been here the night they'd been drawn into volunteering and the day immediately after, but she'd noticed even in that time that there seemed to be a much higher than usual number of Chat Noir fans here. She's not entirely sure why that is but she's definitely not objecting. He deserves more fans.

Marinette has also noticed that Chat Noir's backpack is from here, but that he doesn't seem to know that, and he's admitted now that he was only given the backpack sometime in the past week. That was what first made her think his fans here were likely to be discreet.

She hopes he'd had supplies with him before someone had given him a backpack full of them, but she isn't sure whether she wants to know for sure.

They find a scratching post very quickly, but they spend a lot of time in the aisle comparing different ones until they end up with one in the shape of an actual tree with the shelves designed to look like leaves; it isn't exactly going to match her room but Marinette likes the living-tree look to it so much that she doesn't really mind. Marinette also grabs a laser pointer when her partner isn't looking and several stuffed mice when he is. Chat Noir himself grabs a feather wand- he tries to dangle it in front of her, but he keeps getting distracted and swiping at the feathers himself, which frankly would be enough for Marinette to buy it if he didn't also keep sneezing. She finds him one with a strip of fuzzy cloth instead. (She knows, intellectually, that a ribbon would be perfectly safe- he isn't a real cat, it isn't like he's going to try and eat it- but she still can't make herself buy one).

They find an interactive cat toy with an electronic mouse zipping along a track that even Marinette wants to bat at and they both spend ten minutes playing with it and giggling before, reluctantly, putting it back on the shelf- it isn't cheap, and neither is the scratching post, and the scratching post is something they're actually going to need.

One version of the interactive toy replaces the mouse with a ladybug. Marinette doesn't think that was an accident.

The store radio switches to Stray Cat Strut when they've been in the store for ten minutes. She doesn't think that was an accident, either, especially when it starts to loop. She darts a glance at Chat Noir, just in case the song is bringing up bad memories or destructive thoughts, but he doesn't seem to notice the music- he's discovered the belled collars and is by all appearances enthralled with them. Even as she's watching he bats at one and looks delighted as it chimes back at him.

It's so easy to make her kitty happy. She wonders again where he ran from that no one bothered to try.

Marinette looks at nail clippers, too, but they're the wrong shape for what they need- Chat Noir's claws aren't entirely human, but they aren't wholly feline, either. They're going to have to find clippers somewhere else.

Without discussing it they do both avoid anything with catnip. That isn't an experiment she's sure they want to run, especially now.

The cashier isn't Sarah but he's dressed quite similarly. He's watching Chat Noir when they approach the cash register but quickly switches his focus to Marinette when they get close and Chat Noir hangs back. "Will that be all?"

"Yeah," Marinette says firmly, putting her purchases on the counter and glancing at the trinkets hanging off to the side. She's reaching for her purse when something catches her eye. "Hey- are those fidget spinners?"

The man's eyes are on Chat Noir again but to his credit he looks back at her immediately. "Ah, yeah. They're for a charity, actually, they're uh-" He flushes slightly and turns all his attention to her. "They didn't exactly have permission, so, they're supposed to be Ladybug and Chat Noir themes but they're basically just their colours?"

Almost no one has actually bothered to ask the two of them admission for marketing, but Marinette can't exactly tell him that, and she isn't sure yet whether Chat Noir knows that the staff knows it's him, so all she says is, "Can I get one of each?"

She can't help thinking of the way Chat Noir has been fiddling with his sleeves, or grasping at his tail, and the way that in all the time they've worked together she's hardly ever seen him still. She thinks, too, about how surprised he'd been to get a gift from Ladybug, and that she wouldn't mind having something in her partner's colours, either.

She makes their purchases and they leave. Marinette blinks when she looks in her bag for her receipt and finds both that they were undercharged, and that the interactive toy they'd put back is somehow among their new belongings (and it's the version with the ladybug. They definitely knew Chat Noir was in the store. Hopefully they won't question why she was with him).

She decides against telling Chat Noir, a little bit guiltily, and fetches the red and black fidget spinner out of the bag. She's just turning towards him, ready to tease, when the screaming starts.

"Oh," Marinette sighs, tilting her head back and shading her eyes, squinting in the direction of the screams. Nothing is visible, at least, but that so frequently means nothing.

"Yeah." Chat Noir grins ruefully at her. "See you later, I guess. Duty calls. Stay safe!"

She waits long enough for him to vault away, then sighs and darts back into the store to ask if they can hold her recent purchases for a while.

"We're a designated akuma shelter, you know," the man at the counter tells her. His nametag says his name is Scott. "You could wait it out in here."

Marinette thinks, tiredly, about the way several akuma have targeted the whole city at once. This store won't protect anyone against an akuma like Darkblade, like the Pharaoh, like Syren. It's still nice that they'd try. For someone other than her, it might even work, this time.

The laws and regulations regarding akuma are new enough that no one's entirely sure what they're doing, but there are at least definite attempts being made. Some of them are more successful than others.

Her school is a designated akuma shelter. That one's kind of an inherently broken system.

"Sorry, I can't," she tells him, apologetically. "I'm supposed to find my friend during attacks. We're using a buddy system." That isn't, technically, a lie.

He nods understandingly. "Well, that's a better plan than most have. Stay safe, okay?"

"I will," she lies, and runs back outside, and finds a nearby alley to duck into, and transforms to launch herself onto the rooftops.

The initial screaming has died down a little, but her recent hearing boost is significantly better in the suit and she knows which direction Chat Noir went, besides.

She doesn't want to think too hard about how certain she is which direction he'd gone.

Ladybug has to swing several streets over to get to the fight and she hopes to herself that Chat Noir didn't notice how easily Marinette had heard the screaming, but half-heartedly. It's getting harder and harder to keep this secret and it's less and less a secret that she wants to keep.

She's always said that it's to keep their loved ones safe but she knows Chat Noir hasn't been to see anyone but her family in days. She's already put her family in more danger than they were before by asking him to stay, especially when her parents already unwittingly have one half the city's heroes living with them, but she couldn't have turned him away, and- and he's hers, too. He's hers, and she's his, and he's hurting, and fixing that is part of protecting her loved ones, too.

"Did you start the party without me, kitty," Ladybug calls out teasingly as she arrives, only to be rewarded with a startled yelp and her cat tackling her out of the way of a blast. Heat scorches her even through her suit as they dive out of the way and she just barely hears Chat Noir's whimper over the strangely delayed sound of the explosion.

"Whoa," she says, propping herself up on her elbows beneath him, staring at the demolished chunk of building. "What- yikes. What do those explosions do?" The akuma isn't taunting them, which is strange, and more unsettling than she'd have expected. Like the other recent akuma, he doesn't look like very much, either- he's hovering into the air on some kind of wildly unstable rocket boots, and his hair is all the colours of a fire all at once, and he's wearing bright red bracers and greaves over a suit that would look perfectly normal if it weren't eye-searing yellows and oranges, but aside from the hovering thing he looks more like someone who got dressed in the dark and accessorized poorly than he does a more typical akuma.

"They explode," Chat Noir says grimly, and before she can ask for further clarification she sees another blast aimed at them, so she grabs his shoulders and rolls them both out of the way before they haul each other to their feet. The concussive wave that follows a moment later means they have to fight to keep each other steady even as another wave of devastating heat rolls over them both. Ladybug feels Chat Noir flinch even as she does the same; without their suits, she doesn't think they could have stayed standing.

"They just explode?" she asks in a low voice, startled and beginning to be a lot more worried. They're used to dealing with supervillains, yes, but there's a big difference between magic arrows and explosives. "They don't- transform people, or brainwash them, or-"

Another explosion cracks the pavement way too close to their feet, both of them leaping away to scramble up the nearest wall in sync before they can be knocked off their feet again by the force of it. Panting, crouched at the top, Chat Noir glances up at her and says, voice nearly cracking like the pavement, "They just explode."

They just explode.

Ladybug darts a quick look over the edge of the building again. The pavement's cracked and crazed, lines spiderwebbing out from close to where they'd been, far, far too close to where they'd just been. Further along, there are divots in the street, furrows raked alongside buildings, and small isolated fires that she aches to put out even though she knows their best and most comprehensive way to help is to take down the akuma.

They just explode.

She thinks again about the offer she'd had to stay in the store, and about how many people likely did duck into designated akuma shelters. The shelters, inefficient as they already are against the more usual akuma, are no kind of shelter from explosions like these at all.

"The river," she says, low and urgent. "We need to get him to the river."

"We should get him out of the city entirely if we can," Chat Noir says, just as intently, switching his own gaze from the akuma to her briefly and then back.

Ladybug shivers. She knows that look in his eyes. She hates that look in his eyes.

It's bad enough when he jumps in front of arrows and weird time magic for her (and she has never been quite willing to think too closely about weird time magic, about where exactly the line is drawn between being erased from the time stream forever and being entirely dead); she does not want to see him jump in front of an explosion. She does not want him to even think about it.

And that look in his eyes definitely means he's already thought about it.

"Let's play chase then, kitty," she says, because she doesn't know how to talk him out of that particular spiral any more than she ever has, and the sooner they win this battle the less danger they're both in.

Explosions, in the city. This akuma- Ladybug has not come close enough to get a name, and she does not intend to if they don't have to- is so much more aggressive than the rest. It's not like Hawkmoth to go for pure destruction. Ladybug can't figure out why his tactics would change so suddenly.

He hasn't even demanded their Miraculous.

She keeps waiting for a gimmick, even as they tease the akuma into chasing them all the way to to Seine. They try to get him farther but he stops there- they get at least a little lucky, he stops on the bridge.

"Wait here, my Lady," Chat Noir says softly, pressing a hand to her shoulder, and then he's leaping past her before she can tell him no.

Chat Noir catches himself on the outside of the bridge, claws leaving deep gouges as he swings himself up and over and pounces onto the akuma's shoulders. The man roars wordlessly and tries to grab the hero, but Chat Noir shifts with him until the akuma tries to slam his back into the bars to knock off his unwanted passenger, and then Chat Noir reaches out and swipes at the bridge as he calls on his power. The bridge crumbles and Chat Noir tries to scramble free as Ladybug uses the time he's bought her to call her Lucky Charm.

A heavy ball and chain drop into her hands as Chat Noir leaps for the bank, only for a hand to grab his ankle, bringing him up short and slamming him heavily into the remains of the bridge. He's fought free again a moment later, but a last explosion splashes the water high onto either bank and knocks him back into the air. He lands on the riverbank on all fours and skids until his claws drag him to a stop, crouched and clutching at his side, tail lashing in agitation as he stares down at the water. Ladybug can see the way his hand comes away red from his side even from here.

There's still no gimmick. Chat Noir's been more than grazed more than once, and there was no kind of transformation, no brainwashing; he's just hurt.

(Just. There's no just about any of this fight).

(She hates seeing him hurt).

This has gone terrifyingly violent on all sides now, and she dives into the water herself to snap the ball and chain around the akuma's ankle and snatches both bracers while he's still underwater and sinking- she doesn't know which one of them might be the akuma, and she hopes it's not somewhere else altogether. Thankfully he doesn't seem able to produce any more explosions from underwater and Ladybug breathes the heaviest sigh of relief of all her life when the butterfly flaps free from the second bracer.

The second she's purified it she swims the man up to the surface. He fights her the whole way, making her even more frustrated and anxious; Chat Noir is hurt and she hasn't had a chance to use Miraculous Cure yet. She doesn't have time to figure out what in the world is going on in this man's head. No one has ever reacted to being de-akumatized like this.

She has to reluctantly hand the cursing victim off to a soaked-through Chat Noir in order to have her hands free to use Lucky Charm, but she doesn't want to. Her partner is angling his left side away from her but she can still see him limping, can still see the streaks of blood on his hands and the burns that bite around his side.

Ladybug has to dive into the Seine to retrieve her Lucky Charm (maybe one of these days they'll get lucky and Miraculous Cure will clean the Seine, they end up in the river entirely too often) and she resurfaces in time to see the victim elbow Chat Noir in his bloodied side with another snarled curse and take off running.

"What-" Ladybug starts, staring after him as she hauls herself back out of the river onto blessedly dry ground.

"I guess he-" Chat Noir tries to turn to her and staggers, going pale. Ladybug's feet bring her to his side before the rest of her quite catches up, focused on steadying her partner, who tries again to twist to hide his injured side from her even though it's far too late for that. "My lady, I'll be fine. You should concern yourself with the rest of the explosions, not your cat."

"Of course I'm concerned about you, Chat Noir," she says quietly. Her partner ducks his head rather than look directly at her so she repeats herself. "You're my partner, kitty. You'll always be my first concern." He's not wrong, either, though. It's important that she fix the damage before they do anything else, so she takes the ball and chain and hurls it into the air with one hand so that she doesn't have to let go of Chat Noir.

She marvels, sometimes, at how much their powers enhance their strength. It bleeds over into their civilian forms, too, or at least it does for her; she's had to be careful helping unload deliveries so that her parents don't see her lifting bags and boxes far heavier than she should be able to.

It means that she has no trouble flinging the heavy Lucky Charm one-handed. She can keep one arm around Chat Noir.

Some of those explosions hit buildings. Some of those buildings definitely had people in them.

Some of those explosions hit her partner, and right now she's not sure which of those she feels worse about, and she feels guilty that she's not sure. She doesn't know that either choice would be better than the other. Logic tells her that she should worry about the city and that her partner is part of the city, but too much of her wants to put her partner first, and she doesn't think that's wrong.

There are days when having the Miraculous Cure ability at all feels like too much (too much responsibility, too much potential for abuse), but right now all she feels is gratitude that it's such an all-encompassing power. It's a reset. It's a 'load from save point.'

It's a cheat code, and she always halfway worries that one day it's going to break the system.

Right now she's just grateful to have it. Brick by brick, stone by stone, buildings reform, rapid in the fading light; people start to talk in awed whispers, people who weren't standing in those buildings moments earlier.

Ladybug doesn't think too hard about that. She never can.

She does lean into Chat Noir, who's looking with furrowed brows in the direction the akuma victim took off running, but who's happily no longer burned and bleeding. There's already no sign of the victim. She wishes there was- so much was off about him- but at the same time she's not pleased that he hurt her partner again even after he was de-akumatized. As it is, Ladybug only steps away from Chat Noir when he turns to her with his arm already extended. "Hey, kitty, you sure you're okay?"

"Pound it," is all Chat Noir says in response, brightly, but his eyes are still blown wide even as their fists meet and she thinks her own expression is probably just as bad. This akuma might not have taken as long as some they've faced in the past but he'd done a lot of damage in that time and the entire fight had felt deeply wrong, besides.

Most victims are ultimately decent people who've had a bad day. Increasingly Ladybug suspects that's not true of whoever they just fought.

But he's long gone and they don't have time to track him, so she gives her best friend an exhausted smile as they knock fists. "Hawkmoth must be having a bad day."

Chat Noir returns her tired expression with one of his own. "Maybe he thinks we've been blowing him off."

"Kitty," she groans, laughing despite herself. His ring beeps and she sobers again quickly. "We should get back. Hey, can we meet early for patrol tonight?"

Even when they're both still shaking with more than the usual post-battle adrenaline, Chat Noir lights up at the prospect. His ears flicker upright; his eyes go impossibly brighter, pupils actually expanding again like a happy cat in a way that nearly startles another laugh out of her. "Of course, my Lady. Shall we go now?" He grins with his whole body, shifting from foot to foot, tail twitching.

She does laugh, even as his ring beeps again, even as an entire mess of complicated feelings at his reaction stirs in her. He's so eager to spend more time together (too eager, alarmingly eager-). She knows she's been happier spending more time around him, too. She's starting to suspect just being around each other more is good for them, though after her conversation with Tikki she doesn't know if that's a result of their powers or not. It could well just be a result of them being them.

For just a moment, Ladybug holds her breath and considers- considers just letting their Miraculous time out, right now, rather than waiting.

But they've only just finished a battle. They don't have time to get a safe distance from the vicinity. Alya's probably on her way if she's not already nearby. Marinette wants to tell Chat Noir that it's her; but she wants to tell him, not all of Paris.

"Two hours before sunset," she tells him firmly, and then launches her yo-yo, swinging wide away so that she can come in from a different direction before she meets him back by the pet store. She actually is already looking forward to not having to keep that up anymore.

She's not even halfway back when the screaming starts up again.

Chapter 17: devil's darning needle

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

"Do you need to rest, Plagg?" Adrien asks worriedly, crouched low on the roof, gazing at his kwami with a stare that frankly doesn't belong on an adolescent human. When he tilts his head his hood falls further over his face and his eyes flash from the shadows. One of the sewn-on ears flops forward in an eerie echo of his usual cat ears.

Plagg looks back at his chosen over his cheese for only a moment before dropping his attention back to the Camembert. All his warnings haven't done any good. The kid too obviously doesn't know that he's crouching like Chat Noir, that Plagg can still see Chat Noir in the tilt of his head and the curve of his claws and the phantom twitch of the tail he doesn't even currently have. Even the kid's eyes have gone impossibly greener. Plagg has only ever seen anything like this once and that once is something he doesn't often think about.

But it is different, this time. There's happiness in that head tilt and tail twitch, and they're only resting on this roof long enough to get their bearings back. The kid actually ate dinner with a family last night and he hasn't had a chance to do that in longer than Plagg's known him. Plagg meant it when he urged the kid to stay with the family he'd found, and Plagg increasingly doesn't know if he cares whether the family takes in Adrien or if they take in Chat Noir. Plagg knows, viscerally, that they're the same person anyway; it's only the humans who don't always see that.

Is that good for Adrien? Probably not. But it's better for him than where he was, and Plagg knows very well that sometimes you can only make the best of the bad choices you have left.

Plagg still isn't sure if they're doing the right thing. But Plagg is- selfish, sometimes. Most times. Adrien right now, even post-battle and still trembling a little bit with it, looks happier than he had back in the mansion. The more he leans into Chat Noir the more he seems to start recovering in ways that are more important to Plagg than whether his kid has claws or fangs or a tendency to want to chase and catch. It isn't like Plagg can judge for sure how important having or not-having certain nonhuman tendencies is, anyway; Plagg's not human, he can't know. He can make an educated guess, sure, especially based on past experiences, but he can't know. He's given Adrien plenty of warnings. He isn't going to actually stop the kid from doing what he wants.

Maybe letting Adrien stay transformed so much isn't the right answer- Plagg's sure Tikki is going to have a lot of words for him and he isn't looking forward to it- and there are a lot of things the kid is gonna have to get used to now because Plagg definitely can't reverse any more changes at this point, but. Change isn't inherently a bad thing. Staying with Ladybug's family is a lot better than dissociating on rooftops and worlds better than that stupid echoingly empty house. If he had to make all their choices over again, that isn't one that Plagg would change.

If the stupid human laws aren't on his kid's side then Plagg's going to circumvent them entirely. If Adrien's going to keep staying transformed anyway, well, the stupid human laws are for humans.

Tikki probably does think he should be refusing to let Adrien be Chat Noir so much of the time. It's not something Tikki would ever let a chosen do, but then, Tikki's never had a chosen that needs it. Plagg figures Adrien's had enough restrictions in his life. The kid knows what he's risking- it's his choice to risk it anyway; Plagg isn't about to take that away from him. The kid's also lost enough choices already. The kid's lost too much already.

This price for doing things this way has always been too high to pay before, but this time is going to be the exception if Plagg has to make sure of it himself, so he only says, "No, kid, I'll have enough charge for patrol. Besides, bakery girl is going to worry if you don't meet back up with her."

That happiness in Adrien's body language doesn't falter. If anything, he perks up more. "I forgot that she'd be worried. And her parents want to have dinner again tonight, too."

"Can't miss free food," Plagg says, internally relieved that the kid is finally accepting free food. That's not a problem that's going to resolve overnight but at least now they're started on it.

"Right." Adrien leans back, balancing with terrible feline grace, and says, "Claws out."

Just before they transform the screaming starts again.

"Oh no," Chat Noir says, straightening, ears swivelling as he tilts his head to better pinpoint a direction before bounding off.

He meets Ladybug in less than a minute as she drops down next to him, eyes wild as she runs a hand through her pigtails. Neither of them has had the chance to get very far away.

"The akuma haven't been this close together in a long time," she says, shaken.

"Do you know what this one is?" he asks, leaning hard against her when she moves in beside him and rests an absent hand on his shoulder. She brushes a a hand down his side like she's checking that he's really healed and he shuts his teeth on the loud purr that wants to escape. Now isn't the time.

Ladybug shakes her head. "No, I found you first. Let's try and get a good look before anything else, just in case."

She doesn't say it, but he's sure she means just in case this akuma, too, is inexplicably far more violent than any they've faced before. Besides, he tried his best to hide it, but she obviously knows he was caught by more than a few of the explosions in the last fight.

"Do you think something set Hawkmoth off?" he asks her in a low voice as they dart towards the commotion. He kind of feels a little dizzy, but he shakes it off to keep pace with her; it's probably just from being transformed so much. The explosions and blood loss can't have helped. "He's never done- whatever this is, before."

"I don't know," Ladybug answers, strained. "I don't-" She cuts herself off with a sudden indrawn breath.

Chat Noir gets a good glimpse of the akuma and quickly works out why. He's done a lot of research on ladybugs since they started doing this, even more since he realised he was picking up cat traits himself, and while most of it hasn't actually been helpful he had noted the list of their common predators just in case it ever came up.

The way it just has.

Most akuma are humanoid, at least a little, but not this one. He has to tilt his head back to get a better view- this is a dragonfly, but magnified, huge and threatening, and he's never seen a dragonfly this close at all much less a giant one. This is a meganeura if it's anything, an enormous ancient precursor to the modern insect. The terrible multifaceted eyes are disturbing wrought this large, and because this is an insect made of negative emotions and magic it has more than that about it that's distressing- some of those multiple limbs end in fully-formed human hands, for example. It's breathing fire, for example.

And dragonflies are one of the creatures that prey on ladybugs. His Lady is frozen beside him, breathing rushed and uneven, and she doesn't reach out quite in time to stop him as he leaps out to draw the akuma away from her, spurred to action by the way that she's gone too still.

"Hey ugly," he hollers, darting underneath where the massive insect is hovering (and it is way too large to hover, but sometimes physics just kind of goes on vacation these days, thanks Hawkmoth), skidding to a halt for a second before dancing nimbly out of the way of one of those semi-human limbs. "Cat got your tongue?"

It makes a horrendous buzzing noise and tries again to grab him. Flames fall from its mouth, but it's nearly more like it's drooling fire than it is breathing it, as though the ability was a weird afterthought. Like it was tacked on just because it was a dragonfly and Hawkmoth is, actually, far worse than Chat Noir is about bad puns.

The other akuma didn't say much, either. Even as he dodges again, Chat Noir wonders if that's because of the people Hawkmoth targeted this time around, or if something is actually going on with Hawkmoth. They're not even getting names, much less motivations. He never thought he'd miss the villain monologues but this is somehow a lot creepier.

Chat Noir twists out of the way just before the yo-yo clips and then curls around one of the dragonfly's wings. It buzzes angrily again, but wheels heavily to the side, trying to compensate with the rest of its wings and clipping him in the head with one in the process, making stars burst behind his eyes as he staggers.

There's a lot of power behind those wings, more than there should be, and he shakes his head to try to clear it (which he regrets immediately) and darts back just out of range again. The dragonfly tries to take off, dragging the yo-yo and Ladybug behind it, and Chat Noir leaps at it intending to drag it back down to earth.

That goes badly.

His aim's off and he's dizzy, possibly concussed, and he doesn't jump high enough. The akuma (disjointedly, he really wishes they'd gotten a name) snaps out one mostly-human arm and grabs him by the scruff, dangling him off the ground so that his feet flail with nothing to catch against. His arms are free but no matter how he thrashes he can't reach the akuma from this angle.

He's not technically in all that much more danger than he already was, but he can't help it- his mind goes under in a rush of blind panic.

He's been scruffed before, but somehow it's so much worse this time. He tries instinctively to scratch and twist and then panics even worse when he can't reach anything to scratch at, fear and alarm spiraling higher and out of control as he yelps. He's too large to be picked up like this and it hurts as he strains to get free again. He can't help the panicked yowl he lets out, twisting and flailing and he can't get loose, he can't get- where's Ladybug, he tries to call for her but the noise he makes is too wild and inhuman-

She'd let go to try and swing for a higher vantage point, somewhere that she could maybe jump down onto the dragonfly from, but Ladybug wrenches back around at the sound she hears from Chat Noir, her heart already pounding in instinctive response to his obvious fear.

He's been scruffed before- Rogercop had grabbed him while she was still falling, and he'd had no problem throwing his baton after her- but that was a long time ago now, before their other selves had settled in their bones. Now, she freezes up involuntarily at seeing a dragonfly bigger than them both, the fight-or-flight instincts she'd thought had long since gone rusty at best abruptly lighting up beneath her skin; now, Chat Noir is flailing, eyes wide and panicked, and gasping, and getting nowhere; he's trying to angle his claws for an attack but he can't reach anything, and she's seen him scared before but not in this awful animal-panic way that too closely mirrors what she felt when they first saw the akuma, and she's still kind of panicking too, maybe.

Their eyes meet. She doesn't know what he sees in hers, but his are almost blank with terror, and that's enough to make her lurch forward again, desperate to free her partner.

Out of nowhere, a flowerpot falls on the dragonfly akuma's head.

The akuma screeches and flaps heavily once and drops Chat Noir, and Ladybug snaps out her yo-yo while her brain is still on autopilot to drag her partner back to her side. He falls into her with a wheeze and she automatically wraps an arm around him for the third time today before she scans the higher levels of the buildings around them again, on alert, but acutely aware of the way he's clinging to her and she's clinging to him. He's panting and burrowing into her side and her only objection is that she can't do the same thing back. Today had started out so well, too.

When she drops her gaze from the roofs to the balconies, she sees Alya.

Alya, who is whooping and throwing more flowerpots and rocks, and Nino, who doesn't like it when Alya goes after akuma alone and who is also throwing rocks, and, bafflingly, Rose and Juleka, who are throwing- she's pretty sure Juleka just threw a small potted tree, actually, and what are-

"The stadium, Ladybug!" Alya shouts down at her, words nearly whipped away by the dragonfly's wings as it rises higher into the air again. Last week Ladybug might have struggled to hear Alya over the rising wind, but not now. "Get it to the stadium- close the roof!"

Chat Noir shakes himself, hard, which shakes Ladybug too with how tightly she's still holding him. She's honestly not sure she can let go of him just yet. She knows she doesn't want to.

"The stadium," he says, still a little breathless, and coughs. His voice is rough- the sounds he'd been making aren't meant for a human throat. "Alya said- get to the stadium, close it."

It takes her a moment to realise he doesn't know she heard Alya, but now isn't the time to explain. "Okay- I was trying to get on top of it- remember the dragon?"

He turns his head and blinks at her, slowly, then grins. It only barely touches his eyes, but it's a step away from that all-encompassing terror, and it helps to steady her as well.

Notes:

scruffing a cat: not inherently bad

picking up a full grown cat by the scruff: don't do that.

picking up a catboy by the scruff: not a great idea!

Chapter 18: snapdragon

Notes:

you know how the last chapter was a little shorter? this chapter is why.

Chapter Text

Ladybug ends up having to lasso the dragonfly again while Chat Noir goes scrambling up the side of a building. She sees Nino and Rose each offer him a hand as Alya and Juleka keep the dragonfly down in the street with her by continuing to pitch everything they can get their hands on at it. At one point an entire set of deck furniture goes flying by, which is probably courtesy of Alya.

She hasn't been hanging out with Alya as much recently outside of their combined efforts to figure out why no one's heard from Adrien. She's been too caught up with everything that's been going on with Chat Noir, and she's been letting her worry for Adrien overshadow almost everything else at school, so she has no idea why her friends are up on someone's balcony throwing things at an akuma but she's more grateful for them than she can put into words.

Lassoing the dragonfly goes a lot smoother this time, with rocks and flowers hitting it from above whenever it tries to twist in another direction, and she's pretty sure Rose starts throwing someone's silverware at some point. Ladybug manages to catch both its- forelimbs, she guesses, Hawkmoth doesn't usually go for actual eldritch horror but oh she is going to have nightmares about this one- both its forelimbs with her yo-yo and the rain of debris from above stops long enough for Chat Noir to pounce down onto its back.

"Need a lift, my Lady?" he yells back over his shoulder. She can see from here that his pupils are still blown a little wide, and not with happiness this time.

"Wouldn't mind a hand up," she shouts back, reeling in the line so that the confused akuma hovers closer to the ground. Chat Noir extends his baton and she grabs on long enough for him to pull her onto the dragonfly, behind him.

It's nothing like riding Fang was.

Fang's flight had been relatively smooth, for a mythical creature; they'd been able to stand up and keep their balance, if only because they both tend towards supernatural balance when they're transformed. This akuma's flight is a wild, ferociously fast spiraling nightmare as it kites to either side and swoops and dives; they're far enough forward that the wings aren't clipping her in the head with each beat but the wind from their rapidfire beating threatens her grip, even after she throws her arms around Chat Noir, who's desperately clinging to the carapace with all his claws out in turn. Normally they make an effort not to cause any actual injuries to an akuma victim but she thinks his claws might be all that's keeping them anchored.

She's… starting to hope that this akuma was actually a pet, like Fang, because this day is bizarre enough without thinking too hard about the both of them riding a person to the stadium like the world's most horrifying motorcycle. Even that weak hope is creepier than she'd like. And- sure, Fang had gotten akumatized along with his owner, but they don't really have any evidence that Hawkmoth can't just akumatize animals sometimes. He akumatized Mr. Pigeon; he akumatized Markov; he akumatized an infant, she refuses to consider him any kind of actual strategist.

There's also the possibility that she's right but the dragonfly's owner is akumatized elsewhere. She really does not want that to be the case. She really, really does not want that to be the case.

Steering does not go well.

Once they were both in position, Ladybug had immediately reeled in the yo-yo and then flung it back out in a wide arc, looping around and beneath the dragonfly ahead of them, so that in theory she and Chat Noir have reins. In theory. In practice, they're shortly very lucky they don't both have concussions.

She's the one holding their makeshift reins, but she's holding tightly on to Chat Noir and he's the one who can see where they're actually going. That part's not as bad as it might be for anybody less attuned to each other than they are- it's easy enough to read the shift of each other's bodies and lean into the direction they want- but it's not as though their ride plans on cooperating, either, and they're shortly a lot higher in the air than she'd like as the dragonfly darts left and right at alarming speeds.

"Can you see anything the akuma could be in?" she says close to Chat Noir's ear, thankfully remembering at the last second not to shout.

He shakes his head, his hair brushing against her face, and calls back, "No, I can't see- any belongings, actually." He jerks back suddenly and she pulls on the makeshift reins in reaction, sending them higher again, and he says quietly and apparently to himself, "We're too high up."

"I can get us down," Ladybug replies immediately, and then hopes he doesn't notice how easily she'd heard him, and then remembers that it doesn't matter if he did. It's a lot easier to explain Ladybug's sudden hearing improvement than it is Marinette's. "If you keep us from falling off, I can get us down." She would really like to get down. They've closed in on their destination far, far faster than she'd expected; the akuma doesn't seem all that clever but it is fast.

"Okay," Chat Noir says, and crouches lower, clearly intuiting what she's about to do.

Ladybug leans into him, too, so that they're both pressed as flat as possible, and locks her knees as he kicks back and out to hook his legs just behind hers so that when she releases the yo-yo and they spiral briefly out of control they're kept in place by the weight of each other's bodies. It's not terribly comfortable, and it's terrifyingly far from secure, but it's only moments before she's launching her yo-yo again; they're close enough to the stadium now that she can actually snag one of the railings near the top.

One-handed, she presses lightly on Chat Noir's back in warning, just above his baton, then loops his tail around her waist so she can use both hands to start reeling them in towards the stadium. She's more cautious than she might have been in the past- belt or not, she doesn't know how much more sensitive his tail might be now. Magic is confusing.

"I found something," he says, and she wouldn't hear him at all if her hearing hadn't picked up along with his. "There's a… ribbon or a choker or something around its neck."

"That has to be the akuma," she says, scanning around their surroundings. "Maybe we can end this quickly- can you get it off?"

"It's tied on pretty tightly, I'm not sure," he says.

Ladybug stares at him, despite knowing he can't see it. "Chat Noir. Use your claws." She shakes him a little. "Are you a witch or aren't you, Hermione?"

"Hey, I resent that," he says, voice strained but steadying. "Give Hermione a break, it was a high stress situation. Deadly plants are a big deal and you know what, realistically, I just realised we're going to run into them eventually."

She's groaning at the thought that he's probably right about that when the dragonfly twists again. This time, it's too much torque and they're at a worse angle; when Chat Noir starts to slide she goes down with him, his tail still tight around her waist, and when he tries to reach his baton to slow or stop their fall he fumbles at the unaccustomed angle and it goes flying far off to the side, leaving them to hit the ground hard.

"Oh that's not good," Ladybug gasps, starting to roll off him, brought up short by the reminder that she's effectively tied them together. Before she can sort that out Chat Noir gasps and grabs her shoulders to roll them both, just in time to dodge as the massive insect launches its lower jaw at them. Fire drools from it, scorching the ground where they were a moment ago as the jaw retracts, and that is not something Ladybug ever needed to see at this scale or, really, at all. A moment later Chat Noir yanks his tail free and they scramble to their feet.

And then they have to scramble for shelter, because the dragonfly is still tethered in place by the yo-yo's unbreakable string, but it's bucking and veering wildly and kicking up wind and debris as it buzzes again and feebly spits fire.

Crouched in the shadows at the side of the stadium, Chat Noir pants, "Any ideas, LB?"

"Can you get the roof closed while I call Lucky Charm?" she asks him, but reluctantly, because his terror is still fresh in her mind and her terror is still simmering just below the surface, but they're running out of options.

He straightens enough to give her a bow and a few more of the shadows in his eyes are chased away. "Of course, my Lady."

Watching him bound away wrenches at something deep in her chest, but she can't afford to let that interfere with the fight.

"Lucky Charm!" she yells, letting herself pour all the fear and anxiety of the past few hours (if it's even been that long) into the shout, and reaches out to catch her materializing Charm.

And stares.

"A playground parachute?" she says, a little helplessly, because that's all the ladybug patterned cloth could be. As long as they've been doing this she still can't help but be surprised at how erratic her powers tend to be.

Above her, the stadium begins to close.

Her partner reappears at her side- a maneuver that likely wouldn't go well for anyone else, but she's too attuned to his presence for her startle reflex to kick in. He still doesn't have his baton so either it's landed somewhere obscure or he's just as uneasy about leaving her alone as she is him.

He blinks down at her Lucky Charm. "What is that?"

She blinks back at him, because as playful as he usually is she'd have expected him to recognise it on sight. "It's a playground parachute. But I don't understand, I don't see how we can use it with only two people-"

That's when there's a sudden upswelling of noise at the stadium entrance.

They whirl around as one, pressing up against each other's backs on instinct, Chat Noir facing the still-thrashing akuma while Ladybug assesses the new threat.

Which is, somehow, against all odds, Alya again, who stumbles to a halt and bends over, hands on her knees as she catches her breath.

Nino spills in behind her, equally out of breath, but they've traded Rose and Juleka for Kim and Alix, and they all have expressions varying from determined to exasperated, and all four of them abruptly light up in black-spotted red in Ladybug's vision. She turns her head and Chat Noir's lighting up as well, and the parachute, and the dragonfly's choker.

Ladybug almost chokes a little, herself. Even her powers are urging them to seek outside help, now.

(The akuma is fast. Alya and Nino must have been sprinting after them the whole way here, and even then they must have found shortcuts).

Then she marshals herself, and looks up at their unlooked-for aid, and summons a grin that probably has more of an edge to it than she intends. "I don't suppose you all want to play a game?"

"I knew I wouldn't regret this," Alix breathes, absolutely radiating delight.

Alya straightens up, puts her hands on her hips and grins. "Just tell us what to do, Ladybug!"

Because she can hardly turn their help away now, Ladybug snaps out the parachute and says, "Everyone circle up!"

"Me too, my Lady?" Chat Noir says, arching towards her.

She can't help but grin at him. "Not you, Chaton. You're jumping in the middle."

He laughs, and by now the shadows are near gone from his expression entirely, even though she feels a pang at the thought that she's about to throw him right back at the source of them.

They center themselves below the dragonfly, who still shows no sign of landing, and who can't get any higher up with the roof closed. Chat Noir goes tumbling into the center of the cloth happily. With five of them spread out around the sides there's more than enough people to build up a momentum as they start flapping the massive playground parachute up and down- somewhat selfishly, Ladybug was sure to position herself between Alya and Nino as they get ready to launch Chat Noir.

She's honestly not sure if it's Alya or Alix who starts the chant as they build up momentum.

"Frere jacques, frere jacques, dor-mez vous-" The ryhthm keeps them all moving in tandem, even though Kim is clearly struggling not to use more force than everyone but Ladybug herself. Alya had nudged him into staying roughly across from Ladybug so at least they don't have one side flying higher than the other on every swing.

Crouched on all fours in the middle and bouncing slightly with each throw as their speed builds, Chat Noir's tail weaves slowly back and forth as he looks thrilled, which helps assuage her guilt at literally throwing him right back into the fray.

"Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing-" Kim yells more than sings, grinning goofily, and they all go still for less than a second as they get ready for a final heave. "- ding ding DONG!"

Chat Noir launches high into the air, bypassing the startled akuma entirely, only to execute a flawless acrobatic roll and pounce back down on the dragonfly. This time, he must slice through the ribbon, because seconds later Ladybug's shout has everyone hastily raising the parachute again to catch her partner and the-

-cat.

The akuma is legitimately a cat.

"Okay," Alya says, blinking. "Didn't see that coming."

"Me neither," Ladybug says weakly, before raising her voice. "You okay, Chat Noir?"

Chat Noir pops up from the center of the playground parachute, looking a little dazed but otherwise unharmed. "LB. It's a cat!"

"Yeah, man," Kim says, dropping his side to lean over and offer the hero a hand up. Chat Noir takes it and scrambles off of the parachute, looking no less dazed. "Friend of yours?"

"Uh, maybe?" Chat Noir says, shrugging and grinning sheepishly.

Ladybug shakes her head, slowly, and is all too aware both that her earrings are beeping and that she can hardly leave the situation like this. "Can you all help me with one last throw?"

Cat cradled carefully, Chat Noir gingerly grabs a parachute side when the others instantly make room for him.

"Ready?" Alix roars, gleeful.

"Ready," Ladybug shouts back, because everyone's enthusiasm is proving infectious. It's too bad it's too impractical and unsafe to have this much help on a regular basis- too often, when their classmates fight akuma, someone ends up hurt. All too often nearly everyone ends up hurt.

(She won't forget Timebreaker any time soon, if she ever does. She tries hard not to look over at Alix, grinning and flush with victory. It's not Alix's fault).

As they send the parachute skyward, six different voices call out in a roaring chorus, "Miraculous Ladybug!"

They have, miraculously, caused very little damage to the stadium itself, so it's actually a little weird to see the ladybug light show swarm with so little visible effect. A dozen stinging cuts and bruises she'd only been half aware of heal over, and she sees Chat Noir relax as well, but that's about it. Even Chat Noir's baton is still missing, presumably because it fell rather than sustaining actual damage; by contrast her yo-yo is back on her hip.

"Hey, kitty," she says, making a beeline for him now that there's no parachute in the way. "Hold onto the cat for a minute? I'll go grab your baton for you."

His eyes flick to her earrings and back, but he nods, shifting the cat in his arms slightly. "Got it."

Their time limits are fairly common knowledge, if not the actual reason behind them; no one comments on her darting out of sight to fetch Chat Noir's baton.

It doesn't take too long to find his weapon, confirming her impression that he'd been too eager to get back to her side. She might need to talk to him about that, actually, he shouldn't be running back into battle unarmed.

(She'd technically been unarmed too but she tries to ignore that).

It only takes a few moments longer for Tikki to recharge and her to retransform. She'd packed so many cookies to try and get Chat Noir to eat more, even if it was just a few of them at a time over the course of the day, but it's turning out to be a good thing for an entirely different reason.

"You sure you're okay to transform again, Tikki?" she asks anxiously, scanning the area on habit. She can hear her friends, but there's no sign of anyone else; the stadium has been the site of so many attacks that it was never approved as an akuma shelter.

She will never understand how their school slipped through that process.

"It's alright, Marinette," Tikki assures her, in between bites. "You need the breather more than me, and I think you'd rather be with Chat Noir and the others right now. Am I right?" The kwami smiles up at her.

Marinette smiles back. "Thanks for always being so understanding, Tikki."

When she rejoins the group (and it's no less strange to have a group to rejoin), they're all seated on the ground in a circle, like the parachute has settled the idea of children's games in everyone's head. She has to repress the briefest urge to see what would happen if she started playing duck-duck-goose with them.

Chat Noir must be rubbing off on her.

Kim spots her first and waves her over. "Hey, Ladybeetle! Chat Noir says he knows this cat!"

That startles a laugh out of her as she drops down next to Chat Noir, where they've left a space open for her. It's strange to be staying around the scene of an attack but everyone looks so comfortable, even Chat Noir, that she can't bear to leave right away. She can't help but join them. "Do you know a lot of local cats, kitty?"

He grins at her sheepishly, but he's folding the new cat into his arms as he does it, protectively, and she has to stop and catch her breath a moment at the sight of him so carefully cradling a cat- a black cat, of course it is- in his arms, hooking his chin over the stunned creature's head. The red ribbon's restored and she can see now that it's actually a collar. "Of course I do. I'm the cat's meow."

"Kitty," she says again, still laughing, and runs a warm gaze over the way her friends are lounging all around them, apparently more than happy to indulge her partner. Alix is picking blades of grass from the ground and trying to shove them in Kim's hood without him noticing, which can't be good for the turf, and Alya has her phone back out and Nino is fiddling absently with his bracelets. "How do you know this cat?"

Chat Noir curls further over the cat in his arms, running one hand gently down its back, and says, "She's the cat from the alleyway, when we fought Shelter. I'd assumed she got adopted."

"Whoa, really?" Alya says, bracing herself against Nino's knee with one hand to lean forward. "You can tell?"

"Huh," Ladybug says, curious herself, ducking her head to examine the cat more closely. "You're sure?"

"Positive," Chat Noir affirms, twisting to hold one hand still some distance from the cat's face. The cat, already making no attempt to get out of his arms, sniffs carefully and then slowly headbutts him. Chat Noir grins. "Yeah, it's definitely her."

"What do her tags says?" Nino asks curiously. "If she's from the shelter, I mean."

Chat Noir twists his head down to check, gently lifting the tag to read it. "This one's a microchip tag, but this one says, uh-" His ears flatten, but only for a moment. "Please adopt me."

Settling more firmly against Chat Noir, the cat starts to purr. Chat Noir tilts his head and purrs back and okay, Ladybug can admit that's adorable. Now she wishes she'd run into him sooner when they'd been helping at the animal shelter. She's going to have to go back there and check whether anyone has any photos from that day. Or videos. Or both. And if they do have them, then if they're wise they'll be using them for their next PR campaign; there's just something about the sight of Chat Noir holding a cat that inspires a warm fuzzy feeling.

Of course, it's possible some of that is because he's her partner.

It's possible. But looking at the thrilled faces of her classmates, she doesn't think that's all it is.

"I am- not asking why you're sure," Ladybug decides carefully. "But why was she an akuma?"

Chat Noir shrugs, looking down at the cat. His tail flicks, but weakly. "Guess she didn't get adopted after all."

Ladybug's heart sinks, the warm feeling in her chest turning abruptly cold.

"Black cats don't, sometimes," Chat Noir adds, not looking at anyone. "Bad luck."

Alix stops her assault on Kim's clothing long enough to make a face. "Aw, man. That sucks. Look how sweet she is!"

At least for most cats that's only a superstition. Her poor kitty is a literal embodiment of bad luck. Maybe he wouldn't be living on her chaise lounge, otherwise.

Ladybug shifts more into her partner's side, careful not to disturb the cat in his lap, and wraps an arm around him. She doesn't forget that they aren't alone, or even that Alya has her phone out, but she refuses to be self-conscious about this. She refuses to let Chat Noir ever think that she doesn't want to be near him. He leans into her and purrs louder, and when he does the cat purrs louder too. "She needs a name, you know."

Chat Noir looks at her, ears pinning slowly back again. "Ladybug, I can't keep her."

"Maybe I can," Ladybug suggests, pulling both of them closer. She does need a reason to give her other friends about why her room suddenly has a scratching post and cat toys, after all. She's not hiding him- she won't do that to him- but she also knows better than to tell Alya that Chat Noir's living with her. She'd never hear the end of it and neither would he. It's bad enough that Alya's here and that the aspiring reporter has probably noticed by now that they're both acting differently than usual, there's no need to hand her compromising information.

The house is separated enough from the bakery, and her room farthest away besides, that keeping the cat might not even be an issue providing her parents agree.

She's pretty sure after the night before that her parents will take one look at the way Chat Noir is hugging the cat close, his eyes gone soft with concern and affection, and agree on the spot.

"She'd be a link to your identity," Chat Noir argues, even as the cat headbutts him again and he moves to let her rub her chin along his hand, and Ladybug abruptly realises how right he is. After all, Alya and Nino are here, and she's had Alix over before, too. She doesn't know how well their protective magic can hold up to a hint like that.

"He's right, Ladybug," Nino says, slowly. "Maybe- maybe one of us can keep her? I mean I guess that's not really fair to you guys, but like. At least you'd know she has a home?"

Ladybug also realises, slowly, that once they hand off the cat (if they hand off the cat) neither one of them has to transform urgently. If they leave the others behind she can move up the timeline on her confession the way she's beginning to think she should have done from the start.

Chat Noir's still purring, quietly, and he's relaxed into her as he grins at the ring of her classmates.

He's only seen her family and his kwami for days. She doesn't want to leave the others just yet.

"Ladybug!" Alya stage-whispers, grinning, and nods towards Chat Noir and the also purring cat. "Chat Noir." She looks between them, puts her hands on her hips, and says to Chat Noir, "Please tell me I can take a picture?"

"That's your question?" Ladybug says, unable to keep the amusement from her voice in spite of herself.

"Ladybug," Alya says, and gestures widely to Chat Noir and his new furry friend. "Come on."

"I think it should be everyone's question," Alix says, grinning, and holds up her hand in time for Kim to fistbump her. It jostles Kim's hood and blades of grass go fluttering out.

Ladybug cannot fathom how or why this group's composition changed on the way here but it's worth it for the flush she can see spreading under Chat Noir's mask.

"Hey, actually, where are the other girls?" Chat Noir asks even as she thinks it, looking around at everyone. "The ones that were helping up on the balcony."

"Rose and Juleka?" Alya shrugs at him. "They had dinner reservations, and the restaurant only got approved for a temporary akuma shelter permit like last week and those never last, so they didn't want to reschedule."

"Yeah, not everyone spends their dates chasing akuma," Nino says, side-eying her.

Alya huffs. "It was so worth it and you know it. Now come on, this is the best photo op!" She gestures at Chat Noir.

"She does kind of have a point, dude," Nino says, turning back to beam at them. "That is unfairly cute. Like, I couldn't be that cute if I tried." Alya elbows him. He elbows her back without missing a beat.

"It's up to him," Ladybug says, leaning into her partner with a shrug.

Chat Noir glances up. "Yeah, of course. This little lady still needs a home, though."

"Do not name your cat after me," Ladybug tells him.

"She isn't my-"

The cat takes that moment to twist around in Chat Noir's arms again and grab his forearm with both front paws, beginning to aggressively groom his wrist as best as possible through the leather. Chat Noir looks as though he has mixed feelings about this development.

"I think she's adopted you, Chat Noir," Alya teases, even as she starts taking pictures. She keeps talking even as she makes sure to get multiple angles. "Hey, Ladybug, I actually do have a question I've never gotten to ask. What happens if you use a Lucky Charm, like, now?" She nods at Kim and Alix. "Like, would it fix the damage Alix is doing?"

"Hey," Alix says.

"You really kind of did, dude," Nino tells her apologetically.

"Oh, I-" Ladybug blinks. "I actually shouldn't use it outside of an attack."

"Come on," Kim wheedles. "Aren't you curious? Wouldn't it be worth it just this once?"

She thinks about the time she had used the Lucky Charm outside of battle. Tikki had warned her then not to use it for petty reasons, and she'd taken that warning to heart. Besides that, if she uses it she'll have to recharge again before she can have that chat with her partner. But…

She looks around the circle, at the friends who'd shown up out of the blue and of their own volition to help. She doesn't know how to thank them for what they've done today. This might not be a petty reason. It isn't like she can ask Tikki now.

And Chat Noir hasn't had this much attention in days.

"All right," she relents, reluctantly. They've earned this, really, she reassures herself. "You really want to see what happens?"

"Are you kidding me?" Alix enthuses, starting to lean across the circle into their space (did everyone move closer at some point?) but backing off when the cat starts to go tense. "Of course we do! Hey, Kim, any bets?"

"A bazooka," Kim declares. "No, wait, a super soaker. No, a giant net!" He goes still for a moment, then announces dreamily, "A fighter jet."

"You know the fight's over, right?" Alya asks him wryly.

"Let a dude hope," Kim tells her solemnly.

Shaking her head and smiling a little, Ladybug tosses her yo-yo with her free hand and calls, "Lucky Charm!" maybe a little more theatrically than necessary. But, well, it's not often that she has reason to use her power without the usual stress of an akuma, and it's even rarer that she has an appreciative audience outside of Chat Noir. She might be showing off a little.

When the ribbon drops into her hands, complete with a red spotted bell, the resulting squeal from her friends makes Chat Noir's ears go back and the stray cat's tail bush out.

"I guess we are supposed to keep the cat," she tells Chat Noir wryly.

He only blinks back at her, slowly.

"You should put it on her," Kim urges, crowding close again, but quickly stopping when the stray cat shifts uncomfortably. "Come on, the cat's clearly yours now."

"I have to use the Lucky Charm," Ladybug reminds him. "We need to get her back to where she came from, besides."

And Chat Noir flinches.

She feels it, she doesn't actually see him flinch, but they're still sitting close together and a shudder runs through his whole body, all the way down to his tail as it flicks against her crossed legs.

She forces herself not to outwardly react in front of their audience, but even as she's tossing the ribbon lightly into the air she finds herself running through all Chat Noir's recent reactions in her head.

No one can make Chat Noir go back to wherever he'd run from when he doesn't want to go, but she still thinks he's their age. He could be made to go back as a civilian. She doesn't know his situation; he might well be trapped in a way that he can't be as Chat Noir.

No wonder Plagg hadn't seemed that focused on the transformations. Ladybug will willingly take on every one of his feline traits herself if it keeps her cat out of the hands of whoever's been hurting him so badly for so long.

Miraculous Cure washes over them and restores the carnage Alix has done to the grass. With nothing else left to fix, the ladybugs don't last long, but her friends look overjoyed as they all tilt their heads back to watch. Kim even flops all the way over onto his back.

"We really do have to go now," Ladybug tells her gathered classmates reluctantly as the light fades. "Thank you, for your help. Actually-" She hesitates, but she's beginning to think she really can't put this off any longer. "Can you take the cat for us? The shelter that was on TV for that akuma a while back should be able to take her again, especially if you tell them we sent you."

"You sure, dudes?" Nino asks, even as Chat Noir gets up to try and pass him the cat- try, because the cat doesn't want to let go of Chat Noir, and Chat Noir doesn't seem all that happy with the prospect of letting go of her, either.

When Nino fumbles, he presses his hand to Chat Noir's shoulder, and Ladybug sees the way her partner arches into that touch as his eyes go half-lidded again. Nino doesn't miss it either, from the wide-eyed look of alarm he gives Ladybug.

It's only Nino that sees it- he was quick to shift to block Alya's view the second he noticed, and no one else is at the right angle to notice even if Nino hadn't instantly moved to block anyone else's line of sight.

Nino's eyes flicker between Chat Noir and Ladybug. When she can only give him a sad smile, unwilling to say anything in front of so many people, Nino's expression firms up and he wraps both arms around her partner in a solid hug.

Ladybug's eyes sting. Nino's always been a better friend than she deserves.

Chat Noir goes a little stiff at first, but then hesitantly hugs back with one arm, keeping the cat close to his chest. It's a long moment before Nino draws away and by then Chat Noir's managed to shift the stray cat to the other boy's arms.

"Thanks for saving everyone, dude," Nino says softly, his hands lingering on Chat Noir's shoulders.

Ladybug's suddenly very aware that Alya took the opportunity to take a photo of her boyfriend hugging Chat Noir, but, well, Nino was sure to hide her partner's face, and she can't really blame Alya for that one, anyway. She's not entirely certain what she'd be willing to do herself for a picture of Adrien hugging Chat Noir.

"Please keep the cat safe for us, Nino," Ladybug tells him seriously, moving to stand alongside her partner again, feeling him lean into her side the way that's become his habit lately as she comes close. She leans back against him and locks eyes with Nino. "We have to get going, but before we do, did you all follow us for a reason?"

Alya looks at her like she's gone crazy. "Well, yeah. Those akuma were insane, we wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Oh," Chat Noir breathes, and Ladybug feels a little off-balance herself. She knows she has people who worry about her as Marinette, it would be hard not to know, and Alya is one of those people; it's different to have a friend look at Ladybug and Chat Noir and ask sincerely if they're okay. They're superheroes, most people just assume that they are okay.

These four had followed them and leapt right into battle at their sides, and Rose and Juleka had helped them make it this far. She's not sure what she's ever done to deserve her classmates.

She smiles at them all, feeling warmed right through. "Yeah, we're- we're all right now, thanks."

"You sure, dude?" Nino says, looking at Chat Noir with open concern.

His tail flicks as he beams at Nino. "I am now."

"Good," Nino says, looking relieved, and then he looks like he has more to say but that's when everyone's phones go off at once.

Ladybug and Chat Noir both flinch and draw closer to each other- their overextended battle instincts don't distinguish well between alarming sudden noises and safe sudden noises. They should take the distraction to leave before her earrings time out again but Ladybug can't help but wonder what alert they're all getting. It isn't like she can check her own phone, and she's sure that Chat Noir no longer has any phone except his communicator. A line of communication that only connects him to her isn't terribly helpful these days.

Nino fumbles his phone with one hand and almost drops it, eyes going wide, and Alya curses, long and low.

"Whoa," Alix says, before offering her phone to Ladybug, probably in response to the confusion she's sure shows on her face.

She knows immediately why Nino nearly dropped his phone. It's clear it was a mass text, originating from Max, who's taken up the task of trying to keep their whole class on the same page regarding akuma alerts and current events- Ladybug's pretty sure by now that Max and the Ladyblog have grown to be more accurate than Paris' actual sanctioned akuma alert system- but Alix's phone is displaying a link to a news website.

There's the usual side scroll about the constantly fluctuating state of the still-evolving akuma laws, but that's very obviously not the article Max has drawn everyone's attention to. In the center of the page, in huge bold type, the 'breaking news' headline reads, "Adrien Agreste- MISSING?"

Chapter 19: chat chat

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Chat Noir stops breathing when Nino hands him his phone and he sees the headline everyone's staring at.

He forces himself to start breathing again before anyone can notice, but-

He hadn't expected this. Stupid of him, in retrospect, but it's been at least a week. It might have been longer; without school, without anything to really keep track of days passing, he's not actually sure. After the first few days he'd resigned himself to the fact that no one had bothered to report him missing. He'd even been relieved, in a lot of ways, because no missing persons report means fewer people out looking for him, means fewer people to avoid.

He wonders what it was that finally made his father admit that he was gone.

It's only when he tries to scan the article for more details that he realises how badly he's starting to shake. He regrets handing the cat over to Nino now, because holding her again would probably go a long way towards helping him calm down. He'd hug Nino again if it wouldn't be way too suspicious.

He appreciates that Nino hugged him in the first place. He hadn't expected it, but he appreciates it. Nino's not friends with Chat Noir like he is with Adrien, but he's missed Nino more than almost anyone else and it had been such a relief. As delighted as he is over everyone's enthusiasm to help with the Lucky Charm he thinks he needed that hug.

The Lucky Charm had been fantastic, though. After the terror of the last two fights he hadn't expected a Charm that was that much fun, and he's never expected so much help to arrive right on time. Even Ladybug's not usually that lucky.

All of their classmates here have been amazing, if entirely too willing to leap into a fight against a supervillain. He already knew that about Alya but he hadn't known before just how many of their classmates are all too eager to join in. They're his only experience with having classmates at all, but he's pretty sure their levels of interest and teamwork are unusual. They've definitely all gotten unusually invested in helping to protect their city. They're also getting more creative about it than most of the civilians are, although that might be a side effect from just how many times they specifically have been ground zero for akuma attacks now.

Case in point- Chat Noir's never seen the chat app Nino's signed in on before. Max appears to be running it with Markov's help and it's pretty clearly tailored to their class. He thinks Max must have programmed it for them, and only recently, because it seems to still be missing a couple of class members besides himself; when he clicks back to it from the news site the app is flooding with messages in different distinct colours, which would make it relatively easy to tell who's adding what to the conversation if he could only recognise all the different names they're using. The only restrictions on what anyone can call themselves seem arbitrary at best and there are a lot of people involved.

Someone using the name royalBeholder who's claimed an obnoxiously bright gold is dominating the current conversation, and that's pretty obviously Chloe; she's arguing with a flagrantlyFlowerful in pale pink and a mirroredMoodring in dark purple. Other colours appear and vanish, but those three seem to be the most prominent for the moment.

This app didn't exist when he left. Max must have designed it and then uploaded it to everyone's phones immediately because nearly their entire class appears to be on it. Nino himself is signed on in red as descendingPaladin.

Actually, he's pretty sure one of the people still missing is Marinette. That makes him think it's a very recent development, because he knows exactly why Marinette's been busy the past few days, but if it had been earlier in the week she'd definitely be using this by now.

His eyes flick up to the chat heading on a half-formed hunch. Sure enough, the title text is 'where in the world is adrien agreste,' and the sucking black hollow that's been taking over his chest since he first saw the news headline fills in with a rush of gratitude.

Maybe his father hasn't cared, but his classmates- his friends- have.

"I knew it," Alya's saying even now, glaring at her phone, low and fierce and angry. "I knew it, Mari was right. He's never been in New York at all."

"The chances of finding someone again start dropping really fast after, like, the first three days," Nino says, sounding sick as he shifts the cat in his arms and not meeting anyone's eyes.

(Chat Noir can't help but look sharply at him, though, because that sounds like- that sounds like Nino's looked that up before).

"You don't think- you don't think someone, like, took him, do you?" Kim says, crowding in on everyone else worriedly. His phone's out too but he's looking at the one in Ladybug's hands instead. "I mean- remember what his dad was like on Christmas?"

"Yeah," Alya mutters, gnawing on her lip furiously. "Yeah, I do. And you know what?" She scowls and waves her phone before typing something into it rapidly, pressing the buttons with too much force. The chat chimes repeatedly on Kim's phone; evidently he's the only one who hasn't silenced it. "There's no way his dad didn't know he was missing this whole time."

"But he didn't report it," Nino says, still sounding ill. "Why wouldn't he- last time his assistant and Adrien's bodyguard contacted all of us in like an hour, why wouldn't-"

"Blackmail?" Kim offers, leaning back on his heels and passing his phone to Alix, who starts scrolling immediately. Like Alya she jumps right into the chat. That's probably confusing to everyone else involved when she's typing from Kim's phone. "Like, a don't tell anyone, or else, kind of thing. He thought Adrien got kidnapped before, maybe this time he actually did."

Chat Noir wants to reassure them but- he can't. He can't say anything right now. He didn't mean to freak out all his friends this badly, and while he's still fighting with what it means to him that they are this worried, he definitely never wanted them to think he'd been kidnapped. This is the first he's even heard that anyone had thought that before. It explains a lot about that day that he hasn't really been willing to stop and think about before.

The only difference between then and now is that his father would have known that no one took Adrien away this time. Evidently, he cares more about interference with his idea of parenting than he does about actually knowing where Adrien is.

Chat Noir had thought he was already about as bitterly conflicted as he could be about the clear fact that his father hasn't been making any real attempt to find him, but apparently he can still feel worse about it.

Something must show in his face or his body language for a moment. Ladybug shifts just enough to grab his free hand and squeeze and doesn't relax until he presses back.

Alya, still scowling at her phone screen, interrupts Nino's squeak of distress with, "Or maybe he ran away."

"Yeah, 'cause remember how quick his dad freaked out on Christmas?" Alix taps Kim's phone screen. "His dad still hasn't reported it this time. His bodyguard did."

"Which means it's not blackmail, but Gabriel still didn't want anyone to know." Alya leans over to show Nino the relevant part of the article even as Chat Noir clicks back through the link again and finds it on Nino's phone. Even through the current tangled mess of his emotions, he finds room to be disappointed that they don't actually give the Gorilla's name. "And that doesn't make sense unless he's hiding something."

"Yeah, like what a shitty dad he is," Nino mutters, too quiet for human hearing as his shoulders hunch up around his ears, and Chat Noir fights not to snap his gaze over to him. He knows Nino doesn't get along with his father, but there was real venom in that comment, a lot of it.

And from the way she stiffens slightly, Ladybug heard him, too. Chat Noir doesn't know how to feel about that.

He tries to hand Nino back his phone, but although Nino takes it he's sure to keep the phone angled between them so that they can both read the screen. Nino thumbs back to the chat app right away. The golden text still overwhelms everything else, followed closely by the pink and purple, but flashes of grey and orange and brick red are beginning to break through as well. From the timing and vehemency Chat Noir thinks the orange might be Alya, though he can't check the username at this angle and he probably wouldn't recognise it even if he could.

The chiming from Kim's phone is one long, stuttered sound now. Alix silences it with a wince, which Chat Noir deeply appreciates. The sound's not excruciating like it would have been a day ago but it's not pleasant, either.

It's only when Ladybug speaks up that he realises his partner's been uncharacteristically quiet this whole time. He hasn't even noticed her earrings beeping, although when he checks they're already down two spots.

Ladybug doesn't look at anyone as she says, "Maybe he had a good reason to run."

"Never said he didn't," Nino says, pained.

When Ladybug hands Alix's phone back, her shoulder knocks against Chat Noir's very lightly. The gesture could be mistaken for an accident but he takes it for reassurance, after another breathless moment of panic before he reminds himself that Ladybug doesn't know her partner ran away. She knows something's wrong, but not what; he never did explain. He hasn't even actually said as much to Marinette, although she has to know by now.

Marinette, who's in their class, who might not be in that group chat yet but who's certainly gotten a text from Alya by now. Marinette, who's definitely going to be joining that same chat by tonight, possibly while he's with her.

Marinette, who is more than capable of putting two and two together and coming up with five. He seriously doubts whether his and Ladybug's magical shrouding takes this kind of situation into consideration.

Going back to her family could be just as dangerous as staying away, now. If he goes back, he risks Marinette figuring him out, but if he stays away he might as well be confirming any suspicions she might have.

He wants to go back. He doesn't know if he should.

"He couldv'e come to me," Nino's muttering, staring down at his phone as words fill the screen and vanish faster than Chat Noir can keep up with. "We wouldv'e helped, man."

"Nino, your place is literally the first place anyone would look," Alya points out tiredly, tapping her foot with clear agitation before diving back into the chat. From the colors flashing by too fast to read on Nino's phone, Chat Noir can guess she's arguing with Chloe. "Which, by the way, makes me even more sure that he ran away. His not contacting you was what got everyone worried in the first place, remember?"

Still hovering over his phone, one hand wrapped tightly around the cat curled against him, Nino grits his teeth and starts to answer. Before he can say anything, everyone's phones go off again, this time with varying alarm tones that all completely disregard the fact that all four phones are definitely on silent by this point.

A new window opens itself in the middle of the chat and overrides the scrolling text to display AKUMA ALERT in flashing red letters.

Alya and Alix both curse, Nino almost drops his phone again, and Kim groans and says, "Another one?"

"Already?" Ladybug says faintly. Then she shakes her head with a frown, tilting her head even as Chat Noir does the same, listening over the (painful) phone alarms for any hint of a sound that would indicate an attack. "How accurate is this?"

"Markov's running it, mostly, so pretty accurate. Says it's near the Bastille station." Alya looks up from her phone, expression strained. "Ladybug- I know you have to go, but- can you two-"

"We'll keep an eye out for your friend," Ladybug assures her as everyone's phones get swiftly passed back to their original owners. Her earrings beep again. "But right now we'd better go. Chat-"

"On my way, my Lady," he assures her, turning to race out of the stadium.

"Be careful, dude," Nino calls after him, and Chat Noir waves back before bounding off.

Ladybug doesn't say anything for the first few minutes as everyone starts to swap phones around and argue and log in to Max's app to draw more people into the discussion. She can't say anything.

She should have trusted her instincts from the start. She'd sort of assumed she was overreacting, even when her friends and classmates had joined in; she knows she has a tendency to catastrophize, Tikki's talked her out of it often enough.

But Adrien's actually gone. Her instincts were right.

And of course she had to find out as Ladybug, when she has to bite down on her reaction as hard as she can, because Ladybug doesn't know Adrien that well. The only thing keeping her from an actual anxiety attack is that every time she shifts she feels her partner at her side, standing far too still with his eyes locked on Nino's phone. As panicked as she wants to be over the news, she knows it has more than one reason to worry her partner. While she knows him well enough to know that he's likely to be honestly worried for Adrien's sake this is dangerous for him, too. The last thing Chat Noir needs right now is a high profile missing persons case.

This news has to be hitting way too close to home for Chat Noir. If it was about anyone else, her focus would be entirely on getting him out of there as fast as possible, but- but it's not anyone else. It's Adrien.

Yes, she'd thought something was fishy. As far as all her frantic internet searching has been able to turn up, even with her friend's help, even with Markov's help, there's still no indication of a Gabriel shoot anywhere in America at all. And it's not like Adrien to drop off the grid so suddenly- even when he's grounded he's always made every attempt to reach out to Nino at the very least, to stay in touch with the rest of their social circle if it's even remotely possible.

But somehow Marinette had never made the connection that he could actually be missing. Worse, that they're only finding out now. They could have been searching for him in earnest this whole time, he could be in serious trouble, he could be hurt, and they've been fidgeting around with increasingly less likely Ladyblog screen names when they could have been out looking.

He hasn't contacted anyone this entire time, not even Nino. He is in trouble. She's already relatively certain the reason Chat Noir doesn't seem to have a phone anymore is that phones can be traced- it's possible that's occurred to Adrien, too, and that he doesn't have a way to contact any of them anymore.

If only Max had finished his app sooner. It's so recently completed that even Marinette doesn't have it yet, but if she trusts anyone's online security she trusts Markov's; if they'd all thought of this just a little bit sooner Adrien might have been able to contact them.

Chat Noir's going even tenser at her side and she can't tell if he's reflecting her reaction or if it really is hitting too close to his current situation. Her body language has become too entwined with his by now to separate the causes.

She's also uncomfortably aware both that some of Alya's rapid typing is probably directed at her and that she won't be able to answer it for far too long.

The fact that Adrien hasn't shown up at Nino's by now means he probably did run, same as Chat Noir did. How badly is she failing that two of her most important people have fled their homes now? At this rate she's going to start worrying about Alya and Nino too and she knows that Alya at least is on good terms with her family. Ladybug wants to say more, to ask if anyone does have any idea where to look for him (because Ladybug helping to look for a missing person shouldn't be too suspicious, right?), but her earrings beep a warning and right after they do everyone's phones go off again.

It's Max again, but it's not an update like she was hoping. It's an akuma warning.

It's a third akuma.

It's not even noon yet.

She doesn't know how much longer they can keep fighting without a real break. She feels drained enough and she started the day off in good health; Chat Noir didn't. Ladybug scans the alert thoroughly, numbly, before closing her eyes to take a deep breath. It's not as calming as she'd hoped. Beside her, Chat Noir is nearly vibrating with tension.

The official alert system doesn't sound until after Chat Noir's already taken off, which is a little bit horrifying; Max hacked this application together sometime in the last two days and somehow it's already more reliable than the official channels.

Ladybug opens her eyes after Chat Noir bounds away and fixes her gaze on Alya. "Alya, I need you four to get anyone you can to safety, if you're all okay with that? We appreciate the help, more than I can say, but right now I need to know people are safe. I don't know what game Hawkmoth's playing but today has been way too dangerous for everyone." Already at least one of their classmates definitely isn't safe. She hopes desperately that wherever Adrien is it's nowhere near the akuma. She hopes he wasn't anywhere near the explosions earlier, too; that was one of the most destructive akumas they've seen yet.

"Of course," Alya says, chin going up as she nods an affirmative, but then she hesitates. "But what about you two?"

"Yeah," Kim chimes in, looking over Alya's shoulder and frowning. "I know you're both, like, super strong and awesome, but this is a lot! Are you sure you don't still want our help?"

"We'll be okay," Ladybug assures them, touched. "Just… please, give us a hand with the civilians. That's how you can help this time. Can I count on you to do that?"

"You can always count on us, Ladybug!" Alix cheers, before whirling to dart ahead of Kim and Alya, who are moving out pretty quickly themselves. Even knowing how many akuma attacks Alya especially has gotten involved with, Ladybug's never guessed at the amount of stamina (and courage) her friends are apparently hiding.

Nino stays a moment longer, frowning after everyone else, before turning to her. "Ladybug, I-" He falters, shifting so that the cat in his arms clings closer to him. He lowers his voice. "I wanted to ask if you'd help us all keep an eye out for Adrien. I know Alya asked already, but- please. He must have had a good reason, or he'd still be here, but I need to know he's safe, too."

"Of course, Nino," Ladybug says softly.

Nino hesitates, swallows, and says even more quietly, addressed more to the cat than to her, "And. You. Um. It's a little weird that your charm was a ribbon and not, like, a collar, you know? And- you know that ribbon was like, way too big for this cat, right, dude."

And it had had Chat Noir's bell, too. Ladybug had been hoping that no one made that connection.

She hadn't counted on how observant Nino can be. If he noticed, Alya definitely did as well, but then Alya's learned tact since Lady WiFi. She hadn't even asked any questions about Chat Noir's new hoodie even though Ladybug had seen her eyeing it more than once.

(The baton's attaching to the outside of that hoodie now and she's not sure whether Chat Noir has noticed. She hadn't even known their suits could incorporate new clothing that way. She's not entirely convinced that's normal).

"I know," she answers Nino, just as quietly. "Your friend isn't the only one in trouble." She grimaces. "It's catching, apparently. We're… working on it."

Nino blows out a breath in relief. "All right. Hey, maybe, if you do figure it out, you can let me know? I want… I want to make sure Adrien has someplace to go if he needs it. Like, maybe if you know a safe place for Chat Noir, we can find one for my bro. Or... the other way around, I guess. It's, uh, small, but we're trying to get our place designated as one of the akuma shelters, only the laws right now get kind of weird on that if it's for a home and not, like, a business. They're really not very well regulated yet so we're having some trouble." He glances at her, then back down at the cat. "Sorry, I know you're in a hurry. But I can't not try, you know?"

Ladybug blinks. She's tried before to follow the new and ever-changing laws and regulations regarding akuma, but sometimes it seems like they're different by the day and it hasn't been one of her priorities recently besides; apparently Nino has been putting much more of an effort than she has into keeping up with them. "I'll… keep that in mind, thanks." Her earrings beep an urgent warning. "But right now I really have to go. Thank you for everything."

Nino shakes his head firmly. "Thank you. And thank Chat Noir again for us. Go do your hero thing, dude, I'll get the fluffy one and anyone else I can grab to safety." He makes a face. "Alya's got a pinned post up on the Ladyblog about which shelters are actually helpful- we'll get people to them." He shifts on his feet again, then blurts out, "There's handles for you and Chat Noir on Max's app, by the way. The password right now is mothlit but you can both change it once you log in."

"Oh," Ladybug says, taken aback. "I- thank you, I'll let Chat Noir know." She didn't know her classmates had decided to include Ladybug and Chat Noir in their class chat, or that Alya's that on top of things on the Ladyblog. That means her classmates have thought of more ways to be helpful than she'd noticed, and that Alya's been following the news about the newer laws too. Marinette really hasn't been paying enough attention to what her friends are doing recently.

"Good luck," she tells Nino at last, before whirling her yo-yo to swing out of the stadium and, once she's found somewhere to recharge, back into the fray.

It really is a good thing she'd grabbed so many extra cookies this morning.

There's a good chance Chat Noir is going to need them, too, she reflects unhappily. There's no way he's had a chance recently to acquire any more cheese for his kwami, and no matter how well he'd packed (and he'd clearly prioritized staying as Chat Noir, and by extension he must have prioritized his kwami) he's going to run out at some point.

She drops into a convenient alleyway near the stadium and recharges quickly, not wanting to leave Chat Noir alone any longer than she absolutely has to. She feels wrung raw and she knows he's been taking a lot more hits than her, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. She so badly doesn't want to see him hurt any more- she can still hear the terrible noise he let out when the dragonfly scruffed him, an awful combination of a panicked yelp and a terrified whine that she's pretty sure neither humans nor cats are normally capable of.

"Marinette," Tikki says, even as she eats as fast as she can- she's worried, too. "I know today's been a lot, but you have to focus on the fight. Chat Noir needs you."

"I will," Marinette promises, but guiltily, because she doesn't think she can separate her worry for her partner or her friend from their battle. "And, uh, I'm sorry I used the Lucky Charm a second time, Tikki. I know I shouldn't use it for selfish reasons, but…" She fidgets uncomfortably as she trails off.

"Oh, Marinette," Tikki says, inhaling the last crumbs to smile up at her. "Your reason wasn't selfish."

Marinette smiles weakly back at her kwami. "It was just- they all came to help, Tikki. They didn't have to, but they did."

"They care a lot, Marinette," Tikki says firmly. "All of you do."

"Thanks, Tikki," Marinette says, standing up and taking a deep breath. "Spots on."

Notes:

max saw an opportunity and took it

Chapter 20: VoltHeir

Notes:

i uh
sorry in advance

Chapter Text

He should have waited for Ladybug.

He knows that wasn't really an option- they couldn't have let the akuma run wild that long, and anyway, the conversation had already been far too dangerous for him to stay. Still, as he dodges yet another bolt of sickly, writhing lightning from this akuma, he really wishes he hadn't raced in ahead of any hope of backup.

He had to start dodging ball lightning on the street several blocks away and this entire section of the city is already laced with scorch marks. Chat Noir has had to drop down nearer the street level than the roofs he'd really prefer, because the sky is crawling with lightning and he's starting to have trouble timing his jumps, and halfway to the source he very deliberately flops his hood down to protect his scruff because this akuma is shaping up to be at least as dangerous as the last two.

Also, because scruffs are not actually a thing that humans have, and to be honest he's still a little freaked out about that. Sure, Rogercop had tried to scruff him in the past, but it hadn't really worked because he'd had to settle for essentially just grabbing Chat Noir by the neck. That isn't the same thing. That isn't at all the same thing, and he doesn't know exactly when it changed, and he doesn't think he likes that he doesn't know.

This akuma's talking a little bit when Chat Noir catches up to him. Chat Noir would almost appreciate that, except that the man punctuates every few words with another barely-controlled strike of impossible lightning, and that's on top of the electricity crackling through the streets and forcing him to scramble back and up and cling to walls like a demented spider. It's like playing the worst possible version of the floor is lava, except that he immediately regrets that line of thought, because they haven't seen a lava akuma yet and with their current surge of bad luck that'll be their fourth akuma today.

"You will call me VoltHeir!" the akumatized man thunders, raising both hands and blasting the building Chat Noir's taken temporary refuge on, forcing the hero to take another flying leap backwards. Chat Noir misses the building he's aiming for but manages to catch himself on a lamp post anyway.

VoltHeir's outfit would be surprisingly muted for an akuma if the dulled greys and blacks of his suit weren't laced with neon Lichtenberg figures, crawling like jagged veins up his arms and his legs in arcing patterns and converging at the beak of a plague doctor's mask. Unlike the rest of VoltHeir's ensemble the mask is bright and sparking; the lightning-lattice patterns almost dance across the bridge of it in bright jewels, flashing different colours in the light of the lightning. The hooked beak is sharper and more defined than Chat Noir thinks it should be if it were truly accurate, but it doesn't have to be accurate to be disturbing.

Not for the first time he wonders how much an akuma's appearance boils down to Hawkmoth's influence and how much is due to the victim's own subconscious.

He kind of hopes it's the former, if only for Nino's sake.

He stops wondering when he has to dodge again. A lamp post is not a good place to be, but the street isn't safe either; he dives for the nearest building and just barely catches a windowsill with his claws, accidentally leaving deep gouges in the wood as he scrambles for a better perch. He finds one on an awning but has to abandon it in seconds as a localized electric storm snaps through it, forcing Chat Noir to launch himself across an alley to the next building.

He misses by inches again but he's ready for that this time, claws out and spread to absorb the impact as he thumps high against the wall and drags himself hand over hand onto the roof. He pants there for a second but he doesn't have time to recover before he has to leap to another roof. He twists out of the way of another lightning strike, into the path of the ball lightning, and has to throw himself awkwardly to one side. He ends up halfway down the building again, and he's turning out to be very grateful to his newly sharper claws now. Clinging desperately wherever he lands is all that's keeping him safe. For a given value of safe.

He's been effectively unarmed otherwise. He doesn't know for sure what his baton's made of but now is definitely not the time to find out if it's conductive. Scientifically, it probably shouldn't be, but they're fighting at relatively close range and he's spent entirely too much of his day dodging magic explosions and riding a giant dragonfly. He's half cat. He's not about to count on science to have his back right now.

"Maybe we can talk this out?" Chat Noir calls feebly at another strike as he dives down and to the side, coming up in a roll behind a bus shelter displaying a life-size poster of- well, himself. Himself-as-Adrien, anyway. The ad probably would have made a decent missing poster, he thinks a little bitterly.

It's not much protection, but also, he is more than willing to sacrifice that advertisement to this fight.

Actually it's no protection, he realises a moment later, because he's let himself be driven onto the ground again and that's still not a safe place to be.

Ball lightning springs up too near his feet and he scrambles hastily up the side of the shelter, claws leaving huge rips in his own photographed face. He can't bring himself to care too much about that.

So his father's finally admitted that he's legitimately missing. He wonders again what the final straw was, whether it was really the Gorilla that leaked the information that Gabriel's golden boy took off into the night. His father and his father's staff have to know he left of his own free will; if they hadn't they would have put out a missing person alert the first day he was gone.

The Gorilla was the first of them to be worried enough to file a report anyway. He doesn't even know the man's real name.

His feelings about everything are an absolute mess right now. He's definitely bitter and hurt that it took this long before his father could be bothered to admit anything was wrong, but.

"I knew it. Mari was right."

But his friends had known something was shady from the start. They'd noticed. They know him well enough to have picked up on all the tiny hints that something about the entire scenario has never felt right. Marinette meant it when she said they'd been looking for him. Max's alert had gone out to the entire class, most of them had been in that chat right away, and he doesn't even know most of them all that well.

They might not be his father, but there are people who care.

And they don't blame him. He hadn't known how worried he'd actually been about that until he heard Alya and Nino both saying that he wouldn't have left without a good reason. They seem more disappointed in themselves than they do him (and that's not okay either, but he's always hated to disappoint anyone). He never meant to hurt his friends but they're only concerned for him. Marinette's told him that before but that's not the same as actually seeing it.

Letting himself get lost in his own head almost costs him dearly. He hasn't been using his baton, but it's still on him, and only Ladybug's quick lasso and quicker thinking drags him out of the way of another bolt of lightning. Either his baton is attracting the lightning after all or VoltHeir's starting to aim at it deliberately.

"Hey, kitty," Ladybug reels him in and throws her arm around his waist before swinging them both into the dubious safety of just inside the Bastille subway entrance. Another bolt crackles overhead, but it earths itself in the building behind them, and the ball lightning seems to be staying at street level. Chat Noir hopes desperately that the area's as evacuated as he thinks it is. "Head in the game, all right?"

"Sorry, m'Lady," he apologizes, clamping down on the urge to press closer; no matter how badly he wants to curl right back up with his Lady and purr until they can both calm down from today's events the fight needs to be their first priority. "Have any ideas struck you yet?"

"Not yet, kitty," she says absently, poking her head up to scan the area and then ducking back down before lightning can go striking past again. It's a disturbing undercurrent to the whole situation that VoltHeir's lightning isn't accompanied by any kind of thunder; it's just as soundless as the other akuma have been. VoltHeir's stopped talking, too, which doesn't help.

Ladybug turns back to him with a smirk, faded and worn from the day they've been having but a smirk all the same, and says, "You've been on the scene longer than I have. Care to enlighten me about this one?"

Chat Noir can't help but smile back. He loves it when she goes along with his puns. "Afraid not, my Lady. Shockingly enough, I've had to bolt for cover at every turn." He detaches his baton and holds it out to her to illustrate.

She groans, and not at the puns. "Oh, no. And I don't think we want to leave your main weapon lying around here, either."

"My lady…" He hesitates, but, well, what good are these transformations if he can't use them?

Setting the baton gently against the ground just inside the station, he raises his hands and flexes his claws. He tries for a reassuring smile but thinks he manages to bite his lip on accident (are his teeth sharper? that might become a problem). "Purrhaps I'm an optimist, but it's hardly my only weapon."

Something unreadable flits across her face but she concedes with a nod. "All right then, kitty, let's get a game plan together." VoltHeir (whatever that's about, they may have gotten a name but otherwise this akuma has gone right back to being as weirdly silent as the others) hasn't found them again yet, so Ladybug ducks a few steps farther down to summon her Lucky Charm as inconspicuously as possible.

But Lucky Charms take time, no matter what, and the akuma hasn't been idle.

"Found you," rumbles out from somewhere above them, and even though he knows he shouldn't Chat Noir grabs his staff on automatic and vaults up, determined to defend his Lady. They need the Lucky Charm to win and he needs to protect her while she summons it.

He needs to protect her, and for a critical moment that need overwhelms everything else.

"Chat Noir!" Ladybug hisses up at him, her face a mask of terror, and seconds later he knows why.

He hasn't been thinking as clearly as he should be for this whole fight- really, for a while now; he's been missing jumps by inches for days, he'd zoned out on the way here more times than he's really willing to admit, and he's been getting slower and slower at dodging all day, but this mistake is probably the worst one he's made yet.

He'd grabbed his staff.

The world inverts.

The actual pain takes a second to follow.

The lightning strike lights up the whole sky, or at least he thinks it does; it lights up all of him so he can't entirely be sure. His hands clench down on the staff and he can't loosen his grip at all, even though his hands are burning, too; everything's burning. It can't be more than a few seconds but it feels much, much longer.

He can't tell if he's screaming. He kind of doubts it though; he doesn't think any noise he'd be making right now would be as human as a scream. Yowling, maybe.

His head feels- fuzzy, like his thoughts are on two separate tracks that keep coming close but never meeting. It's like the concussion from earlier magnified a thousand times. He only barely catches the thought that the suit's probably all that saved him before something latches tightly around his waist, making him start coughing as he's hauled into a fireman's carry. At least the concussion hadn't swept this burning pain through his whole body. His ears are ringing. He thinks his ears are ringing.

Ladybug's Lucky Charm never coalesces; she drops it entirely to get them both out of the immediate area as fast as possible. Every jump jostles him and sends another secondary bolt of agony through him until he's letting out involuntary whimpers every few seconds. He's screwed up; Ladybug is abandoning the fight to get them both out of range, and meanwhile there is entirely too much lightning damage happening to this entire area.

By the time his vision starts to clear again Ladybug's kneeling next to where she's propped him against someone's chimney. "Don't do that to me, minou," she breathes, her hands on his shoulders and her eyes wider than he's ever seen them behind her mask. Lightning is still sparking dangerously against the sky behind her but she's not paying any attention to it. Her focus is solely on him, which normally he would appreciate, but lightning akuma. "Please."

He tries to reply and finds himself coughing again. This time, when he licks his lips afterwards, he tastes blood.

For a second, he's honestly worried that he might be bleeding internally even though he knows, or he thinks, that Plagg's already trying to heal the worst of the damage-it's a lot more than he's used to dealing with unless he's been taken out of the fight entirely, and Adrien can't actually figure out if Plagg even has ever tried to heal him before, but he thinks that's what's happening. The pain is receding, anyway.

Ladybug's eyes dart down to his mouth and then back up to his eyes. "You bit your lip."

He tongues at his teeth, already pretty sure of what he's going to find. Yeah, those are definitely fangs. When did that happen?

That, sadly, is the least of his problems right now. He gives Ladybug a weak grin and starts to push himself up, fighting past the immediate pain of his burned palms and the overall shakiness that plagues him. His voice fails him on the first try but comes out relatively steady on the second. "Guilty as charged. Shouldn't we be more concerned with current events?"

She hasn't let go of his shoulders, keeping him from rising as she hovers worriedly. "There's blood on your teeth, kitty, and you weren't answering me. I'm serious, are you okay to fight?"

"For you? Always," he answers honestly. Mostly honestly. He's hurt, but he knows he can stand, and once they win she can heal everything- him included. He will be fine.

Ladybug looks no less concerned but she lets him up, though he has to lean on her heavily to make it back onto his feet. But Plagg's magic is strong, it always has been; he does make it back to his feet. "All right, if you're sure. But be careful, Chat Noir. I can't do this without you."

And that… that leaves him speechless for a long moment, even though he knows it shouldn't.

He's known from the start that he can't do this without her. That's how their powers work; he needs her more than she can ever need him. She can fight without him. Sometimes, more often than he would like, she has to.

But he looks at her and realises with a start just how much she doesn't want to.

"Chat Noir?" Ladybug says uncertainly and he remembers that she's waiting for an answer.

He bows, still unsteady but recovering quickly. "I'll be more careful, LB. I purromise."

Some of the tension eases from around her mask. "Okay. So, any idea how to take out Laxus?"

"VoltHeir," he says automatically. "And I think the akuma's in his mask." He blinks, letting himself be more distracted than is really wise, but anything right now is better than thinking about the lingering pain. "Wait, Laxus? You've seen Fairy Tail?"

She sweeps one hand out in a gesture that encompasses the rampaging akuma and says dryly, "After a certain point, watching some more anime seemed wise."

Chat Noir winces as another bolt of lightning streaks too close to their roof. He aches again in sympathy, shaking himself to try and throw off the answering twinge of pain.

(He has a sudden, badly-timed vision of watching anime with Ladybug just like he has with Marinette, but with the added chance to have Ladybug's arms around him, and feels an entirely different ache start up- and then he feels terrible about it, because Marinette's been a lot kinder to him than he really has any right to expect. It's not her fault that he misses Ladybug like he might miss an arm or a leg when he's Chat Noir and she's not there).

He has to shake himself a second time and drag his scattered thoughts back to the fight before he starts losing track again. Maybe that lightning strike did leave a little more damage in its wake than he's accounted for, healing or no healing. "I don't know, LB. Let me be candide with you, I don't think we can get close- he can aim that lightning." Another, angrier strike goes crawling over a building only a street away, and he amends that to, "Well, mostly."

Ladybug's suddenly pressed close to him again, quicker than he sees her move, hands back on his shoulders as her eyes anxiously search his. "Chat Noir, are you sure you're okay?"

He smiles at her, fighting hard not to wince again as another bolt of pain does go lancing through him and then flinching anyway when he manages to bite his lip yet another time. How does anything with fangs avoid doing that? "I'm good to fight, my Lady."

"That's not what I-" Ladybug never gets to finish that sentence, because that's when the akuma vaults onto their roof with a thundering roar.

Chat Noir doesn't really think about it. He's tackling Ladybug out of the way before he even knows he's moving, whirling to bring up his staff, hoping desperately that he can redirect the lightning with it.

Thinking's not involved. Moving is.

In his defense, he does try to throw the baton.

He doesn't manage to let go of it in time.

For a horrifying, weirdly stretched moment he can see the metal limned in St. Elmo's fire in the seconds before it spreads to him.

He can't really brace himself; there isn't enough time, and somehow it hurts even worse than it did the first time.

If the instant that the first bolt of lightning hit him felt at first like another concussion, this one feels like getting hit by a city bus, several times over. He would know, he's stopped buses before. He's just not used to it feeling like the bus is still going and also on fire. He feels like he's on fire.

Is he on fire?

"Chat Noir!" He doesn't remember falling. Ladybug's rolling him over onto his back, frantic, rearing back to thump at his chest until she sees he's still breathing erratically, and good, the lightning didn't hit her. But what is she doing, the akuma is still here-

His breathing is erratic, but he is still breathing. The fight's more important. Once she wins she can put everything back to rights. He'll be fine.

His vision is wavering worse than ever but he can still make out the anguish on Ladybug's face as she leans over him. His heart sinks- he never meant to cause her any pain. The opposite, really.

"You just promised, kitty," Ladybug whispers, her eyes welling with tears, and then she whips around in a crouch to stare down the akuma. The threatening hiss she lets out as she rises to her feet actually makes him faintly, distantly proud over the uneven pounding in his head. It's as good as any hiss he can manage, even now. Really much better than any he can manage at the moment.

The vicious snarl she follows it with actually makes VoltHeir hesitate.

"Lucky Charm," Ladybug says, her voice a rolling growl with none of its usual melodies as she plants herself solidly in front of Chat Noir.

He tries to push himself up off the ground to help her as the Charm materializes, but his limbs don't seem to want to work right.

VoltHeir is just… hovering, looking nonplussed. Ball lightning boils up around him again but fizzles out immediately and Chat Noir realises through the distant ringing in his head that the akuma must have put too much of his power into that last strike.

Ladybug holds out one arm without looking and waits for the ladybug-patterned cinder block to drop into her outstretched hand.

And then, as Chat Noir's dizzily wondering what kind of plan would use a cinder block and whether he can use Cataclysm to help (he could Cataclysm the roof out from under them, he guesses, but if he does that he's going to fall too and his body is already unhappy enough with him), Ladybug takes the Lucky Charm and clocks VoltHeir across the face with it.

The tip of the mask's long noise goes flying. Evidently, that's not enough of a break to release the akuma, but it's enough to make the man recoil with a bitten-off curse- just in time for Ladybug to strike out again with another wild, vicious hiss.

Chat Noir stares, blinking hard to try and clear his vision, but he appears to be seeing things correctly. Ladybug, who is at heart a strategist, is making no attempt whatsoever at any kind of plan. Instead she's opted to go straight to beating an akuma over the head with her Lucky Charm.

It's kind of terrifying.

(It's kind of worrying that it only makes him fall even more in love with her).

Ladybug hits the akuma again, hard. The man doesn't even have time to dodge. He's still trying to raise lightning, but it keeps falling apart into sparks as Ladybug strikes him repeatedly, the force of each swing sending wind howling through the cinder block with a painfully high-pitched whistle.

"That," Ladybug growls, voice still in that furiously feral register as she raises the chunk of concrete again, "Is. My. Partner!" She hits VoltHeir a final time, this time finally cracking the akuma's mask right off his face.

The butterfly flutters free but Ladybug's only barely paying attention to it. Her yo-yo darts out to purify the akuma, but her other hand is already pitching her Lucky Charm into the air with a ragged cry of, "Miraculous Ladybug!"

Chat closes his eyes and shuts his teeth on a whimper as the light and ladybugs knit his injuries back together. He's hurt worse than he realised, and he'd been aware that it was bad. On top of that he thinks they've finally tried to push Ladybug's healing magic too far, and it's not like he'd known before that Plagg could do it at all- his head doesn't clear entirely and he still aches dully all over. When he prods at it with his tongue he can feel that his bitten lip stayed, too, but at least that's presumably because it was a result of his own fangs.

By the time he can sit up again Ladybug's throwing her arms around him, completely ignoring the befuddled man sprawled on the rooftop behind her. "Chat Noir," she says, her voice muffled against his chest as he tentatively hugs her back. "Never do that again."

"I'm sorry," he says unsteadily. Then, because that doesn't seem like enough, "I didn't mean to."

"Chat Noir," she says again, and then nothing else.

He shifts in her hold, then has to go still again as her arms tighten around him immediately. "Really, LB. I just… reacted. I'm sorry." He glances over her shoulder at their audience, but the akuma victim takes one look at them and goes scrambling for the door to the roof as fast as he can move. Either he's retained a phantom memory of a berserk Ladybug or he has some other reason to avoid drawing their attention.

That's the second person today who's wanted nothing to do with them as a civilian. What the hell kind of fit is Hawkmoth throwing?

"I'm not waiting any longer," Ladybug says, still muffled, and then draws back at last to look at him. "I shouldn't have waited this long. Can you follow me for a little bit, kitty?"

He looks back at her uncertainly, unable to stop himself. Her earrings are already down a spot.

"Chat Noir," she says gently. "Trust me?"

"Of course I do," he says, a little helplessly, and then levers himself painfully to his feet with her help. Echoes of pain clamour for his attention as she steadies him and he lets out an anguished hiss before he can bite it back.

"It didn't heal you?" Ladybug asks anxiously, scanning him from head to toe. Another spot winks out on her earrings and she completely ignores it.

"Mostly it did," he hurries to assure her, prodding absently at his new fangs again and wincing. "I think today's just been a lot."

She doesn't stop studying him, but she nods slowly. "Are you okay to follow me?"

"Yeah, LB," he assures her. "Really. Your light show always makes me feel better."

Something darkens in her eyes, but she does nod. "All right, let's go."

He's fine for the first roof. He's even fine for the second, third, and fourth, if far too aware that Ladybug is still ignoring the countdown from her Miraculous.

He completely misjudges the jump for the fifth roof.

It's one of the buildings with a low crenellation around the edges, more for decoration than anything else, but it's more than high enough for his foot to catch on it and send him careening forward.

Ladybug whips around at the yelp he lets out as his jaw meets the ground painfully. Faster than his still slightly fuzzy vision can keep up with, she's crouched at his side again, one hand resting lightly between his shoulderblades as he starts to shove himself back up off the ground. His palms burn. He's not sure if that's a sense memory of the first lightning strike or if they haven't healed yet.

He's increasingly less certain that Plagg had ever actually healed him at all. He's not even sure why he thought that; Plagg's aspect is destruction, there's absolutely no reason the kwami would be able to heal. It's a lot more likely that Chat Noir's just getting more practiced at pushing past injuries. Repetition will do that.

"M'fine, LB," he mumbles, though the blood he spits out a moment later probably undermines the sentiment. Seriously, the fangs are more of a pain than he'd ever have imagined. He doesn't even need fangs.

"You're really not," Ladybug tells him, pressing down against his back very lightly. Somehow that slight pressure is enough that he collapses back down onto his front with a groan, which he could really have done without.

And today had started out so well.

He hopes Marinette's waiting somewhere safe. It's a little worrying that she wasn't one of the people to show up with Alya, but then the store they'd started at isn't all that close to any of the attack sites. At least she'll know he didn't stay away so long on purpose- that group chat is clearly doing a good job of keeping everyone in their class up to date, and he'd bet anything that Alya is using that early access to information to update the Ladyblog as well. His classmates are adapting to Hawkmoth's Paris distressingly well.

"Hey, kitty, are you still with me?" Ladybug asks worriedly, and he wrenches his thoughts back on topic. He's been having an alarming amount of trouble focusing for a while now, he realises distantly.

He starts to answer her but two things happen at once.

Her earrings sound their one minute warning beep.

And Plagg abruptly drops his transformation entirely.

Chapter 21: cat's meow

Notes:

shinobicyrus helped with this chapter too!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"Plagg," Adrien gasps, but then he can manage nothing else, because what was a dull ache as Chat Noir is an insistent pain as Adrien and he chokes when he tries to continue. His fangs haven't gone away, either, which really isn't helping.

"Yeah, me," Plagg growls, even as Ladybug's hand moves swiftly and automatically to flip Adrien's hood up before she can see his face. He's still face down, so it covers his head almost completely. "Congratulations, kids, I haven't gotten this involved in centuries. Ladybug, can you pick him up? I can show you somewhere we'll all be out of sight." Plagg sounds- Plagg doesn't sound well. He sounds more exhausted than Adrien's ever heard him, in fact, and Adrien feels the kwami drift down to climb into the pocket of his hoodie after he says something Adrien doesn't quite catch to Ladybug.

"Plagg, no," Adrien tries and fails to get out, finding out in the attempt that by now he's having some trouble producing any noise resembling actual words. It filters dimly through his awareness that he must still be really hurt for Plagg to have dropped his transformation at all. Plagg respects Adrien's choices, the kwami wouldn't go against them unless he felt he had to.

He should probably feel more concern about that than he actually does.

Ladybug's already picking Adrien up carefully, and by the time she starts to run he's become acutely aware that he's starting to lose entire stretches of time. With every blink they're farther away from where he'd first collapsed and he doesn't remember Ladybug moving them from building to building even though she must pain is turning to numbness, slowly dulling his senses until he's only really aware of Ladybug's arms holding him closely and of his ridiculous, loyal, exhausted kwami curled up as close to his heart as he can get.

He can't figure out what the low rumble he's hearing is at first until he realises too slowly that it's his own purr- not his happy purr, not even the self-soothing one, but his 'I'm hurt and I just want it to stop' purr. Even more unusual, Plagg's echoing it, a constant little tremor against his chest.

Lightning's lethal- lethal enough that he's still this badly off after Ladybug's Miraculous Cure.

And Plagg can't actually heal. Why did he think that?

Adrien never truly passes out, but Ladybug's setting him down again, cautious with his concealing hood and clothing, and he has no memory at all of how they got here. Wherever here is. He remembers the first few rooftops, if only faintly, but the last stretch of time might as well have never happened for all he can recall.

Ladybug hesitates a moment, then very carefully moves him so that he's stretched out on his stomach again. That way when Adrien manages to drag his arms up to cross them under his head his face isn't visible between his crossed arms and his hood. A few moments later Ladybug's draping a blanket loosely over him as well.

There shouldn't be a blanket on a random rooftop. Plagg must have brought Ladybug to one of their boltholes.

Adrien can't seem to hold onto that thought long enough to be upset about it. He can't seem to remember why he should be upset about it.

He's increasingly unsure whether Miraculous Cure healed him this time at all; a patch job to give them time to get to safety is starting to seem a lot more likely. He hopes it finished patching up their surroundings, at least. He doesn't want anyone who might have taken shelter somewhere inside VoltHeir's range to still be hurt.

When Ladybug sits down at his side, she's so close that Adrien can turn his head and brush his face against her leg. He does do that a few times before he catches himself. Plagg, crawling back out of his hoodie (and still not flying), snorts but doesn't say anything about it.

Plagg has given him more warnings than he's really deserved about the price of staying Chat Noir so long, but somehow Adrien had never made the connection that it could cascade like this. And- it isn't as though it matters, because he knows he still can't stop. Chat Noir has somewhere to sleep tonight and Adrien doesn't.

Before his thoughts can go haring off on that particular depressing tangent Ladybug's earrings beep their final warning and he feels himself go utterly still.

Her hand's on his shoulder again, the contact point radiating a comforting warmth that he struggles to arch both into and away from, wanting and embarrassed by turns, and Ladybug stays.

Ladybug stays.

"This isn't how I wanted to do this," she says softly, and he knows that voice. He always knows her voice when they're transformed, and the fact that he doesn't when they're not was what first tipped him off to their impossible magical shielding; they've long since learned that they can disguise their transformed voices from each other with conscious effort but otherwise they know each other.

And these circumstances are enough to finally break that impossible shielding entirely. He knows her voice.

"M'ri," he says, or tries to say. Her name comes out mangled and bearing more than a passing resemblance to a meow, and he doesn't manage the second half of it at all, but the hand on his shoulder clenches in response before relaxing a moment later to rub soothing circles against his back. Marinette.

The first thought that makes its halting way through both the shock and the stubbornly persistent pain is of course it's Marinette. She could never have been anyone else.

He should have known.

"Yeah, kitty, it's me," she says, low and guilty, and he thinks he should reassure her but he can't- he's too preoccupied with the chaotic way his thoughts go tumbling over each other as he finds himself suddenly able to make a rapid series of connections.

He's been staying with Ladybug for days now. He ate dinner with her family. They taught him Pictionary. They've fed him.

He's been helping Marinette with her homework. He's been helping Ladybug with her homework.

He's been sleeping in her room.

He's slept in her bed.

Even without knowing it was her, she's still the first person he ran to.

Her room at night feels close and safe and warm, feels the way that she's always made him feel, and he really should have known that it was her all along.

"Kid?" he hears Plagg say, surprisingly quietly, and a second later the kwami's ducking under the blanket and into his hood. Plagg's so close that Adrien goes cross-eyed trying to look at him. "Hey, kid, talk to me."

Adrien would like to, honestly, but doesn't know what he can say. He's still breathless from Ladybug's unexpected revelation (and from pain too, probably, but he cares about Ladybug more).

"Chat Noir?" Ladybug- Marinette- says uncertainly. "I'm sorry, minou, I shouldn't have waited. I should have told you the first night you came by." She tugs him closer, very, very gently, and it occurs to him far too late that if he didn't want her to know how bad things were getting then collapsing on her probably wasn't the way to go about it. Not that it matters anymore, because Marinette of all people certainly knows he isn't going home at night. "You don't have to tell me who you are, Chat Noir, but I couldn't keep hiding it from you. Please don't think it means you have to leave; you can stay with me as long as you need to. As long as you want to." Her breath hitches. "We'll figure something out, kitty. I promise."

There's a world of emotion in those two words, and Adrien can't keep himself from ducking his head against her side again, purring louder without meaning to. His purr sounds strange with the clinging remnants of pain and distress, wheezy and rattling, but Ladybug's hand moves long enough to stroke his hair through his hood before returning to her iron grip on his shoulder. By now he's aware that it's probably as much for her comfort as for his. She'd looked so scared before rounding on the akuma (and he's still reeling a little from both how violently she'd rounded on the akuma and from how suddenly safe it made him feel).

He never meant to upset her. He tries to push his purr louder, to reassure her, but he can't seem to increase his volume beyond his current weak rumble.

Plagg's strangely agitated, backing up against Adrien's arms where they're folded against the ground as Adrien glances at him again. The kwami studies Adrien's eyes with an odd expression, then announces in a strained voice, "That's great, Ladybug, but if this kid doesn't answer one of us in words in the next forty seconds I will make him tell you."

Adrien's eyes go wide at that, because he knows now that Ladybug is one of the people looking for him. For Adrien. As much as he trusts her, and he does trust her, Adrien is likely to be a lot harder to hide in her room than Chat Noir is.

But also because- because Plagg doesn't really do ultimatums, not like that. His kwami is worried about something.

Plagg's afraid.

It's surprisingly difficult to talk over the shaky purr he still can't stop. He has more than one false start, he keeps coughing badly after every other attempt, and the first few sounds he does produce still sound more cat than human but he finally manages to say, quiet and hoarse enough not to be recognisable, "Plagg, claws-"

His kwami bites him.

On the nose.

"Not that," Plagg hisses as Adrien recoils with a distinctly feline yelp.

"Plagg, did you just bite your chosen?" a new voice chimes in and a second later there's a weight that can only be Ladybug's kwami on his back.

"Yes!" Plagg says, very nearly shouting. "Yes, I did, and I will do it again! Listen to me, kit. Do not change back. Not- right now. Just- just let Ladybug do her thing first, all right?"

Adrien blinks at him in response, partly because Plagg still sounds as close to outright afraid as Adrien's ever heard him, but also because he doesn't want Marinette to hear his voice. If that was enough for him to know her then she'll definitely recognise him if he says anything else.

Plagg blinks back and then groans as he gets it. "Now? Now is when you choose to get hung up on all the secret identity nonsense? Since when do you care, kid?"

Adrien tries to glare at his kwami, but by now he's shifted just enough to bring his injuries roaring back to his attention and he slams his eyes shut instead. It might be for the best. He never has been able to out-glare Plagg.

"It's up to him, Plagg," Marinette says gently, and then almost in the next breath, "Tikki, spots on."

Adrien startles before he can help it and then whimpers with renewed pain- but he can't think of a reason she's transforming back so quickly, unless she regrets letting him know it's her.

He's still not quite done processing that Ladybug just told him who she is, honestly. Or that they've been friends both in and out of costume this entire time. Or that she's been trying to help him on both sides of their masks. It isn't as though he was processing information all that well when they first reached this rooftop and he hasn't really improved yet.

Marinette's been so kind and understanding since he'd first shown up on her balcony. Ladybug's been so patient and so worried since she first realised something was wrong.

Of course it's her.

He should have known that it was her from the very first night he was so drawn to her balcony, if not sooner; she'd invited him in so readily and he'd finally felt safe.

He twists enough to rub his face against her leg again, even though moving hurts, even though he doesn't know why she's transformed again.

He's glad it's her.

At first, Ladybug thinks she's caught up to Chat Noir in time to end things quickly, before either of them can get too hurt. She sees Chat Noir's wary glances at the ball lightning that litters the street as it pinwheels past like sparking tumbleweeds, but she notes that it isn't following them down the subway steps and assumes that the akuma doesn't have that much control once he looses the lightning.

By the time it occurs to her that VoltHeir might be pulling back his power on purpose it's already too late.

She thinks Chat Noir tries to scream, but it comes out choked and soundless, and his eyes are no longer focusing as he starts to fall- starts, because she's catching him and running before she knows she's going to do it. She abandons the Lucky Charm, abandons the akuma, abandons the fight entirely; she no longer cares about the fight. She only cares about getting her partner out of there.

And then the akuma catches up anyway, and her wonderful, sweet, idiot cat is going to get himself killed.

And that is not acceptable.

Marinette never does remember defeating VoltHeir. Chat Noir tells her about it later, but all she's really aware of at the time is an overwhelming wave of red rage that crashes together with absolute panic, because for a terrifying moment she hadn't known whether or not Chat Noir was breathing.

She has to tell him. He's still not well, even after her healing light; his reaction times are shot, he keeps taking longer to answer her than he should, he's shaky on his feet and he keeps cutting his lip open on the fangs he'd sprouted sometime in the midst of the fight and those are a bad sign as well. She has to tell him. She should have told him when they first woke up this morning. She should have told him days ago.

He should be healed. Their surroundings went back to normal just like always, as far as she can see; he should be healed. It's always worked before.

He's probably never started a fight quite this badly off before. He's definitely never been so hurt in such rapid succession before. They've been healing between fights, but Plagg did tell her that her partner hasn't been eating, and that's not something Miraculous Cure would have helped with.

Despite everything, she doesn't expect him to collapse.

Her heart stops for the third time in the past- however long it's been. She isn't sure. Time feels odd and stretched, so that the entire morning seems like it took place over both a breathless eternity and no time at all.

Ladybug hits the ground on her knees beside Chat Noir at almost the same moment he hits the ground himself. She's terrified for him, has been terrified for him for she's not sure how long; she has a hand on his shoulder immediately because she needs to be in contact with him, she needs the physical reassurance just as much as he always does.

She needs him to be okay and he's not.

She doesn't expect him to detransform, either.

He's still wearing the hoodie, thankfully; she flips it up and over his head before she can glimpse more than messy blond hair. It's not as though she didn't already know that he was blond, anyway, they've talked before about their hair colour not changing when they transform. (It probably should. It would be safer for them both. Their hairstyles really should, at the very least).

Despite everything, or maybe because of it, she still wants telling her to be something he chooses to do. She doesn't know who's been taking his decisions away from him but she isn't about to do it as well.

And by the way Chat Noir reacts to detransforming with a weirdly strangled, choked off attempt at his kwami's name, she doesn't think that losing his transformation was his choice this time.

"Yeah, kid, me," Plagg snaps, but he doesn't really sound angry. He sounds like Tikki does when she's worried and trying hard not to show it. "Congratulations, kids, I haven't gotten this involved in centuries."

He leaves Chat Noir but only to flit over to her. "Ladybug, can you pick him up? I can show you somewhere we'll all be out of sight."

She can only nod, still breathless and aching with fear and adrenalin. Her hand clenches on her partner's shoulder again.

She's never seen him so hurt.

She's seen him brainwashed, seen him gone (and by now she knows she never will be able to think too hard about that); but she's always been able to fix things. He's always been okay in the end.

Chat Noir tries to say something else, but it's not words. The closest sound she can compare it to is a hoarse, inquisitive mew, and she's not sure whether or not he knows he's doing that.

His kwami's suddenly frozen expression makes her think that he doesn't.

Plagg stays in the air long enough to give her directions but then he crawls into Chat Noir's hoodie and she can't really blame him. Plagg looks bad, too, exhausted and worn and somehow rough around the edges.

Chat Noir feels too light in her arms, too insubstantial, and she has to relax her grip more than once for fear of hurting him. Inevitably her hold on him tightens again so that she knows he's still there with her, that she still has a hold on him, that he's still solid and real and breathing against her.

Before this moment she's always loved hearing Chat Noir purr. It's such a reassuring sound, and she likes knowing he feels safe and happy enough for it; but right now it isn't reassuring at all. It's weak and thready with a faint echo that can only be Plagg and she can't stop thinking about how cats also purr when they're injured or dying.

She starts running faster.

The rooftop Plagg told her about has enough supplies hidden off to one side to make her wince. They're tellingly well hidden; they aren't anywhere that Ladybug would see them on a passing patrol, and it isn't as though anyone else would be up here. Unhappily aware that she's very much invading her partner's privacy at this point but not seeing any other choice, she rummages around until she finds a blanket to throw over Chat Noir before he can knock his hood back off in his daze.

Her hands shake as she pulls him close again. He shouldn't still be this dazed, she healed him. She knows she healed him.

But he'd been having trouble from that first fight on and he's been hurt every time. She's never hit the limits of her magic before, but then she's never had to use Miraculous Cure on such widespread damage three times in a row before, either. And she'd used up a Charm showing off to her friends; Tikki had said it shouldn't matter, but it does if it means she can't heal her partner when he needs it.

Dully, it occurs to her that the responsible thing to do would be to check that VoltHeir didn't leave parts of Paris tattered behind him. If Miraculous Cure left Chat Noir still hurt, she needs to make sure the city is truly repaired.

Chat Noir turns against her, brushing his cheek against her leg with a tiny sound she doesn't think he means to make.

The city can wait.

She knows what she wants to do, but it has to wait until after Tikki recharges.

When her transformation drops, Tikki gives her a wide-eyed stare but doesn't say anything before diving into her purse and dragging out an entire package of cookies. She doesn't even stop to say anything to Plagg, though she does bring the cookies over to where he can share them with her.

"This isn't how I wanted to do this," Marinette says, barely aware of what she's saying, keeping one hand on her partner at all times because she doesn't think she can handle not having concrete proof that he's right there beside her and still breathing.

Chat Noir's been rumbling in a weak attempt at a purr since first falling over but as she speaks, as the magic fails to keep her voice concealed, he goes very still.

"M'ri?" he says, very, very quietly, and he definitely just tried to say her name, and it was definitely more of a meow than any kind of human language, and that is definitely a very bad sign.

But he did try to say her name. He knows it's her. He knows she's Ladybug.

"Yeah, kitty, it's me," she says, guilty, her hand clenching on his shoulder involuntarily. She forces herself to relax a moment later, unsure exactly how hurt he still is, not willing to risk hurting him any further.

She'd thought already that she's likely to have nightmares about the two akuma before VoltHeir (Chat Noir, burnt and bleeding- Chat Noir, scruffed and frantic- her partner, the closest friend she's ever had, hurting and it took too long every time before she could help-) but now she hopes desperately that he comes home with her again after all, because she doesn't think she can sleep at all without him safe where she can see him. She'll burrow under the blankets right alongside him if he'll let her, because her heart stopped when she thought that his had.

"Chat Noir?" she says carefully, because aside from the raspy purr still rattling his frame (and he is too thin, he has lost weight) he's gone far too still. "I'm sorry, minou, I shouldn't have waited. I should have told you the first night you came by." She tugs him closer again, as gentle as she can make herself be when she's still so scared for him. "You don't have to tell me who you are, Chat Noir, but I couldn't keep hiding it from you. Please don't think it means you have to leave; you can stay with me as long as you need to. As long as you want to." Her breath hitches. "We'll figure something out, kitty. I promise."

She saw Plagg duck into Chat Noir's hood before but she hadn't heard what the kwami said to him. Now, though, she hears Plagg loud and clear as the kwami announces with a very audible strain in his voice, "That's great, Ladybug, but if this kid doesn't answer one of us in words in the next forty seconds I will make him tell you."

She's about to tell Plagg that's not necessary, that she doesn't need to know if he doesn't want her to, but-

In words.

Marinette draws in a sharp breath, suddenly much more afraid.

She's been assuming that Chat Noir hasn't said anything just because he's hurt, but by the way Plagg just said that it's more than that. Chat Noir's been transformed almost all day again. He'd only used Cataclysm in that first fight, and they'd only barely had enough time to recharge between that and the next one, and she knows he didn't change back between the dragonfly and VoltHeir. She doesn't know if he detransformed at all while she was asleep last night but it's not something she's willing to count on.

Marinette listens with mounting fear as Chat Noir fails at his first few attempts to speak up. That's not normal, and neither are the faint cat's cries she hears in place of words when she listens closely, and a new fear shivers down her spine because she's never thought of this and she should have.

Tikki comes flickering over, nearly silent, and perches on Marinette's shoulder to say softly, "You two used a lot more magic today than you normally do."

Just as quietly, and now even more shaken, Marinette whispers back, "Is that why- " and sweeps her free hand out, gesturing at Chat Noir and Plagg.

Tikki nods and starts to answer her, but she's interrupted by a yelp from Chat Noir and a hissed, "Not that!" from his kwami.

Tikki darts off of Marinette's shoulder without warning, spiraling down to alight on Chat Noir's back, and asks incredulously, "Plagg, did you just bite your Chosen?"

"Yes!" Plagg zooms out of the hood, wild-eyed and frantic, just long enough to glare at Tikki before he zips back under the blanket. "Yes, I did, and I will do it again! Listen to me, kit. Do not change back. Not- right now. Just- just let Ladybug do her thing first, all right?"

Plagg sounds scared, too, and he very obviously hasn't kept Chat Noir from transforming for all this time- until now. Something's wrong.

(Well, something else is wrong, anyway. By now it's a very long list).

Plagg must get some kind of response, because Marinette hears a groan, followed by, "Now? Now is when you choose to get hung up on all the secret identity nonsense? Since when do you care, kid?"

Oh.

Her heart sinks a little despite herself.

He doesn't want to tell her anymore.

She knew he might not, that it might not even be safe for him to tell her who he is right now, and she thought she'd accepted that. She's surprised at how disappointed she still feels.

Marinette knows she could probably convince him to tell her anyway, but she would never do that to him. The only reason she could do it all is because of how much he trusts her, and she's very aware how much that trust means to both of them. She won't take advantage of it.

"It's up to him, Plagg," Marinette says gently, and then, wincing at her own kwami's worried expression, "Tikki, spots on."

Marinette never takes her hand from his shoulder as she says, quieter and more subdued than he's ever heard her, "Lucky Charm. Miraculous Ladybug." He catches himself brushing his face against her leg again, but this time he's not sure that he minds. Her healing light washing over him again is such a relief. "Spots off, Tikki."

No one moves. Plagg's still staring at him, Ladybug's still keeping him in one place with one hand and no effort, and Tikki must be recharging as fast as possible because a minute later he hears, "Spots on. Lucky Charm. Miraculous Ladybug. Spots off-"

Ladybug's spamming her abilities to heal him, and neither kwami is berating her for abusing her powers even though they are definitely not meant to be used this way.

He breathes in hard when it registers dully just how badly hurt he actually was.

"Yeah, kit," Plagg says, watching him. The kwami's settled on Adrien's folded arms, purring in tandem with him as Ladybug's voice and transformations rise and fall, trance-like and hypnotic. "We keep trying to tell you kids magic has its own rules. Your health's been shot for a while now, and that was before you managed to get yourself into the path of two different kill shots. So congratulations, you managed to push it to the limits of both your magic."

Adrien can't actually worry about answering him, feeling his eyes slide shut as his purr rumbles louder. Ladybug's magic slips under his skin and soothes more hurt than he'd been consciously aware of. Even the constant dull ache that he recognises with a sudden start as hunger subsides. Evidently Plagg was right when he said that Adrien didn't know anymore what it was like not to be hungry.

Guilt starts to eat at him for a moment, because for at least the past few days that's been his own fault, but another wave of healing light washes even that away. By the time Ladybug's powers finally trickle to a halt he's a boneless heap beside her, purring with everything he has. At some point he manages to snake one arm out from under the blanket to wrap around Ladybug's waist as he huddles closer. He might be embarrassed about that if it was anyone else, but he knows Ladybug isn't going to mind.

When the last of the light fades and Marinette drops her transformation with a sigh, she wraps her free arm around him in turn. Her other hand hasn't left his shoulder this entire time. "I don't know if I'm looking forward to Alya's theories on what just happened or not. That had to look strange." She smooths the blanket draped over him. "Are you all right now, Chat Noir? Honestly, this time?"

"Yeah, I actually think he is," Plagg says, with an odd sharp note of relief in his voice.

Marinette hauls him closer again, and how did he never notice before how strong she is? "Don't ever do that again, kitty. You scared me."

He starts to apologise again and hastily swallows it down before he can give himself away. Still far too close, Plagg shoots him a look that's more than a little annoyed.

"Well, we don't have to hurry back anywhere, anyway," Marinette says tiredly. "We're kind of only waiting on each other. And I left our purchases back with the store clerk, I doubt they care how soon I come back for them." She tugs the blanket closer around both of them- around all of them; both their kwami are kind of hovering, now, and not in the literal sense. They're both still drooping too much to hover in the literal sense. "My parents aren't expecting us back until dinner." Hesitation creeps into her voice. "If- if you still want to come back, I mean."

And he-

He trusts her, with his life, with all his heart. He trusts her more than he thinks he's ever trusted anyone before. If there's one person he can put all his faith in, it's- well, it's probably Plagg, actually, but he believes entirely in Ladybug as well.

He doesn't- he doesn't think she'll try to get him to go home any more than Plagg would, not when she knows he doesn't want to go.

He does want to go home with her. He likes staying with her family.

The rise and fall of her breathing is just as reassuring as it's been the last few nights as he's fallen asleep in her room, as she's tried so hard to make sure he has somewhere to go where he feels safe and cared for.

He takes a deep breath.

"I should," he says, and stops, both because the words feel unnervingly strange on his tongue for a moment and because he's still not used to the fangs. He takes another breath and says, shakily, "I should have recognised your pigtails."

Marinette goes very, very still.

Then she breathes out, "A-Adrien?"

He finally pushes himself up, shoving his hood back as the blanket slides off. He bites his lip (ow) as he glances up her from under his bangs (his bangs are draped so far into his face that he strongly suspects he still has Chat Noir's hairstyle). "Um. Surprise?"

Notes:

(we'll find out what those lucky charms were but not right now)

also, for the record here, plagg would not normally care if adrien was answering him in words or not; plaggs got a very specific reason to worry about it in this case, tho.

Chapter 22: schrödinger's partner

Notes:

at this point i think shinobicyrus is officially my beta for this fic
have i succeeded at dragging you into this fandom with me yet cy

Chapter Text

Adrien had thought that Marinette's grip before was strong, but she abruptly crushes him in so hard a hug that he lets out a squeak. "Everyone's been looking for you!"

He carefully disentangles himself and starts to sit up, suddenly very nervous. He truly doesn't believe Marinette would ever turn him in but he can't stop worrying at the thought anyway. He isn't that sure what she thinks of his father, and 'I ran away because he was going to pull me out of school' sounds so stupid when he considers saying it out loud.

But he's barely moved at all before Marinette's reaching for him again, and he can't- he ducks right back into her arms, because he can't make himself keep moving away. She wraps one arm around him as easily as though they're both still transformed and he burrows into her side before he can stop himself. She doesn't seem like she minds, if the way her the strength of her hold increases is any indication.

"Not that- I mean, I'm really glad, but I'm not going to tell anyone," she says hastily, even as she draws him closer, and he lets out a purely internal sigh of relief. He hadn't thought she would but it's still a reassuring thing to hear. "I would never- I mean, unless you wanted me to tell someone, I wouldn't."

He doesn't want her to tell anyone. Well, he does, he'd rather their friends knew that he's all right, but he doesn't want to risk anyone else knowing. The only people he wants knowing are all on this roof.

...and Nino, but Nino sounded pretty hurt that Adrien hadn't come to him, and he doesn't know how to explain why he'd have gone to Marinette instead without revealing their identities. He'd gone to Marinette's because by the time Ladybug asked him if he had a place to stay Marinette had already offered.

Ladybug asked him if he had somewhere to go and he'd run right to her. No wonder she's let him stay so close while they're working on homework. No wonder she's been so concerned about getting him to stay.

Adrien starts to glance at Marinette again, but then drops his gaze and rubs at the back of his neck instead. "T-thanks. And, um. Sorry. For. Everything, I guess?" He moves his hand up to scrub through his hair, obscurely relieved not to still feel his cat ears. If the fangs and claws are already holding over he doesn't know what he can rule out. "Can you, um. Maybe not tell anyone yet? I kind of didn't plan this very well."

It's Tikki that answers, not Marinette. The kwami's voice is strained as she says, "Plagg, how could you let this happen?"

"Hey-" Adrien starts, startled, because Plagg's very real concern for him is about all that carried him through those first few days- Plagg's the one that got him to Marinette, to Ladybug, in the first place- but his kwami's already gotten between both of them and Tikki.

Both of them. Plagg is defending Marinette, too.

Adrien has no idea what he's ever done to deserve Plagg.

"Don't," Plagg says, in a low, rolling growl, "Start."

Tikki whirls away, darting off to the side with more energy than he'd expected, and Adrien's already wincing as he turns his head to follow her.

Plagg did take them to one of the rooftop hideouts. Worse, it's the first one they'd stayed at, the one he'd lost most of a day to. There are still boxes up here with food and books in them, in addition to the blanket Marinette's already found.

She isn't exactly going to have trouble figuring out why those things are here.

Tikki flutters over to land on a box and Plagg darts after her with an angry hiss. The two kwami keep arguing but they've switched into a language that Adrien doesn't even begin to recognise.

He didn't even see them stop to recharge.

"Adrien," Marinette says again, sounding a little stunned, and he almost doesn't answer her because he hasn't answered to Adrien in days now. He'd barely noticed when Plagg stopped using his name. He's not sure even now how long ago Plagg had stopped using his name.

He still can't quite bring himself to look at her. "Yeah. Sorry, I- know you were looking for me."

"We just wanted to know you were okay." He hears her take a deep breath before she reaches out to rest her hand on his shoulder again. Then, sounding miserable, she says, "And you're not okay."

His head snaps up, eyes widening, because despite everything he's loved staying with Marinette and her family. He still wants to stay with them. Maybe he's not strictly okay, but he's a lot better than he was, and he really hopes she's not about to suggest he stay somewhere else.

He doesn't want to stay somewhere else, not now that he knows what it's like with Ladybug's family.

"Wha-" He starts, and then trails off without even completing the thought because it isn't like he can really argue with her. She's turned out to be both the people he's gone to. She's in probably the best position of anyone but Plagg to judge how okay or not he might be.

And he doesn't know how to phrase 'please don't make me leave' without making it sound pathetic, or worse, manipulative. He doesn't want her or her family to keep him out of guilt.

It doesn't matter that he doesn't actually answer, anyway, because Marinette lets out a weird hiss as soon as their eyes meet and stares at him with a very strange expression.

"What?" Adrien asks nervously. He can tell that if he were transformed his tail would be lashing, and from the way her eyes flick down and back up Marinette can tell too. He's not sure that either of them should know that with such certainty. "Do I have something on my face?"

"You could say that," Marinette says, strangled, before she suddenly starts digging through her purse. "Also I think we should maybe, just. Stay up here and rest for a while. Without- either of us transforming." Shakily, she holds out a compact mirror. "You should see this, kitty."

(He doesn't think she means to let that kitty slip out but he almost starts purring again when she does).

Adrien blinks at her, but she doesn't offer any further explanation, so he takes the compact from her and flips it open.

And stares.

He has Chat Noir's fangs still, all right. And hair. And-

Well. It's really, really obvious that he's Chat Noir.

Chat Noir is Adrien.

Marinette's mind shorts out for a moment and only comes back online with an effort, because Chat Noir is Adrien.

The first coherent thoughts that do manage to break through the sudden flurry of panic and apprehension and terrified relief are that can't be right and then, bizarrely, tripping right on the heels of the first thought, I should have known.

She'd like to say that she couldn't have known. She'd like to either blame it entirely on magic or claim that he acts so differently that no one could blame her for not noticing, but that- that isn't actually true, when she thinks about it.

For one thing, she strongly suspects by now that their magical shielding has been degrading ever since she first invited him to stay the night (because really, they have heard each other's voices before now, if only from around corners and behind walls) but there are also a lot of little clues that she suddenly starts to add up.

It's true that she's a lot more used to Chat Noir's easy and sometimes-unearned confidence, and to her partner's puns and teasing and occasional brutal honesty, but.

But she's seen Adrien do all of that, too.

He teases his friends, he's called her out on the ways she's behaved poorly around Chloe before more than once, and although she hasn't heard him make very many puns she's willing to bet that if she asks Nino about it she'll learn it's only that she hasn't heard them. She's just... never put any of that together, before now. It's not that he acts differently, it's that she acts so differently around him that she's never seen all the little hints before that it is him.

And now that she's looking back on it, there were actually a lot of hints.

She can forgive herself for not noticing the way he always has some excuse for why he's late or for where he's been during an attack- she's always been more concerned with making her own excuses, after all, and he is in fact a lot better at it than she is. (She wishes she'd thought of hiding in her locker like that during Zombizou's attack, that was clever). He's a lot more over the top as Chat Noir (and a lot more flirty but she shoves that firmly into a box in her mind marked for later) but knowing that he can't be like that most of the time is more enlightening than she thinks he knows.

And so much of the rest of it-

He puts his hands on her shoulders the exact same way, she realises distantly. She's seen that same over-exaggerated bow more times than she can count. He likes to appear out of nowhere and startle her, to the point where she's come close to blurting out that they should put a bell on him before. He doesn't like enclosed spaces, which always has seemed a little odd for Chat Noir. He's helped her direct people out of the path of attacks before right up until they both have to vanish- and they do always both have to vanish.

Every time any of their friends are in physical contact with him he holds on like he's not sure he'll ever have another chance, like he's not sure it's really meant for him, even though they're both friends with Nino and Alya and those two are the most physically affectionate people Marinette's ever known-

-until she counts in Chat Noir.

Chat Noir, who needs her right now, who needs her not to be a mess about this, who's still curling in on himself at her side and waiting for her to respond. (He's so much taller than her. She's never noticed, with the way he almost never stands straight outside of a fight, the way he leans into her like he trusts her more than anything).

Marinette closes her eyes and remembers Chat Noir over the last couple of nights, stretched out alongside her on the floor writing out equations, learning how to play Pictionary after dinner with her parents (and now she knows why he wouldn't know anything about a game with a four-player minimum), teasing her over episodes of anime and podcasts, and then before she can stop herself she's remembering him sprawled on the rooftop and barely breathing and still trying to get up to help and she has to open her eyes so she can see him again.

And it is him she sees first. It's surprisingly easy to see Chat Noir in him before she does Adrien, now, and the relief at knowing he's all right easily overtakes the wild tangle of the rest of her emotions. She needs to know that he's all right more than she needed to know who he is; whatever her feelings are his health and safety are a lot more important to her.

She's stunned, actually, at how easily and immediately her relief overwhelms everything else. Most of it is for her partner, but- she did want to find Adrien. She has found him; she knows where he is now. She can help. She can help, and that's a relief, too.

She's been helping. He may not have been able to go to Nino, but he did come to her. He's come to her a lot of times if she counts anything he's let Ladybug help with- which still isn't as much as she'd like, even now, but he has listened to her.

He started staying with Marinette after Ladybug asked him if he had somewhere to go. He's listened to her a lot more effectively than either of them had expected.

He hasn't taken off the hoodie she gave him in all this time, even though he's been transformed and definitely doesn't need to wear it, and knowing that he's Adrien adds another dimension to that. She's had the uneasy thought before that maybe Chat Noir's just never owned very many clothes. That's very obviously not true, but even now she can tell he's running one hand along the edge of his sleeve, the exact same nervous tic he's developed as Chat Noir.

He's had plenty of clothes. It's important to him because it's from her.

He didn't even want her to take the hoodie long enough to wash it.

Okay, so she might actually be freaking out a little internally at the idea that Adrien has been wearing her clothes all this time. It's stupid and terrible, because that is not at all important right now, but she can't help it. If she lets herself stop she's going to start falling apart over everything else and she can't do that.

Part of her (okay, a lot of her) wants to spend more time freaking out now, but it's overridden by her very urgent need to know that he really is all right. He should be, but then he should have been healed the first time.

Besides, he was clearly nervous about telling her, and that's not like him. Not at all. He's wanted to tell her right from the beginning and he's never seemed nervous about it before. He's told her before that he'll still love her no matter who she is without the mask, he has to know she feels the same way.

(There is a thought in there that Marinette is in no way ready for just yet).

Anxious now herself, Marinette studies him as well as she can when he's not meeting her gaze just yet.

She's paying more attention to what kind of shape he's in than anything else. Because of that it takes her longer to notice than it should, especially when he's not transformed and Plagg is right here (Plagg is right here and clinging to Adrien's clothes, worryingly quiet, purring softly and showing no signs of letting go of his chosen).

Adrien's still moving entirely like Chat Noir. He had definitely not been doing that before this past week- she's spent enough time watching both of them that she would have noticed.

He's looking at the roof and not at her, but he's settled easily on his haunches instead of sitting in a more usual position, and the way his head is tilted and his bangs are draped across his face is all Chat Noir.

The way he won't meet her eyes is not. Neither Chat Noir nor Adrien has ever had a problem looking her in the eyes before the past few weeks, and she wants to find whoever made that change and- and she's not sure what she wants to do to them, exactly, but she wants to make it very clear that no one is allowed to put that look on his face.

None of his body language is a good sign, not when he's detransformed, and especially when he doesn't seem conscious of any of it. It does help Marinette refocus. She knows her partner, and suddenly that thought turns over in her mind like a key turning over in a lock; she does know her partner, and he is still her partner, and that means she knows Adrien far better than she's ever thought she did.

She also knows Chat Noir's body language almost as well as she does her own and right now Chat Noir is all she can see.

He's definitely been transformed way too long. From the glimpses she's gotten, she thinks he still has the fangs from the fight. She knows he still has Chat Noir's messier hair, though that might be unrelated to transforming; he showered at her house, she doubts he brought anything like hair gel with him.

(...there's another thought in there that will have to wait).

But he does look healed.

Marinette moves on an impulse to pull him much closer, wrapping her arms around him tightly as she closes her eyes and finds that she's not actually that nervous about hugging him at all. Chat Noir's her best friend, and he's okay, and then without thinking she says, "Everyone's been looking for you!"

She regrets opening with that immediately.

At the very least she should have found a better way to phrase it, because she doesn't mean- she doesn't want him to think she's not just as devoted to his safety as he is to hers.

He starts to pull away from her and she starts to let him, but then she can't help reaching for him again, and he comes right back to her because he always does.

"Not that- I mean, I'm really glad, but I'm not going to tell anyone," Marinette says, tripping over her words only a little bit and not at all for the usual reason. "I would never- I mean, unless you wanted me to tell someone, I wouldn't."

He curls into her more, somehow. Chat Noir's always been incredibly tactile. Adrien is, too, but she hadn't- she's never thought about that before. Adrien hangs off of Nino every chance he gets (and Nino lets him, which is actually kind of telling in itself); he sits at least as close to Nino in class as Marinette does with Alya, and she's fallen asleep on Alya before. She's not particularly proud of that, but- well, she's felt a lot more touch-starved since becoming Ladybug, too. She thinks she has an idea why, especially now that Tikki's told her that they aren't actually meant to be bleeding traits into each other the way they are.

She thinks they might actually have been doing that for a lot longer than any of them had guessed.

She's able to pull herself together again faster than she'd expected. He might be Adrien, but- she'd met Chat Noir first, and she's been friends with him longer, and it is surprisingly hard to remain shy around the same person she's been running along rooftops with at night all along.

Even as Adrien and Marinette they're good at working together; she remembers how she hadn't been that nervous around him just before they'd both left to transform to fight Kung Food. They've thrown each other off buildings before and tackled each other out of danger more times than she can count.

(They've talked to each other about their crushes, but that's going right in that same mental box for later).

They've saved each other's lives.

She's never, ever doubted that he would come running to help her when she needs him.

She wants him to know that she'll always come running to help him, too.

Chat Noir's the bravest person she knows, but he's been scared for so long now, and Marinette hasn't wanted to consider that too deeply. She hadn't known why, and she still doesn't, exactly, but she isn't about to forget the way he'd flinched back at the stadium. Back when she'd said they needed to make sure to return the cat to where she belonged.

(With her, Chat Noir belongs with her-)

Marinette can guess his reasons now.

She didn't miss Nino's muttering to himself earlier, or the way that he had deliberately stayed behind to talk to Ladybug after everyone else was gone, or that he brought up shelters. Now she wonders why exactly he'd wanted to come to her place for lunch earlier in the week, because Marinette's been pretty vocal about her concerns, and Nino has apparently been a lot more worried than she'd known. And... he'd been upset at the news about Adrien, but he hadn't seemed surprised.

(She might really need to talk to Nino, actually).

No one missed that it took Gabriel Agreste a full week to even admit his son had gone missing, even though Adrien actually is a target for kidnapping, even though Marinette herself has first-hand experience of exactly how crazed some of his fans can get.

"I know," Adrien finally replies far too quietly once he's edged closer again, hunching more under the blanket in a way she doesn't like. He's more cautious now and she hates it. He's tense and unhappy and she has to fight not to wrap her arms around him entirely. He's also still not looking back at her. Marinette wishes he would look up.

It's really starting to unnerve her that he hasn't. She knows that Chat Noir's been a lot more nervous than usual recently, but it's different to see him this anxious when he isn't transformed. She's never liked seeing Chat Noir unhappy but she knows how to help. It's different somehow when he's Adrien, it shouldn't be but she's not used to this yet.

She's going to have to get used to it faster because he still needs her help. He still needs somewhere to stay, since if he's here then that means he has his own reasons for not wanting to go back to the mansion. It's very clear that no one else is actively keeping him away- Chat Noir is more than capable of going wherever he wants to, even if Adrien isn't.

(It kind of has to be something his father said or did and she's not completely sure she wants to know).

She's still afraid he will have interpreted her initial reaction as wanting to bring him home. Well- okay, she does want to bring him home, but she wants to bring him home with her, not- she's not going to ask him to go back to anywhere he ran away from. That's never going to happen.

He's still staring at the roof. When he brings one hand up to rub the back of his neck, she wants to kick herself for never noticing how familiar the gesture is.

"T-thanks," he says, slowly, with that same too-familiar stutter that he didn't have before the last week, not as Chat Noir or as Adrien, and she likes that about as much as she does the way he's half-hiding under the blanket. "And, um. Sorry. For. Everything, I guess?" He pushes his hand through his hair like he's trying to discreetly check for his cat ears, just in case. (He's not discreet. He's not even a little bit discreet). "Can you, um. Maybe not tell anyone yet? I kind of didn't plan this very well."

Marinette doesn't start laughing at that but it's much too near a thing. If she does start laughing it's going to be a lot more hysterical than she'd like and she doesn't want him to think she's laughing at him. It's just, that is such an understatement.

Then her eyes catch on the boxes on the roof again and suddenly she doesn't feel like laughing at all. This isn't the kind of hiding place someone sets up unless they think they might need it. Adrien had known this might happen, had planned for it, and none of them had noticed.

Well. Marinette thinks back to that conversation with Nino again, seeing it in a different light now. She wonders for the first time when exactly Nino had started trying to get his home approved as an akuma shelter- or, possibly more accurately, as a safehouse under a law that still has a lot of loopholes.

Maybe one person did notice.

Just when she thinks she's finally figured out what she's going to say next to Adrien- Chat Noir? Is it easier to think of him as Chat Noir, still? - Tikki interrupts her.

Both kwami have to be exhausted, but Marinette's suddenly very aware that Plagg is still clinging to Adrien's sleeve in much the same way the two of them are clinging to each other. Plagg hasn't left them alone even long enough to recharge. From what Chat Noir and Tikki have both told her that is not remotely normal.

Tikki has been recharging and while the repeated Lucky Charms had taken a lot out of her, she'd still been in better shape than Plagg.

And Plagg had been exhausted, when they'd detransformed. She doesn't think he'd have crawled into Adrien's pocket like that otherwise and he'd been doing that same injured-purr as Chat Noir had been doing (is still doing, now that she pays attention, though now that it isn't from injury it's back to being a reassuring sound).

Marinette tries to discreetly stretch one foot out far enough to kick the last box of cookies over closer to the cat kwami. He doesn't react, and she hopes fervently that VoltHeir was the last of the akuma burst because none of them are going to be in any shape for another fight.

The only other time Hawkmoth sent akuma after them so rapidly he'd stopped at three. If they're lucky that's the most he can manage. After all, his kwami has to be worn out, too.

If they're not...

Well, she hopes they are lucky.

"Plagg, how could you let this happen," Tikki's saying, voice pitched even higher than usual as she ignores both their chosen entirely. Tikki's clearly tired out as well but not as badly. Unlike Plagg, she's back in the air, hovering as she peers worriedly down at her counterpart.

"Hey-" Adrien starts to say, probably- understandably- to defend his kwami, but Plagg cuts him off.

"Don't. Start," Plagg growls at Tikki. Marinette had already thought that Plagg radiated a sense of danger, but with that wild growl that sensation abruptly magnifies by a hundred.

That should probably frighten her but it actually has the opposite effect. Plagg's clearly even more protective of his chosen than Tikki is of her, and that's stupidly reassuring. Marinette feels a little less overwhelmed already just hearing Plagg growl like that, like anything that wants to hurt them is going to have to go through him.

(Which VoltHeir did, unfortunately).

The two kwami keep arguing, but they dart over to the boxes in a sudden brief flare of energy and switch to a language that Marinette doesn't even begin to recognise, so she refocuses on Chat Noir. On Adrien.

...On her partner.

"Adrien," she makes herself say, before she can think about it too much, and when she sees how delayed his response is she's glad she didn't listen to the urge to keep calling him Chat Noir.

She's retroactively even happier that her friends- their friends- had come running to help earlier. She's still a little stunned that they would do that, risk that, but at least Adrien wasn't alone to find out he'd been reported missing. At least he'd gotten that time with their classmates.

She's kind of wishing Nino was here now to help her out, actually. He seemed like he had some ideas.

She would have said 'and he knows Adrien better' but it isn't true. She knows Chat Noir so well that they can communicate without words, and knowing his identity doesn't- can't- change that.

It does mean she could really use some time to re-evaluate her feelings about both of them but that's her problem, not his, and it's going to have to wait.

Adrien isn't meeting her eyes even now, fidgeting in such a specific way that she can tell he would be playing with his tail if he were still transformed. "Yeah. Sorry, I- know you were looking for me."

He looks so worried. It continues to be far easier than she'd expected to see Chat Noir in him still and it takes her a moment to find her voice again.

"We just wanted to know you were okay," she says at last, before reaching out to rest a hand on his shoulder again, because she can't keep herself from it any longer. It hasn't been very long at all yet since he'd been so hurt that she doesn't even think he noticed the way he'd stopped talking for an alarmingly long time. She doesn't think that he could have said anything, and she thinks Plagg knew that, and she thinks that Adrien didn't, and her voice almost breaks as she says, "And you're not okay."

He finally looks up sharply at that and she misses his response as she sees his eyes and lets out an alarmed hiss.

(She thinks she hissed at the akuma earlier, too. That's also probably not a great sign).

After that fight Marinette had been ready for the fangs (and when she runs her tongue over her own teeth, she finds they're already sharper, too. She is not looking forward to that conversation). She didn't expect his hairstyle, but then, she's never actually known before that it changes that much. Even now she's not totally sure how much of that is only that he obviously hasn't been styling it.

She definitely didn't expect his eyes to stay transformed.

Chapter 23: balance

Chapter Text

Plagg lands on the boxes before Tikki does, but only barely. If he's lucky she didn't notice the way he half-crashed into them rather than actually landed.

But he's never lucky, so.

"How could you let it get this far," Tikki says, following him down. He notices that she still perches just close enough that if he does lose his balance she can catch him.

Plagg is annoyed at her right now, so he resolves to stay exactly where he is.

They've been at Marinette's long enough now for Plagg to know that Ladybug's family is just as affectionate and happy as most of Tikki's chosen tend to be. For everything they share, Tikki has almost never had a Ladybug that found themselves in Adrien's kind of trouble; Ladybug tends to have a support structure, a family, supportive friends. If Plagg is lucky Chat Noir has maybe one of those things.

And he's never lucky.

"We couldn't stay there," he hisses at Tikki, hunching down on top of one of the kid's boxes and then glancing over at both kids before he can help it. By the way the two of them are huddled into each other, and the way he can see Ladybug's fingers going white from here as she tightens her grip, they're fine for now. "I know you've been in the room, too. I know you can tell he's not used to a decent amount of food or attention."

"Cats never think they're getting enough food or attention," Tikki says, but she does look troubled.

"He barely ate anything for days until that cake and then he was sick," Plagg snaps, feeling his hackles rise. He's not normally so agitated around Tikki, but then Tikki tends to assume that everything can be fixed because that's what Tikki does. Plagg doesn't have that luxury.

(And- Plagg would have survived, but both of them together nearly didn't fix Adrien, and Plagg doesn't like that).

Tikki finally looks a little horrified. "Why didn't you say anything! Marinette's parents would have found something else for you to eat, I'm sure of it!"

"Yeah, about that," Plagg says, snippily, because if Tikki's going to judge him for something he had to do he's not above judging right back. "Does your kid know that her parents-"

"You are changing the subject," Tikki insists, flickering back into the air, but then settling back down again guiltily when she realises Plagg's not really up to doing the same just yet.

Plagg should probably be glad that she doesn't bring up the way he continues to keep glancing over at the kids, but he doesn't think he has it in him. Adrien's been pushing himself too hard for weeks now, and Marinette-

He's never seen any Ladybug pull off a row of Lucky Charms like that. He's never seen Tikki let them. Plagg's not in territory he likes with Adrien, but he isn't entirely unfamiliar with it; he's not sure whether Tikki even knows what the price is for one of her Ladybugs taking a risk like that.

Plagg knows he's getting too invested in their current chosen, but it looks like he's not the only one.

"Most of them still go for panthers, you know," he says, consciously making himself look back at Tikki. "The domestic kitten thing, that's entirely the kid. That's how little anywhere felt like home."

"Entirely," Tikki says, and it isn't a question.

Plagg scowls and checks on the kids again.

"Plagg," Tikki says. "This isn't fair to them."

"C'mon, Teek," he says, instead of acknowledging that, instead of saying anything that might make Tikki aware that he's checking on both kids and not just his own (this Ladybug has had unwavering faith in her Chat Noir from the very beginning and Plagg knows very well how much it's returned- but he also knows that, as much as Adrien's devotion isn't entirely a good sign, his Ladybug's more than earned it). "We couldn't stay there."

"Plagg, we can't reverse this," Tikki says unhappily, and Plagg catches her looking over at the kids, too.

(They haven't noticed the eyes yet. He'll have to go back over there when they do).

"You aren't listening to me," Tikki says, "We can't reverse this. When we have to leave-"

Plagg's attention snaps back to her, all at once.

"When we what?" he says, softly.

Tikki's eyes are huge. "Plagg, you- you know we'll have to leave them. Once Hawkmoth is defeated-" She looks at Marinette and falters, then takes a deep breath. "Once Hawkmoth is defeated, it won't be safe for us to stay."

"If the old man didn't want us to stay with them," Plagg says, low and angry, "Then he shouldn't have given us kids."

"I-" Tikki falters again, still looking at their chosen. "I'm sure he meant well."

Plagg starts to reply, but stops himself just in time to see the way Tikki is also looking at both kids, see the worried way she holds herself.

"That's why you let her do it," he says with sudden clarity. "That's why you haven't told her to go to Master Fu, that's why you let her use her Lucky Charms like that. You don't want to leave yours, either. If it starts happening to both of them you have a reason to stay!"

"Plagg, they're already both-" Tikki starts, but that's when Marinette hisses and pulls out a mirror, and Plagg doesn't hear whatever else Tikki says because he's already heading back towards his kid.

Adrien doesn't quite manage to tear his eyes away from the mirror for longer than he'd like.

He still looks like Chat Noir.

It's not subtle. It's much too obviously him; he looks like he might if he transformed and then somehow took his mask off. He's only missing the ears and tail, and he's a lot less sure than he'd like to be about whether he can rule that out, and this is not something he can hide.

He doesn't realise he's raised one hand to his face until Marinette hastily grabs it and tugs it back down.

"Claws," she says by way of explanation when he looks at her.

And then he keeps looking at her, because he doesn't know what else to do, and because now that he knows she's his Lady he doesn't know how he never saw it before.

"Chat Noir?" Marinette says uncertainly after he doesn't say anything. "We can- we can figure something out, kitty. We can get you contacts."

"Sclera, though," Adrien says, after too long a pause. "I don't think contacts are going to help."

Marinette takes a deep, determined breath and Adrien moves closer before he can help it. "Then we'll think of something else. But I'm pretty sure sclera contacts do exist, Alya would know more- oh, no, Alya!" Her eyes widen and she twists to rummage through her purse, coming back up with her cell phone. "She's going to be frantic, I never joined the chat!"

Adrien starts to say something in response to that, but he doesn't know what, so he's glad when Plagg abandons his ongoing argument with Tikki to rejoin them. Tikki follows the other kwami back slowly, still looking upset as she glances between both humans before drifting to the ground beside Marinette's purse.

"Oh, hey," Plagg says, landing on the gravel between Marinette and Adrien. "You actually noticed."

"Plagg," Tikki says, sounding no less upset than she had before the two kwami had gone off to argue.

"What," Plagg says flatly. "I told you, I warned him. I warned both of them, actually, since you didn't."

(From Marinette's sudden frown, Adrien's not sure that's true).

"You should," Tikki says, "Have stopped him."

Plagg turns on her with such a vicious wordless hiss that Adrien finds himself scrambling closer to Marinette, even though it's Plagg, even though he could never be scared of Plagg, and Marinette fumbles and drops her phone.

"What's going on," she whispers when Adrien's burrowed impossibly further into her side, both their backs pressed solidly to the wall as she loops an arm around his shoulders again like they'd never detransformed at all.

"I don't know," Adrien breathes back, huddling even closer on automatic before freezing as he wonders if that might be a little weird now. Marinette shuts her eyes and takes another deep breath, but then she hauls him closer herself, so he ends up curling up against her anyway.

Maybe it is a little weird. It's still just as reassuring as ever, and it's not as though it's really anyone's business but theirs.

"No," Plagg snarls at Tikki, bristling with fury. If their backs weren't already literally to the wall even Adrien would still be backing up and from the twitch she gives he thinks Marinette would be doing the same thing. Plagg never sounds so- so angry. "There are enough people telling him he can't do things. I'm not gonna be one of them."

Adrien closes his eyes, even as Marinette suddenly hugs him a lot harder.

He didn't know how badly he needed to hear that.

Tikki looks between Plagg and the huddled humans before drooping. She flickers closer to Plagg, lowering her voice, but Adrien's sharpened hearing can still hear her.

From her sudden intake of breath, so can Marinette.

(There's something strange about that, but he can't focus well enough yet to know what it is. For all that Miraculous Cure seems to have healed him entirely he's still so exhausted).

"You really care about him, huh Plagg." Tikki flits closer to the other kwami, continuing in a hushed whisper, apparently unaware that both their chosen can still hear her. From Plagg's suddenly sharpened gaze, he is aware, but he doesn't seem about to enlighten his other half. "I haven't seen you get like this since Cath."

"Yeah, well." Plagg drifts slowly back into the air, clearly ready to abandon the conversation entirely, and tosses back over his shoulder bitterly, "Cath never met his Ladybug, did he."

Tikki starts to respond, sounding stricken, but she's switched languages again and Plagg's ignoring her anyway as he zips over to the (mostly) humans. He lands in a crouch on Marinette's knee so that he can glare up at Adrien. "I meant it, kid, you make your own decisions. But it would be nice if you would quit making stupid ones."

"Plagg-" Adrien starts, reaching for him, only to startle back when Plagg flashes up his sleeve and into his hood faster than he sees him move. "Plagg?"

"You scared me," the kwami says gruffly, clinging to the collar of Adrien's shirt. "I'm not a healer, kit. So if you could quit throwing yourself into danger for like five minutes that would be fantastic."

"Sorry, Plagg," Adrien says softly, bringing one hand up to cup around his kwami. He couldn't bring both hands up if he wanted to; Marinette's still holding him in a vice grip.

"You scared all of us," she says, shakily. "Kitty, I thought you were dead." She swallows and he can feel her trembling. "I thought I lost you. I could have lost both of you and I wouldn't have known until it was too late."

"I'm sorry," he says again, uselessly.

She laughs without any humor behind it. "You don't need to keep apologizing. You just- A-Adrien, do you know how worried we've been?"

"I, um." He ducks his head. "I kind of do now." He rubs at the back of his neck, awkwardly, because he's heard- quite a bit from her, actually, about how worried they've been, and he'd kept quiet anyway. "And... I mean, you'd kind of given me some idea."

He glances over at her again, cautiously, and she looks in his eyes without any sign of finding them odd or off-putting. It has to look strange to her as it did to him, Chat Noir's eyes without his mask, but Marinette seems to have accepted that as easily as she has everything else about his transformation.

(Ladybug bought him a scratching post. He is really not sure what to do with that information).

"You know," Marinette starts to say, and Adrien turns back towards her immediately as Plagg flits back out of his hood and- vanishes, somewhere. Adrien doesn't turn to look for him, not when he knows Plagg wouldn't actually have left them alone.

"What?" he says, burrowing further into Marinette's side despite himself. He can't- he can't seem to stop that, honestly.

He still doesn't know if that's a Chat Noir trait that held over or not. He's afraid to ask.

Marinette lets him (she always lets him), but she shakes herself all over once, the same way he does when he's trying to shake off a particular thought, before picking her phone back up and saying, "We can get you sunglasses for now, but we're going to need some kind of solution for when it's night or when we're indoors. I think- I think I can figure out where to find sclera contacts?"

He thinks he sounds uncertain but he's not sure. He almost doesn't hear her at all, because even though she's right here and holding him he's seized with a sudden need to be closer. He squirms around until her arms loosen enough that he can sink down towards her lap, resting his chin on her knee and tilting his head towards her as he closes his eyes.

It should be embarrassing. It is embarrassing, why would he do that? He just went ahead and flung himself into her lap with no warning, that's not normal, why would anyone-

Marinette moves and Adrien holds back a flinch, because she must want him to move, but her hand lands lightly on his head and starts running through his hair. She only stops long enough to draw the blanket back around them both.

He wasn't really aware before that he'd never stopped purring, but he notices now when it rumbles louder in response.

Slowly, he nudges his head further into her hand.

She starts scratching right where his transformed ears are and he goes limp all over again, draping himself over her lap entirely and purring loudly, and she doesn't seem to mind at all that he's being weird. He's- he is being weird.

He's being so weird.

He'd stayed transformed way, way too long.

"Nino stopped me before I left," Marinette says, unlocking her phone with one hand and angling it between them as he twists just enough to peer up up drowsily, and Adrien startles a little when he sees that he's on her phone background.

He's on her lockscreen, too, but that's a group picture with Alya and Nino; the background is just Chat Noir, curled up on her chaise lounge and gazing intently at something out of sight. He's not even sure when she took that.

"And- oh, Papa texted. He says the akuma attacks put them behind schedule, so we shouldn't worry about getting back in time for dinner." Marinette ruffles his hair again almost absently as she swipes out of that message and into a download link from Max. "But when Nino stopped me, he also told me they set up profiles for us- for Chat Noir and Ladybug, I mean. On Max's app."

"Is that secure?" Tikki pipes up worriedly from somewhere nearby.

"Well," Marinette says, considering it. "I guess I could transform and use my communicator if you're really worried, Tikki, but if I was following the read-mores on Alix's phone right earlier, Markov is actually acting as the server. I think he's more secure than anything anyone else has."

Tikki doesn't suggest transforming, so she probably agrees.

Marinette takes her hand away and Adrien misses it immediately, but he's still curled up comfortably between her and the blanket, and she turns out to only be logging in to the application. She goes right back to petting him with no sign of thinking he's being stupid and needy and weird, even though he's sure he is.

"The default password's mothlit," Marinette continues, and Adrien snorts before he can help it.

"What?" Marinette says, glancing over at him.

He buries his head against her stomach, muffling his voice as he says, "That's an Animorphs reference, my Lady, who chose that?"

"Oh for-" Marinette starts laughing. "Of course it is. I don't know who decided on it, but of course it is, they even made it a pun-" She's still laughing when he flips over onto his back, still draped across her, and she shows him the phone again.

Even though she's logged in as ladyBug, the chat only stops long enough to confirm with her that the fight's over and for her to confirm that there's no lasting damage before resuming at twice the speed. Alya's not even pausing to try and figure out why there would have been so many Lucky Charms in rapid succession.

The chat's still about him.

There was a vicious, flashy battle between when this conversation started and now, and it's still about him.

royalBeholder's still dominating the conversation, and she seems honestly worried; most of the arguing going on with her is in the form of ladyBlogger pointing out that obviously Adrien couldn't come hide at the hotel, Chloe, that's the second place anyone would look, and Chloe taking offense to it not being the first place before epochGraffiti butts in to point out that either option means it's not where Adrien would be right now.

"I told you we've been worried," Marinette says softly as more and more colours appear and vanish. He thinks everyone's in the chat but the two of them, now, and there are multiple ongoing conversations.

He doesn't see Nino at first, but before he can start to worry about it red text flashes under Alya's orange and he realises it's just that Nino changed his name to jukeboxHero at some point. Apparently they aren't stuck with their default names.

"I just found out that Nino and Alya have been studying the akuma laws," Marinette tells him. Alya's spamming the chat to egg Chloe into having one of the more ridiculous akuma laws amended as they watch. "I think they're trying to find one to help you."

"Can they do that?" Adrien asks curiously, feeling his shoulders start to hunch.

Marinette shifts to run a hand down along the back of his neck until he relaxes again. "They're certainly going to try. If they can't, I think they're going to trick Chloe into getting one written."

Eventually she does have to log out so that she can log back in as Marinette, but they end up waiting several minutes to make it less obviously timed. Marinette pulls the phone back towards herself to start searching for something intently.

"What are you looking for?" Adrien asks, blinking up at her.

"Those sclera contacts, I'm sure I have seen them," she says, typing something else into the search bar. "They might be uncomfortable, but I think they should work. It'll be a little more complicated than hiding your claws but we should be able to do it."

It takes him too long to realise he's never actually told her that he can't quite change all the way back anymore, that he hasn't ever told her he still has his claws and sharpened senses. She'd said something about his claws earlier, too, hadn't she?

Even caught between the warmth of the blanket and Marinette's lap he feels cold. "I didn't think you knew."

She hunches over him, oddly protective. "I mean, obviously I would definitely know now, but I was always going to know."

"What?" Plagg darts back over to them and lands on Adrien's head, suddenly sounding suspicious. "Wait, why, kid?"

Marinette blinks at him, then groans. "You mean you don't know either? Tikki was surprised, too." She shifts the phone to one hand again and holds out the other for Plagg to inspect. "Because Chat Noir's traits bleed over to Ladybug."

"Since when?" Plagg yells, but Adrien's busy staring at Marinette's hand- at the way her nails are just slightly too sharp, just slightly too curved.

He glances up at her and when she smiles her teeth are too sharp, too.

"Since them," Tikki says shortly, back from wherever she'd flitted off to. "Since whatever is going on with them, Plagg, I keep trying to tell you-"

That does it; Plagg hisses and dives after her and both kwami go off to argue loudly in that unintelligible language over on top of Adrien's old supplies.

"I got the hearing boost, too," Marinette tells him, sheepishly. "Not- I don't hear as well as you do, but it's definitely more than human hearing."

"You didn't tell me," Adrien says, doing his best to ignore their arguing kwami.

They hear Tikki shout, "Because I was busy with the Mongols, Plagg!" before the argument drops into the kwami's strange language again.

"I knew you couldn't stop, and I didn't want you to worry about it," Marinette says, shrugging and tucking a stray bit of hair behind one ear. "Besides, it's different for me. I'm not Chat Noir so I'm just getting echoes. I don't think anything's even going to be noticeable unless someone looks really, really close."

"What did Tikki say?" he asks, acutely aware that both kwami sound furious by now.

Marinette's smile turns sheepish. "Thaaat it's not supposed to happen? Honestly, I don't think she believed me at first."

"Marinette, I can- I can- stop-" He's not sure how, but he can come up with something if he really tries, he's sure of it.

She brushes a hand over his hair again, lightly. "No you can't, kitty, you're too easy to recognise. But I told you who I was so that you can detransform at night."

He hadn't even thought of that. "But if it's hurting you-"

"Kitty- Adrien, it's hurting you," she says, softly. "I don't care if I take on every trait you do, as long as it keeps you safe. The only reason I'm even asking you to transform at night is that it's getting dangerous for you."

He's silent for a moment, before muttering, "We're both idiots, aren't we."

Plagg breaks off from his argument long enough to yell, "Yes, yes you are!"

"I'm not answering that," Marinette says dryly, but she stretches her foot out to the last package of cookies and manages (with some effort, because Adrien clearly has no intention of moving) to kick it over towards their kwami.

Plagg stops arguing just long enough to phase into the nearby box, re-emerge with two energy bars, and throw them to her. She has to catch them one-handed but she manages that more easily than she'd expected; Plagg has surprisingly good aim.

Somehow she doesn't think that Tikki's assessment of Plagg's selfishness is right.

Tikki's known Plagg for millennia, so Marinette isn't sure exactly how- or, more tellingly, when- that happened.

"If I just stayed here again-" Adrien starts, and Marinette grabs his shoulder unthinkingly, turns him more towards herself.

"No," she says flatly, when he doesn't continue. "I'm not going to say you can't, because I'm not in charge of you," And because she saw his reaction when Plagg said he wouldn't tell him what to do, "But- please don't." She's the one who curls forward over him, this time, moving so that she can wrap her arm around his shoulders.

"I know it was a bad plan," he says, and then he stops, though that didn't sound like the end of his sentence.

"It wasn't," she says, pained, because he had planned this. "It probably would have worked, if you weren't-" so alone, she does not say. "- if you hadn't started changing so fast. I can't believe how prepared you were, actually." She hands him one of the energy bars. He makes a face but he does take it. "Honestly, it's still a really good starting point if we have to run again."

He'd started picking at the wrapping on the energy bar but he goes still at her words. In a very small voice, he says, "We?"

She shakes him slightly, exasperated in a way she associates purely with Chat Noir. "Yes, cat, we. You're not running off alone again."

"Ha!" Plagg says, swirling back over with a frustrated-looking Tikki trailing in his wake. "What did I tell you, kid? You don't have to go back. I told you we'd take you and run first." The kwami looks very smug as he drifts down to perch on Marinette's shoulder. Tikki looks at him, sighs, and drops down to land on top of Adrien instead.

(Marinette did not know before that exact moment that she wanted to see her kwami and her partner together. She's glad she hasn't picked up purring from Chat Noir, because she's not sure she wouldn't be.

She also kind of wonders if Adrien had anything like the same reaction to Plagg darting to her as she did to Tikki going to him).

"Marinette?" Tikki says quietly.

"Sorry, Tikki," Marinette says guiltily. "But... you know we would."

"I know, Marinette," Tikki says, hopping forward before looking back at Adrien and hesitating. She settles for staying where she is, glancing up at Plagg and then away. Apparently their argument didn't end in a satisfying way.

"Your parents," Adrien says, staring up at her. "They'd worry."

There is a world of unspoken hurt and guilt in those words. "They would, but we'd be able to tell them one day, I think, and they'd understand."

"We're supposed to be back for dinner," he says quietly, and her heart swells, because he said we. He does want to stay.

"We can be," she assures him, settling more firmly against the wall as Plagg curls up against her neck and her own displaced kwami flits up to Adrien's shoulder. "I mean, if you still want to be. You..." She hesitates. "I think you should still be transformed around my parents until we figure out what to do, but I don't want you to feel like you have to."

"It's okay," he says, blinking at her, and she's never realised before how much she likes Chat Noir's eyes. It isn't because he's Adrien; no, in fact, it's specifically because they are Chat Noir's eyes. "I don't mind. I just want to-" He falters for a second, then whispers, voice full of too many emotions for her to identify, "I want to stay."

"Of course you can," she assures him immediately, full of relief. "Even if we have to sneak in, even if you can't transform for a while, you're welcome to stay. That's why I invited you in the first place."

He closes his eyes and shifts around, but not off her lap. If anything he's moved closer again.

Tikki flutters into the air, takes one look at the spot Plagg's claimed on Marinette's shoulder, then sighs and drops back down onto Adrien.

"Thank you, my Lady," he says, opening his eyes to look at her again.

Chapter 24: dysecdesis

Notes:

this chapter is early for anyone in the U.S. who is hiding from family this holiday

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

They end up staying on the roof for most of the afternoon. It's not long before Adrien falls asleep, and both kwami right after him, so Marinette takes the opportunity to check in with her parents and Alya and assure all of them that she's fine, that she wasn't caught up in any of the akuma attacks.

(She ends up splaying one hand out against her partner's chest for a while after she sends that message, just to feel him breathing).

She logs into Max's application long enough to keep anyone from getting suspicious, but she ends up picking a fight with Chloe so that she has an excuse to log right back out. She's not sure she can keep her replies believable with Adrien sleeping soundly in her lap.

Surprisingly enough, it's Plagg that wakes up first, but then he insists that Marinette get some rest as well.

"I'll keep watch," the cat kwami tells her, oddly quiet, but from the way his ears twitch back towards them she can assume that he's trying not to wake the others. "Seriously, I've had plenty of practice."

"I know you have," she says, glancing back down at Adrien again. "Thank you, Plagg."

He twitches one tiny paw back towards her. "Don't thank me."

"Thank you, Plagg," she repeats firmly. He doesn't answer her, but he does go to perch on the edge of the roof where he can easily see all around them.

(It doesn't escape her that he knows exactly where to go to do that).

It's a little difficult to get comfortable enough to fall asleep while she's sitting up but she's not about to move Chat Noir. Eventually, and mostly by matching her breathing to his, Marinette does drift off.

When she wakes up, it's to the slanted golden light of late afternoon. She's stiff from sleeping in such an unnatural position, but she's not as cold as she would expect to be from sleeping on a roof.

Probably because she has a lap full of blanket and Chat Noir, still. He hasn't moved. She isn't sure where their kwami are, but she knows exactly where her partner is.

When she glances down at him he's looking up at her, still and peaceful, looking entirely like a cat who's found himself a comfortable sunbeam. Green eyes blink up at her drowsily and something in her chest clenches.

"Hey, kitty," she says softly, reaching out to smooth his hair back again.

He closes his eyes again and relaxes under her hand, purring quietly, and she's suddenly frightened of just how completely he trusts her. She's scared of losing him, but she's scared of making mistakes and hurting him, too, and it would be so easy.

He didn't go to anyone else for help. He came to her.

They've held each other's hearts in their hands since the early days of their partnership. It's never been quite so daunting before.

"We should get back home," she says, feeling the familiar weight of Tikki landing on her shoulder. Plagg lands on her other shoulder a moment later, a false dichotomy that makes her smile to herself. "And I left our stuff back at the store, we need to pick it up."

He doesn't answer her; he blinks again slowly when she says home, and she thinks he's purring more, but he doesn't actually respond.

Her lingering sense of lazy contentedness drains away abruptly.

Her heart rate starts to pick up.

"Kid," Plagg says, before Marinette can articulate why the way her partner is purring under her hands, looking calmer and happier than he has in days, is suddenly terrifying. "Kid, you gotta answer her. Words, kid."

He stops purring and slits both eyes open, barely.

"Adrien?" Marinette asks him, worriedly.

Plagg climbs down her shirt- climbs, oddly, and doesn't fly, and then drops down onto Adrien's hoodie and bats at him. "C'mon, kit, you can do words."

"Plagg?" Adrien rasps.

"Yeah, and Ladybug," Plagg says, darting into Adrien's hood and pressing tiny paws against his neck. "We're still on the roof."

"Adrien, I need you to get up," Marinette says, urgently, because she doesn't think they should stay here any longer. They shouldn't have stayed this long. "We need to go."

He blinks yet another time, but this time he looks a little more alert as he starts to fumble his way upright. "We... do?"

He's speaking thickly, like the words are heavy on his tongue, but he is talking again. Marinette sees Plagg relax a little, and feels Tikki relax a little, even as she does the same. "Yeah, kitty, we gotta get home."

"Home?" he echoes, with an odd lost lilt in his voice, and Marinette shakes him before she can help herself.

"Kid," Plagg stresses, pressing hard against Adrien's neck this time. "Talk."

"This is why you should have stopped him," Tikki says abruptly. It's the first thing she's said in a while.

"Is this really the time?" Plagg hisses at her.

Marinette ignores both of them, scrambling to her feet and drawing Adrien up with her. He still looks disoriented, somehow, and it's still strange that he's watching her with Chat Noir's bright familiar eyes- as if both halves of her life have gone crumbling into each other and left the two of them to stand together in the ruins. "Chat Noir- Adrien, are you okay? We need to- we need to go."

"I'm okay," he says softly, but it still sounds too close to an echo of her words.

This is her fault.

This is her fault, not Plagg's; Plagg did the best he could, he did take Adrien and run, and she- she should have told him who she was days ago. She should have told him when he came to her for help, or when he landed on her balcony, or- she should have told him.

This is permanent and life-changing and her fault.

She tries to remind herself that she's been helping as much as he's let her, but it's hard when he's looking at her like that, when they're standing so close that she can still smell smoke and sweat, and she trusts him more than anyone. She should have told him.

"Are you sure you're okay?" she asks him anxiously, scanning his eyes again, but he really is beginning to look more and more present now.

"Yeah," he assures her, reaching up to cup one hand around Plagg as well, shaking his head a little. "Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm all right."

"That's twice now," Plagg says grimly. "Kit, you gotta keep talking to us. I can't do anything about- any of the rest of it," he looks up, at Adrien's eyes, "But you can't stop talking on me."

"I..." He shakes his head again. "It's not... It wasn't on purpose."

"We know," Marinette says, stepping closer, relieved when his arms come up to encircle her automatically. "But you keep scaring us."

"I don't mean to," he says softly.

She hugs him back, harder than she's willing to let herself hug even Alya. He's her Chat Noir; she doesn't have to hold her strength back. "Of course not. But I think we're getting back down from here the old-fashioned way."

He's better than she is at climbing down a building detransformed. He's better at staying safely out of sight as they dodge and weave through the city to their destination, too.

That's not surprising, when she thinks about it.

This time he does have to wait outside when she ducks into the pet store to pick up their purchases from earlier. The morning seems so long ago now.

(The bag seems heavier, even accounting for the still-disassembled scratching post, but she doesn't want to leave him alone long enough to figure out why).

She also stops long enough to pick up a length of black fabric, handing it to Adrien as soon as they meet back up.

"You think this'll work?" he asks her, tracing out eye holes with his claws before ducking his head to let her tie the makeshift mask on.

"I don't know," Marinette admits honestly, stepping back a little bit. "It might. I think it's more convincing when it's still so obviously your eyes. I do think we should probably not go to dinner, just in case, but it's better than nothing." She tugs his hood up as well.

The way one of the faux cat ears flops down when he tilts his head, on top of the fangs still peeking out and the glow that flashes off his eyes in the dark between the buildings, make his grin more rakish than usual when he says, "How do I look, my Lady?"

He looks like he's walked right out of one of her more private daydreams. He looks like he should be on billboards, except that he is, and the real thing is so much more appealing. He looks unfairly like the culmination of fantasies she's not yet willing to admit she's had.

He looks like he's going to be the death of her, and like she's going to thank him for it with her dying breath.

"Errol Flynn would be proud, kitty," she tells him dryly, even as she hopes fervently that she isn't blushing anywhere near as hard as she thinks she is.

He's almost definitely just as good at climbing back into buildings as he is at climbing down them, but her parents are expecting them both. He stays close behind her while they try to rush through the bakery as fast as possible.

"Marinette, Chat Noir!" her mother greets them happily. "Oh, sweetheart, we saw the Ladyblog. There were certainly a lot of akuma victims earlier. Are you both all right?"

"Yes," Chat Noir says, quiet and startled, and it's only when she glances back at where she expects to see his tail lashing that she remembers he doesn't have it. The mask is clearly not his usual one, but his transformed eyes make that slow to register; not having his tail is a lot more easily noticed.

Marinette starts trying again to edge through the far door.

"Um- he is pretty tired, though, Maman," she improvises in a hurry, doing her best to reach the door quickly without being too obvious about it. "We were just going to go up to my room, if you don't mind us taking dinner up there later?"

"Oh, but we were so looking forward to dinner," her mother says, sounding honestly disappointed. "Are you certain you're both okay?"

"We're all right," Marinette assures her, touched that her mother is concerned for her partner, but anxious at the reminder that he nearly wasn't okay.

"I don't mind at all if you bring food up later," she says, warmly, and Chat Noir finally slips through the door first and then immediately up the stairs to her room. "But Marinette, I have to tell you-"

"I'm sure it's important, Maman, but I have to-" Marinette starts, still trying to back away after her partner.

"Marinette!"

Marinette freezes, halfway through the door into the hall, and looks up slowly.

Nino waves at her from a door she's sure was closed a moment ago. "Dude, your mom said you could have a cat! Ladybug was trying to find this one a home."

"Nino?" she says, floored, because she doesn't know what else to say.

(She deliberately pitches her voice up on instinct, just a bit, the way she does for Chat Noir to better hear her during an akuma attack).

"Yeah, sorry." Nino steps out entirely into the hallway as she does the same, and she sees that he's come out of the study for some reason. She can't remember the last time they actually used the study. "I was asked to bring this cat back to the shelter, but... Well, I know she didn't get adopted once already. I can't have a cat at my place, and Alya's sisters are allergic, so..." He shrugs at her, a little sheepishly. "I figured it couldn't hurt to ask."

There is a very, very faint thump from upstairs, Chat Noir's sign that he's listening. (Or possibly that he's knocking things off her desk. Or both).

"Of course," Marinette says, touched. As much as she was wishing she had Nino's help earlier, it's frustratingly inconvenient that he's here now when Adrien's upstairs and unable to transform. She still can't help but appreciate how dedicated Nino is to finding a home for a cat he only ended up with by chance. "What did my parents say?"

"They said it's up to you." Nino takes a step to the side and gestures at the study door. "Your dad's in there with her, though, and I'm pretty sure he already made up his mind. As in, I think he already set something with an inspector from the shelter." His eyes fall on the bags still in her hands, in exactly the way she'd hoped they wouldn't, and he frowns. "But it looks like he already told you?"

She seizes on that offered out with the ferocity of a wounded animal. "Yes! Yes, exactly! He sent... he sent me a text about a cat earlier, and, I got, overexcited. Yes. And bought... a lot of cat toys. And a scratching post." She really hopes her smile isn't half as strained as it feels.

Nino lights up. "Awesome, dude! Man, I knew I could count on you to look after the cat!"

Oh you have no idea, Marinette thinks. "I'm flattered, Nino. But I also have, uh, to study. The. Akuma laws. Yes, I have to study the akuma laws."

From upstairs, but close enough that she knows Chat Noir's definitely well within earshot, she hears a hissed, "Marinette, he's studying the akuma laws!"

"I can help you with that," Nino says at almost the exact same time.

Marinette starts to answer, to turn him down because she really needs to get upstairs, but then she actually looks at him.

She's known Nino for years now. She can tell immediately that his smile's not a real one.

"Are you okay?" she asks without thinking.

"Not really," he admits, then swallows. "You... you saw the news earlier, right? About Adrien?"

This thump is much louder.

"Mice!" Marinette says loudly, when Nino starts to glance up in confusion. "It's. Mice. That's why we wanted a cat. Yes. Mice. Very, very loud mice. Very... active."

She takes a deep breath, relieved when the only other thing she hears from upstairs is an oddly offended, "You do not have mice."

"Okay," Nino says slowly. "Uh, anyway. Did you know your parents registered your place as an akuma sanctuary?"

"They what?" Marinette says, stunned, hearing her partner echo her distantly.

Nino ducks his head, slightly. "It's a little more complicated than getting registered as a shelter, but that's why I was still here. If, uh, if someone can prove they're more likely to be akumatized if they stay... somewhere they shouldn't, they can go crash at a sanctuary instead. Basically, anyway, it's a little more complicated and Alya knows it better but-"

Marinette drops everything she's holding to hug Nino.

"Um?" Nino says, sounding faintly baffled. "Dude, not that I don't appreciate it, but-"

"Nino you are the best friend," she says, muffled from holding him. "Don't you ever, ever let anyone tell you otherwise." Sanctuary laws. How long have there been sanctuary laws? Why hasn't she ever checked? "You never believed he was in New York either, did you?"

"No," Nino admits, carefully stepping back out of her hug. "But he wouldn't have had anywhere to go. And they won't register the apartment as a shelter, much less a sanctuary, because no one's ever home, and there are too many people living at Alya's for her to qualify. I thought, your parents, maybe-"

"LB," she hears, oddly urgent. "Can you bring him upstairs?"

Marinette stoops down both to pick up her dropped bags and to hide her face as she whispers back, "Are you sure, kitty?"

There's a faint shuffling noise, and he sounds guilty when he says, "No, but I want to talk to him, and your mom didn't seem to notice. If you don't think I should risk it-"

"We'll be up in a few minutes," she mutters hastily, because she really doesn't like the way he's so willing to defer to her.

Suddenly, talking to Nino seems like a good idea for both of them, before they find themselves trapped in an unhealthy loop of codependency. They're already at too high a risk for that.

Straightening back up and trying very hard to look as though she hasn't been mumbling into the pet supplies, Marinette says, "That was a good idea, Nino. Hey, do you want to help me bring the cat upstairs and get her settled in?"

He blinks at her, but he's already twisting back towards the door he'd come out of. "I thought you had to study?"

"I thought you said you'd help?" she counters, stepping past him.

And then she stops, blinking, because the study- isn't, anymore.

"Hello, sweetheart!" her dad greets her, backing away on hands and knees from the bed he's putting together before beaming and standing up.

The de-akumatized cat is watching him from a corner of the not-yet-assembled bed.

Putting his hands on his hips and then pausing to brush dust off, her papa says, "What do you think? We never use the study anymore, so we thought it was time we had a proper guestroom."

Marinette looks around, slowly.

She thinks their apparent guestroom is suspiciously cat-themed- or, at least, themed for a very specific cat.

The room she remembers being a placid sort of blue before now seems to have an abundance of red and black and green, and she spots more than one paw print pattern. One of the walls is painted over into a chalkboard.

There are ladybugs painted on the baseboards and an alarm clock she's never seen before on a nightstand that's been painted red and black.

Her parents must have been in here all day.

She knows that her parents have been surprisingly welcoming towards Chat Noir, but this is- this is getting-

"Of course, there's still the hatch in the closet," her dad says, apologetically, cutting off her train of thought. "Nothing to be done about that."

"What?" Nino says.

"What?" Chat Noir says, at the same time, and he actually sounds like he must be right above that same closet.

"You can get into my room from here through the closet hatch," Marinette says, surprised into an answer. "You'd have to know to look for it, but it's there."

"Part of the house," Papa says. "Like I said, nothing to be done about it, but it's only really noticeable if you know it's there. Were you two here to bring Snapdragon upstairs?"

"Snapdragon," Marinette repeats, but she can hear her cat laughing at that already and she knows the name is going to stick. "Snapdragon."

"Ah... yeah." Nino grins and rubs the back of his neck. "Little dude... dudette... kinda got collectively named by the class chat. Rose suggested Snapdragon and everyone just kinda went with it."

"Snapdragon," Marinette says one last time, and then, because he's still laughing, she adds loudly, "I mean, I've heard worse. At least it's creative."

That earns her an offended, "Hey!" and she's smiling as she stoops down to pick up Snapdragon.

It's a little awkward getting up the stairs with the cat and the supplies. Nino takes the bags from her, and she halfway expects Chat Noir to open the trapdoor but when they climb into her room he's nowhere to be seen. She can see Plagg peering down from her bed, just barely out of sight, though, so she isn't worried.

"Just drop everything here," she says to Nino, gesturing at the chaise lounge and then feeling vaguely guilty about it, because that's kind of Chat Noir's bed at the moment. She sets Snapdragon down and the cat immediately takes off to explore the room.

"Um?" Nino says a moment later.

She looks over at him and he's pulled a first aid kit out of one of the bags, looking very confused.

"What the-" Marinette pounces on the rest of their earlier purchases, digging through them.

Everything they'd picked out is in there, but so are several things that she's positive they put back, and they were at a pet store. The store didn't even sell first aid kits, or any of the nonperishable food items she finds, or-

"Hey, kitty, I think they're on to you," she says at last, staring at a gift card for, hilariously enough, her own family's bakery.

He thumps down through her skylight, landing on her bed in a crouch before bounding down the ladder to carefully tug the card out of her hands. He's adjusted the fabric mask again; between that and the hood his eyes seem to gleam out of the shadows.

Marinette wonders, suddenly, if her eyes have picked up that same wild glint by now.

(She kind of hopes they have. She likes the idea of having that in common with him. She likes it a lot more than she'd have thought she would).

"Well, they have my favourite bakery right," Chat Noir says, amused.

"Yeah, I think they think you're raiding the dust bins, though," she says wryly, plucking a box of rice out from the cat toys and tossing it at him.

He catches it easily. "Maybe they think I deserve fair compensation for keeping the mice away."

"We do not have mice, don't slander us like that," Marinette says, laughing.

"Well you don't now," he says brightly, eyes glittering with fond warmth. "Maybe I've been earning my keep. Maybe you actually had the beginnings of an army of mice in your trash-"

"This, this is why they tell you not to feed strays," she says, snickering still as she bats at one of the ears on his hood. He ducks into her hand instead of away, though, and she ends up ruffling his hair as much as she can through the cloth.

She's relaxed so immediately into the easy and familiar way they tease each other (flirt with each other, suggests a part of herself that she shoves away with brutal speed), that she completely forgets that Nino's still in the room.

That is, right up until he says, soft and strangled, "Adrien?"

Notes:

whoops

(im also writing a magic!au now, if you want something with cat!adrien. its called what worse luck and i woke up one day and accidentally wrote like forty pages of it).

Chapter 25: trust

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

He has a lot more fun talking to Marinette from a floor above than he'd ever have expected.

He'd never thought of anything like this, when his hearing (their hearing, and he's still wrapping his head around that) had first picked up. But he hears that particular pitch to her voice when she greets Nino, the tone that she uses during battle that's just for him that makes his ears prick up every time, and immediately hones in on their conversation.

It reminds him a little bit of playing spies with Chloe when they were much younger, but he never enjoyed that quite as much as he does talking to Ladybug. It's a little frightening, actually, how happy he is to share something like this with her, even if it's tempered with guilt that they're sharing it at all. Ladybug's not the one who's been abusing their powers but she's still paying the price for it right along with him.

It takes him a little longer than usual to remember to signal her that he's listening- usually they can see each other- but he was already tempted to swipe a book off her desk. She just- she left a textbook sitting right by the edge of the desk. Knocking it off the desk entirely satisfies a restless part of him, at least momentarily.

Then he hears Nino asking anxiously about Adrien, about him, and accidentally knocks over quite a bit more.

"Kid, really?" Plagg mutters as Adrien scrambles to pick up Marinette's belongings and put them back. He fumbles a couple of times, too much of his attention wrapped up in listening to Marinette and Nino and responding when his Lady says something clearly meant for him, and once everything is back in place he finds himself pacing along the room to follow the sound of their voices.

He doesn't expect to end up half in her closet, staring at a second trapdoor that's much harder to spot than the main entrance. Marinette's voice echoes up from beyond it as clear as day as she says, "You'd have to know to look for it, but..." before his attention lapses.

Part of him aches to block this off, to protect his Lady's space, but most of him is too busy being relieved to have another exit if they need one. That's the part that wins out.

When he hears Nino and Marinette on the stairs with Snapdragon (Snapdragon, he loves that), he loses his nerve and darts outside, crouching on the balcony.

"Kid," Plagg says, tiredly, from where he's still inside. He's claimed Marinette's cat pillow. "Seriously? It's just your friends. Who you need."

Adrien looks at him.

"What?" Plagg says, irritably, and Adrien remembers guiltily that Plagg's had a very long day, too.

"Nothing." Adrien fidgets, missing his tail. He runs a hand over his head hastily when he thinks he feels his ears flick back, but it seems to still be a phantom sensation. "Shouldn't- shouldn't you be warning me about keeping my identity secret?"

"Eh." Plagg shrugs, huddling smaller on the pillow. He must not have slept as much or as well as the rest of them had earlier. "You're not stupid, kid. You can figure out how important that is." Much quieter, he adds, "Or if there's something more important."

Adrien's still unpacking that when Marinette and Nino spill into the room.

He couldn't have stopped himself going to Marinette if he'd tried. She'd called, so he'd answered; he's always going to answer.

He should think about the fact that he's not actually transformed. He should remember that they aren't that certain that their improvised mask is effective.

He'd let slipping past Marinette's mother build up his confidence too much.

He honestly doesn't expect Nino to recognise him.

He's distantly aware that he might be panicking a little as he stares at Nino, his hands twitching as he tries desperately to come up with something to tell him. He knew the mask was a risk but he hadn't thought anyone would know it was him that easily.

"Um," Adrien says, finally, stammering a little before he can help it. "I'm... not? I'm Chat Noir?"

He winces when that comes out as a question.

"Sorry, Nino," Marinette says, sounding both chastised and much calmer than Adrien feels, even as she steps up next to him and grabs his hand.

By how much pressure there is in her grip he thinks she's not actually as calm as she sounds.

"Sorry?" Nino says, faintly, leaning one hand back on the chaise lounge for balance and shaking his head without taking his eyes off of Adrien.

Adrien does start to calm down a little, though, squeezing Marinette's hand back. From the way Nino's acting it's possible he doesn't actually know that it's him. He might only be jumping to a conclusion.

They don't have to let him know that it's a correct conclusion.

"Sorry," Marinette repeats, with just the right amount of guilt in her voice. "I know you were hoping my parents would let Adrien use the spare room, but uh, Chat Noir's been staying here, and I think they meant it for him-"

Wait, Marinette's parents meant what for him-

"Marinette," Nino says, strained. "I know it's him."

"It's not?" Adrien tries again, awkwardly, but he has the sinking feeling he's already lost this one.

Nino shakes his head, slowly, then abruptly lurches forward to wrap both arms around Adrien. He ends up with one arm flung awkwardly around Marinette as well, since she doesn't seem willing to move away.

Adrien should be worrying more about trying to salvage his secret identity, but there's no way he can keep himself from hugging Nino back. He's missed Nino. He's missed everyone, but aside from Ladybug Nino is his best friend, and he's missed him very badly.

Nino's holding him a lot tighter than earlier, when he'd hugged Chat Noir at the stadium, and when Adrien does return the embrace he knows it's going to remove any doubts Nino has about it being him. He can't help but do it anyway, even as he winces in anticipation of the questions Nino's sure to have.

"Dude, I don't care about you being Chat Noir," Nino says, muffled. "I care that you're okay." He pauses. "Although, holy shit, you're Chat Noir. Does- does Ladybug know?"

"About what, exactly?" Adrien asks cautiously at the exact same time as Marinette says, "She knows where he is."

Adrien glances at her sideways, uncertain now. Her identity's not in any danger, as far as he can tell, but if she tries too hard to keep his a secret then it's going to be.

"My lady, he does know it's me. I'm sorry," he says, as quietly as he can, knowing that Marinette will hear him even when Nino can't.

"I know, kitty, it's all right," she breathes back, leaning into him for a moment. "I think it might be a good thing."

Adrien fights not to startle at that, because Ladybug's never seemed willing to budge on their secret identities before today, but she sounds like she means it.

He doesn't think that Nino believed for a second that it wasn't him, so he really hopes she does.

"I, uh." Nino slowly disentangles himself, blinks when he realises he's still holding on to Marinette too, and then abruptly sits heavily down on the chaise lounge. Snapdragon darts out from under the desk to attack his shoelaces. "Oh man."

"Nino?" Adrien says cautiously.

"Holy shit you're okay," Nino repeats in one breath, leaning his hands on his knees and inhaling deeply. "Dude I've- everyone's been so worried. Have you been here the whole time?"

"Yes," Adrien says, but right as he does Marinette says, "No," and they both turn to glance at each other.

Nino rubs his forehead, looking pained. "Should I just go back downstairs until you two have a story worked out?" He blinks again, then swings his head over to stare at Marinette. "...you knew."

Marinette raises one hand, placatingly. Adrien thinks she starts to raise both but she's pressed too closely up against his side to move her other arm, and neither one of them is willing to move away. "Nino, I..." Marinette trails off and glances at Adrien.

He takes a deep breath, because he doesn't think they're going to be able to keep many secrets from Nino at this rate. At least Ladybug's with him. At least she knows he didn't give anything away on purpose.

Gently, he says, "Marinette's only known for a few hours, Nino. I, uh..."

He trails off and Marinette takes over.

"I found out by accident," Marinette says, her voice growing firmer as she does. Adrien hears more than a little bit of Ladybug in her tone and leans harder back into her in response. They probably shouldn't be keeping so close together, not with Nino right here and Ladybug's identity still a secret, but Marinette seems about as willing to let go of him as he is of her. "He's, uh, been staying here. Chat Noir, I mean, he's been staying here as... as Chat Noir. I guess... we should have expected one of us to slip up eventually, with him here all the time."

"Dude." Nino rubs at his face. "This is. A lot." He blinks. "So that's why you didn't want anyone over earlier this week."

"We were still figuring things out," Marinette says, apologetically, then blinks herself. "Although, I didn't expect my parents to be so enthusiastic." She stretches against Chat Noir's side, brushing her face against him, as she says, "They really love you already, kit- Chat Noir."

He actually purrs at that, ducking his head down to brush against her in turn.

"Um," Nino says.

Marinette blushes suddenly and jerks away, though she doesn't go far, and as soon as it sinks in that Nino is still right here Adrien finds himself blushing too. Not only does Nino have no way of knowing that he's a lot closer to Marinette than he ever has been anyone else, Adrien's not used to anyone but Ladybug seeing him display so many blatantly feline traits this close up.

And Nino's going to notice any minute that Adrien isn't transformed, and that his eyes are.

"I, uh." Adrien looks down at Marinette, unsure whether he should explain, or even what he should explain.

"You should tell him, I think," she says, very softly, out of normal human hearing range. "He's going to notice your eyes any minute. And we-" She hesitates, then finishes even more quietly, "We could honestly use some help."

He comes very close to asking her what exactly those consecutive Lucky Charms she'd used were before he catches himself.

Instead, he turns back to Nino, backing himself and Marinette further towards her desk on accident as he does, and says guiltily, "It turns out there are reasons not to stay Chat Noir so long." Awkwardly, he gestures at his eyes.

Nino slumps over the chaise lounge, rubbing at his face before glancing back up at them with a troubled expression. "You aren't actually transformed, are you?" he says faintly. "That's why I could recognise you." He shakes his head, slowly. "Is that... why you left?"

Marinette lets go of Adrien long enough to pull the desk chairs up behind them, then tugs him down into one. They're still close enough for the two of them to stay in physical contact. That's probably something they shouldn't be so obvious about, not when it's fairly common knowledge how comfortable Ladybug and Chat Noir are with each other. There's an entire section of the Ladyblog devoted to it, Adrien's looked through it before. (It conveniently seems to have left out everything that happened with Dark Cupid, and he still feels conflicted about that. He'd have liked to know but- he deeply appreciates that Alya has a policy against posting photos or videos of Chat Noir under mind control. He really doesn't want to see them).

Marinette seems even less willing to move away than he does, anyway.

"Uh, no. I'm not transformed," Adrien admits finally, dropping his eyes to the floor with a wince. He knows that Nino, out of everyone he knows, is the most likely to understand why his father's last ultimatum was enough for Adrien to run away- but he hasn't even actually told Ladybug what happened yet.

He stills.

He can tell Nino that.

"...I haven't actually told Ladybug exactly what happened, and I should tell her first," he says, slowly, reaching absently for his tail before wincing and letting his hand drop.

Marinette sees him do it, though, and gets up long enough to fetch something from their abandoned shopping bag and hand it to him.

Adrien blinks down at the red and black fidget spinner.

"You fidget," she says in an undertone, leaning against him again and then pulling back with a wince when both their chairs wobble. "A lot, minou. I got myself one too, but you don't have your tail right now, so-" She shrugs.

"Thanks," he says softly, already spinning the toy absently.

"You're welcome," Marinette says at a more normal volume, before sitting up straighter and glancing back at Nino. She clears her throat before saying, looking between them both, "You know, Ladybug knows- uh, Ladybug would understand you telling your best friend, ki- Chat Noir."

Adrien side-eyes her, suddenly a lot less sure that she isn't about to get caught too.

"It's all right, dude," Nino says hastily, holding up both hands. "If you don't wanna tell me, I'm cool with that. I know you, I know you'd have to have a good reason."

He nearly checks for his ears again at how clearly he feels them flattening back. "What if I- what if I didn't, though?"

"Dude. I know you," Nino repeats, a little softer. "I'm sure you did. I'm just not sure whether you knew you did." He leans over to pick up Snapdragon from the floor, gently tugging her away from his shoelaces before sitting back up.

The cat purrs for a moment, then wiggles out of his hands and runs over to leap onto Adrien's lap.

"Guess she was meant for you after all," Nino teases, then slumps back again. "Oh man, you really are Chat Noir."

"...yeah," Adrien says slowly, awkwardly. "I'm. Really sorry I never told you."

"Hey, that's all right," Marinette says, reaching over to pet Snapdragon and probably not coincidentally brushing her hand across Adrien's as well. It occurs to him that she's been a lot more physical since the rooftop earlier and he isn't sure if that's from knowing his identity or from the fight with VoltHeir. She really hadn't wanted to let him out of her sight after that lightning, and when he remembers how panicked she'd looked guilt lances through him again. He never meant to worry her.

"It was Ladybug's idea to keep your identities a secret, right?" Marinette continues.

"Yeah, but she was right about it," Adrien says, trying not to look at her and failing miserably. "Knowing does put you both in danger."

"But it helps you," Nino points out immediately, and from the way her mouth shuts suddenly Adrien suspects Marinette was about to say the same thing. "Ladybug loves you, dude, she's not gonna be upset about you needing help. Does she know that you need help?"

Adrien blinks, letting the hand with the fidget spinner go limp for a minute and then shaking himself. His partner is right here, it's not fair to let that misconception stand. "Ladybug doesn't love me back, Nino."

Marinette overbalances and falls out of her chair.

"Dude," Nino's saying, even as he offers Marinette a hand up with a raised eyebrow. "I'm not- dude, are you blind?" He waves his free hand. "I will find Alya's akuma playlist for you, I swear, but the entire city has seen you and Ladybug fight. She loves you."

Marinette's standing very, very still in the center of the room, but she picks up something else from the shopping bag before falling back into her desk chair, leaning into him and nearly falling out of her chair all over again. "Chat Noir."

He looks at her and realises she's holding a fidget spinner of her own, but in black and green- in Chat Noir's colours, instead of Ladybug's.

That probably shouldn't strike him as strongly as it does, but it suddenly seems weirdly, incredibly important.

He hadn't even noticed how much he'd been picking at his sleeves or playing with his tail until she'd mentioned it. Marinette's clearly been very aware of it, and very sympathetic- because Ladybug does know him better than anyone else.

She'd thought of the scratching post, too. She'd come up with sclera contacts. She's been more attentive to the changes in him than he has.

(Although he doesn't really think the fidgeting is new. He thinks it's just- a lot more pronounced, recently).

Marinette can't seem to look at him at first, but then she takes a deep breath and meets his eyes as she says, steadily, "Ladybug loves you, kitty."

Adrien nearly falls over, too.

Snapdragon makes a displeased noise and he hurries to pet her apologetically, repressing the urge to purr at her. Marinette won't think anything of it but it might still be a little weird in front of Nino. He'd only seemed amused back at the stadium but he hadn't known it was Adrien then.

"See?" Nino's saying, stubbornly, but he's also shooting Marinette an oddly apologetic sideways glance. "Ladybug really obviously loves you, dude. She's gotta be so worried." He blinks, then adds, "Actually, I, uh, left the stadium a little later than the others. I know she's worried."

Adrien can't say anything to that. He doesn't know exactly what Marinette told Nino, and he also doesn't know what Nino might have said to Ladybug that he may not want to repeat to Adrien and Marinette.

Adrien's also putting a lot of effort towards not visibly reacting to Marinette- to Ladybug- telling him that she loves him. He wants to tell her the same thing in return, but Nino is still right here and very obviously knows that Adrien's- that Chat Noir's very much in love with Ladybug.

Ladybug, who loves him back. He really, really needs more time to process that (to be deliriously happy about that) but he can't fixate on it now.

He'd really thought he would have less of this kind of frustration now that he and Ladybug do know each other's identities.

But then, he's maybe not quite over that yet, too.

"Adrien?" Marinette asks in a low voice, and he startles a little and realises he's still staring at her hand.

"Ladybug knows," he finally answers Nino, too quietly, and then winces when he realises he has to repeat it. He's already too used to talking to Ladybug and knowing that she can hear him.

He's only known they could even do that for a few hours. She's right, he does need Nino to know. He can't keep relying on Ladybug and Ladybug alone.

Even if he hadn't actually known that was what he was doing.

He should have known, really. Marinette's been so kind to him. She did know right away that he needed help, she'd tried to make sure he had somewhere safe to stay right from the start. He'd left her balcony that first night and now he thinks she would have invited him in even then.

He does owe her an explanation.

He owes Nino one, too. Adrien knows very well what it's like when someone you care about is suddenly gone without a word to you, and he'd still done it to his best friend. To both his best friends- he's more than aware of how hard Marinette looked for him, and that Nino's right, that she's been worried.

"I don't- it isn't a good reason," Adrien says finally, haltingly.

"Dude," Nino says, rubbing his forehead. "Again, you don't have to tell us at all. We trust you. And for you to actually run, dude- I'm sure your reason was better than you think it is."

"It's really not," he says, despairingly, hunching over to pet Snapdragon. That way he doesn't have to meet his friend's eyes when he tells them.

Plus, the cat is purring and as hard as it is not to start purring back, it helps ground him. It's immeasurably comforting.

(He wonders if this is why Ladybug seems happier when he purrs. He hopes it is).

"It's just- Father- Father pulled me out of school," Adrien admits at last, haltingly. "I didn't- want to go back to being homeschooled. I just really didn't- want to- to have to stay at home all the time." Even though they've both seen his room, they know what his life's like and that he's being ridiculous, wanting to leave; he knows how`stupid he sounds right now. He knows how weird it is that he ran when he has so much at home.

But they're all things. He never wanted more things, he just wanted- he just wanted friends. That's all he's wanted, for a long time now.

"Yeah, I thought it was probably something like that," Nino says, and Adrien jerks his head up.

His hood falls back, but he hardly notices.

"Adrien," Marinette says, tentatively. "We know how much you love going to school. Everyone knows that, it's not hard to see. And you're already grounded all the time, I don't blame you at all for running away at that." She blinks. "Wait, have you just been taking off as Chat Noir whenever you're grounded?"

Wouldn't you, he wants to say, but he actually doesn't think she has. He knows she wouldn't let it keep her from a fight, she doesn't let anything keep her from a fight, but otherwise Marinette probably does listen to her parents.

"Yeah," he says at last, blinking. "Yeah, I- didn't want to- I probably kind of abused that ability, to be honest. I just- couldn't stay there any longer."

"Is that when you set up that spot on the rooftop?" Marinette asks, very, very quietly.

He swallows, and answers her just as softly. "There's more than one of them, actually. But yes." He blinks again, harder. "They were supposed to- that's not what they were for, originally, I swear."

"I'm glad you had them at all," she says fervently, leaning against him as best as she can from a separate chair.

"They weren't as helpful as I'd hoped," he mutters, and he's stressed out enough that he accidentally tries to pet Snapdragon with the hand still holding a fidget spinner.

She hisses at him.

He hisses back on instinct.

Nino gives him a worried look. "I still, uh, I still have some questions about that, dude. Like. I didn't think you did that kinda thing when you weren't transformed. It seems like something we'd have noticed before now."

"I didn't," Adrien says, sitting back. Marinette reaches over and puts a hand on his shoulder. He puts his hand over hers and takes a steadying breath as he says, "I stayed transformed too long, and we- I found out there's a reason we shouldn't do that." He gestures tiredly at his eyes. "I can't really- transform all the way back, anymore."

"Oh," Nino says, faintly. "Oh, crap."

"Yeah," Marinette agrees. "We can hide most of it, but, well, there hasn't seemed to be a lot of point to that when he's hiding here anyway?" She squeezes his shoulder. "I found out about it, and my parents just think Chat Noir's staying here. We thought we should try and find a solution to Chat Noir not being able to go home before we worried about it."

Adrien gives her another sidelong glance, because they've discussed no such thing, but the concern and love in her eyes disarms him and he flounders for a moment.

He replays her 'Ladybug loves you, kitty' in his head again and tries not to huddle closer to her. He's suddenly not thrilled that they opted for the desk chairs and not the floor, where it would be easier to curl into his Lady.

It's concerning, how much he still wants to do that. He should be warier after how hard it had been to pull himself back from that content state earlier.

He's not sure how hard he would have tried if he hadn't been so obviously scaring Marinette and Plagg. It had been such a relief to finally stop worrying for even a short while, though. He doubts that's a state he can reach on his own, but he's frighteningly certain that he wouldn't have come out of it on his own, either.

As glad as he is to see Nino he does desperately need to talk to Marinette and their kwami. Plagg's warnings aside, he doesn't think he was changing this fast before.

(And he thinks he'd have transformed again anyway if he hadn't found out that it' s been affecting Ladybug every time as well. That's not fair to Plagg, but as dangerous as it's become there's still a terrible draw to just- just staying Chat Noir).

"That's fair, I guess," Nino says, slowly, before brightening. "And like I said before, your parents did register as an akuma sanctuary. If we can prove it's safer for him not to go home, and I bet we can, then Adrien can stay here."

Marinette turns a very interesting shade of red.

"Look, your parents clearly want him to stay," Nino continues, doggedly. "That spare room is in Chat Noir and Ladybug's colours. They turned one wall into a chalkboard. Your dad was showing off that alarm clock to me earlier and it wakes people up by flooding the room with scents. Dude, I dunno why, but they already seem ready to adopt Chat Noir. Like, really, really ready."

"I told you, kid," a smug voice chimes in, and Plagg drifts down from Marinette's bed to settle on Adrien's other shoulder. He presses his paws against Adrien's neck as he continues, "I told you to just stay here. They appreciate you."

"See? Plagg agrees," Marinette teases him, even as Nino's eyes go wide.

Snapdragon's eyes go wide, too, as she sits up and stares at Plagg. Her tail swishes and Adrien hastily grabs the cat so she doesn't lunge at his kwami. She chirps once, but then she does settle back into his lap.

"What-" Nino starts, and then stops, finally looking overwhelmed.

Adrien's surprised that it took this long.

"Sorry," Adrien says guiltily. "Nino, this is my kwami, Plagg. Plagg, Nino."

"Your what," Nino says faintly, edging backwards on the chaise lounge. (Adrien's trying not to worry about that, but the chaise lounge is currently his bed, and he kind of wishes that Nino would move. That urge alarms him a little by itself, because he's not- he's never really been territorial about his things before, and this is Marinette's room, besides).

"Kwami," Marinette contributes with a helpful smile, and Plagg snickers.

Adrien sighs, realising neither one of them plans to actually be helpful about this. "My kwami. He lets me become Chat Noir. And he's- I guess he's kind of like a spirit guardian, too."

Plagg snorts, darting up to Adrien's head and tugging at his hair. "Listen, you needed some kind of guardian, kid. Your plan involved sleeping on roofs for who knows how long, I wasn't gonna leave you alone."

Adrien appreciates hearing that- he always appreciates hearing that- but Nino's expression has fallen at the mention of sleeping on roofs, and he winces at the agonised look his friend gives him.

"You could've come to me, dude," Nino says, softly. "We could have figured something out."

"I'm sorry," Adrien says, painfully. "I thought they'd look for me there right away, and staying Chat Noir seemed like such an easy way to escape, at first."

Nino sighs. "No one ever did come to look. You were right to be worried about it, but no one ever did check, dude." He blinks, and his eyes look suspiciously wet. "He really didn't plan on reporting you missing."

"Probably thought I'd get fed up and come back," Adrien says, unhappily. "Which- I did get- I wasn't going to go back, though. Even if Marinette hadn't- I stopped on the balcony here one night, and she invited me in, and-" He shrugs. "I couldn't really stay away, after that."

"Yeah, of course not," Nino says, turning back to Marinette and starting to smile again. "It's hard not to stay here. I used to when I was younger, too, remember, Marinette?"

"Oh yeah," she says, blinking. "I'd forgotten about that. Your dad was always out of town even then, and we'd have playdates and you'd end up just staying."

"Yeah," he says, a little wistfully. "I don't think your parents liked the idea of me being at home alone. Uh, I, I turned him down, but- your dad offered to let me stay in the guest room tonight, actually. He asked about my place not gettin' approved for a shelter, and then when I said why he asked if I wanted to stay over."

"You should stay," Marinette says immediately, even as Adrien opens his mouth to say the opposite. "You should stay, Nino, we- we've missed you."

She looks directly at Adrien when she says that, though, and he knows it's not about her missing Nino.

Ladybug always has known him better than almost anyone else, and it seems like she's only getting better at reading him.

"Sure," Nino says, sounding honestly relieved. "And I guess if we need to talk more, I can use that closet hatch, huh." His eyes narrow suddenly. "The one that your dad was being really obvious about. And he knows Adrien's up here- well, that Chat Noir is up here, I guess. Okay, wait a second, if he's only working on the guest room now where have you been sleeping? Because if it's on the balcony I'll-"

"It's not!" Marinette breaks in, hastily. "It's not, Nino, he's uh-" She's very red again. "He's been sleeping in- in my room, on the chaise lounge."

"Oh," Nino says, derailed. "I...huh. Didn't. Expect that."

"Yeah," Marinette says, a little sheepishly. "I. Didn't either? We'd already both slept here a couple times by the time I told my parents he was here, and then when I asked if he could stay on the couch they said he should just stay in my room."

"Wait, really?" Adrien says, startled. "I didn't know that." Although Marinette's willingness to let him sleep in her room makes a lot more sense now. He's fallen asleep with Ladybug more than once, after all, and she's definitely been aware of his increasing reluctance to leave.

Marinette shrugs, pressing down on his shoulder again. "I didn't want you to feel bad about it. They were honestly pretty happy, I think. They trust you."

"Why?" he asks, blankly.

Nino groans. "Because you're Chat Noir?" He stops, looking very pained, and presses his hands to his forehead again. "Dude. You're Chat Noir. Yeah, okay, I'm still getting used to that."

Plagg snickers. Adrien's glad he's staying where he is, though, because otherwise he'd be checking for his ears again- he felt them flatten at that, and it's only the fact that Plagg is still on top of his head and would probably have said something that keeps him from getting alarmed.

"Come on, ki- Chat Noir," Marinette says, gently. "You save the city all the time. Of course they trust you."

"With you?" he asks her helplessly, turning away from Nino entirely to look at Marinette.

She's still very red, but she looks him in the eyes when she says, "Yes, with me. They said-" She flushes even deeper, which he didn't think was possible. "They said if they can trust you with Ladybug, they can trust you with anyone."

He's still staring back at her, taken aback by that, when he sees a sudden realisation flash through her eyes. The flush vanishes as colour abruptly drains from her face, and she's still looking at him when she says, hoarsely, "Nino, actually, can you, uh. I told Maman we'd eat up here, after that fight, can you- would you be willing to go and ask her about that real quick?"

Adrien fully expects Nino to protest that, because he doubts his friend wants to leave this conversation any time soon, but Nino only looks between them for a moment before agreeing and vanishing through the trapdoor.

"Marinette?" Tikki asks cautiously, poking her head out of Marinette's purse. "Are you okay?"

Marinette exhales, slowly. "That- is not going to take Nino very long. Chat- Adrien, I think- I think my parents-" She stops, looking lost.

Plagg snickers again. There's badly repressed glee in his voice when he says, "Oh, yeah- they definitely know."

Notes:

WHOOPS

Chapter 26: in confidence

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

"Plagg!" Tikki hisses, darting out of the purse entirely with a wary glance at Snapdragon. Adrien's a little bit offended on the part of the cat. Snapdragon doesn't know what kwami are, she can't be blamed for showing an interest in chasing them. Plagg's made Adrien chase him before.

He's gotten kind of suspicious of that, honestly. Sure, Plagg started doing that the moment they met, but he's also never really stopped.

Marinette isn't letting herself get sidetracked like Adrien has. "What do you mean, they know?"

"Ask Tikki," Plagg says snidely, finally leaping off Adrien's head to come inspect the cat instead. She swipes at him and then recoils when he hisses back. Laughing, Plagg flits into Adrien's pocket as he says, "I like this cat."

"Tikki," Marinette says, voice strained. "How- how long have they known?"

Tikki sighs, settling on Marinette's shoulder. "I'm not sure. I thought I was just being overprotective at first, but- Marinette, they weren't surprised when you said Chat Noir was here. They keep referring to you as a team. They've been really specific about trusting him with Ladybug."

Marinette slides off the chair to collapse on the ground, slumping against Adrien's legs without appearing to think about it. He tries to stay very still. "Oh. Oh, no, you're right, they know, Tikki what are we going to do-"

"Marinette," Adrien tries, startled at her sudden panic. He doesn't think he's seen Ladybug panic since fighting Stoneheart- seen her upset or scared or angry, yes, but not panicking.

He'd talked her out of it then. He can talk her out of it now.

(He'd been a lot more confident himself then, and that's been her role almost exclusively for the past week instead, but- maybe they can share more than just cat traits).

"Marinette, I know it's frightening, but it'll be-" he struggles, flinching slightly as she whirls herself around on the floor and suddenly clings to his legs.

"What if they ask me to give up my Miraculous?" she hisses up at him, her face a mask of desperation. "What if they want yours? What if they turn out to know Hawkmoth, somehow, what if he can tell they know, what if he comes after them-" Her breathing's starting to go unsteady, and Adrien is really not prepared to handle this at all.

He's glad to have Nino actually here to help them now. He didn't expect to find himself so quickly wishing for Alya's help, too. She's a lot more likely than he is to know what to do right now. She's Marinette's best friend, she has to know what to do.

...she's Marinette's other best friend.

He should know what to do.

"It'll be okay," Adrien says, more than a little desperate himself, and tentatively reaches out to rest one hand on her head the way he likes Ladybug to do for him. "It's- LB, I've been here for days, and they haven't even asked about my Miraculous. And I- I sleep here." He has to stop himself at that, though, because he's never phrased it quite that way before, even to himself.

He almost says he lives here, but actually saying that would feel too much like tempting fate. It's only been a few days. It's only been a few days, and he's only known that Marinette's his Lady for a few hours, and-

And her parents have been so nice, she's been so nice, and- and they said the guest room isn't a guest room-

Adrien didn't want to start thinking of this as his home, not when it isn't really his, but apparently his heart went and decided on that without waiting for the rest of him. He so badly doesn't want to have to leave.

"Yeah," Marinette says, her breathing starting to ease again. "Yeah, that's- that's true. And this would be a lot for them to go through, if that's what they really wanted."

"And they're your parents, Marinette," Tikki chimes in, landing in her chosen's lap and looking up at her with huge, anxious eyes. "They've always been supportive, I'm sure they're proud of you and all the good you both do!"

Adrien can't help the way he flinches at that.

Plagg scrambles down and onto Marinette's head instead, shooting Adrien an unreadable look before adding, "Also, if they did react badly, you could just both run."

"Plagg," Tikki scolds, but Marinette lets out a surprised laugh and wipes at her eyes.

She seems to suddenly realise the way she's hugging his legs and lets go with a squeak, but now Adrien can't possibly stay where he is. He sets Snapdragon and the fidget spinner both aside very gently and joins his partner on the floor.

"Hey, I would go with you, you know," he reassures her, before squeaking himself as she abruptly yanks him into a crushing hug.

Her eyes closed, she mumbles into his shoulder, "That's not fair, I was supposed to go with you."

He hugs her back, tightly, and tries to pretend he can't feel his tail lash as he does. "I think we're supposed to go together, my Lady."

She giggles again, watery, and then says, "How are you- I'm still having- you really don't have any trouble seeing me as Ladybug, do you?"

His eyes flick down to the fidget spinner, then back up to her. Uncertainty touches his voice as he says, "Do you, really? With me, I mean. I'm still- I mean, I'd understand, if it's easier to just think of me as Chat Noir."

"No!" she says, jerking back, but not going very far. "I- I mean, yes, it's- easier, especially when you still look like Chat Noir, but- I just want you- I want you to be you, minou."

"That's still more Chat Noir then Adrien, really," he says quietly. "And I know Chat Noir annoys you."

(But she did just say- she did say that she loves him. And Ladybug doesn't lie to him, any more than he does to her).

"Wha- no, you don't. I mean, sure, when you let yourself get distracted in the middle of a fight, maybe," Marinette says, exasperated. "That's dangerous, kitty. I don't-" Her breath starts to go unsteady again. "I don't want you to get hurt. I hate it when you get hurt."

"But-" Adrien blinks down at her, bewildered. "But you can fix it. You can fix everything. That's- you're more important, I can't let you get hurt."

She sits up in his arms then, vibrating indignantly, and the look she gives him is both all Ladybug and an acute reminder that he watched her beat an akuma with a brick earlier. "I don't care what I can fix, I need you to stop getting hurt."

"Besides, kid," Plagg chips in, glancing up at him from Marinette's hair. "You were probably still too out of it to notice, but Miracle has limits. I have limits. We almost didn't fix you, and we weren't supposed to keep trying, and now I don't think you should transform for a while at all if you can help it."

Adrien blinks down at him, blindsided at the odd grief that rips through him at that. "Wha- but. I need to be Chat Noir."

Plagg tumbles from Marinette's head down onto Adrien's sleeve, apparently so he can glare at him from a shorter distance. "Yeah, kit, I know. You're always gonna be Chat Noir. But we need to come up with an actual solution if you wanna be able to transform outside of akuma attacks again."

"You're really not supposed to be transforming outside of a fight," Tikki says, but she sounds tired, like she doesn't actually expect anyone to listen. "But Plagg always has been bad about that."

Marinette blinks at her kwami this time. "Wait, Tikki, you would have- I know you've told me not to, but you really would have stopped me?"

"I haven't," her kwami reminds her gently. "You go to things like press conferences all the time, and you both patrol more than you really should."

Both teenagers flush.

They've been aware for a long time now that patrol is far more for the two of them than it is for Paris. It's too hard not to give in to the rush of their powers, to the excitement of leaping onto buildings and running along rooftops, throwing themselves along the skyline knowing that even if they miss the other is always there to catch them. Adrien knows how much freedom he feels as Chat Noir, and even if it's a very different situation for her he can't imagine Ladybug doesn't feel that rush, too.

Plagg snorts. "You know that isn't what she's asking, Teek. No, kid, Tikki doesn't let her chosen stay transformed." The kwami's voice turns bitter as he adds, "After all, her chosen are lucky."

"Plagg?" Adrien asks, surprised at his tone.

"My parents," Marinette says, softly, snuggling further into him before seeming to catch himself. "That's what you mean, isn't it, Plagg?"

"Yeah," Plagg says. "Your parents have known for at least a couple days, kid, do you have any idea what happens every time people find out who Chat Noir is?"

"Every time?" Marinette says pointedly, pulling back and narrowing her eyes at his kwami. "Nino knows. I know."

"Ladybugs knowing is different," Plagg mutters. "And Nino is-" He stops.

"Plagg," Tikki says, warningly.

Plagg scowls, but it's not really directed at anyone. "It's probably nothing, anyway. But either way him knowing should be fine. But if your dad knew-" He winces. "I don't think he'd be painting ladybugs on the walls."

"Painting-" Adrien's lost now. "He's what?"

"Papa's enthusiastic," Marinette says, sheepish. "Really enthusiastic. And the guest room's really not a guest room. I'll show you later, you'll see what I mean." She shakes her head. "But we're really sidetracked. What do we do about my parents?"

"I don't know?" he says, helplessly. "You're the one who comes up with the plans, I just listen to you."

"You're just as smart as me," she says, stubbornly. "If you had the Lucky Charms you'd be the one coming up with the plans. I've really been meaning to get your input, more, anyway, "she adds, looking oddly guilty. "I don't ask your opinion as often as I should, I don't want- I never wanted you to think I didn't still value it."

"I never thought that," he says, surprised. "You're just a better strategist."

"Maybe," she says steadily. "But I still need you. And you could be a better strategist, yourself, if you weren't so impulsive." She tugs one hand free and presses it to her face, looking conflicted. "I'm not used to thinking of you as impulsive."

"Yes, you are," he reminds her gently. "It's still me, my Lady."

"Seriously, kitty," she says, pained. "Has no ever told you to look before you leap?"

"I mean, you have," he tells her, mock-seriously. "A lot."

"And you never listen to me," she points out, earning herself a snicker from Plagg. "Or to your kwami, apparently."

Adrien snorts. "Maybe Tikki gives you good advice all the time, but Plagg told me to enjoy the party instead of transforming to fight Bubbler."

"Nino would probably agree with Plagg," Marinette points out, curling into him this time.

"Yes, and that's how Hawkmoth was able to akumatize him." Tikki sounds tired. "Plagg, really?"

Plagg bristles a little and Adrien reaches for him, not entirely consciously. Plagg flits onto his shoulder, though, and glares down at Tikki. "Don't, Tikki."

Tikki blinks up at him and says something in that strange language again. Adrien can see the conflict on Marinette's face. That, he understands; he doesn't always agree with Plagg but he knows he'd still feel the urge to side with his kwami. That Marinette so clearly disagrees with Tikki right now has to be bothering her.

Marinette looks away from both their kwami and bites her lip. "I guess we- I guess we just have to determine beyond any doubt that my parents really do know. I can't believe that they-" She blinks. "-know."

"Okay," Adrien says, a little nervously. "What was that look for?"

"They know it's me," she breathes, tilting her head back and glancing up at him. "They're not upset. They- I need you to see the guestroom, still, but- trust me, they're not upset. And they really do want you here." She blinks again, and her eyes are definitely watery this time, and she takes a deep breath before adding, steadily, "Chat Noir, I want you here."

He's really grateful that he can still snag the fidget spinner off the floor, because he catches himself trying to reach for his tail again. "You really mean that."

"Yes, you-" Marinette struggles visibly for a moment, sighs, and looks at Snapdragon instead of him as she says, quietly, "Ladybug does love you, you know."

He thinks his own eyes are probably wet, too. "Marinette, I-"

Tikki abruptly dives back into her purse.

"I've got food," Nino announces, flipping the trapdoor back open and raising an eyebrow when he sees them on the floor. "Uh, your folks actually did ask if I was staying, so, I guess I am now. Your dad said I can try out the guest room." He glances between them. "...The one that is definitely not a guest room, seriously, has he seen it yet?"

"Ah, no," Marinette says hastily. "I kind of thought that later tonight, we could sneak down."

"But they know he's here?" Nino says, confused, handing Marinette a plate, then handing Adrien one with a much larger sandwich. Adrien looks at it in dismay, but judging by Nino's expression he'd better eat all of it.

"Kid," Plagg speaks up again, and it occurs to Adrien that his kwami has largely been oddly quiet. "If you start feeling sick, don't finish it."

Marinette gives him a sharp look at that. There's so much Ladybug in it that he wonders again how he never saw it before. "Did you get sick before?"

"...a little," he mumbles, looking down at Snapdragon instead of at his friends.

"Then just eat a little bit at a time for a while, dude," Nino offers, a little desperately, before falling back against the chaise lounge with a groan. He hasn't bothered to get up off the floor, either. "I knew you weren't eating enough."

"Yeah, well." Adrien shrugs, picking at his sandwich until Plagg flits down and starts trying to take the cheese off of it. He gets caught up enough in mock-fighting with his kwami that he isn't really thinking about it when he says, "You two and Alya are the only ones who really noticed. Uh, and Ladybug," he corrects hastily.

Nino and Marinette look at each other again.

"Yeah, you weren't wrong to run, dude," Nino says quietly. "My dad's never even home and he'd still notice if I quit eating. That's messed up. He seriously didn't say anything?"

Adrien honestly has some difficulty at this point reminding himself that the past week isn't at all his usual experience, but since Nino asked he tries his best to remember. "I don't... think so. Nathalie might have mentioned something about a new photo shoot opportunity, but he never said anything directly."

He doesn't have a hand free, not between Snapdragon and protecting his food from both Plagg and the actual cat, but Marinette reaches for him and he nearly drops his plate trying to reach back.

He sees Nino raise an eyebrow at that but he can't make himself worry about it.

"Yeah," Marinette echoes softly, "You weren't wrong to run." She leans harder against him, shifting around so that they're pressed up against each other. "I wish I- that we'd known, but I understand why you didn't want to tell us."

"That's not why I actually left, though," Adrien says weakly. "I didn't- I wouldn't have left for something like that." Modelling is- was his job, after all. It's one of the only ways he feels like he can connect with his father at all anymore. Why would he-

"Kid." Plagg leaves off messing with his sandwich entirely to flit into his hood (and Adrien notices now that Plagg hasn't actually touched his food, that he was apparently just distracting Adrien). "You had plenty of reasons to run. I'm just not sure you knew about all of them."

"Yeah, what your- uh, spirit cat thing said," Nino says, a little bemusedly.

Marinette sighs. "You get used to the- uh, him. You get used to him."

Plagg flits over to Marinette, landing on her head again, and grins. "Sure you do."

"Is it weird to say that I agree with him on that one?" Nino asks Adrien.

"No," Plagg says, tilting his head and preening a little.

"Maybe a little bit," Adrien admits, starting to relax at watching all of them interact. Plagg and Ladybug and Nino are some of the most important people in the world to him, and he'd never really thought he'd get to spend time with all of them at once.

(He thinks guiltily of Tikki, hiding in Marinette's purse again, but it's not enough to damp his happiness at seeing the three of them together).

"Anyway," Nino says, blinking down at his own sandwich. Adrien kind of wonders if this is a normal dinner here or if it's different because they've apparently been busy with the guest room all day.

He forces himself to keep thinking of it as the guest room. No matter how badly he wants, there's absolutely no reason Marinette's parents should be planning for him to stay.

They're not, anyway. They're planning for Chat Noir to stay- for their daughter's partner to stay, and if they- if they really do know, that's something he and Ladybug have to figure out how to deal with between them. Or- well, no, that's actually wholly Ladybug's decision. He's not- he's not actually a part of her family, that's not a right he has.

"Minou?" she says, too quietly for Nino, and his ears flick towards her.

(No they don't, or at least he really hopes they don't).

"What?" he says, just as quietly.

"Something's bothering you," she says, leaning harder against him.

He breathes out before admitting, unsteadily, "Your parents."

"Ah." She stills. "Me, too. But they really don't... seem upset." Marinette still sounds a little wondering about that.

He can't blame her. He doesn't even want to try and picture his father's reaction, if he'd found out Chat Noir's identity. Pulling him out of school would have been the least of his problems.

"They'll help you," Marinette says, more to herself than to him. "They want to help you."

"But they don't know it's me," Adrien reminds her. He feels oddly like it's his fault that her parents know at all. After all, Chat Noir climbing in through their daughter's window is fairly damning evidence.

Even if he hadn't known she was Ladybug himself, at the time.

He's not sure that's better.

Marinette breathes out. "No, I don't think they do. They would have said something, right?" She says that mostly to herself as well, and by now Nino is raising an eyebrow at them both.

"I dunno how you ever miss any part of a lecture, dude, has your hearing always been this good?" Nino asks, his eyes flickering down to Adrien's still mostly untouched sandwich and then back up.

"I miss lectures entirely when there are akuma attacking," Adrien reminds him gently.

Nino shrugs. "Sure, but then everyone misses them. I think Mendeliev is the only teacher who still cares." He makes a face. "Did Marinette tell you she tried to lock everyone in the classroom last time the alert went off? I mean, it was the school system and someone just tripped the alarm, but dude, still." He shrugs.

"No," Adrien says, giving Marinette a worried look. He hopes that's not likely to affect any attacks soon- he can hold an akuma off by himself as long as she needs him to, but after today he doesn't think she's going to be happy with him the next time he does. "Could you, uh- could you have gotten out if there was an emergency, though? A real one, I guess."

"Oh, yeah, dude," Nino assures him, finishing off his sandwich before continuing. "Chloe got out, like, immediately. Something about not missing a sale, I wasn't really listening." He shrugs. "And Sabrina snuck out after her, and as soon as she realised the door was open Alya left to chase the akuma, the, y'know, nonexistent akuma, and then Alix and Kim raced each other out, and-" He shrugs again. "Probably woulda had a better chance at students staying without attempting a lockdown, really."

"I got out pretty quick, too," Marinette says sheepishly, brushing against his side in silent reassurance.

"Oh, yeah," Nino acknowledges, a little startled. "You said you were gonna check on Alya. She said you never caught up to her, though."

Marinette flushes and very obviously looks anywhere but at Nino. "W-well, you know what she's like during an attack. She was gone long before I could keep up."

It occurs to Adrien, slowly, that Marinette's identity has probably been in danger more often than his own. Her best friend is running the Ladyblog. Alya's entire goal when she'd been akumatized had been revealing Ladybug's identity. She's since mostly stopped trying to find that out, focusing instead on reporting on their fights and on interviews (and now the fact that Ladybug agrees to those interviews makes sense), but- still. And Adrien's managed to be seen with Chat Noir a couple times now, as well; Lila's illusions had been good for that much, at least. Ladybug hasn't managed that.

"Yeah, I feel that," Nino mutters, rubbing the back of his neck. He sighs. "Alya usually manages to leave me eating dust, too."

"She gets in way too close to a lot of the fights, you know," Marinette says suddenly, anxiously. "Does she- would she listen, if you asked her to stop that? It's dangerous. She's going to get hurt." She's looking at Nino, but she's holding onto Adrien's arm, and she squeezes tightly enough when she brings that up that he knows it's at least partly because of how badly he'd been hurt.

She's right, too. Alya doesn't have a kwami or superpowers to protect her, and Adrien's increasingly sure he wouldn't have survived that attack without Plagg.

"Dude, I've tried," Nino says tiredly. "You know how stubborn she is, Marinette. She's not gonna listen. I don't think she'd listen even if Ladybug told her herself."

"She wouldn't," Marinette mutters quietly and Adrien nudges her shoulder with his own, shooting her a worried glance when she looks up at him.

She smiles, a little sadly. "Thanks. Think there's any chance she'll listen to Chat Noir?"

He raises an eyebrow. "When she won't listen to Ladybug? No. No chance."

Marinette's eyes narrow. "You're just as important."

Adrien raises both eyebrows this time, enjoying the eye roll that earns him because it's so purely Ladybug reacting to Chat Noir.

Nino blinks, looking between them, and lowers his sandwich as he says, "You are, you know. Dude, I stayed to ask Ladybug about you and about- well, you, but I didn't know that- but seriously, dude, you're important too. Didn't you notice? She stayed around the stadium after that fight 'cause you were happy." He shuffles away from the chaise lounge so that he can move closer to them. Adrien jumps a little when Nino slumps against his other side.

Nino manages to get an arm around his shoulders, though, and Snapdragon's jumped back into his lap and Plagg's settled on his shoulder and started kneading- and Ladybug's pressed so closely against his side that he's honestly starting to have a little trouble getting at his sandwich at all, but he really doesn't mind that. He's always been happiest when Ladybug lets him cuddle with her, and Nino's surprisingly physically affectionate as well (oddly so, actually, because Adrien has never seen him cuddle with anyone else but Alya), and he's never thought before of curling up with both of them. He's never thought that he could.

His friends leaning against him from either side and Plagg staying nearby and a cat purring on his lap is very nearly too much. Adrien sets the sandwich down, cautiously, and shuts his eyes as he inhales.

"Adrien?" Marinette asks, quietly, and he lets his breath back out and tilts over just enough to rest his head on her shoulder. Plagg grumbles, but he's on his other side anyway, closer to Nino, so it isn't like he has to move.

"I missed everyone," Adrien mumbles, quietly.

"Yeah, we've missed you too, dude," Nino says, squeezing him slightly. "Seriously, that's- did Ladybug show you the class chat?"

He blinks. He has to blink again, because his eyes are starting to burn in a way he doesn't like. "Yeah, she did. I can't believe- I figured everyone would, I mean, I assumed everyone would believe I really was on that photo shoot."

"The one your dad made up," Nino mutters, tensing slightly. His hold on Adrien tightens, a little awkwardly with how closely Marinette is pressed against his other side, but Adrien finds himself wriggling back slightly to stay closer in between both of them. They're so warm and real and here. "Dude, I'm still not over that. I don't- I don't get it, honestly."

"He probably thought I'd come back on my own," Adrien says tiredly. "I mean, it's not like he knows I'm Chat Noir. I'd bet if I actually went to a normal shelter it would get back to him right away somehow."

"Well," Nino says, leaning away just long enough to snatch their shopping off the chaise lounge. "I guess that depends on the shelter. Seriously, guys, the animal shelter? Should I be, like, concerned that both of you apparently thought that was a good idea?"

"We, uh." Adrien tugs one arm loose and turns his hand over to show Nino his claws. "It wasn't exactly on purpose. We kind of needed a scratching post."

"Whoa," Nino says, blinking down at his hand. "That is- no wonder you didn't fall off that dragonfly earlier, I wondered how you were staying on." He blinks, then shakes his head. He sounds upset again as he said, "That was- dude, that was kinda terrifying, when it grabbed you. Uh." He blinks again and glances down at Snapdragon. "...when she grabbed you. Okay, not gonna lie, that does feel a little weird."

"I've fought our whole class," Adrien points out dryly. "I've fought you. The cat honestly feels less weird at this point."

"Yeah, okay, point taken." Nino frees his arm enough to pet Snapdragon briefly, then twists around and hugs Adrien again, hard. "Dude, I'm sorry, I tried to get my place to be an akuma sanctuary earlier but- but I don't qualify. And I- I know Juleka and Luka's place was registered a couple weeks ago, I should have just told you to go there, Rose has been there for like a month and a half now and I know they don't have, like, a ton of space because, uh, boat, but-"

"Wait," Marinette starts, twisting into Adrien herself to peer over at Nino. Adrien's starting to feel a little overwhelmed at so much prolonged physical contact from both his best friends, but not nearly enough to move. He misses that closeness immediately when Nino lets go only to settle against his side again. "Wait, that's- Rose has been there how long?"

Nino shrugs. "Okay, so no one is totally sure when exactly she moved in, that wasn't my point. But, like- a while, dude. They'll still say Rose doesn't live there if you, like, ask, but Rose also hasn't gone home since before school started, so. Pretty sure that counts."

Adrien's eyes flicker to the closet, where the second trapdoor is. Where the shortcut to the guestroom is.

(Where the shortcut to his room is-)

Nino nudges him with his shoulder, but he's looking at Marinette. "I bet your parents would do the same thing, actually."

Marinette flushes, but counters with, "Sure, but Nino, they want Chat Noir to stay. If we ask them they'll know his identity."

Her hand tightens around Adrien's arm, out of Nino's line of sight.

Nino groans, flopping limply against Adrien's side. "How did you two make this so complicated? If that's what it takes for him to stay, then tell them!" He runs one hand through his hair, looking stressed.

"Our identities are really important to Ladybug, I don't think she'd like that," Adrien points out, even as he presses back into Nino with a much louder purr than he intends. Nino blinks and then, oddly, flushes.

"You're important to Ladybug," Marinette says firmly, drawing his attention back to her immediately. There's still fear in her eyes when they meet his but there's that familiar determination again, as well, and she looks like she's making a decision. "You know that, ki- Adrien- she'd understand, this time. You can't stay transformed forever, you're-" She swallows, hard, and he feels her own sharper nails dig in just slightly through his sleeve. "You're changing too fast."

Adrien glances down at the floor instead of continuing to meet her gaze. "It could be worse."

"Adrien," Marinette returns, clearly exasperated. "That's kind of not the point? Seriously, we're still- Nino, do you know where to get sclera contacts?"

"Um- yes, actually." Nino blinks. "Alya's gotten them for cosplay before, I know a place." He starts to ask something else, looks at Adrien again, and stops.

"We could use some," Marinette says dryly.

"Yeah, I can see that," Nino says, before asking curiously, "I don't- wanna change the subject, but, like, does Ladybug get- well, ladybug side effects?"

Adrien and Marinette glance at each other and then away immediately.

Plagg snickers. "Yeah, kid, she's supposed to anyway. Somehow this time our two idiots started giving each other side effects so it's kinda hard to tell."

Nino blinks. "Each other? Holy shit, do you have ladybug side effects too? What even are ladybug side effects? Is your blood toxic now, holy shit-"

Adrien glances at Marinette again and starts giggling himself when he sees how red she's gone.

"Shut up, alley cat," she mutters under her breath.

"You're as red as your suit," he snickers in delight, keeping quiet himself. "Is your blood toxic?"

"Hey-" Nino sits up straighter, and for a terrible moment Adrien thinks he overheard them. "Hey, is that why you always want to cuddle with someone so bad?"

It's Adrien's turn to go bright red.

Nino rolls his eyes, hand tightening reassuringly on Adrien's shoulder. "I didn't say it was a bad thing, dude, just- you-" He pauses, then says, "I think I'd feel better about it if it was from Ladybug, actually."

"Huh?" Adrien says, startled. His tail would flick if he were actually transformed. "You just said that it's not bad." Uncertainty creeps into his voice no matter how he tries to stop it as he adds, "I mean, I know it's kind of weird- I, uh, know I'm kind of weird-"

"Hey, stop that," Marinette says, ducking down enough to brush her cheek against his side and then reaching over to scratch behind Snapdragon's ears. Adrien relaxes again. "Nino, you think that's from Ladybug?"

"I- I mean." Nino is looking down at the floor, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. "Adrien, dude, I just meant- look, I know your dad's not exactly, uh- the warm and caring type. I just meant I guess I'd feel better if you haven't felt like that for that long, actually."

"Oh," Adrien says, taken aback. "N-no. Uh, maybe? Um. It's definitely more noticeable since we've had- since I've had my ring."

Nino shuffles around slightly, causing everyone else to shift until they're in a more comfortable spot and leaving Adrien pressed up against the side of the chaise lounge with his friends draped around him. Plagg flickers from his shoulder to the top of his head again, sounding thoughtful as he says, "You know, kid, he might have a point."

"Really?" Marinette says, slumping down at Adrien's side and blinking slowly up at him, and oh. So that's what that feels like, from the other side of things. No wonder she's been so willing to cuddle with him. "I wouldn't think there'd be so many noticeable ladybug effects. I mean, cold, maybe, but Ladybug pretty clearly doesn't hibernate."

Adrien holds in a snort with an effort, because he's found her napping on buildings in bad weather more than once. He'd been delighted about it, in fact, at least once he'd realised she slept lightly enough that no one but him was likely to be able to sneak up on her. She's safe, and he can tease Ladybug about taking catnaps.

"No," Nino says, slowly, like he's thinking very hard about his answer, or like he's been asked a question in class when he hasn't really been paying attention. "But- don't ladybugs also, like, huddle together in the winter?"

"Yeah," Plagg says, settling more comfortably in place on top of Adrien's head, and Adrien is suddenly acutely aware of the way they're still all tangled in a heap on the floor. "Yeah, kid, they do that."

"...huh," Marinette says, thoughtfully, settling in against him again. Adrien's pretty sure this wasn't in their plans for the night. Not that he's complaining, definitely not, he didn't think he could feel more comfortable than he does with Ladybug but he'd also never thought that he could ever have Ladybug and Nino holding him at the same time. Marinette honestly seems just as content, and their cat- their cat, he's pretty sure he and Ladybug have a cat now and that makes him happier than he can put into words- is purring loudly, and he and Plagg are both purring back, and Adrien doesn't want to move.

Neither of them has to worry about their transformations now and Nino said he's staying the night. They don't have to move.

"Hey, little cat dude," Nino starts, and Adrien laughs again. Nino shoves against him playfully as he continues, "You said this time. Is that why Alya thought Ladybug was, like, five thousand years old?"

"I mean, she is," Plagg says, and Adrien knows his kwami's preening even without seeing him.

He also hears, very faintly, Tikki mutter from inside Marinette's purse. "Quit teasing him, Plagg, he's trying to help."

Plagg doesn't outright reply to his counterpart but he does say, "Ever seen The Princess Bride, kid? I mean, identities can be passed down."

"Oh my god, Adrien, did you make the cat god watch The Princess Bride?" Nino demands, but Marinette's reached up to absently run one hand through Adrien's hair and she ends up answering Nino instead as Adrien goes limp and shoves his head into her hands.

"There's a chance Plagg watched that on his own, honestly," Marinette starts.

"No, he made me," Plagg cuts her off, flitting off of Adrien's head and over to her shoulder now that she's petting him. "He's the hopeless romantic."

"I- yeah that's true," Nino says, and then falls silent.

They really should get up, not stay piled on the floor like an exhausted litter of kittens. He still needs to talk to Marinette, and Marinette still needs to figure out what they're going to do about her parents, and Adrien really does want to see the guest room now, and he's- he's worried now, about falling asleep again after what happened earlier. He's worried about letting himself melt into her like this again, no matter how comforting the petting feels right now or how much he wants to stay in her arms.

He'd scared Ladybug. He'd scared Plagg.

He'd frightened himself, a little, because it had been a struggle to listen to them long enough to drag himself back out of that half-aware state- but also because he hadn't entirely wanted to drag himself back out of it. He'd been happy. He hadn't felt guilty, or afraid, or sick with nerves; he'd felt perfectly content to stay in Ladybug's lap forever.

He can't do that. He can't do that, she needs him. She needs him, and she'd looked so scared, and he shouldn't want to do that.

But he really had felt so happy and content, like when the sun shines in his bedroom window in just the right way to stripe over his couch and he and Plagg can sprawl out there for a nap. That's never lasted long, his schedule is too busy and he's not technically allowed to lock his door and half the household has keys to his room anyway, but he's always enjoyed it.

With Marinette and Nino here as well and no identity to hide that same lazily contented feeling threatens to drag him right back down again. He almost lets it, too, except that every time he starts to come close tiny pinprick claws stab through his hair, or his sleeve, or wherever it is Plagg has flitted to.

He did really scare Plagg. He hadn't thought that was possible.

He's too drowsy, he realises distantly. He's too warm and comforted and content, and his purr is rumbling louder without him meaning it to, and he's still so tired even after napping earlier. He's not entirely certain that he isn't finding himself on a feline sleep schedule by now.

"M'l- Marinette?" he mumbles, sighing as she runs one hand through his hair again.

"I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere," she assures him quietly, and he shuts his eyes on that reassurance and nearly doesn't open them again.

Marinette shakes him a moment later, though. "Hey, none of that, okay? We need you to stay awake for a while."

"Trying," he mumbles, and Marinette shakes him again until his eyes open further than half-slits.

"C'mon, stay awake for me," Marinette urges again.

"Um," Nino says, and there's concerned confusion in his tone. "One of you mind explaining what's happening here?"

It takes Adrien what feels like a monumental effort to sit up straighter, but he's able to tell Nino, "It's, uh, the cat part of me. Just wants to- wants to find somewhere warm and comfortable and nap, but. It's kind of happening a lot more often."

"That seems reasonable," Nino says, slowly. "I mean, dude, you did say you were- you have not been picking the best places to sleep, other than, well, here. And also you were- you were kinda noticeably not doing all that well for, like, a while before this all happened, too. Maybe you should just go ahead and nap."

"Can't," Adrien forces out, even as he turns the slightest bit more into Marinette and sighs deeply.

It takes him a moment to realise the rumbling purr he's feeling isn't coming from him alone.

He tilts his head back enough to flick an alarmed glance up at her. She's already staring back at him, alarm visible in her eyes as well before familiar determination slides in to take its place.

Her eyes look brighter, too. Her pupils might be the slightest bit narrower.

He'd already forgotten that 'changing faster' has implications for more than just him, now.

Plagg's the one that answers Nino. "You're almost right, the kid wasn't getting enough sleep before." The kwami's voice turns slightly bitter and he flits over to knead at Adrien's shoulder again as he adds, "Not enough time in his schedule."

"So why-" Nino starts, looking lost, and also looking between Adrien and Plagg like he isn't sure who to address. "I mean, dude, you've gotta be exhausted."

Adrien glances up at Marinette again, because he doesn't know if he wants to answer that.

Marinette takes a deep breath and admits, almost too quietly, like she's forgotten their advanced hearing as well, "Because earlier he woke up and couldn't talk."

"Oh," Nino says, faintly. "Oh. Okay. That's- that's only. Mildly terrifying." He blinks a few times, shakily wipes one hand across his eyes, then turns to Plagg and says, "And you, what- you let this happen? You said- you said there have been others, does this usually happen?"

"Once," Plagg says, and his voice suddenly has a dangerous edge as his claws close around Adrien's shoulder, sharply possessive. "It only ever happened once, and that time there was no Ladybug around. This is different. I'm not sure it's the same thing."

Adrien hears Tikki squeak and blinks as he wonders if she'd known that. He regrets that when it's an immediate struggle to open his eyes again.

"Anyway," Marinette cuts in hastily, tightening her grasp on Adrien until he stops blinking more slowly by the second. "We should stay awake for now. Just- just treat it like a concussion, I guess?"

"Dude, that is not actually how you treat a concussion, you-" Nino stops and sighs. "Yeah, okay. Um." He blinks down at how tangled in each other they've become. "I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to be able to move first, though."

Notes:

that is not actually how you treat a concussion but its how we got to stay up all night as kids (yes we hit our heads a lot)

that bit about rose staying with juleka is bc thats basically how twins gf moved in with us in high school. we werent even like. subtle about it. 'does she live here now' 'no' '...she hasnt gone home in like three months' 'i fail to see your point'

im about to go back to work full time after an injury, so updates are likely to slow down a bit more. if im lucky they wont but its a pretty demanding job and im gonna have some lingering injuries so we'll see.

Chapter 27: anexpected guest

Notes:

thank you to shinobicyrus for betaing!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Nino isn't sure that he can name all the emotions he's experiencing by this point.

Relief, definitely. He's been so worried for so long.

Adrien hasn't been doing well for a while now, he'd been eating less and less and every time Nino had moved even the slightest bit closer to him at their desk Adrien had leaned in like a moth to a flame, like he was desperate for any bit of physical affection he could get. Nino had long since started making a conscious effort to hug his best friend more often or ruffle his hair or sling an arm around his shoulders because Adrien does lean into it every time.

That had come a little more easily to Nino than he'd expected.

He'd been a little worried about that, too.

Except that the only other person Nino is ever like that with is Alya, and Alya had only laughed at him and started paying more attention to Adrien as well. And Adrien had looked that little bit happier every time Nino brushed against him or Alya leaned dangerously far over their desks to plant an elbow on his shoulder.

But even when they'd managed to rope in Marinette as well, all of them together hadn't been able to get him to eat more, and Adrien had started looking more and more defeated by the day. By the time he'd actually vanished Nino had been trying to get his apartment declared a sanctuary for weeks and Alya had been scouring the akuma laws for twice as long.

Nino's always been surprised that Adrien hadn't tried running away years ago (although, technically, he did, it's just that most people don't have to run away to go to school); but he really wishes his friend had better timing.

At least he'd had Ladybug. Nino's still having a little trouble processing that.

Chat Noir's loud and flirty and over the top and Adrien's- not. Nino would have said he wasn't, anyway.

He's not sure how much trouble Adrien would get in for being loud and flirty and ready with bad puns. Nino's sure that he would get in trouble, though. Adrien's dad is- a lot of things, and Nino doesn't like most of them. All of them.

Adrien is shaking, right now, pinned between Nino and Marinette with a cat on his lap and his kwami on Marinette's shoulder (and Nino is both still getting used to Plagg and so grateful to find out Plagg exists). Nino twists just enough to look at Adrien and sees he's smiling, not that happily but he is smiling, and that the shaking isn't tears or-

Adrien's purring, he realises distantly.

It's a nice sound. Nino likes it, and from the way she tucks herself in closer Marinette does too.

(He's never seen Marinette this close to Adrien without blushing. Marinette wasn't in the class chat earlier. Marinette has been letting Chat Noir sleep in her room, and she's come this close to calling him kitty more than once now, and her parents are- are honestly way too enthusiastic about this arrangement-

Marinette is so frequently late or absent or unreachable, with bad excuses when she has excuses at all.

Plagg said Ladybug and Chat Noir are affecting each other.

And Marinette might be purring, too.

Nino is not going to ask. He is not going to ask. He can't tell people things if he doesn't know them).

"We should- get up," Marinette says, reluctantly, a little while later. Nino's actually half asleep himself by then, lulled by the warmth of Adrien's side and the soft rumbling purr his best friend is still emitting. (Which is a problem. Which is surreal, and a huge problem, and Nino has no idea how to help with something like this. Nino didn't sign on for magic, he just wanted his best friend to have somewhere he could feel at home).

"Why?" Adrien mumbles, ducking just enough to rub his head against Marinette's shoulder. There's more than a hint of a whine in his voice when he says, "Right here's good."

"Ki- Adrien," Marinette says, gently, though she immediately rubs her cheek against his hair in return. "We just talked about this, and anyway, we shouldn't sleep on the floor."

"But," Adrien says, blinking his eyes open, and as startling as Chat Noir's eyes in Adrien's face still are Nino is apparently not immune to cute kitten eyes. This is not fair. This is still kind of unreal. "It's so comfortable here."

"Adrien," Marinette says, a little more urgently. "C'mon, get up. We were all gonna stay up for a while, remember? We can keep watching anime, or play a game, or something. Something that'll keep us awake."

"Yeah, dude," Nino says, softer than he means to. He feels weird, watching his friends act like this. He feels like he's seeing something he absolutely shouldn't.

He feels like Marinette should be wearing spots but he's still not going to think about that. Finding out about Adrien is bad enough, he does not want to know, Alya's going to kill him as it is if she ever finds out about this.

He feels weird about it when he ends up taking the chaise lounge, too, setting the forgotten shopping bags aside. Then he finds himself having to rejoin the other two immediately when Marinette suggests building a blanket fort to Adrien, who lights up so obviously at the idea that Nino hurts a little, watching him.

"I've tried blanket forts before," he assures Nino, nearly tripping over his words like he and Marinette have temporarily swapped personalities (or specific traits- no, still not thinking about it). "C'mon, Nino, you've seen my room. There's tons of space for blanket forts."

"Yeah, but did your dad actually let you," Plagg mutters, and Adrien stops talking for too long.

"They're more fun with other people, you know," Marinette calls from where she's dumping an armful of pillows beneath her bed. She's already tugged the comforter loose enough to drape down over a good half the space she's filling with blankets and pillows. It's not really a proper fort, it's way too big and it includes too much of her room- she moved her desk closer with, honestly, way too little effort so that they could reach the computer and games- but Nino's pretty sure that Adrien isn't going to know that.

Adrien is smiling at Marinette with his eyes gone soft around the edges, ineffective mask crinkling, and Nino's not sure he should still be here. This feels private. This feels like somehow stumbling on Ladybug and Chat Noir on the Eiffel Tower at midnight, or like when Alya had found them on the banks of the Seine and then refused to upload either of the two pictures she'd actually taken. She'd shown them to Nino and saved them to her own phone and then insisted it was a private moment.

Nino can understand that, watching Adrien and Marinette.

Also, if he's right about- about what he is adamantly not considering, they probably need to have a much longer conversation without him still in the room.

He clears his throat and they both turn to him immediately.

In perfect sync.

Nope, Nino thinks as hard as he can, before saying out loud, "I, uh, I think I actually am gonna go check out the guest room. You know, at least act like I'm gonna sleep in there, for, like, your parent's sake?" He makes such a vague and inexpressive gesture that he immediately wants to kick himself for it. "Just like- just, like, swing down through that hatch I guess whenever you want and I'll join you again, sound good?"

That way he can't accidentally interrupt any conversation they may or may not be having, the way he thinks he did earlier.

Marinette smiles at him, the same sunny smile that had given him such a hopeless crush on her back before that eventful trip to the zoo, and Nino swallows hard.

There's suddenly so much he can't possibly tell Alya but also he thinks he really needs to talk to Alya.

"Sure, Nino, that'd be perfect. Give us like, uh..." Marinette glances at Adrien, who gives her a helpless look back.

Because it wouldn't actually make sense for Adrien to answer that, would it, Nino realises slowly. Not unless there's something the two of them specifically have to discuss without Nino there.

He backs up a little, waving awkwardly and then feeling stupid for it. "Uh, long as you need, dudes, I'll just- you can just, like, knock on the- closet door or something?" He finishes, a little lamely.

"Yes," Marinette says, too quickly. "Yes, exactly, perfect idea Nino. We'll- we'll see you in a bit?"

"'Course, dudes," he says, hastily, before ducking back out of the room.

He takes a deep breath on the stairs and then makes his way back down to the guest room.

('Guest' room. Sure).

"Make yourself at home for now, Nino, I've just finished for the night," Marinette's dad assures him, rising from where he's fiddling with a second alarm clock and stretching. Nino always forgets how huge Marinette's dad is, when Marinette herself takes more after her mother.

Okay, except for the times Nino's seen Marinette lift her friends in one of her dad's bear hugs before.

"Thanks, dude- M. Dupain." Marinette's parents can, apparently, get a lot done in a short amount of time. Nino wasn't exactly paying attention to the time while he was upstairs but if this room isn't already completed, Nino can't tell by looking at it.

"Of course, Nino, the invitation's open any time you need it. For your brother, too, for that matter." Marinette's dad reaches out to rest a hand on Nino's shoulder, pulling back a moment later. Nino had forgotten, somehow, that Marinette gets her tendency towards casual affection from her parents- from both her parents.

He's really, really relieved that it's Marinette's family that Adrien's ended up with. The way that Adrien presses against his side whenever he thinks Nino won't notice, the way that Chat Noir had arched into his hands earlier-

The way Adrien had been purring, curled up with both of them.

Adrien's dad can't ever be bothered to so much as show up in person. Nino definitely thinks Adrien needs a lot more affection than he's been getting.

(Nino is definitely willing to give Adrien as many hugs as he wants, but he's not thinking too hard about that).

"Ah- Chris is with his mom this weekend," Nino says at last, a little awkwardly. It's not like Marinette's parents don't know about his own family situation, not when it was the reason Nino had been here so often when they were younger, but it's still not something Nino really wants to talk about. The only people he feels comfortable enough to have that discussion with are Alya and Adrien. It's never come up between him and Alya, and Adrien...

Yeah, Nino is not planning on going anywhere near that topic with Adrien. It's one thing if Adrien asks about it, but it's not a conversation that Nino is going to start with him.

"Well, make sure to let him know our door's always open," Marinette's dad says, warmly. "Alya, too, although half the time I don't know how long she's been here." He laughs.

So does Nino, concealing the wince as he realises how long it must have been since Marinette and Alya have had any time to spend with each other. He's been so worried about his own best friend that he hasn't realised the girls have both been too busy to keep up any of their usual activities- usually Alya is over here multiple times a week, and that obviously hasn't happened in a while now.

Marinette's dad stops, partway out of the door, and says, "Before I go to bed, what do you think?" He waves at the room. "Comfortable, or too much?"

Nino starts to answer and then stops. That was... phrased oddly.

Nino isn't supposed to know that Adrien's upstairs.

Nino isn't actually sure that Marinette's parents know exactly who's upstairs.

But he thinks there are more ladybugs painted on the walls and ceiling then there were a few hours ago. He thinks there's an unnecessary amount of blankets and pillows piled on the bed that weren't there before. He thinks this is an awful lot of effort to put in awfully quickly for a boy they can't expect their daughter to know that well.

He thinks it's possible he's not the only one with suspicions about how well Marinette actually knows Chat Noir.

He's not about to say that out loud.

"It's great," Nino says, honestly. "It's, uh, it's a really awesome room. For- anyone, really." For one person in particular but Nino's not lying, he thinks it's an awesome room too. "Definitely not, uh, anyone specific, totally for anyone at all."

M. Dupain grins. "Good, that's what we like to hear! Well, we'll see you in the morning, Nino. There'll be plenty of food at breakfast, you're welcome to join us."

Nino very nearly asks him how well Adrien's been eating. There's a number of reasons he can't say that, though, so he only responds with "Thanks," before Marinette's dad leaves.

Nino shuts the door behind him, because if Marinette and Adrien do swing down they'll still need privacy, and looks around the room.

It doesn't really look like Adrien's old room at all unless he counts the abundance of colour. It's not that big, for one, and while it does have a large window it isn't like the wall of them Adrien's used to, and there's nothing like a climbing wall or a personal arcade. (Nino was admittedly a little jealous of that arcade until he realised it's nothing but single-player games, even the ones that aren't usually made that way).

But this room has a chalkboard wall to write and draw and make a mess on, and there's already a pile of colourful chalk in a bucket on the nightstand, and the alarm clock is designed for someone with sharper senses, and the now-completed bed has a ridiculous black cat headboard and someone's tossed a stuffed ladybug onto the pillows. There's a scratching post in the corner that he thinks Marinette's dad might have made and a note below the window about how to open it outward if anyone (and Nino notices that it does specify 'anyone,' and then he tries very hard to stop noticing) needs to leave in a hurry. There's more than one hanging mirror, and that seems like a very odd detail until Nino realises that they could easily be strategically angled to see out the window from across the room or down the hallway when the door's open.

Nino glances up and sees a half-completed map of glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.

Nino hasn't been jealous of Adrien's old room for a long time now but he's definitely jealous of this one.

(The bed's more than big enough to comfortably fit two people, three if they're close friends, and when he investigates further he finds he can pull a trundle bed out from beneath it. A good four people could sleep in here comfortably and he really doubts that's an accident.

If Marinette's parents don't know that Chat Noir is Adrien, and by now Nino is not honestly sure who knows what, then it must be entirely too obvious that Chat Noir is lonely, too).

It's kind of painful, to see a room more clearly Adrien's than his own is when the people that put it together have only had him living with them for less than a week.

It's not as nice as Adrien's old room. But it's much more personalized, and that without Adrien even seeing it yet.

Nino flops onto the bed with a sigh and wishes he had his own kwami to talk to. He can't tell Alya, and he doesn't want to slip up around Marinette or intrude on them, and this isn't really something he can discuss with anyone else.

"I wasn't ready for today," he mutters to no one.

He's still trying to get his head around Adrien being Chat Noir. That's a little easier to believe when Adrien had been purring in both their arms, when he'd been looking at Nino with slit pupils and the edge of fangs just visible, but it's also much more worrying that way. That's not- he's so obviously Chat Noir, right now. That's not safe.

Marinette's in danger, too, if he really did hear her purring as well. If he's not imagining the sudden brightness in her eyes, the way her pupils don't seem to be quite the right shape anymore. Nino isn't friends with Marinette in the same way he is with Adrien, or even the same way that Alya is with Marinette, but she is his friend and he doesn't want to see her in danger either. They may have drifted apart over the years but that doesn't mean that she isn't still one of his best friends.

And something is wrong with two of his best friends now, and Nino doesn't know how to help.

He hopes they knock soon because he wants to throw his arms around them both again. At least if he's with them he knows they're safe.

Nino's not even entirely sure why he has such a desperate urge to protect crawling beneath his skin, except for the way his brain won't stop replaying every time Chat Noir's thrown himself in front of Ladybug, every time either of the heroes has been backhanded out of the sky or had cars thrown at them or had their minds played with. Nino doesn't know how he can follow that urge when his friend is a superhero, when what he has to protect against is magic, but he thinks he's going to have to find a way.

He wants to ask about the lightning earlier, too, because he and Alya had been too busy fulfilling Ladybug's request to get everyone off the street to see any of that actual fight. He's afraid he won't like the answer. His friends are being awfully clingy right now and he's not sure that he wants to know what happened to cause that.

He's glad that Adrien is safe.

He's also terrified that he's not.

(And that Marinette might not be, either, not when they were both purring earlier).

"I wasn't even a little bit ready for today," Nino mutters to himself, before drifting off into a very restless sleep.

Notes:

im trying to be better at answering comments- i love and appreciate all of them! human interaction is just hard (and my anxiety apparently does not care if its through a screen).

ps the chapter title isn't misspelled xD

Chapter 28: (room) reveal

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

"C'mon, minou, up," Marinette urges, drawing Adrien after her into the poorly-built blanket fort. Knowing her parents there's likely to be more than enough bedding down in the guest room to build a much better one, anyway. "We'd better talk while we have the time."

Adrien resists her for a moment, still blinking away drowsiness, but Snapdragon yawns and darts after Marinette and Adrien shakes himself all over and follows.

"Sorry," he says, quietly, staring at the floor and not at her, and she wishes he wouldn't do that. "I should have tried harder to convince Nino, and maybe if your parents didn't know I was here they wouldn't know about you, and-"

Marinette hugs him, hard, before he can keep going in that vein. "It's not your fault, kitty. None of it's your fault, don't ever think that. Besides, I-" She hesitates, then sighs. "If I'd known how badly keeping our identities to ourselves was hurting you I would have told you sooner. I still should have told you sooner."

"You weren't wrong, though," Adrien says, hugging her back and closing his eyes as he settles his chin on top of her head. It's a position that should make her blush with Adrien, but it's also one she's not that unused to with Chat Noir, and Marinette can't quite figure out what to do with herself for a moment. "Hawkmoth's powers are literally mind control, it's dangerous."

"So we don't let him get us, minou," Marinette says, softly. She wonders if she's overdoing the nicknames for a minute but Adrien's arms tighten around her almost imperceptibly when she calls him that. She thinks it would be hard to stop now anyway. "We don't let ourselves get akumatized, and you stop throwing yourself into danger."

"But I have to," he protests immediately, not letting go even as she draws them both closer to the pile of pillows she's thrown onto the ground. She's not sure that they should use them, because how quickly he'd gone from alert to blinking up at her like a drowsy kitten again is terrifying, but Marinette had felt that same contented relaxation this time too.

That's probably not good. It had felt stunningly right, it had satisfied something restless in her in a way that even cuddling with Chat Noir alone sometimes doesn't help, and she thinks Nino might be right about that being a Ladybug effect. She thinks it has to be a bad sign that it's hitting them both this hard.

This is so dangerous. Tikki's been right to be so worried.

Marinette drops down onto the pillows with Adrien anyway, both of them curled into each other. They can't keep doing this forever, or even much longer.

But she can't stop seeing him on that rooftop, too still and too silent. She can't stop wanting the reassurance that he's right here and safe.

Well, relatively safe.

Snapdragon looks at them both, tail lashing slightly, and then turns and leaps onto the chaise lounge instead. She tucks herself in a contented little curl half-under Adrien's pillow and starts purring. Marinette isn't sure if it's their hearing or if Snapdragon's purr is really just that loud.

It's not as loud as the rumble coming from Adrien, though.

"It's so weird to think that Nino knows," Adrien breathes, tucking himself in against Marinette's side in a way that makes her think worryingly of cats squeezing through too-small spaces. "Do you think he's upset?"

"I think he's only upset that you're in trouble and didn't tell him." Marinette presses closer to him in turn. She's still hyperaware that they can't keep doing this.

She doesn't ever want to stop doing this.

"I couldn't tell him," Adrien mumbles, sounding just drowsy enough again that Marinette hauls them both into a sitting position right away.

His eyes are bright and alert when he blinks at her, though. "Hey, I was comfortable."

Marinette lets out a sigh of relief. "I know, kitty, me too. I was worried we were too comfortable."

"Oh." Adrien glances at the ground, scratching at the back of his neck. A moment later he winces and pulls his hand away, staring down at the faint sheen of blood on his claws in dismay.

"Chat Noir," Marinette says, strained, shoving at him without restraint so that she can see what kind of damage he's just done to himself.

It's not that bad, fortunately. It looks like he just took a thin strip of skin off the back of his neck, and while it is still bleeding a little it looks as though it's not going to be noticeable for long.

"Do you just not know what careful means?" Marinette asks in exasperation. She fishes for a fabric scrap she's willing to sacrifice and lays her hand across the back of his neck, hoping to stop the last of the bleeding. "This is getting- really bad, you know, if you're scratching yourself up on accident. Plagg, is there- is there anything else we can do?"

Adrien's kwami claims a spot on her shoulder, studying his chosen closely, as he says, "There is one thing."

"Plagg," Tikki says, sounding exhausted. She starts to dart to Marinette's other shoulder, but then seems to change her mind and makes her way to Adrien instead. "We promised."

"People break promises all the time," Plagg returns, flatly. "Believe me, they've been breaking promises to him for ages. And-" He darts forward abruptly, headbutting Adrien in the back of the head, and Adrien startles badly.

Because, Marinette realises slowly, he'd gone utterly limp as soon as she'd laid her hand across his neck.

"I'm sorry, Tikki," she says quietly. "But this can't keep happening."

Adrien tugs his hood up just enough to cover his neck, looking unsettled, but clearly not enough to move away.

They're definitely going to have to move, though. Which might be its own kind of problem, when she so badly doesn't want to let him leave her sight, when she's so sure she's going to have nightmares tonight where he doesn't get back up after that lightning, where he collapses in her arms and none of her Miracles can do enough to bring him back.

She'd been planning to ask him if he''ll sleep in her bed tonight. As mortifying as the thought of asking him that is, her need to know exactly where he is easily overrides her embarrassment. She hasn't taken a very close look at the guest room yet, but maybe there's enough room in there for both of them- and Nino, too, because she can see the way her kitty is still glancing anxiously at the trapdoor. She's sure he's missed Nino, and she didn't miss the happy flash in his eyes when Nino joined them on the floor earlier, and she didn't miss how fiercely Nino was holding onto him either.

She's always suspected that Chat Noir was touch-starved. Now she knows that Adrien is, and if Nino's right then she's probably made it even worse without knowing it. Either they are going to see if they all fit on one bed for the night or they're all going to end up sleeping on the floor in one room or the other.

"Plagg," Marinette says, finally. "What is it? You made it sound like there is something we could do."

Plagg studies her for a moment before zipping back down to nestle into Adrien's hood. "Two of your Lucky Charms earlier were foo dogs, weren't they?"

"Plagg," Tikki says, sounding increasingly agitated, but Marinette's mind is already leaping ahead to draw and link conclusions.

"Guardian lions, Plagg," she says, absently, resting one hand against Adrien's head without thinking about it and ruffling his hair until he starts purring again. "They're not actually called foo dogs, you know." Her eyes narrow and her hand stills. "You do know that. Tikki, does he mean-"

"Plagg, we don't know if that will help," Tikki says, insistently, quietly. She darts up and alights on Marinette's shoulder, pressing close, and it's very reminiscent to the way Plagg has been acting with Adrien.

Worryingly so.

Marinette's stomach drops. "Tikki- what is it you don't want to tell me?"

"You knew?" Tikki asks, still very quiet. Not that her volume matters, not anymore; neither kwami has outright told them that Marinette's changes aren't any more reversible than Adrien's are, but she doesn't see any reason why they would be. Marinette's not about to point that out. Her kwami has been stressed enough.

"I've known that there was something you don't want to tell me." Marinette considers reaching up to her kwami, but she doesn't particularly want to let go of Chat Noir- of Adrien to do it.

That is much easier, now. She isn't sure how much of that is because he still looks more like Chat Noir than he does Adrien- he's still wearing the sweatshirt she gave him, and even though his hood's down now and it's obvious that he doesn't have his cat ears it's still Chat Noir's eyes and mask and hair. Still a face she really, really should have recognised, mask or not.

She knows a lot of it is because he told her that he didn't have any trouble adjusting to the idea of her being Ladybug.

"Plagg?" Adrien says, reaching for his own kwami. "Why didn't you say anything?" There's a concerned, lilting tone to his voice that she isn't used to hearing, and when he tilts his head Marinette has to blink away the image of one of his cat ears tilting towards her.

"Because you agreed to come here," Plagg says, more than a little grumpily. "Because that was a better choice. Because-" He glances at Tikki.

Tikki sighs and does flutter down to Marinette's lap, looking up at her with huge eyes. "Because we were both scared."

"Hey," Plagg says, but Marinette notices he doesn't actually deny it.

"Marinette." Tikki is still looking at her, but now she's darting glances at Adrien and Plagg as well. "I told you, this has never happened before. Not like this. We don't know what Master Fu will suggest we do." She hesitates, then says, "We don't know if he'll want you both to give up your Miraculous."

Marinette's hand goes to her earrings automatically. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Adrien rubbing his thumb across his ring in the same moment.

(She realises with a start that when his hands aren't twisted into his sleeves, like they have been so often recently- like they are nearly all the time now, unless he's fiddling with his tail- his ring is very obviously not transformed. They'd better think of a way to hide that sooner rather than later).

"Do you really think he'd do that?" Adrien asks, and when Marinette looks at him his pupils are blown wide. It takes her longer than it should to remember that that's a fear response, too, not just a happy one.

"We don't know," Tikki repeats, sounding no less agitated. "This has never happened before. Master Fu may have no more idea what to do than we do, and I-" She stops, whirling into the air for a second and darting fretfully before settling back on Marinette's shoulder, pressing close. "And I don't want to lose you. I've never had a Ladybug like you, Marinette."

"Tikki," Marinette says, at a loss for words.

Plagg doesn't have the same problem. He snorts and says, "I still don't understand why you talk about it like he can make any of us give each other up. I'm not planning on going anywhere."

Adrien's head lifts a little at that, head tilting like his ears would be flicking back. "You mean that, Plagg?"

"Yeah, kid, I mean that." Plagg glances at Tikki and then flits into Adrien's hood, tugging it back up. "I don't care what the old man has to say about it, if he didn't want me to stay with you then he shouldn't have given me you in the first place."

It doesn't look like Adrien notices the way his kwami phrased that, but Marinette definitely does. She feels her eyebrows fly up and hears Tikki's near-inaudible giggle.

It looks like Tikki was right about one thing. Plagg's clearly attached enough to Adrien to fight leaving him.

And so is Marinette. Even if this wasn't affecting both of them, she doesn't want to be Ladybug without Chat Noir- without her Chat Noir. She wouldn't fight as well beside anyone else and she doesn't want to.

"He'd have to fight us both, kitty, I'm not about to give you up either," she says, ruffling Adrien's hair again. The lopsided smile he gives her is all Chat Noir, and so is his loud purr.

Marinette climbs to her feet before she can give voice to the purr she feels building in her own chest. She doesn't think he'd noticed that before and she doesn't want him to worry about it now. If her luck holds, he'll have assumed it was Snapdragon's purr he heard earlier. "Come on, I think this is a lot to think about after all of today. Why don't we join Nino for now and decide what we want to do in the morning?"

Adrien accepts her hand up and gets to his feet as well. "But... we still don't know what we're going to do about your parents."

Marinette's heart leaps a little at that we, at that sign that he does understand that no matter what they're in this together. She worries about that with Chat Noir, sometimes, when their problems aren't related to their hero work. "I think... I think maybe we shouldn't do anything differently. They haven't said anything directly, and Tikki said they must have known for at least a couple of days, right?" She glances at her kwami.

"At least," Tikki confirms, sounding much more confident and self-assured now that she's not trying to hide anything. "And I don't know if they know about Adrien or not."

"What?" Marinette says, her thoughts derailed. "You mean- that he is- but- Tikki, how would they know that, we only just found out!"

"That mask didn't work on Nino, kid." Plagg pokes his head out of Adrien's hood. "Maybe that's just 'cause he knows you better, but... your mom didn't say anything in the kitchen earlier."

Marinette goes pale.

"Marinette?" Adrien says, more urgently than she thinks he means to.

Somehow she's certain already of what he's asking. "They wouldn't report you, Adrien. They've liked having Chat Noir here too much for that. And they..." She hesitates.

"What is it?" Adrien's pupils are still wider than they should be. Wider than Chat Noir's should be, anyway.

"They're worried about you." Marinette tugs him away from the blanket fort, closer to the hidden trapdoor. "They want you to stay."

"But they were worried about Chat Noir." Adrien follows her, gaze flicking down to the trapdoor and then back up to meet her eyes. "What if they don't feel the same way about Adrien?"

"They will," Marinette says, firmly enough that she surprises herself. "They do. Kitty, they love you, and that has nothing to do with whether or not you're wearing a mask. You're still you." She tilts her head close to his, taking a deep breath and feeling something inside her finally settle.

She loves him, and it has nothing to do with whether he has a mask on or not, and it's a relief to know that she didn't fall this deeply for two different boys at the same time- that it's always been her partner.

"Um," Adrien starts, and Marinette finds herself rolling her eyes because somehow his tone has perfectly encompassed Chat Noir's usual nervous tail lash.

"They do love you, kitty," she assures him, and takes another deep breath, and looking at him as she says it is still too difficult. "I- I love you."

"Yeah." His answer is barely a breath, but Marinette hears it as clearly as though he's spoken directly into her ear. "I love you too, my Lady."

Marinette could scream with joy at that, were the circumstances different. Right now, however, she has a point to prove. "I think you'd better see the guest room."

She swings down ahead of Adrien, wanting to check whether Nino's awake first. She knows how badly she wants to see Adrien's reaction- she can't imagine that Nino doesn't want to, too.

"Hey," she whispers, finding their friend asleep slumped across the bed. Gently, Marinette reaches out and shakes his shoulder. "Hey, Nino, wake up, you're not gonna wanna miss this."

Nino flails upright, gasping out a garbled reply that dies immediately when he sees her. "M'rinette?"

"Yeah, Adrien's right behind me." She grins. "Thought you'd want to be awake when he sees all of this for the first time."

"Oh holy crap yes thank you," Nino says fervently, sitting up straighter.

Marinette doesn't worry about raising her voice; she pivots in place and calls back towards the closet, "Okay, you're good, come on in."

She misses the strange expression on Nino's face.

Adrien's slow coming through the closet hatch, much slower than she knows he can move, and he freezes partway out and into the room.

Marinette backs away and sits down on the bed, next to Nino, without taking her eyes off Adrien.

He looks stunned, gaze darting around like he's trying to take everything in at once. Marinette can see his pupils expand again from here and this time it definitely isn't from fear.

Plagg darts past him, whirling in a tight circle in the middle of the room, and lets out an impressed whistle. "Whoa. Yeah, kid, I think this is for you."

"Um," Nino says, holding up a stuffed ladybug he'd been using as a pillow and gesturing towards the headboard with it. "Yeah, this isn't exactly subtle, dude. I'm pretty sure once we figure out how to make sure the laws'll work in your favour you already have somewhere to stay."

Marinette hesitates. That can only work if they're willing to admit at least Adrien's secret identity to her parents, and possibly her own, and she still isn't sure that's wise. There's a difference between suspecting that her parents might know and the two of them actually telling them.

Adrien doesn't look like he even heard Nino. He's trailing his claws lightly over the chalkboard, over the cartoon cat her papa must have drawn before he left, and he stops and blinks down at the alarm clocks when he sees them.

"Oh, dude, those are really cool," Nino enthuses when he sees what Adrien's staring at. "One of them is scent-based and the other one just, like, gradually brightens the room. I don't even know where they found those."

"So they won't hurt your ears," Marinette says softly, and when he glances at her she knows Adrien heard the unspoken or mine as well.

(There's not really a reason to have two alarm clocks in here).

(Her parents clearly haven't minded the two of them sharing a room, and she thinks this might be their way of letting them know that even if they have their own rooms they can continue to spend just as much time together).

"This is amazing." Adrien sounds worryingly close to tears.

Plagg dives down and latches onto his shoulder, already speaking before Marinette or Nino can respond. "We told you, kid, they want you here." Plagg says something else, too, but it's too quiet even for Marinette to make out.

It makes Adrien start to smile, though, and that's all she really cares about.

Notes:

those are both very much real alarm clocks btw, my twin brother has the brightening one. (little brother has one we named Clocky that rolls around his house yelling so he has to chase it. mine is a dragon. we all have, uh, different needs).

Chapter 29: where the heart is

Notes:

thank you shinobicyrus for being an awesome beta!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Marinette ducks into the room ahead of him, leaving Adrien to pace behind her until she calls back an all clear.

It feels just as natural as scouting a situation with Ladybug does, and that's still amazing, but it also means that it takes him far too long to notice how clearly he feels his tail swinging behind him. He actually does crane his neck back to look over his shoulder and try to be sure that he doesn't currently have a tail.

Adrien already isn't so sure they're going to be able to hide his eyes. A tail would be- a tail's going to be much, much harder for them to hide.

At least he can be sure there's a they. He always knew that Ladybug would help him if he asked, but he never knew that her help would extend this far.

He's still glowing a little with the knowledge that she'd be willing to run away with him if she thought it was their only option.

"Adrien?" Marinette's kwami flutters over to him, perching in Plagg's preferred spot on his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

Adrien forces himself to stop pacing, eyes locked on the hidden trapdoor. "I'm okay."

He can still feel his tail lashing.

He's really trying to ignore that.

Plagg lands on his head. Adrien feels the sensation of tiny claws combing through his hair for half a second before Plagg seems to catch himself. "You are not okay."

Adrien winces internally, because he had no particular desire to tell Ladybug's kwami that. "Thanks for that, Plagg."

"You're welcome, kid." Plagg doesn't move. "You're not okay and you don't have to act like you are, kit, everyone else here already knows why you're here. I keep telling you that you were right to run, have you noticed yet that no one is surprised that you did?"

Adrien can no longer feel the phantom sensation of his tail, but that's because he's gone very stiff at Plagg's words. Out of the corner of his eye he can tell that his hair is trying to bush out like an angry cat. It's hard to tell if it's succeeding, when his hair's still just as wild as it is when he's fully transformed.

"Plagg," Tikki says, before Adrien can say anything else. "He doesn't have to talk about it."

"Tikki," Plagg retorts, in a surprisingly nasty tone that makes Adrien startle. Plagg's tone changes immediately, but he still sounds upset when he says, "I don't tell you how to handle your kid."

Adrien glances at Tikki and finds her already giving him a worried look. She flits off his shoulder and says, gently, "Why don't you go join the others? Plagg and I will catch up."

"Tikki-" Plagg darts into the air, but he also looks at Adrien and then sighs. "Yeah, kit, we'll catch up. Sorry for yelling, I'm not angry at you."

Apologies from Plagg are rare even now, and usually reserved for when he's really remorseful about something. Adrien wants to say he's not that badly affected by hearing his kwami get angry but Plagg knows him more than well enough to know that isn't true. It's not normal for Adrien to hear Plagg angry at all- between now and the roof earlier he thinks this might be the most riled up he's ever heard his kwami.

He thinks it's possible that Plagg had been deliberately avoiding showing too much anger around him before.

Adrien doesn't want him to do that, but he's also quietly relieved that he did.

Akumatized villains are one thing. Adrien doesn't handle anger or irritation from people he loves nearly as well.

Snapdragon meanders over and twines around Adrien's legs, purring loudly, and he crouches down to pet her. She leans into his hand with an even louder purr and his lips twitch slightly. Softly, so that the kwami don't hear him, he says, "I know, sweetheart. Petting's great, I know."

Snapdragon headbutts his hand and he scratches behind her ears, right at the base of them, right where he loves for Ladybug to scratch.

Marinette calling him down saves him from having to listen to any more of their kwami's quiet argument. They aren't arguing in any language he knows, or even recognises, but their unhappy tones are unmistakable.

Adrien is still worried, briefly- he doesn't like the idea that their kwami are discussing him and Marinette without them there, even though he trusts Plagg completely, and he can't imagine that Marinette doesn't trust Tikki just as much- but his desire to rejoin his friends is stronger than his worry. He scoops Snapdragon up and into his arms and then drops straight through the trapdoor.

He doesn't worry about landing on his feet.

(He doesn't have to).

Adrien's not prepared for the room he drops into.

He knows what Nino and Marinette had both had to say about it, but Adrien had assumed that they were only trying to make him feel better. A guest room makes sense, after all, he knows Marinette's family has had relatives stay with them before and he was a little surprised to learn that they didn't already have a guest room.

This room is not for guests.

Adrien is aware that he can be a little oblivious, that a lifetime of isolation has left him more than a little uncertain about how exactly social interaction works and that sometimes he needs the obvious pointed out, but even he can see that this isn't an impersonal room. This is- this is undeniably Marinette's parents trying to give a room to Chat Noir, there's too much in here that's geared towards Chat Noir specifically for it to be anything else.

He sets Snapdragon down and watches her make an immediate beeline for the corner- for the cat tree in the corner. It's not designed like an actual tree like the one Marinette bought him. It is patterned over in Ladybug spots over half of it and acid-green Chat Noir pawprints on the rest. There's a toy replica of Ladybug's yo-yo dangling from one shelf that Snapdragon is happily batting at, and part of the base is clearly based on his baton.

Adrien can already feel pressure building behind his eyes.

Plagg follows him down so quickly that he can't have had time to really talk to Tikki, but Adrien isn't thinking about that. He isn't thinking about that even when Plagg says, far more quietly than Adrien's used to hearing him, "They're not gonna let anyone take you from them, either, kid." Then, louder as he darts out into the room, he whistles and adds, "Yeah, kid, I think this is for you."

"We told you," Nino says, softly, watching him from the bed (the bed that has a black cat headboard, has enough space to share, has the kind of indulgent pile of blankets and pillows that Adrien has secretly wanted since becoming Chat Noir but that he knows his father would never agree to. Nino actually has a stuffed ladybug). "This isn't exactly subtle, dude. I'm pretty sure once we figure out how to make sure the laws'll work in your favour you already have somewhere to stay."

It's Nino explaining the alarm clocks that really hammers it home for Adrien that this is real, that he's really standing in this room that's so obviously for him. Overwhelmed, he manages, "This is amazing," before his throat closes up and Plagg flits back over to him.

"We told you, kid, they want you here." Plagg alights on his shoulder, claws latching solidly into Adrien's hoodie. Far more quietly, he says, "Looks like they've been willing to adopt you from the start."

That does it; Adrien has to quickly duck his head before his friends can see the tears spill over. He goes to swipe at his eyes, but Marinette is suddenly right at his side, stopping him with a gentle hand on his wrist.

"Claws," she murmurs, tugging his hand away, but then intertwining her fingers with his. "Come on, look around with us. Nino already found the comics so you might have to fight over who gets to read them first."

Nino snorts. "There's no might about it. I don't care what else you wanna read, dude, but I wanna see the Ninja Turtles comics first. I've never even heard of some of these. Marinette, I didn't even know your dad liked comics."

"He doesn't," Marinette says, dryly. "That would be Maman."

"Comics?" Adrien echoes faintly. He's already stunned at the room, that it is so obviously for him that even he can't miss it, and he didn't expect-

Well, he didn't expect anything, to be honest, but definitely not for her parents to give him anything so unnecessary as comic books. That's not something that he needs. That is something he enjoys, but it's that detail, that they'd go through the trouble of giving him something so thoughtful even though he doesn't need it, that makes him take a startled step back and nearly stumble because he's still trying to account for a tail he doesn't have.

"Yeah, dude," Nino says, lifting the Ninja Turtles comic he'd apparently been reading to show Adrien. "Lots of'em. I guess they figure that's something you both probably like? There's, like, a retro game system set up over here, too." He nods towards the end of the bed.

"Oh," Adrien says faintly, much more overwhelmed than he's willing to admit.

He's also worried. This is- this is really nice of Marinette's parents, this is so much more than he'd ever expected even after they'd made it clear that he could stay, but it's also- it's also a little too reminiscent of being brushed off with toys and games whenever he'd tentatively broached the idea of maybe trying to make more friends.

...except that Marinette's hand is still wrapped around his, and Nino is scooting over to make room for them both on the bed. Except that superhero comics are something he likes, and the bed is big enough for all of them, and the game system has more than one controller.

There's more than one ladybug pillow on the bed. There are paw prints and ladybugs both painted on the walls (and Adrien can't help but trail his claws gently over the chalkboard wall as he passes it, enthralled by the idea of a wall that he's meant to make a mess of, and he hears Plagg snicker at him but he doesn't particularly care). There's- Nino is enthusiastically pointing out that the alarm clock is based on scent instead of sound.

Adrien's been here less than a week, and he's mostly been hiding in Marinette's room when he is here.

He doesn't understand how her parents can already know him better than his own father does.

Marinette takes one look at him and tugs him towards the bed. "Come on, let's check out the games."

Adrien mostly wants to curl up between his friends and fall asleep, but he knows that Marinette's right to be concerned about that. They can't avoid sleeping forever, and it's more complicated than that anyway, but the rest they had on the rooftop earlier is hopefully at least enough to tide them over until they can go see Master Fu because they really need to go see Master Fu. There's a risk still, but at this point there's a risk no matter what they do- it's become a matter of deciding which risks they'll have to take.

The pile of blankets and pillows on the bed is even more comfortable than it looks. There's so many of them, and they're all kinds of different textures but all of them are soft or fluffy or both. Adrien picks up a neon green throw that might be the softest fabric he's ever encountered, even softer than the lining of his hoodie, and resists the urge to roll himself in it.

Nino and Marinette find a huge bright red comforter folded at the foot of the bed and drape it over all three of them.

"Hey- this is a weighted blanket," Nino says excitedly. "I've always wanted one of these!"

Marinette laughs and tucks it in along her side, before tucking herself in along Adrien's side. For just a moment, when he glances at her, he thinks she's blushing. She's back to smiling quickly enough that he's not really sure he saw that, and then she says, "This is mine, actually, but I haven't used it in ages now."

Adrien's never heard of a weighted blanket before now, but he still echoes Nino when he says, "Why not?"

Marinette shrugs and leans back against the headboard. "Convinced myself I outgrew it, I guess. Which was kind of dumb, I should have thought of getting it out earlier than this."

She and Nino share a look that Adrien can't read. He's concerned about that, briefly, but Plagg pokes him and he relaxes again. He trusts them both, he doesn't need to be concerned about that.

They don't actually discuss all of them curling up together. No one seems to feel a need, and Adrien doesn't want to say anything in case that makes it weird, because he likes being able to huddle under the blankets with both of them. He does have the distinct and uncomfortable thought that it's probably not wise when he had so many changes in such quick succession earlier today, but no one is stopping him, and he thinks that Plagg would if he were really concerned.

He thinks.

It's getting hard to tell. Up until today, Plagg has seemed a lot more concerned with finding Adrien a family to stay with than he has with halting or even simply slowing any transformations. Adrien can't blame him for that, not when Adrien himself had erred on the side of staying Chat Noir a lot longer than he knew was wise, but- he had not been prepared for the sudden rise in cat traits after that fight with VoltHeir. He doesn't think that Plagg was prepared, either.

And neither of them had known that he was passing them on to Ladybug.

"Hey," Nino says, nudging him with his shoulder and handing him a game controller as Adrien shakes himself out of his thoughts. "Look, Final Fantasy Nine's in here! Oh, dude, I loved this game."

Adrien did too, actually, but he's staring down at the controller instead of responding. He's not sure how to respond.

Marinette blinks down at the second controller that Nino shoves into her hands. "This is not a two player game."

"No but there's others over here that are." Nino shuffles off the end of the bed, dragging half the blanket with him before Marinette yanks it back. "Hey, Ehrgeiz! Dude, I haven't seen that in- actually, I've never seen that, where did your parents even get that?"

"I don't know, Nino, why would I know that? Papa keeps all his old games, I doubt he knows where he got most of them by now." Marinette is peering after Nino with undisguised interest. "I haven't seen most of these in a long time, though. They must have been in storage or something."

"There's tons of them." Plagg wanders away from the bed to phase into and out of the chest that the TV's perched on. Adrien's a little afraid to look too closely at that chest, because it looks old and scuffed and like it likely has family history behind it and it's in here anyway- it's in his room, and he's still reeling that he has a room here at all. "What are all these? Twisted Metal? Jak X? What kind of names are these?"

"Guys, as far as I knew this was still a study when we left this morning." Marinette reaches out and pulls Nino back. He comes up holding an entirely different game. "Wait, is that Bloody Roar? Oh, hey, I haven't played that in years!"

"Bloody Roar it is," Nino says immediately, swapping out game discs before shuffling back up the bed. "I call winner."

Marinette glances sideways at Adrien and her mouth curves into a grin he's far more used to seeing on Ladybug. "That'll be me."

"Hey," Adrien says, pretending offense, but he isn't going to be surprised if she's right.

She's right. She wins the first four matches.

She wins the next three as well.

After that they end up switching to simply rotating controllers rather than taking turns playing against Marinette. Nino's not very good at first, but he improves noticeably with each fight as he starts to get the hang of the controls, and Adrien is quick to study the way Marinette's playing whenever it isn't his turn so that he can try to adapt accordingly.

He only notices Nino's fallen asleep because he doesn't take the controller the next time Adrien tries to hand it over.

"Hey, kitty," Marinette says quietly, setting down her own controller. "Should we try to sleep too, or do you think that's a bad idea?"

Adrien hesitates, and as he does he becomes slowly aware of just how tangled up they've all gotten. Marinette is pressed in against his side the way he often does with her when they're transformed, and when he shifts slightly Nino's head drops onto his shoulder with a loud snore.

Plagg flits up to his other shoulder. Adrien isn't entirely certain where his kwami has been for the last little while, and he abruptly feels guilty about that, right up until Plagg says, "You don't know if it's safe, do you, kid?"

"You don't know, either, do you, Plagg?" Marinette sighs. She shifts like she's going to sit up, then settles against Adrien's side again. "I guess we'd better go see Fu sooner rather than later. I'm sorry, Tikki, I really think we need to go as soon as possible." She glances around, her hair brushing across Adrien's shoulder, and he's suddenly embarrassingly aware that he's been purring loudly for- well, he doesn't know long, but probably for a while now.

Then he notices the same thing Marinette did. "Tikki?"

"She's, uh, not here, kids." Plagg sounds a little defensive. "She went to talk to Master Fu on her own."

"What?" Marinette sits upright so quickly that it jostles the entire bed, and she hastily lowers her voice when Nino mutters something sleepily. "Plagg, why would she go without us!"

Plagg doesn't look at either of them when he answers. He flits into Adrien's sleeve and clings there, claws latching onto the fabric without piercing it, as he says, "Because the old man can't take you from her if you aren't with her."

Marinette's hand goes to her earrings again.

Adrien's already running his thumb across his ring, not sure when he started.

"This way we know what he has to say without the risk," Plagg says, oddly stubborn, like he expects them to argue with him.

Marinette shakes her head immediately. "That's not- Plagg, we don't want him take you back!"

Adrien cups his hand gently over Plagg's perch. "Plagg, you're not just our kwami. You're our friends."

"And you're both heroes, and you have a self-sacrificing problem," Plagg grumbles, even as now that he's out of Marinette's view he butts his head gently against Adrien's palm. "The old man could probably convince you it was best for Paris if you did return your Miraculous. We don't have to take that risk. So we didn't."

Marinette looks as stricken as Adrien feels.

Adrien wants to tell Plagg that he's wrong, that not even for all of Paris would he ever want to give up his Miraculous, but-

He wouldn't want to.

But for all of Paris- if he thought that he had to, he doesn't know what he would do. He doesn't want to know what he would do. Giving up their Miraculous isn't as simple as handing over their jewelry. It's never been that simple, and that realisation is already something that's kept Adrien up at night more than once.

Hawkmoth has a Miraculous. He has a kwami. He knows exactly what he's asking for, that the ring and earrings are more than just magic jewelry, that these are living beings that he's demanding they hand over. Even if Adrien had ever, ever, seriously considered giving in to Hawkmoth (and just thinking about that at all makes him shudder), there is no way he would ever let Hawkmoth anywhere near Plagg. There's no way that Marinette would let him near Tikki.

Their kwami aren't tools. Plagg is the reason Adrien is even here right now, safe somewhere with his friends rather than freezing on a barren rooftop or miserable in a cold empty house.

Plagg glances up at Adrien's expression and sighs. "She's not gonna be gone long. She left a while ago, and she doesn't want you to transform right now, kid, she isn't going to stay away."

Adrien blinks, even as Marinette wraps an arm around him protectively. "Tikki doesn't want me to transform?" His stomach drops. "Is it- is it because Marinette-"

Marinette immediately hugs him tighter and leans hard into his side. "No, minou, don't do that. Tikki's been worried as long as I have been, since before we had any idea it was affecting me at all, and that is not your fault, okay? I'm the one who didn't tell you." She reaches out with her free hand to click off the light, leaving the room illuminated only faintly from the streetlights outside.

At least, presumably it's illuminated only faintly. He can't really judge how dark a room is any more with any degree of accuracy.

"Besides," Marinette says wryly. "It's not all bad. I always was kind of jealous of the night vision."

It's only now, with everything turned off and the room as dark as it's ever going to be for either of them again, that Adrien realises it's raining outside. He glances at the window, suddenly apprehensive for reasons he can't pin down.

At least, until a flash of lightning makes everything go bright for a moment and he finds himself flinching hard into Marinette.

Marinette's flinching, too, and she pulls the blanket in tighter around all three of them. She reaches up to her shoulder, letting her hand hover there a moment before dropping it and saying shakily, "You know, I used to like storms."

"Yeah," Adrien says, pressing into her for a moment before he shifts back a little to be closer to Nino as well. "Me too."

Plagg snorts. "You're both weird. Storms are loud and wet and annoying." Even as he's saying that, he slips inside of Adrien's hoodie, making his way to his usual pocket and ducking into it. Muffled now, he adds, "No one who has to be outside in them likes them."

Adrien starts to reply to that and stops, not sure what he wants to say. He's acutely aware that if he hadn't listened to Plagg and Marinette then he and Plagg both would be outside in that. That doesn't sound appealing at the best of times, but-

Lightning flashes again and he flinches even harder. Marinette, worryingly, lets out a quiet hiss.

"Are you okay?" he asks her quietly.

"Ye- No." She sighs. "No, I'm not. I don't like this. Well, I like this," she says, gesturing around at the guest room (at his room), at the blankets, at the game system, at Nino and Adrien. "I don't like the storm. I know I keep saying it, but Chat- A-Adrien, you really, really scared me. I thought I'd lost you." She reaches one hand up to her shoulder again and looks lost when there's no kwami there to reassure her.

Adrien resists the urge to press his hand over his heart, near where Plagg is hidden.

"You could have brought me back," he says, very softly. He knows that's not something Ladybug likes to think about. He knows that's an aspect of her power that she's uncomfortable with, that she skirts questions about and tries to avoid having to do at all.

But some akuma cause the kind of damage to city infrastructure that racks up an inevitable body count . Some are like Syren, where the incidental deaths are barely fathomable- she'd drowned most of Paris to make her point. Even if Ladybug's Miraculous Cure is an unnerving power to have, and considering Adrien knows how he feels about Cataclysm sometimes he's sure it must be, it's a necessary power.

"Ch- Adrien," Marinette says. "We don't know that. What if that was the time it didn't work? What if- minou, it almost didn't." She shivers and tucks in even closer. "Tikki didn't even say anything about using Lucky Charm like that, and I know it isn't meant to be used that way, but I used it as fast as I could after the battle and you were still so hurt."

"Yeah, if you could never do that again, kid, that would be grand," Plagg mutters, still muffled. "That's not a trick my magic's meant for. You're lucky you didn't end up with more traits bleeding over." He pauses. "Or she's lucky, that seems more likely."

"What were your Lucky Charms?" Adrien asks, curious. He hadn't exactly been in a position to see them at the time.

"Those two guardian lions we mentioned earlier." Marinette leans around him for a minute, apparently to check that Nino's still asleep before she continues. "Uh, what I'm now pretty sure was a version of Nino's hat, which didn't make a lot of sense at the time but I guess it does now? A cell phone, which I thought was about the group chat but now I'm not so sure about that. These weird animal figurines-"

"What animals?" Plagg says suddenly, sharply, phasing all the way back out of Adrien's clothes to stare at Marinette.

She blinks. "They were pretty stylized, but definitely a turtle. There was some kind of... dog? Maybe a fox, it had a bushy tail. And an insect but it was hard to make out what-" She blinks, then groans. "They were the other Miraculous."

"Of course they were, how could you not have realised that?" Plagg demands, flitting to the top of Adrien's head in agitation.

"I'm sorry, I was a little preoccupied at the time." Marinette doesn't quite snap, but it's a near thing.

Plagg starts to say something else, probably less than politely, but a loud crash of thunder makes everyone jump and startles Nino awake.

"Whoa, who's winning?" he gasps, before blinking around the dark room. "Or not. Never mind. How long was I asleep?"

"Not that long," Adrien assures him. "You didn't miss much."

Phasing back into Adrien's pocket, Plagg snorts.

Nino blinks down at where he was. "Okay, so that's why I've never seen him."

"I mean- he's in my bag a lot, too, but yeah," Adrien admits. "Plagg usually hangs out in the inside pocket of my shirt."

Nino rubs at his forehead. "And Chat Noir showed up for the first time the day before you made it to school. He' s been with you the whole time I've known you?"

"I hadn't thought about it like that." Adrien doesn't realise he's moving his hand to hover protectively over Plagg's hiding spot until after he's done it.

"I've had this kid longer than you have," Plagg calls back, which makes Adrien feel odd, but he's not sure he really wants to work out why.

Notes:

my age and biases are both showing

Chapter 30: guardian

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

"Dude, knowing you've had Plagg with you all this time? That is honestly a huge relief." Nino shrugs closer into Adrien's side, or tries to; Marinette's already so close on his other side that there isn't anywhere left to move. "Never liked knowing you were alone like that whenever you weren't with us."

"Nathalie was around," Adrien defends, but weakly. "And the Gorilla."

Nino snorts. "Yeah, I know you know that doesn't count."

Another flash of lightning ends that conversation abruptly, because this time Nino's awake to see both Adrien and Marinette jump and his eyebrows fly into his hairline. Cautiously, he says, "So, uh. I didn't think you had a problem with storms, dude. Either of you, actually."

"Yeah, well," Adrien says, more than a little shakily. "That last akuma was not- was not fun."

"Are there fun akuma?" Nino asks, more than a little incredulously, and then winces when he looks at Adrien's expression. "Okay, superpowers, that was a stupid question."

"I mean, there's usually too much adrenalin to really tell?" Adrien says, acutely aware that he's saying this in front of Ladybug. "Akuma fights are always a lot happening in a short amount of time. But- okay, I still don't know that fun is the word I would really wanna use, because that seems, uh, not great. With the supervillains, and all. But sometimes we get to do things like, oh, pilot a giant robot mech together. I can't really honestly say that wasn't fun." He winces. "I mean I guess I could? But I'd be lying. Still pretty terrifying, but it was fun, and a lot of the time the powers are really cool, too."

An expression flashes across Nino's face too fast for Adrien to read it, and Marinette squeezes his hand at the same time. When Adrien twists to glance at her, she's smiling and he relaxes a little. He's sure she already knew that Adrien's been enjoying himself for more than a few of their fights- he's sure she's enjoyed a few of them too- but he'd been a lot less sure that she would approve of him admitting it.

Nino starts to ask him something else and hesitates.

"What?" Adrien blinks at him, slowly.

"Well, it feels kind of weird to ask you this now." Nino fiddles with a fringe on one of the blankets piled along the side of the bed. "And kind of dumb. Just, dude, how much of your powers do you have when you aren't transformed?"

Adrien can't help exchanging another glance with Marinette.

She looks just as curious as Nino does. She did mention that the changes she's experiencing aren't as dramatic as his own, and the fact that they're happening at all means he really does owe her an explanation.

Nice as the weighted blanket is, it doesn't have the kind of fringe to fiddle with that the blanket Nino's claimed does. Adrien still finds himself running his hands over the fabric nervously, careful that his claws don't snag, until Marinette nudges his shoulder and then slips a fidget spinner into his hand beneath the blanket.

Given something to occupy his hands, Adrien does find a lot of his tension gradually seeping away. "I've had the night vision since the first time I ever transformed. And I think I was stronger, but that was a weird gradual thing, so it was harder to tell. We're still definitely a lot stronger as ourselves. I mean, Ladybug can throw me across a stadium when we're transformed, and the last time we tried to test our strength it kind of just turned into an arm wrestling contest?" He smiles sheepishly. "We didn't use to get a lot of time together when there wasn't a supervillain attacking."

"Use to," Nino repeats, with another oddly pained expression, and Adrien would be more concerned about him focusing on that if he didn't already have a good reason in mind.

Adrien nods. "It's part of why we started patrolling. We missed each other." He flushes. "At least, I missed her."

"She missed you too," Marinette says softly, before hastily adding, "I mean, I'm sure she missed you. You're partners."

Adrien thinks he catches a flash of something strange in Nino's eyes for a moment, but it's gone so fast he might have imagined it.

"There's- I do have better hearing now even when I'm not transformed," he adds, but lightning flashes again before he can continue.

Nino rolls his eyes as they both jump again. "Okay, there's like a dozen blankets on this bed and possibly even more pillows, why don't we just make another fort?" He waves in the direction of the window. "It can't be that hard to block out the lightning."

Adrien exchanges a guilty glance with Marinette. Between the two of them, they really should have thought of that.

They all have to pile off the bed for a few minutes before they can begin and Adrien's a lot grumpier about than he's going to admit. His reaction is much too close to a cat that didn't want to move from somewhere comfortable and he's much too aware of it this time.

"Guys?" Nino is staring at something higher up on the wall, above the window. "Do you see those hooks on the wall?"

"What?" Marinette, who'd dropped to the floor to examine the trundle bed with some bemusement, scrambles upright. "Why would there be-" She stops.

She looks at the bed, still covered in a truly unnecessary amount of bedding, and then back up at the hooks. "They didn't."

Nino fumbles with the blankets for a second, coming up with a dark green one edged in black fringe, and shows them both how several of the fringes turn into sturdy loops. "They totally did!"

"Did what?" Adrien asks, lost and a little forlorn at suddenly feeling left out.

"Dude, watch!" Nino scrambles up to hook the fabric loop over the hook he's found on the wall.

"Found more." Marinette sounds extremely pleased, and digs out another blanket to hang from more oddly deliberate ceiling hooks on the other side of the bed. It's not much longer before they're all three enveloped in a warm, dark space beneath the draped blankets, and Marinette and Nino start to push and shove pillows into place all around them before Adrien can do the same.

Nino pauses. "Uh... this is okay, dude, right? I know you're not, like, big on small spaces."

"That's more about being locked in," Adrien admits painfully, even though he's reeling a little internally. He's never actually told Nino that. He thinks he's only ever told Ladybug that. "Blankets aren't like walls, they aren't going to bother me."

"If you're sure, dude," Nino says, but there's a weird note of caution in his voice that Adrien didn't expect to hear. "Just... if it ever is a problem, tell us, okay?"

Adrien can't help his flinch. He should have talked to Nino before running away. He should have trusted that of course Nino would try to help in any way he could. Nino honestly probably would have had some good ideas, before Adrien had run off on his own and likely put irreparable dents in most of them.

But at the time, Adrien hadn't been thinking that much more clearly than needing to get out, and Plagg was too concerned with getting him to go to come up with better suggestions.

"Also? Dudes? Some of us do not have night vision. It is super dark under here." Nino shifts a little, and for all that he's indicated that he can't see Adrien doesn't think the arm that wraps tightly around his shoulders a moment later is an accident. It takes Marinette a while longer because she stops to draw the weighted blanket up over all three of them again, but once she has she wraps her arm around Adrien as well and leans her head on his shoulder again.

Adrien's still not used to this much casual affection from anyone but Ladybug.

Nino's never once pushed him away or said anything about how clingy he is (and Adrien is achingly aware that he is clingy), and Marinette has let him close as Chat Noir, and Alya hugs almost everyone liberally, but Adrien's only ever had Ladybug to curl up with like this. He'd never expected to be able to extend that outside of their masks, even when he'd so badly wanted to.

Adrien does feel a lot calmer now that the lightning is so much less obvious. He can still hear thunder, which means Marinette can too, but it's not about the thunder.

He wonders, more than a little uneasily, if his rooftop shelter would have been any refuge from this storm at all.

He's glad he'd had anywhere to go at all those first few nights. He's also glad not to be there on this one.

Unfortunately, now they're sitting in the dark with both Marinette and Adrien entirely unwilling to actually sleep. There's too much danger in it still, especially when they're this comfortable.

Adrien's so relieved that Marinette mentioned having already had the blanket and that her father had already owned the game system. He's still overwhelmed that they've done any of this for him; he already feels guilty, he'd feel so much worse than that if they had been buying him more new things than they clearly already have.

He keeps coming back to the alarm clocks and the scratching post and the angled mirrors.

He keeps coming back to the idea that the room is for Chat Noir, poking at the concept like a loose tooth, like he can't help occasionally tonguing at his new fangs even now. He can't stop wondering at the way that as far as he can tell they'd seen no issue with incorporating some of his less human traits. Ladybug has been so indulgent over them already, he never expected that from her parents as well. It's not- it almost feels like it means more, somehow, than if the room was for him as a civilian. They're superheroes, he didn't expect this level of willingness to help, this level of attention to detail.

Maybe he should have. They did raise Marinette.

And- it hasn't just been Marinette's parents.

The class had specifically left spaces for Ladybug and Chat Noir in their group chat.

The animal shelter clearly knows something is going on. Judging by the supplies they keep trying to get to him, they have a much better idea than he's comfortable with.

Nino had offered Chat Noir help back at the stadium before ever knowing his identity.

Plagg pokes his head out again, and Adrien doubts the way Plagg scratches him slightly when he does is accidental. It's enough to jar him out of his thoughts, though. "If it's dark and you're still not going to sleep, isn't this when humans do things like tell stupid ghost stories? Want me to start? I can start."

"Plagg," Adrien says, though he's well aware of what his kwami is trying to do. "Yours is only going to be about running out of cheese."

Plagg sniffs. "You can't know that for sure."

"I can," Adrien assures him. "I really, really can."

"I sort of have one?" Marinette says, tentatively. "I mean, it isn't really, but it involves one. It's about, well, Nino, you remember that time all the girls from class got together and then no one would talk about that sleepover later?"

"Vividly." Nino doesn't seem aware that his grip on Adrien is getting tighter whenever lightning flashes bright enough to be visible even through their carefully constructed shelter. Adrien isn't about to say anything about it, because if he does then Nino might stop.

And because Marinette is doing the same thing.

"Well, ah, someone decided we should play Bloody Mary." Marinette leans back against the headboard, pulling both boys along as a consequence. "...okay, Alix, Alix decided we should play Bloody Mary."

"What's Bloody Mary?" Adrien asks tentatively.

"Oh, it's a superstitious game. Kind of an urban legend. It's silly, it's not like it could ever..." Marinette trails off, and when Adrien glances over at her he sees she's narrowing her eyes at nothing he can see.

"Um?" Nino says.

Marinette sighs. "Okay, I was going to say it isn't like it could ever actually do anything, but then I remembered that hey, magic." She turns over Adrien's hand in hers, tracing one of his claws. Adrien's a little nervous about that, because his claws are sharp, but Marinette is careful. And he trusts her. "The point is, as far as we knew, it couldn't do anything. I mean, we still weren't gonna make Mylene do it, but- sorry, I forgot to explain!. Adrien, it's where you chant 'Bloody Mary' at a mirror in a dark room three times, and supposedly she comes out of the mirror to murder you. Unless you run down and touch a doorknob in time, then you're safe."

"This is a game?" Adrien asks her incredulously.

Nino raises his hand. "I thought you had to have candles in front of the mirror. Also, I thought she was supposed to, like, yell the name of your future husband or something. Not, uh, murder you. Also? Not sure that I would call it a game, dude."

"Okay, so there are a few different versions!" Marinette says hastily, though something definitely flickered across her face at Nino's version of the... Adrien still isn't sure how this is a game at all. "Alix taught us the murder version and then she went to do it, 'cause she'd well, scared most of the rest of us. But she brought Nathaniel with her, and he handed her this baseball bat-"

"Wait," Nino interrupts, leaning around Adrien with his brows furrowed. "Wait, if this was the girl's sleepover, why was Nathaniel there? Why did anyone even have a baseball bat?"

Marinette shrugs. "Because it was at Alix's place and no one there cares about either of those things? Because Chloe was offended to be invited and we were short a person? Honestly, I don't remember, we all like Nathaniel so nobody cared. Nino, we were at Alix's place, you could have showed up and no one would have cared, but we were that age where you decided girly things weren't cool. Remember that?" she asks pointedly.

Nino winces. "Yes, okay, I'm still sorry and we don't need to go into any details, thanks dude."

"No, I kind of think we do," Marinette replies, sounding amused now, and Adrien leans more into her when she reaches up to card her hand through his hair. "But it's off topic. So- you can explain it while I go get the cat, because I just realised we left her outside the fort somewhere. I'll finish telling you what happened after I go grab her, she probably found another one of the cat toys."

Adrien whines a little without meaning to when he feels Marinette gently untangle herself, and not just because he'd like to hear how her story ends. His face heats up.

"I don't think all the cat toys are in here for Snapdragon," Nino says dryly. He shifts closer to the wall, gently tugging Adrien after him and away from the empty spot Marinette leaves when she gets up.

Adrien can still feel that empty space, though, like an ache in his soul, and has to physically stop himself from reaching after her.

"I'll be right back," Marinette assures him, leaving the blankets turned up so he can see her going straight to the cat tree (it's possible they'd never needed to buy one at all). "Seriously, it'll only take-"

There's another flash and they both flinch as lightning limns the room, lighting everything in excruciating detail for several seconds that seem to stretch far too long. Adrien feels a sympathetic pain lingering deep in his bones, and even knowing that it has to be in his head by now doesn't help.

Nino groans, loudly, and sits up. Adrien feels even more bereft but Nino picks up a spotted pillow and throws it at Marinette, who catches it easily and gives him a hurt look.

"Dude," Nino says. "Come back here, I'll go get the cat."

Marinette looks like she's going to argue with that, but then she looks at Adrien and her expression softens. "Okay. That's- okay. Thanks, Nino."

This time, when she ducks back under the covers with him, Marinette makes a point of shifting closest to the window. She has to crawl over him to get there, and she's a brighter red than her suit when she does, but she seems determined to put herself between him and the distant lightning.

"I'm okay, you know," Adrien tells her softly, even as she ducks her head against his shoulder and inhales deeply, the way he might if he wanted the reassurance of her scent. Something in him warms at watching her do that, but there's worry in it too.

He'd been more than willing to risk his own humanity to stay out of his father's hands. He'd never meant to risk hers.

Nino comes back very quickly this time, although they can hear him cursing trying to get an armful of uncooperative cat to come with him. Adrien and Marinette exchange glances with each other and he finds she's fighting back a laugh as well. The humour sparking in her eyes as she tosses her hair back briefly makes Adrien grin back at her, and he only looks away when Nino drops Snapdragon onto the bed with a huff.

"You guys have had a cat for like two hours and you already lost track of her." Nino also drops down onto the bed, careful not to land on Snapdragon. He's considerably less careful about landing on Adrien and ends up half-draped over him.

Adrien blinks at him, but finds he doesn't actually have any desire to move away.

Marinette reaches over him to pull Nino closer anyway. Adrien turns a slightly indignant look towards his partner when she tugs Nino's arm close enough around him to rest her head against and lets out a contented sigh.

"You're bony," she tells him in response to his expression. "Nino makes a better pillow." She nudges him in the side. "At least, until you start eating more."

Nino shrugs, shifting everyone, and then grunts as Snapdragon clambers over and makes herself comfortable on his stomach. "Please eat more, dude, I don't actually wanna be everyone's bed." He ducks his head against Adrien's other shoulder himself, though, close enough to muffle his voice as he says, "So. Why did any of you think it was a good idea to hand Alix a baseball bat and send her into a dark room with poor unsuspecting Nath?"

Marinette snorts. "Alix did. And the baseball bat was actually poor unsuspecting Nath's idea, he said she could hit Bloody Mary with it if she showed up and Alix just sort of went along with that. So we hear them chanting, then dead silence for a minute, then the lights flickered rapidly a bunch of times and Nathaniel started yelling and bolted to the front door- only he was bleeding from the forehead and, you know, head wounds bleed a lot and Alix was still in the bathroom but she was just laughing hysterically-"

"I am actually glad that I did not go to this now." Nino shakes his head, brushing his hair across Adrien's shoulder. Adrien is suddenly very, very aware of just how close both his friends are right now. He's definitely not about to object to that. "I thought you just had, like, pillow fights or something."

Marinette picks up a spare pillow, reaches around Adrien, and hits Nino in the face with it. While he's spluttering, she says, "You watch too many movies. And we're not allowed to have any more pillow fights after the last one. Anyway, turns out the lights were Alix hitting the switch a bunch, and while she was doing that she turned around and hit Nath in the face with the baseball bat. He thought Bloody Mary was coming out of the mirror so he ran." She looks very amused, eyes turning distant for a moment as though treasuring the memory. "We did go on to telling actual ghost stories, eventually, but we had to go explain to Alix's parents first."

Adrien blinks. "And they... didn't make anyone go home? You said Nathaniel was bleeding."

"From the forehead," Marinette confirms, looking disturbingly fond of the memory. "A lot, actually, because, well, head wound. Alix's parents mostly thought it was really funny. They did offer to call his dad, but I don't think Nath wanted to have to explain what happened, so he just bandaged it up and came back upstairs."

"And then you... told ghost stories," Adrien says, slowly. He honestly had much the same impression as Nino mentioned about girl's sleepovers, if he'd thought about it at all, but only until he stops to really think about his classmates.

They might have a pillow fight, but they'd be likely to get more than a little caught up in the fight aspect of it. If Adrien really tries to picture it he mostly comes up with Alix and Marinette going after the others with war cries and Mylene probably sitting it out; he doesn't think he knows the others well enough just yet to predict what they'd be doing, but he also thinks that it would have to be only a single pillow fight before they would have decided not to try that again.

"Well... a couple more of us tried the Bloody Mary thing first, but then we did move on to ghost stories, yeah." Marinette snuggles closer to him, too, and Adrien relaxes a little more into the pile of bedding and the warmth of both his friends.

Nino twists to give Marinette an unimpressed look. "Dude. There is no way you're ever gonna convince me that you weren't one of the people who tried the whole Bloody Mary thing. You. At the age where you were almost as bad as Kim about dares."

Marinette flushes. "Well... Juleka still wanted to try it, and it's not any fun if no one else is with you, okay? But we did move on to ghost stories, really-"

Nino interrupts her, which isn't like him, but Adrien understands a second later. "Wait, you're just gonna skip over that? You had a whole story about Nathaniel and Alix and you aren't gonna say anything about you and Juleka?"

"Nothing happened," Marinette says darkly.

Nino rakes his free hand through his hair. Adrien's not sure where his hat's gone, now that he thinks about it. "Dude. Now I'm even more convinced that something did." Marinette starts to say something else, and he adds, "And I'm not gonna believe Juleka made you promise not to say anything, 'cause she wouldn't do that."

"That's... true." Marinette curls her legs under her more and Adrien catches himself purring, but not in time to stop. "I think we both convinced ourselves nothing did happen later, though. I haven't really thought about it in years."

Plagg pokes his head back out of Adrien's pocket long enough to grumble, "Will you just tell us," and then dives back in, leaving Adrien to blink after him.

"Okay, I know why I wanna know, why do you wanna know?" Nino asks Plagg.

Plagg's voice is muffled. "Maybe I just wanna know."

Marinette shrugs with her whole body. "Hey, at this point he could tell us Bloody Mary was a past Ladybug and I wouldn't be sure whether or not he was lying."

"She wasn't," Plagg says, which sounds reassuring right up until Adrien thinks about it for longer than a moment.

"...she's rea-" Nino starts, and then shakes his head. "No, wait, I don't want to know. I don't want to know."

"Oh good," Marinette says. "So it was actually Juleka's ghost story-"

Nino sits up a little straighter. He must be more than rested enough from his earlier nap, because he's clearly not the least bit tired now. "Dude, no you don't. Come on, what happened?"

Adrien shifts a little, turning more towards Marinette, and closes his eyes briefly when she cards her hand through his hair almost absently. "Nino, if she doesn't want to say, she doesn't have to. Does it really matter? Really?"

Nino shifts uncomfortably himself, but stills when Marinette sighs and says, "We saw- we saw a bunch of these roses blooming, okay? And- and some other things, in the mirror. And- out of the mirror, for a couple seconds, but then those vanished. Then we just sort of never brought it up again, because we never understood why, and frankly because we weren't totally sure it really happened. It wasn't any of the things we even thought were supposed to happen. I think Juleka would have been more interested if we'd actually seen Bloody Mary."

Nino blinks while Adrien is still processing all of that. They all have plenty of undeniable proof that magic is real, but that isn't the same thing as discovering silly urban legends are real as well.

It also hasn't escaped him that Marinette is definitely still leaving out a lot of details.

"You... both saw it?" Nino says slowly.

"...yeah. Yeah, we definitely both saw, well, something." Marinette tucks her hair behind her ear, then winces at a roll of thunder.

Plagg snickers.

Adrien cups a hand over his pocket and rolls his eyes as Snapdragon perks her head up, looking over at Plagg with interest. "Plagg?"

"Hey, Nino's the one who pointed out the other version of the game exists." Plagg sniffs "Not my fault you kids went about enacting weird rituals you learned through stupid rumours and didn't stop to think about consequences."

"I don't think you get to lecture anyone about consequences," Marinette tells him, shrugging into Adrien again. "But anyway. I don't, uh, recommend actually playing that game."

"It's not a game, you know." Plagg phases through Adrien's hand and then through Snapdragon's paw as she bats at him. "That's a ritual you were doing. Maybe try not to do those."

Marinette reaches out and gently guides him away from the cat. "I didn't know it was a ritual. I thought it was a game, and I'd just seen two other people do it without any real effect. I know some of the others tried it too and as far as I know now Juleka and I are the only two who saw anything at all."

"Kid," Plagg says, settling on Marinette's hand. "Did you ever think about why it might have worked for just you?"

She blinks down at him. "Not really. Honestly, it's been so long and it was so weird that I'd mostly forgotten that it happened."

"Plagg?" Adrien says, beginning to reach after his kwami and then hastily retracting his hand. Plagg flits back to him anyway and Adrien thinks he mostly manages to keep his wince internal. He's spent enough time hiding Plagg from everyone, if Plagg wants to interact with his friends too Adrien should let him. "This is important?"

"Yeah, it's-" Plagg stops.

Adrien becomes abruptly aware of how still and quiet Nino's gone beside him.

"It was a long time ago," Marinette says hastily, before flinching again at a lightning strike bright enough to cast shadows even through the shelter of their fort. "And I really do have a pretty good ghost story. I mean it's Juleka's story, but it's actually really creepy."

"Dude, I don't know why you say that like Juleka wasn't practically known for creepy stories for, like, half our childhood." Nino reaches out and tugs another blanket across them from the pile. It doesn't actually do much, not when they're already under so many and their main one is weighted besides, but Adrien's grateful for the thought anyway. "Remember the two foot outline ghost?"

"Oh for- yes," Marinette says, and Adrien muffles a snicker at how familiar the exasperated tone is. It's definitely her 'not now Chat Noir' tone. "I remember. I remember and it's dumb. Nino, it was always dumb."

"I don't have any context for this," Adrien reminds them, already amused.

"We went on an overnight school field trip, stayed at these old cabins, and Juleka kept insisting that there was a ghost that looked like a two foot tall sketchy outline of a kid that hovered in the door at night," Nino tells him. "I still think she was making it up but like three other kids swore they saw it, too." He leans around Adrien and gives Marinette a pointed look. "Everyone in your bunk, actually."

"Sure, except for, you know, me," Marinette points out dryly. "So if you're looking for a common thread here, it's Juleka. And come on, that still sounds insane!"

Nino shrugs. "Hey, Bloody Mary is real, apparently. Why can't the creepy ghost that's bad at haunting be real, too?" He looks down at Plagg. "Hey, little dude, are ghosts real?"

Plagg sniffs and makes himself comfortable on Adrien's shoulder, close enough to Marinette that she tilts her head to give him more space. "I'm not answering that, kid. I shouldn't have to answer that."

"I'm gonna take that as a yes," Nino tells Marinette. "I'm pretty sure that was a yes."

Marinette starts to cross her arms, but apparently decides that staying close to Adrien takes priority. "I'm not acknowledging that one without proof. Do you want to hear the story I was gonna tell or not?"

"I do," Adrien says immediately, because at this point he wants to hear any and all stories that they're willing to share with him. "I definitely do."

Marinette sighs. "Okay, so this actually happened, like, right after I went and saw a movie with Juleka and Rose. We all came back here later, though, and Rose and I fell asleep right away but Juleka swears this happened. She couldn't sleep so she went downstairs- well, down in the living room, so down the hall," Marinette waves vaguely in the direction of the hall, the door to which would be clearly visible through the room's carefully placed mirrors if the three of them weren't so thoroughly cocooned in blankets. "She says she came down for a glass of water and there was just a guy standing there. Not transparent or ghostly or anything, she was actually worried someone had broken in. I guess he turned to her, said 'Be careful what follows you home,' and then just vanished."

Nino promptly reaches down and yanks another blanket up and over all of them, blocking the sight of the doorway further.

"Nino," Marinette says patiently. "I've lived here all my life and never seen anything like that. Juleka's the only one that did."

Adrien is keeping quiet now, because he's noticing the same thing he's sure Plagg did but he can't point it out in front of Nino.

Marinette is probably missing it because Juleka is present in all these stories too, but the other common threads are Marinette herself and- and what might be magic, working for her, in a way Adrien doesn't think is normal.

And Plagg and Tikki still don't know why Ladybug and Chat Noir's magic is interacting the way it is.

Adrien has been assuming that it's his fault, when he's the one who's been using his powers in a way he clearly isn't meant to for so long, but now he thinks it's possible he hasn't been paying enough attention to the fact that they're partners before they're anything else.

Juleka might be a coincidence. He really doesn't think Marinette is.

"At least the ghost gave her good advice, I guess," Nino mutters, but even through the added blanket he's eyeing the exit with trepidation. "Also, how did you get Mylene to come over here ever again?"

"I'm not mean enough to tell Mylene about that!" Marinette sounds indignant at the suggestion.

Adrien has to force himself to join the conversation again, because with his friends pressed in on either side of him in the very cozy nest of pillows and blankets they've constructed all he really wants to do is purr himself and them to sleep, but he does manage a shy, "Do you have any other ghost stories?" A little more reluctantly, he adds, "Or just stories. Chloe never, uh, mentioned any of this when she was getting me into school."

Marinette pauses like that's never occurred to her before. When Adrien really thinks about that, he realises it probably hasn't. Chloe isn't exactly known for altruism, after all.

Nino slumps onto Adrien further. "Dude, now you've made me feel grateful to Chloe and I don't like it. She probably didn't mention any of it because she kept refusing to join in, because we're 'beneath her.'" Nino puts that last bit in air quotes.

Adrien winces. He knows by now that Chloe isn't exactly the friend he thought he was, that the girl he grew up playing in the gardens with while their parents talked about politics and upcoming charity events and other things that weren't of any interest to a couple of five year olds isn't the same Chloe his friends grew up with.

He still doesn't know how to explain that. He's not even really sure anymore what happened to the Chloe he knew when they were children, when she'd been bossy but not usually outright cruel. He so rarely sees any sign of the old Chloe now.

(But she did help him enroll in her classes with her, without either of their parent's knowledge. And she's been one of the most active and vocal about finding out where Adrien actually is, right after Marinette herself. Maybe Adrien is seeing a lot more of her bad side now but- it still means something to him that she was his only friend, once. That she was his only friend for a long, long time).

"Nino." Marinette breathes out hard enough to flutter Adrien's hair and he tilts his head against hers with a louder purr than before. "Chloe's trying to change now, I think. But- sorry, Adrien, but that's true. Chloe just didn't come along on a lot of those trips, so she wouldn't have known much about them." She sighs. "I mean, it was kind of a relief, because it meant she wasn't going to be sniping at everyone the whole time, but maybe we should have tried harder to include her, too."

"Seriously, dude?" Nino says, in pained disbelief. "Are we talking about the same Chloe?"

Marinette fishes around for a moment, comes up with her phone, and unlocks it as she hands it across Adrien to Nino. "Nino, just open the chat app. Look at how much Chloe's posted- is posting- in it. She's trying."

"She's trying because it's Adrien," Nino snaps, then hunches in on himself immediately afterward. In a much smaller voice, he says, "Sorry, dude, I didn't mean that. Of course we all wanted to find you. It's just that- Chloe wouldn't have cared at all if it was any of the rest of us." His voice turns bitter as he adds, "She'd be thrilled if Marinette or Alya went missing."

Adrien starts to say something, either to reassure Nino or to try to defend Chloe- he's not sure which- but he's interrupted.

He's interrupted because Tikki breaks up their pile by diving back in through the window, flitting straight to Marinette without making the slightest attempt to hide. Before he or Marinette can say anything, can reason out any kind of excuse, Tikki starts speaking in a rush. Her voice is even higher than usual, a faint waver in it betraying her anxiety. "Master Fu had- has something he wants to discuss."

Marinette stares at her kwami, eyes huge, one hand half-raised like maybe she can still block Tikki from Nino's view if she moves quickly enough. Her eyes dart swiftly between the window and her kwami and her mouth twists unhappily as she seems to take in the way her kwami is soaked through and shivering. Moments later, she tucks Tikki close against herself, holding her cupped hands up near her neck and cradling Tikki like she's trying to reassure her rather than hide her.

Adrien knows her well enough to know that's probably exactly Marinette's intent.

Before anyone else can react more than that, a second kwami drifts in through the window.

He's moving much more slowly than Tikki, though it looks like most of the rain is sliding off him in a way it didn't for her. He's probably slowed down in part by the way he's carrying a bracelet bigger than himself. The new kwami looks around nervously before slowly settling on Nino's knees, a cautious distance from Snapdragon, and looking up at him.

"I'm Wayzz," the kwami greets him quietly. "I am the kwami of protection. And you, Nino Lahiffe, have been chosen to wield the Miraculous of the Turtle."

Tikki speaks up again, sounding exhausted. "Master Fu has a few things he wants to discuss."

Notes:

whoops

also there's a couple small edits at the beginning of the last chapter now so that it flows better with the one before it, sorry about that!

the baseball bat thing, the two foot outline ghost, and the 'be careful what follows you home' thing are all versions of things that have happened in my life i did not actually make any of those up myself

Chapter 31: considerations

Notes:

thanks shinobicyrus for the beta!

Chapter Text

"Um," Marinette stammers, a thousand thoughts whirling through her mind at once. She looks at Adrien because she's used to looking to Chat Noir when she's overwhelmed, but he doesn't look any less stunned than she does.

She thinks his hair might be bristling like a startled cat, too, which can't be good, but it's honestly difficult to tell with Chat Noir's usual hairstyle.

Nino doesn't seem to be quite having the same problems. Slowly, he extends his whole hand to Wayzz and waits for the kwami to hop onto it. "Nice to meet you, little dude. But are you, uh, sure you've got the right guy here?"

Wayzz inclines his head. "As sure as I reasonably can be. I have had upwards of a hundred years with Master Fu, and it is not as though I'll be unable to see him." He slides a sideways glance at Tikki that's so brief Marinette's not sure, at first, that she saw it at all. "He is, after all, the last of the Order of the Guardians. By necessity, we have been operating entirely under whatever rules we deem appropriate for some time now."

Wayzz flits to Nino's shoulder and smiles at Adrien, who doesn't appear to know that he has one hand raised protectively over Plagg.

Marinette really isn't in any place to comment. She has both hands cupped around Tikki and she doesn't remember doing that.

"For one thing, we are both in agreement that kwami and their chosen should never be forced to part," Wayzz says gently, glancing between Adrien and Marinette. "Maybe that was considered best in the past, but we are not in the past. Here and now there's only Master Fu, myself, and your new generation of Guardians."

Marinette and Adrien lock eyes at that. He looks just as alarmed as she feels and his hair is definitely bristling now; she can see the hair on his neck standing on end.

Marinette's pretty sure her own hair is doing the same and that is deeply worrying. She thinks she might have been purring earlier, too, and that is an extremely new development- she doesn't know exactly how much power Plagg's poured into Adrien today but she suspects both that it was very far beyond a safe level, and that the way Tikki had let Marinette abuse her own powers may have sped things up as well.

Adrien's been changing because he's been overusing his transformation. Marinette using Ladybug's magic so far beyond the bounds of the way she's supposed to may have had a similar effect, and on top of that there's the way their kwami are both entirely at a loss for why their magic is linked the way it is.

And Master Fu intends them as the new generation of Guardians? That's- that's a lot more pressure than Marinette is comfortable with at the moment. Stopping Hawkmoth has always been her goal; she never even- the thought never occurred to her that she might have to safeguard the other Miraculous, after. That Master Fu wouldn't always-

Wayzz clearly sees the banked panic in both their expressions, because he adds, "No one expects you to take up that mantle until you are truly ready, of course."

"Oh," Marinette says, shakily. "Good."

"Um." Nino shifts uncomfortably. "This all sounds super important and all, but dudes. Dudes. I have, like, a billion questions now."

Tikki squeaks and hastily dives into Marinette's hair.

Evidently she's hoping that if she's quick enough Nino will forget having just seen her. It's kind of comforting to know that millennia-old gods aren't immune to wishful thinking.

"That wasn't one of them, actually," Nino says dryly. He nods between Adrien and Marinette. "You two are, uh, not doing the subtle thing well. Like. At all."

"We aren't?" Adrien says weakly.

Plagg and Nino both snort.

"Kids," Plagg says, though he's crouched close enough to Adrien that his own anxiety is perfectly obvious. "You are not subtle."

"It'd probably be less noticeable if I didn't already know you both, but yeah, what he said," Nino says distractedly, before gesturing (carefully) at Wayzz. "But, uh, all of my questions were more along the lines of what do you mean chosen."

Tikki finally pipes up again, peeking sheepishly back out into view. "Um, I went to see Master Fu. He does want to see all of us as soon as possible, but he made several very good points about how dangerous it is for Chat Noir not to be able to transform right now."

"I still can transform," Adrien protests, twitching slightly.

"Don't," Marinette, Nino, and Plagg all say at the same time, and Snapdragon lets out a tired, inquisitive meow.

Adrien starts to cross his arms, but he doesn't actually have space for that with Marinette, Nino and a cat huddled around him. "If we need to! I'm not just-" He sighs. "I'm not just going to transform without thinking about it any more." He slides a guilty glance in Marinette's direction.

"It's still not your fault," Marinette tells him gently.

"Dude, I also have questions about that. So many questions about that." Nino shifts to rub the back of his neck. "But they, uh, might have to wait. I just- chosen? There are- there are more Miraculous? Besides Hawkmoth's and... yours?"

"Yes." Wayzz looks at Adrien and Marinette, then back at Nino. "This is a rather unorthodox way to decide, but as I said, we've been operating by our own rules for quite some time now. Nino Lahiffe, you have been chosen to wield the Miraculous of the Turtle. It grants you the power of protection."

"I, uh." Nino's hand drops from the back of his neck. He hesitates a moment, then curls that arm around Adrien again.

Marinette's beginning to notice that Nino seems just as driven to keep hold of Adrien as she is, like he's afraid if he lets go too long Adrien will disappear again. She feels bad now for not letting Nino know that Adrien was okay right away, but-

He hadn't been okay. He isn't okay, even now, and she'd almost lost him hours ago.

She's thought so many times today how much she could use Nino's help. Nino already has helped, and not only with the akuma earlier. He'd noticed right away that something was wrong with Chat Noir even before he knew it was Adrien.

Marinette moves to put one hand over the bracelets Nino's already wearing and collides with Adrien, who's doing the same thing.

"Nino," she says softly, because Adrien's pupils are as dilated as Marinette's ever seen them and he's not saying anything. She has to fight not to glance down at where all her instincts tell her his tail should be twitching. "You should put it on."

Nino accepts the bracelet, but runs his fingers over it hesitantly instead of slipping it over his wrist. "What if-"

"Nino," Adrien says. "Please."

Nino shuts his eyes and slides the bracelet on.

Marinette doesn't realise they're both holding their breath until Nino lets his out, and then they both do too.

"I thought- I thought I would feel different, somehow," Nino admits, shakily, holding his wrist up and blinking as the Miraculous- his Miraculous- blends into his other bracelets.

Nino blinks rapidly, and it occurs to Marinette that their friend is probably more than a little overwhelmed by now. They've dropped a lot on him in such a short amount of time.

Nino takes a deep breath, and then another, and Wayzz flits up to his shoulder and settles there and doesn't move as Nino squeezes his eyes shut. Without opening them, Nino says, "So what, uh. What kinda turtle traits are likely to..." He trails off, grimaces in a way that Marinette thinks was meant to be a smile, and says, "Or should I be asking about cat traits?"

He looks, Marinette realises, really shaken.

So does Adrien, in fact, when her eyes fly up to meet his.

She didn't think of that. She can tell by Adrien's expression that he hadn't, either, and they should have. It should have been the first thing they thought of.

"Oh," Tikki says softly, leaning hard into Marinette and peeking around to blink at Nino with her eyes even wider than usual. "Oh, no, that's not- the traits don't usually bleed over quite so strongly, and I've never seen it happen so fast before."

Tikki ducks her head and nudges against Marinette in a way that sends a wave of worry through her, because she's never seen Tikki do that before but she has seen Plagg do it to Adrien. They still don't know how affected their kwami are by everything that's been going on but it would be naive to think that they aren't affected at all.

"So," Nino says, slowly. "So... yes to the turtle traits, but not like, uh- I'm not gonna get like, cold blooded or anything? I mean, if turtles even are cold-blooded, I don't know a ton about turtles, dude, although I guess I'm gonna have to learn quick." His eyes are still shut, as though if he doesn't look around too much he can convince himself Wayzz hasn't chosen him. "And, like, do I get an answer about the cat traits? Or is this a 'you must discover that for yourself' kinda thing?"

"You're not partnered with another Miraculous the way our two are, so no on the cat traits, kid." Plagg flits up to curl himself up against Adrien's shoulder. "An' it isn't supposed to happen at all, anyway." He scoffs. "Might not be entirely us. Isn't like we're the only magic in the world, you know."

Nino blinks, then puts one hand to his forehead and looks like he's contemplating different ways to escape this conversation. "Not as reassuring as you seem to think, little dude."

"Thanks, wasn't meant to be." Plagg nestles further against Adrien, pressing against his neck until Marinette is eyeing both of them with trepidation.

She's been so worried about Adrien, she's forgotten how worried she'd been about Plagg. Their kwami are powerful, but they aren't invincible; they can get tired and hurt and sick the same as the two of them can. Marinette's had to bring Tikki to see Master Fu before, but she doesn't think Adrien and Plagg have ever done the same thing.

And Plagg has been avoiding Master Fu. She doesn't think he'd go even if he is ill. She doesn't think he'd even let Adrien know, right now, if he's not feeling well.

He probably isn't. Tikki's said the two of them have been transforming for much longer than should be possible, and while they're all very aware of the effects that's been having on Adrien (and, by extension, Marinette herself) it can't be leaving Plagg totally unaffected.

Marinette also wonders uneasily if Plagg is likely to reflect effects onto Tikki the way Adrien is to her. She doesn't think that's supposed to happen, but then both their kwami have been very clear that none of this is supposed to happen.

Nino does not look reassured in the least. Marinette really can't blame him for that, since Plagg doesn't do reassuring very well.

Not for them, anyway. She suspects that if the little cat thought that Adrien needed reassuring it would be a different story.

Not for the first time, Marinette wonders what exactly it is that draws their kwami to them. Tikki has mentioned before, in an off-handed sort of way, that Master Fu chose them because they showed 'strength of personality,' whatever that means, and Tikki probably would have gone along with that decision with minimal argument- but Marinette doesn't doubt for a second that Plagg would have left if he didn't want to stay with Adrien.

"Does Master Fu want to see us right now?" she asks her own kwami, who shakes her head immediately.

"No," Tikki says, quietly, nestling even closer to Marinette and letting out a quiet sort of trill Marinette's not sure she's ever heard before. "He wants to see us in the morning, though."

"So," Nino still looks unsure. He looks between them both, starts to raise his hand like he wants to reassure himself that Wayzz is with him the way Adrien and Marinette are both still hovering protectively over their kwami, hesitates and lets his hand drop again. "So we're- what, just- what do we do for the rest of the night, then?"

Wayzz blinks. "Sleep, I had assumed."

Plagg glares around the shelter of Adrien's hand at the turtle kwami. "I'm gonna assume Tikki didn't fill you in all the way."

Marinette waits for Plagg to finish explaining, but Plagg only nestles sulkily closer to Adrien and stops paying any attention to Wayzz at all.

She feels more than a little off-balance, seeing all three kwami together- all three of their kwami, and oh, is that ever a mess she's going to have to sort through mentally later. It still isn't safe for her and Adrien to know each other's identities, and now Nino and her parents know, and the two of them know Nino's which Marinette is not at all done processing. As much as she'd wished for Nino's help she never expected him to join their team.

Team. They have a team. It's not just the two of them (the four of them) any more, they have help, and it's Adrien's best friend and one of her own oldest friends and she couldn't have chosen better herself.

And if there's maybe a tiny seed of sadness in her heart that it isn't just her and Chat Noir against the world any more, well, she doesn't have to admit that to anyone. Tikki definitely already knows, and she knows her partner well enough to know that Plagg and Adrien probably feel just the same about it.

Since Plagg clearly isn't going to answer Wayzz, and Adrien is preoccupied looking to his kwami in concern, Marinette picks up the thread of the conversation instead. "We can't sleep right now, Wayzz, it's too dangerous. Adrien is- uh, the last time we slept, things sort of got. Worse."

Wayzz blinks, flitting off Nino's shoulder and circling closer to Adrien.

Plagg makes a very, very quiet sound that might be a growl. Marinette's not sure it's audible to anyone but Adrien and herself and possibly Snapdragon, but Wayzz immediately puts a respectful amount of distance between himself and Adrien, so he must have heard it too.

Plagg warning Wayzz off so obviously takes a massive weight off Marinette's chest. She knows how insistent Plagg's been that he won't leave Adrien, at least not without the kind of fight that no one wins, but it's different to see it.

And Tikki's been clinging to Marinette herself tightly for all this time, too. Marinette hadn't been sure, in the face of Plagg's conviction, if Tikki was as determined to stay with her as Plagg is with Adrien- but it looks like her kwami won't leave without a fight, either.

"I think," Wayzz says, finally, "I might have an idea."

Plagg's subvocalised growl kicks up in volume.

"Plagg," Adrien says, mildly, and Plagg subsides with a lot of grumbling and baleful looks.

"If Nino transforms, and uses his new ability," Wayzz says carefully, putting even more distance between himself and Plagg. He sets down on the brim of Nino's cap, this time, and Nino doesn't look like he entirely knows how he feels about that. "He could, at least theoretically, use Shellter on you, Plagg, or on your chosen, and it might insulate you from each other enough to slow down the effects."

"No." Plagg's snarled response is instantaneous. "We don't- you can't separate us like that."

"It's not a separation, it's a protection," Wayzz says "A temporary one at that, Plagg, you know it will wear back off! It will only be for a few-" Wayzz trails off momentarily. "It will only be a few hours, at most. Assuming it even works at all, at this point."

"If it works at all?" Marinette echoes, exchanging another glance with Adrien and catching the nervous way his gaze keeps flitting to his kwami. "What if it doesn't?"

"Then we'll have tried," Tikki says firmly, flitting back into the air and looking between Nino and Adrien.

"I said no." Plagg hunches in on himself, and Marinette's sure the only reason he isn't edging even closer to Adrien is that there isn't any way he can get any closer to Adrien. "I don't wanna do it. We won't-" He stops, scowling.

"Won't- what?" Marinette asks, cautiously.

"Be able to transform," Wayzz sighs. He's been doing that a lot, Marinette's noticed.

"That's," Marinette starts, blinking at Plagg and tugging Adrien closer. "That's a good thing right now, isn't it?"

Plagg is still scowling. "He's only ever done this once, he doesn't know that it will wear off."

"Wait, he's- done this before?" Tikki frowns, circling closer to Plagg, who hisses at her until she backs off.

Marinette is a little taken aback at that. So is Tikki, judging by the way she startles back towards Marinette.

"Once," Plagg hisses. "He's done it once."

"So we know it works, Plagg." Wayzz sounds exasperated now. Marinette's not sure she's ever heard the turtle kwami exasperated, but she's never seen the kwami interact for this long before, either. For all she knows this is his usual reaction to Plagg. "And it did wear off."

"Not. Quickly." Plagg's teeth are grinding.

"Plagg?" Adrien reaches for his kwami and gently cups both hands around Plagg, bringing him in front of his face. "I don't think Wayzz would suggest it if he thought any of us had a better idea."

Plagg grumbles again.

Marinette tries very hard to come up with a better idea and fails. She tries harder, because if she's honest she's on Plagg's side, here. She doesn't want Adrien to transform for a while, but she doesn't want to take away his choice to transform.

She's still thinking about it when she says, "I don't think you should do it."

"Marinette?" Tikki asks anxiously.

Marinette sees Plagg relax the slightest fraction and repeats, more firmly, "I don't think they should do it. I don't think it's a good idea for Adrien to transform again for a while either, but I'm not gonna say that he can't, Tikki, do you know how upset I'd be if you told me I couldn't?" She frowns at her kwami, who suddenly looks very abashed. "You'd be upset about it!"

Plagg snickers.

"I'm not, like, super jazzed about the idea either, little dude," Nino says gently, but warily. He shrugs away from Adrien enough to scratch the back of his neck, dropping his gaze to the bed. "It'd be one thing if they wanted to do it, but they, uh, super obviously don't, so. I would rather not?" Nino's voice shifts up on the last few words, wavering between questioning and apologetic.

Wayzz drops onto Nino's shoulder and looks up at him, blinking. "Oh. I'm sorry, young Master, I should certainly have asked you first."

Nino shifts uncomfortably. "Can we maybe not do the young master thing? Uh, ever, preferably? It's Nino, little dude. Just Nino."

"Oh, I- well, yes. Nino." Wayzz looks around and sighs. "Do any of you have any ideas, then?"

"Yeah," Plagg says. "You could have tried asking him not to do it."

"And I'll try not to." Adrien leans into Marinette. "What are the chances Hawkmoth is even feeling up to another akuma already after earlier, anyway?"

There's an uneasy silence.

Broken, moments later, by Nino and Marinette's phones going off simultaneously.

"Kid," Plagg says. He sounds tired. "We need to talk about jinxing things."

Chapter 32: backlash

Notes:

thanks shinobicyrus!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Nino leaves his phone with Adrien. He isn't really sure what else to do, and even though he'd agreed it was better if he stayed behind Adrien had looked more than a little devastated about it.

That had hurt to see.

It hurts to an extent that honestly surprises Nino. He's long since known that he doesn't like seeing any of his friends unhappy, and Adrien is definitely the one he worries about the most, but-

But he'd never expected to be going into battle with the sight of his best friend's crestfallen face haunting him.

He's not sure he can claim Adrien as his best friend anymore, not now that he knows his friend is Chat Noir and not when he's always known how very gone Chat Noir is on Ladybug. Everyone in Paris knows that. People outside of Paris know that.

Everyone but Ladybug knew, and now that Ladybug knows her partner is the same boy she's just as obviously in love with Nino doesn't see how anyone is likely to ever keep them apart again. He doesn't want to see them kept apart, for both their sakes.

As happy as Nino is for his friend, for both his friends, he can't help but feel a little left behind as they grow closer. Adrien hadn't come to Nino for help.

He'd gone to Ladybug instead.

At least, Nino thinks that's what happened. He didn't miss that his friends weren't very consistent in trying to explain that.

And right now none of that is what he should be focusing on anyway, because Ladybug needs him to be her shield while Chat Noir can't be, and Adrien needs Nino to protect Marinette while he can't.

Now that Nino's left him his phone Adrien should at least be able to follow the battle on the Ladyblog, since Adrien's own phone is long gone by now and because they weren't entirely sure that Adrien wouldn't transform and follow them anyway if he didn't have any way to keep up with the fight.

The reality is, the longer the fight goes on, the less sure Nino is that he should have left his phone with Adrien.

"Carapace!" Ladybug yelps as she swings past. "On your left!"

Nino turns just in time to catch an explosion with the edge of his shield. It still sends him flying backwards and nearly into the river, and he has to slam his shield into the wet pavement to drag himself to a halt even as he flinches from the heat biting around the edges of the shield, but at least the blast doesn't lay him out entirely.

Or do much worse than that, part of him whispers, terrified.

He'd been nervous about joining a battle so directly, but he's been at the edges before. He thought it couldn't be as bad as it looks. Nino's been in fights before, as recently as this afternoon, and he's been okay- maybe not always great but okay, but-

He had not considered the difference between, say, being the ones throwing plates at a giant dragonfly and the ones riding it.

He should have known better, he should have known from the amount of times Alya's been in danger alone, but he somehow still hadn't been totally prepared for this.

Maybe his friends would have been better off asking Alya for help. She'd be a lot less likely to panic.

"Carapace!" Ladybug shouts, dropping down beside him and grabbing his hand to swing them both violently out of range of yet another explosion. Her eyes are tight behind her mask.

(- her eyes have a green tinge to them, now. He wonders if she knows that yet).

Ladybug's whole face is drawn tight, now that he looks, and though she's doing her best not to she's still flinching whenever lightning splits through the air again.

Nino doesn't know what happens if they're struck by lightning while they're transformed. He's never seen it happen, but the way both his friends have been twitching at every burst of lightning doesn't fill him with confidence.

It does make his thoughts flash uneasily to that last akuma earlier, the one no one had actually seen since he and Alya had been guiding people to shelters on Ladybug's request and there's really only one other reporter in Paris willing to get so close to the battles. Nino has no idea where Mme. Chamack was then or where she is now, but he supposes it's unreasonable to think that she can find her way to every fight any more than Alya can.

Despite both of them making their best attempts.

The storm hasn't died down any, either, which is a little bit helpful in that it seems to dampen the explosions some. Nino is beyond grateful for the protection his suit offers from the driving rain, but while increased agility is definitely a perk of the suits it isn't enough to stop them both slipping on the wet pavements, and the worse Ladybug reacts to the storm the more nervous it makes Nino as well.

"Didn't you and Chat Noir fight this dude earlier?" he asks Ladybug, shakily, clinging to the boutique she's landed them two floors up on. Marinette's fast enough with her yo-yo that Nino's accepting that he has to figure out what she just did after she does it, and flinging them multiple stories into the air without warning is apparently something she does a lot.

Nino's respect for Adrien's level of trust in his partner is ratcheting up by the second.

"We did," Ladybug acknowledges, tilting her head. "He ran off after, though, so we never did find out why he was akumatized." Her eyes narrow, and Nino notices with a start that her pupils seem to narrow too. She licks her lips in an oddly predatory gesture before adding, darkly, "I didn't exactly stop him to ask. He hurt Chat Noir."

Nino opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn't know what.

He still doesn't know either exactly what had happened earlier, because both his friends are being suspiciously cagey about it, or- well, if he's being honest with himself, he doesn't know how he would react to seeing Adrien injured.

-no, that's a lie. The first time Nino had seen Adrien really, visibly hurt, Nino had gotten akumatised over it. He doesn't know how Marinette hasn't been, when Chat Noir throws himself into danger constantly, something Nino has been trying very hard not to think about.

He doesn't think about it now, because Ladybug reacts a moment later to something Nino doesn't sense at all.

With a shout, she launches herself off their perch and twists in mid-air to hit the opposite building and cling to a windowsill, and by now that's enough forewarning for Nino to leap hastily after her.

He's just in time. An explosion rocks the base of their original building and sends the stonework crumbling.

"Beginning to think letting this guy run off was an oversight," Marinette says, and she sounds no more put out than she had the last time they had a group project. Less, in fact, because Adrien had been in that group.

Nino's pretty sure that's an act, because from this close he can tell how much she's trembling. Marinette's hands are wrapped so tightly around her weapon that her fingers have to be going numb, and there's a wild look in her eyes that he doesn't think is usually there during a battle, but hell, maybe it always has been and he's just never seen it before.

Nino was really not ready for the day he's had. Is still having.

It's like four in the morning, what is Hawkmoth even doing? Doesn't the dude need to sleep just as much as the rest of them?

...does he?

Marinette whirls them to another building while Nino's agonising over whether he's going to be able to manage his schedule and his homework and his friends the way his friends have apparently been doing all along, and he's shocked back into the fight when she shouts, "Lucky Charm!" and he has to throw up his shield as yet another explosion sends them both tumbling to the street below.

"A little warning!" Nino shouts, still shaking, and Ladybug has the grace to look sheepish.

She's also shaking nearly as badly, but Nino's trying hard to ignore that. He doesn't know if he can handle realising that Ladybug is as scared as he is, and if he thinks about it too much he's going to start wondering if she and Chat Noir have been this scared the whole time they've been fighting, and that's a line of thought he can't follow while he needs to be fighting.

"Sorry," Ladybug says, too quietly to be picked up by anyone else. Thankfully there isn't really anyone else around; not even Alya has proven willing to brave both the storm and the explosions, which makes Nino want to tear his hair out both over being here himself and knowing that Adrien and Marinette have always been at the centre of the attacks.

He and Alya have spent all this time thinking their friends were safe. Nino had been so grateful that even if Alya always runs towards attacks, he could count on Marinette and Adrien both finding somewhere safe to wait it out.

Nino does not have words for the poorly-timed burst of emotions he's having about the realisation that Adrien and Marinette have never been safe.

Ladybug's gazing down at her Lucky Charm, which Nino still hasn't seen, and her expression is pained as she says, "I know Chat Noir and I are in sync, but I never really realised how much we rely on that."

Nino winces. As much as he knows that isn't directed at him, not really, it still lands painfully.

He finally looks to see what the Lucky Charm is and sees what he's pretty sure is a spotted stop sign.

Why.

A moment later, Ladybug swings it up in time to block another explosion, wincing as fire still blooms around the edges of both the sign and Nino's hastily-deployed shield, but this time there's an effect they didn't anticipate.

This time, a good half of the explosion's concussive energy rebounds back towards the villain.

"Oh," Ladybug says, faintly, as the man's blown off his feet and slams hard into the pavement. "Oh, I don't like this plan."

"Dude, you have a plan?" Nino wheezes, hands tightening on his shield so rapidly he half-expects to hear them creak as the villain scrambles back to his feet. "Now would be a good time to share it!"

"Okay, but you're not going to like it," Ladybug warns.

"Ladybug," Nino says, frantically blocking another blast with his shield. Whatever magical property the Lucky Charm has that allows it to deflect, Nino doesn't have it. He can only defend. Nino wants to defend, because that's what Adrien needs him to be out here doing while he can't, but he would prefer if it weren't his only option. "I already don't like any of this. Any plan of yours can't possibly be worse."

He is not at all right about that.

Notes:

...so i wanted this to be longer, but the next bit really needs to be a different chapter. but that means hopefully a shorter time before the next update!

Chapter 33: care

Notes:

so this chapter is largely unbeta'd, since its a busy time of year but i wanted to post for thanksgiving again for anyone in the states who just needs. to get away for a bit tomorrow/today.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"Kid." Plagg settles on the headboard, still half inside their crumbled blanket fort, and blinks slowly at Adrien. "They'll be alright."

"What if they're not?" Adrien frets, pacing back and forth and trying very hard to refrain from pulling up any videos on the Ladyblog. He doesn't know if he can watch them and stay put. "I should be there, I should be there protecting her! Protecting both of them!"

Plagg darts closer, diving into Adrien's hood and pressing against his neck with a purr. "Wayzz is literally the kwami of protection, kid, your friends can watch each other's backs for one fight."

Adrien's shoulders slump.

Very quietly, he says, "What if it isn't just one fight?"

Plagg stops purring. "What?"

Adrien collapses onto the bed, mostly inside the remains of the fort, and runs both hands down his face, careful of his claws. He nearly knocks his mask askew and he fixes it hastily, suddenly very aware that they're alone in the house with Marinette's parents. He knows now that his friends won't report him for running away, but he doesn't know for certain how any of their parents might react.

Marinette's parents might be eager to let Chat Noir know that he can stay, but they definitely won't want anyone to think they've kidnapped Adrien Agreste.

"Kid." Plagg's claws prick him, very lightly. "What."

Adrien whines for half a second before he catches himself and hastily stops. He flops onto his back and raises one hand to his face, studying his claws before dropping his hand over his eyes with a groan. "Can I transform without-" He waves his free hand vaguely. "Without... changing more?"

Plagg's quiet for a long moment.

Lightning flashes outside, making Adrien flinch badly and curl in on himself, and Plagg leans into him again with another low rumble.

"Kid," Plagg finally starts again, a little hesitantly, which immediately makes Adrien's worry spike quite a bit. It's true Plagg's been a lot more careful with him over the past weeks, but hesitant still isn't something he associates with his kwami. "I gotta admit, Chat, I don't actually know the answer to that. This isn't, uh-" Plagg falters, which does nothing for Adrien's rapidly rising concerns. "This is not how this has worked in the past, okay? I have no idea how your transformations are pulling Marinette in, too. That- that shouldn't happen."

Adrien hesitates himself, but then that's a lot more usual for him than it is for Plagg, especially recently. Finally, he ventures, "Could me and Marinette be- linked, somehow? Like a-" He stops, not sure how Plagg will react to what he wants to say. He's not even sure of his own reaction to it, but he has to ask. He's going to wonder about it forever if he doesn't ask. "Like soulmates?"

Adrien has to admit, the thought of Ladybug being his soulmate makes him ache in all the best possible ways. He fell for her so fast and hard and loves her so much- if Plagg tells him now that there's a destined bond between them, Adrien would be-

He'd be thrilled. He can't deny that he'd be thrilled. He'd be relieved, too, but he doesn't really want to investigate that reaction too closely. He doesn't want to admit why he'd be relieved, even to himself.

But Plagg flits back out where Adrien can see him and shakes his head adamantly. "No, kid. Soulmates aren't a thing."

Adrien sits up, flinging himself upright without meaning to, and winces as he feels his claws punch through the edge of a blanket. Guiltily, he tugs them loose, turning both to inspect the damage and to avoid the look Plagg is giving him.

It's one of the fringed blankets and he was close enough to the edge that he's only torn a bit of fringe loose. It's nothing that Marinette won't fix in a heartbeat if he asks her, but Adrien finds himself ignoring Plagg's exasperated sigh and trying to tuck it under to hide the damage anyway.

It isn't like Adrien himself doesn't know how to fix it. He knows enough to use an emergency sewing kit; it isn't as though that's never come up before.

But he doesn't think he can do it with his claws. Not unless Plagg suddenly comes up with a way to reverse the changes, and the kwami has made it very clear by now just how unlikely that is, and Adrien still doesn't know what to do with that information. He trusts Ladybug to have a solution, because she always has a solution, but Adrien himself has difficulty even thinking about it for long.

He knows, abstractly, that the claws and fangs and eyes are a problem. He knows that. He has to hide them, because if he slips up even once his secret identity isn't going to stay a secret. Nino is proof enough of that.

Adrien doesn't want to admit to his friends that he likes his fangs and claws. He even likes his eyes, hard as they're going to be to hide. The slit pupils make him feel more like a hero of Paris and less like Gabriel Agreste's dutiful son and, even if it's still painful to realise, he very much prefers to be a hero of Paris.

He wants to admit why the fangs and claws are a relief even less.

(Adrien Agreste is nothing but eager to please, to the point where he's effectively a doormat and everyone knows it, they know it like it's stamped on his skin where everyone but him can see it, written across him like a Gabriel logo on a photo spread. Chloe's been taking advantage of that desperation to please since they were little kids and Adrien knows it.

Chat Noir might be just as starved for praise and affection as Adrien but Ladybug never withholds praise, never takes advantage of him, never takes him for granted- if Adrien weren't already more in love with her than he'd thought possible, he'd be falling even farther out of honest gratitude).

"Soulmates aren't a thing, kit," Plagg repeats, a lot softer, when Adrien starts paying attention again and his kwami finds himself a perch on Adrien's knee. Adrien reaches out for him, careful when he curves his hand around his kwami, but Plagg of all beings knows that Adrien's claws aren't going to touch him. "That one really is a myth. An' it's not-" He makes a face, one that Adrien has trouble reading. "Look, humans don't do so hot with the whole fate and destiny thing to begin with. Trust me when I say none of you were ever gonna actually handle soulmates well, no matter what some of you thought."

Adrien opens his mouth, then shuts it again slowly, because Plagg's phrasing is bringing up additional questions but he doesn't think that his kwami's going to answer them. He isn't sure that he wants Plagg to answer them.

"Anyway, I said we gotta talk about the jinxing thing, right?" Plagg says gruffly, and Adrien starts.

"I didn't think you were serious." Adrien lets his hand fall away before he can try to curl it closer around Plagg out of habit. Plagg might not be concerned about Adrien's claws, but Adrien still is, sometimes. He's slowly getting used to them, and there's something reassuring about having them at all (about having a kind of last ditch defence that can't ever be taken away from him), but he doesn't trust his control just yet.

Plagg's ears flick. "Yeah, well, I was. S'posed to be just me that's bad luck, kid, but-" He eyes Adrien critically. "Don't think what's supposed to be possible is mattering around here much, anymore." His voice drops into a low enough mutter for a moment that even Adrien can't make it out. "Anyway. You're getting my bad luck, too, I think." He stops, frowning. "Hey, kit, when exactly did... ah, never mind."

"Plagg?" Adrien ventures uncertainly. His claws snag against the blanket again.

Snapdragon stops where she's sniffing around the baseboards and sidles back over to him, leaping onto the bed and then clambering into his lap with a loud purr. Adrien's too wracked with worry for his friends to return it, but he does cautiously start to pet the cat, paying extra attention to the spot right behind the ears that he most likes Ladybug to scratch. Not that he's ever told her that, but she seems to know anyway.

Snapdragon shifts around, claws just barely scratching his pants, and Adrien thinks guiltily that he probably should have taken a change of clothes with him when he left. He thinks, now, that Marinette's parents would get him another set of clothes if he asked, but he doesn't want to ask. He doesn't want them to feel obligated.

He loves this room. His room. He loves how open and welcoming they've been. He loves that they like him, that they want to talk to him, that they want him to talk, and he feels safe here in a way that makes him uncomfortably aware that he didn't feel safe before.

Adrien only notices that his hand's gone still when Snapdragon twists to shove her head insistently against his palm, and then he starts to shake.

Plagg pauses. "Kit?"

Adrien shakes his head, not trusting himself to say anything, and buries both hands in Snapdragon's fur as best he can while still being careful.

He's so, so scared that he's going to do or say the wrong thing and lose this. He doesn't know what Marinette's parents expect of him, and he has no idea how to make sure he doesn't accidentally step over a line somewhere when he doesn't know where the lines are.

And-

And he might have, already.

Adrien's heart lodges in his throat, and he works to get words out before Plagg can start to worry. "I'm- I'm supposed to protect Marinette. That's why they-" He lifts one hand just barely, just long enough to wave at the room, and then curls in on himself when he drops his hand again. He feels the phantom sensation of his ears flattening and doesn't bother to check whether or not it's real this time. "But I'm not protecting her right now. I don't- deserve-" His throat closes again.

This isn't like on the rooftop, where words had simply stopped seeming important. This is something different, where he has the words but they won't work for him.

Plagg flits out in front of him, looking stricken, and immediately dives to huddle between Adrien's hands and Snapdragon. His eyes are luminous as he looks up at his chosen, and though the next flash of lightning makes Adrien go still except for his shaking hands Plagg only shifts closer. "Chat? You don't- kid, you don't gotta earn safety. Attention and affection aren't things you gotta make deals for, you don't-" Plagg's eyes flash, and this time Adrien honestly doesn't know if it's reflected lightning or something else.

Slowly, haltingly, like he doesn't want to say it but he needs to, Plagg says, "Kid. You don't gotta work for love."

Adrien flinches, and there's no corresponding lightning strike to blame it on.

"Adrien." Plagg tugs at one of Adrien's sleeves for a split second before letting go and flickering up towards Adrien's hood instead. "That ain't something you gotta earn. C'mon, you know Marinette and Nino aren't like that, right? Why would your bug's parents be?"

Because Father is. Even if Adrien could say that, he knows from just a glance at Plagg that he doesn't have to.

"It ain't supposed to be a transaction, you know," Plagg says, softly, from inside Adrien's shirt, phasing through his clothes until the kwami's pressed close to his heart. "There's not enough cheese in the world could make me stay if I didn't want to, for one."

"Nooroo doesn't- want to. So I know that it- it isn't that- it isn't that simple," Adrien forces out, words stuttered and uneven, breath stuttered and uneven. He's still too, too aware that his friends are out there fighting in the storm, still twitching towards the window with every crash of thunder because he keeps trying to swivel his ears for any sound from the battle. He isn't even sure where the fight is, he probably can't hear it over the rain at all, but he can't stop trying.

"It's that simple for me." Plagg's response is fierce and immediate, his claws pricking through to Adrien's skin where they rest over his heart. "Yeah, a wielder can make- uh, demands of a kwami. Not exactly something I wanna advertise, but yeah. But you didn't, kid, did you?" He draws back just enough to let his claws flex convulsively and laughs mirthlessly, and there's a sound Adrien never wants to hear again.

Much more softly, Plagg says, "An' you never would. I know that." He shifts uncomfortably. "But, uh, it really isn't something we tell our chosen. Can't really ask you not t'tell your friends now, not with- everything. But seriously, do not tell anyone but them."

Adrien has no plans to tell even Marinette and Nino about this. Plagg is trusting him with this, and Plagg gets keyed up and cagey when they talk about Nooroo in a way that makes Adrien wonder sometimes, and he thinks-

No one has been very clear with him about whether or not this is the first time a Miraculous has been misused.

He's had the impression more than once that it's not.

And if anyone really wanted to cause damage- damage is sort of what Plagg does.

"Kid?" Plagg nudges him, and Snapdragon shifts to make herself more comfortable in his lap. "I know you ain't gonna sleep til they're back, but let's maybe do something other than sit here and worry."

"R-right." Adrien swallows, before picking up Nino's phone again. He turns it over in his hands uneasily, missing the weight of his own phone, before trying to unlock it in the pattern Nino had showed him.

It doesn't unlock.

Adrien stares down at the phone and tries to ignore the unease clawing at the back of his mind.

He fumbles the phone when he tries again, but catches it before it can fall on Snapdragon, who only curls up more tightly with an affronted chirp.

The touch screen doesn't register that Adrien's trying to swipe a pattern across it at all, much less what the pattern might be.

Slowly, he sets the phone down, then raises one hand to look more closely at his claws than he's actually done yet. He thinks Marinette's taken a closer look than he has.

Inspecting the changes he's let happen already makes them feel far too real for Adrien's peace of mind.

He can see why Marinette had been so adamant about that scratching post. This isn't a matter of his nails simply growing longer and sharper- his nails aren't nails at all anymore, and giving them anything more than a cursory glance makes that immediately obvious. They are too sharp, yes, but they're also curved and elongated in a way that human nails don't do, and they're embedded in his hands in a way that Adrien can't look at for too long without starting to feel ill.

What they still aren't is retractable.

And they definitely aren't compatible with a touch screen.

He only gives it one more try before setting Nino's phone down carefully, afraid that he's already left scratches on the screen and wincing when he thinks of the cost of replacing a phone. Or repairing a phone? Do people repair phones? He doesn't actually know if that's something people do or not. That's something he probably should know, but then he hasn't had a phone for a week now. He hasn't really needed one, not since those first few days, but even if he had his communicator is always an option.

Adrien stares down at his hands, flexing his claws, as he feels his way around that thought.

He really had been expecting to be able to just- just go live as Chat Noir. There are things he doesn't want to give up as Adrien- his friends, his classes, whatever scraps of affection he did get at home- but they don't outweigh how much he wants to be Chat Noir, and they're all things he'd have lost if he stayed, anyway.

Plagg zips down to the phone, groans, and says, "Kid, just tell me the pattern, jeez."

Adrien blinks, stunned and then frustrated that he hadn't thought of that. "Um- like this." He draws it in the air, and though it takes Plagg a few tries to match his movements to the pattern on the screen it does work.

Adrien's shortly very relieved that his friend still has the Ladyblog set as a homepage, because trying to direct Plagg to navigate through a phone that Adrien himself isn't that familiar with isn't going all that well.

"Nothing," Plagg announces, looking up from Alya's blog. "She hasn't updated since earlier today."

"What about Mme. Chamack?" Adrien tries. "She's usually on the scene pretty quickly."

"Yeah, and then attacked very quickly," Plagg mutters, but he tries his best to navigate to Nino's news app anyway. It's easier for Plagg than it is for Adrien right now, but Adrien has no idea if Plagg really gets cellphones. The kwami have indicated that his and Marinette's communicators have taken that form largely due to Adrien and Marinette themselves, so he's not sure how familiar Plagg and Tikki actually are with them.

"Not yet, kid," Plagg says finally, looking up from the phone with his paws still balanced on the screen. "But the storm's still going pretty strong, so. Maybe they're just late."

Maybe.

Or maybe this is like VoltHeir earlier, when it was swiftly so dangerous that no one wanted to get too close.

Adrien takes a deep breath and curls over Snapdragon, burying one hand in the cat's fluffy fur and relaxing a very little bit as she arches her back against him with a noisy purr. "I guess we... wait, then."

Waiting is excruciating.

He wants to get up and pace, wants the satisfaction of feeling his tail lash, wants-

He wants to transform and run after them.

Wants to be out there, fighting, making sure his friends are safe.

Snapdragon settles stubbornly on top of him, though, and he hates to move her when she seems so comfortable and when she's one of the few things keeping him from giving in and transforming anyway.

Plagg doesn't say anything, just takes the phone with him into Adrien's hood and huddles down in the hollow of a cat ear. He starts purring, too, but so quietly that Adrien's not even sure he's hearing it at first.

Plagg doesn't usually purr unless he's really worried for Adrien.

Adrien's heard Plagg purr more in the past week than he has in the rest of the time he's been Chat Noir.

Adrien clenches his free hand around the fidget spinner Marinette gave him so tightly that his fingers are starting to ache, but only shifts restlessly on the bed, caught in a loop of frustration, until Nino's phone pings with an alert.

"Alya made it," Plagg announces, muffled, as he scrambles back out of the hood and tugs the phone after him. "She's keeping her distance for once, but she's getting us some footage."

It's shaky footage, but it's enough to see the way Nino and Marinette are working in tandem and throwing each other out of danger like a well-oiled machine. Adrien feels the tension bleed from his shoulders for the first time in what feels like hours, but a different, gnawing ache takes its place.

They're doing well. They're all right. They don't need him to come help.

They don't need him.

Plagg headbutts him with a tiny growl, evidently guessing the way Adrien's thoughts are trending. "Kid. You know they'd rather have you there with them."

Adrien swallows, his throat feeling scratchy as he says, "They might not, if they're doing this well."

"Kid-" Plagg starts, but then he freezes suddenly before darting down Adrien's sleeve in a flash of black.

"Plagg?" Adrien says, confused, but as he does there's a knock at the bedroom door.

Adrien freezes up, panic seizing along his spine.

"Chat Noir?" Marinette's mother's voice is muffled through the door, but the concern in it is clear. "Are you here, sweetheart? And if you are, may I come in?"

He has to swallow convulsively a few times first, and then he has to try and fight down the fear still crackling through him, but Adrien does eventually manage a weak, "I'm here."

And then the fear overtakes him anyway, because he's not transformed and he can't transform, and Nino had recognised him immediately, and because he's unsure, still, what Marinette's parents expect of him.

There's a pause before Mme. Cheng says, calmly, "May I come in?"

Adrien breathes a little easier. His chest still feels tight with worry, and Plagg flashed back through his clothes and into his hood at some point, but Adrien hadn't expected the question. He'd assumed that she would let herself in.

He's still afraid to say no.

He starts to say yes instead and chokes, because that's a bad idea but also because suddenly, powerfully, he does want her there, he wants Marinette's mother to come check on him and reassure him more than anything and he hurts with it.

"Chat Noir." Her voice is patient, though he can hear her shifting her weight outside the door. "I won't come in without your permission. But I saw on Alya's blog that you aren't at the fight, and that isn't like you, honey, are you all right?"

"You're not," Plagg hisses, right up against Adrien's ear, and Adrien startles enough that Snapdragon grumbles and slips off his lap and curls up at his side instead, kneading at his pants. "Kid, tell her to come in."

"But I-" Adrien gestures at his makeshift mask, the hood he doesn't actually remember pulling up, his jeans that don't look all that designer anymore after days of living as Chat Noir and spending his time in battle or on rooftops or in alleys when he wasn't here.

"She might know anyway," Plagg reminds him, a little ruthlessly. "And if she doesn't, there's still a chance you're gonna have to tell her. C'mon, kid, she wants to help you. Let her."

Adrien swallows, swallows again, and tugs the scattershot remains of the blanket fort around himself. He drapes the weighted blanket around Snapdragon and over his lap, carefully tucking his legs and his incriminating designer jeans under it, and buries his ungloved hands in Snapdragon's fur to the sound of the cat's low, pleased rumble.

Those shaky precautions taken, Adrien finally croaks out a thready, "Come- come in."

He fidgets and then stills as the door creaks slowly open, though, still anxious and afraid and not quite able to place why (but the phone is still sitting next to him, still playing what faraway shots of the battle they can get, and his friends are dodging and flinging explosions and edging far too close to bright bursts of lightning and to the dark, rushing river).

"Oh, sweetheart," Marinette's mother says when she sees him, huddled up on the bed like a child afraid of the storm. Adrien would prefer if that were a less accurate assessment than it actually is. "Are you all right? Are you hurt? It isn't like you to stay behind."

Pressure builds up behind Adrien's eyes immediately, and he doesn't mean to say the words that burst from his throat. "I'm sorry!"

She looks genuinely startled by his outburst. "Chat Noir, what on earth do you have to be sorry for?"

Adrien hunches in on himself, curled tight over the cat on his lap, over the kwami hiding silent in his clothes. "I'm- I'm supposed to protect her. I'm supposed to- supposed to be there-"

"Oh, hon," Mme. Cheng says, softly, before crossing the room slowly. She stops a foot away from Chat Noir, studying him closely, and Adrien can't help the desperate upswelling of relief that she doesn't seem to have any intention of looming. "You've done nothing but protect her for so long. And I can see she's not alone, Chat Noir, though I don't think you'd still be here if she was. Would you?"

He wouldn't. He would have followed her, even with the risks.

If Carapace were anyone but Nino, he probably would have followed her anyway.

"May I sit with you?" Mme. Cheng asks politely, looking him in the eyes as she says it but not pushing the matter when Adrien drops his gaze right away. Adrien may not totally understand eye contact, he has yet to figure out when he's supposed to do it and when he's not (a confusion that modelling for so long has not helped clear up), but he doesn't think looking Marinette's mother in the eyes knowing that his own eyes aren't human any longer is a wise idea.

Plagg's claws prickle through his shirt when Adrien doesn't answer.

"Yes, ma'am," Adrien finally says, hesitantly, his voice coming out far softer than he'd intended. He clears his throat and speaks up a little louder. "I-I mean, yes, of course."

"You don't have to call me ma'am," Mme. Cheng tells him gently. "Please, call me Sabine."

Adrien takes a shaky breath, finally starting to feel a little calmer. Marinette's mother isn't upset with him after all. He's still not sure why she's here, but she definitely doesn't seem disappointed or angry, and he's a little less afraid for it. "Thank you, Mme.- um, Sabine." Adrien shifts uncomfortably, a faint whisper at the back of his mind insisting that isn't a polite enough form of address.

Plagg pokes him, then whispers, well below human hearing, "She asked you to call her that, kid."

Sabine doesn't sit down beside him on the bed, to Adrien's faint surprise and relief. Instead she looks around, finds a folding chair in the corner that Adrien hadn't even registered was there, and rolls her eyes at it before setting it up across from Adrien.

"We'll find you space for a desk and chair as soon as we can," she assures him as she arranges herself comfortably on the chair. "Honestly, Tom was so excited about the rest of the room, I never realised he didn't think of that."

Adrien catches himself trying to reach for his tail and stops, hiding one hand in Snapdragon's fur again and curling the other around his fidget spinner, forgotten in the blankets until now.

Mme. - Sabine's not even trying to pretend this is supposed to be a guest room.

"You don't have to do that," Adrien says, his voice small.

"I don't have to do a lot of things," Sabine says calmly. "This is something we want to do. I don't want you to feel obligated, Chat Noir, but I do want to know you have somewhere safe to stay if you need it." She nods around the room, leaning forward and crossing her arms over her knees. Adrien's startled enough by the sudden casual pose that he almost misses her next words.

"I try to watch all the battles I can." Sabine's voice is gentle, her eyes kind when Adrien darts a glance at her. "You're running yourself into the ground, Chat Noir. I don't want you to get hurt."

Adrien's chest feels tight, his throat scratchy. He blinks pressure from behind his eyes and tries to search for something to say to Sabine, something reassuring, something that doesn't admit to having been homeless for the past week.

"I would be all right, though." He's much quieter than he intends to be, but his voice isn't shaking as much as it was before. "Ladybug would make sure of that."

"Oh, son." Sabine reaches out and covers his hands with her own, layering them on top of the weighted blanket and pressing very lightly. "Just because you'll be all right in the end doesn't mean anyone wants to see you hurt."

Adrien blinks furiously, but he loses the battle to keep his eyes from tearing up. "But-"

Sabine shakes her head, firmly. "No, Chat. It's not okay because you'll get better. No one has the right to hurt you, sweetheart."

Adrien can feel his claws scraping his palm on the hand clenched around the fidget spinner, but he can't seem to loosen them. "We're- we're fighting. People are always going to get hurt."

Sabine levels him with a piercing look. "You seem awfully determined that you should be the only one to get hurt."

He shrinks back under that look, fidgeting even worse. He definitely misses his tail right now.

Inside his hoodie, holding still next to Adrien's heart, Plagg purrs quietly as Adrien's heart rate climbs.

"You know Ladybug loves you, Chat Noir." Sabine increases the pressure on his hands for a moment, then draws back again. "How do you think she feels about you putting yourself in danger like this?"

Adrien's mind flashes to Ladybug hissing wildly and striking out with a cinderblock, shouting at VoltHeir. He shivers at the memory, though he wouldn't be able to say why. "I... she doesn't like it. I... know that. But I have to keep her safe," he stresses, and then flinches, because he's not doing that right now.

"She's not the only one who worries about you," Sabine says, still with that terrible gentleness as she folds her arms across her lap again. She's still slouched forward in her chair, and it's throwing Adrien off badly- something about the way she's not paying any attention to her posture makes him feel just as strange as the slow realisation that she must have come to check on him as soon as she saw the battle footage. He'd only just seen it.

Adrien doesn't meet her eyes when he says, "I- I know. But Ladybug is more-"

"Chat Noir," Sabine says, drawing herself up, eyes flashing in a way that reminds Adrien very strongly of Marinette when she's ready to fight someone. "If you are about to say that Ladybug is more important, you stop that right this instant."

"But-" Adrien starts, though he has no idea what he's trying to say anymore, and Plagg's purr has changed to a disgruntled rumble instead.

"Chat Noir," Sabine says again, gently but firmly. "No. You are worth as much as anyone else. You are a wonderful partner to Ladybug, but her safety is not worth more than yours. You're fourteen, Chat, that is not solely your responsibility."

Adrien buries his hand so suddenly and sharply in Snapdragon's fur that he's lucky the cat doesn't snap around and bite him. He's lucky that he doesn't scratch her, too.

Sabine continues, to all appearances blissfully oblivious to what she's just implied. "And- this isn't a question we have to fully address now, but we'll have to at some point. But Chat Noir, what about your family?" Her brow draws tight. "Don't you think they worry about you?"

A few weeks ago he might actually have said yes. He might even have believed it.

But then he had never suspected that his father wouldn't so much as bother to report him missing.

"...He's not worried," Adrien finally says, very, very quietly. "I thought... but he's not."

"Well, I know my family worries about you," Sabine says without missing a beat. She nods at the room around them. "It's not something you have to decide now, but you are always welcome here."

Notes:

i miiight have some personal issues about soulmates (no objections to all the soulmate fic out there, just. not for me).

having a movement disorder means i dont LIKE touchscreens (yes theres voice commands/speech to text but they arent viable options for me; adrien just hasnt thought of them yet)

Chapter 34: kitsuné

Notes:

thank you shinobicyrus for betaing!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Plagg presses closer and Adrien's hand comes up to hover over his kwami. He has a flash of worry about Mme. Cheng seeing his claws, or his kwami, but-

You're fourteen, Chat.

Chat Noir and Ladybug have been cheerfully, blatantly lying about their ages every other breath for as long as they've been doing this. They're five thousand, they're fifty, they're four hundred and thirteen- they've never once admitted their real ages. But-

You're fourteen, Chat.

But she'd still called him Chat.

And she hasn't once asked him where Marinette is, or even where Nino is, and now that Adrien thinks about it Nino is the one who was supposed to be staying in this room tonight. Adrien's still supposed to be upstairs, in Marinette's room, he's supposed to be with Marinette- he's supposed to be protecting his partner.

But Nino is, instead, and that's left Adrien where Nino should be right now.

He wonders if Marinette's mother would have rushed in like this to check on Nino, too.

He honestly thinks she would have.

He thinks she'd have come to check on any of them, and though the thought sets his hands to shaking it also sends a muted thrill of happiness and longing through him. Sabine cares about them all- she cares about Chat Noir, for his own sake. She doesn't care about Adrien's fame or fortune- not that he's sure he can still lay claim to that fortune at this point, because even if Father takes him back after this, even if Adrien wanted to be taken back, he sincerely doubts his father would ever let this kind of rebellion go without a harsh punishment. Finding some way to deny Adrien access to any of the money he'd so painstakingly earned might be just the sort of thing Father would deem a fitting response to Adrien's running off on him so publicly.

And Adrien doesn't want to be taken back, anyway. He wants-

He wants to stay here.

"I want to stay," he tells Marinette's mother in an unsteady rush, his hands shaking over Plagg and Snapdragon. "I w-want to stay. But I don't, um. I don't know how to- how to make that work." Father may not exactly be chasing down Chat Noir, but he's going to notice if Adrien shows up living with someone else.

Adrien's starting to wonder half-seriously if he can re-register for school as Chat Noir.

But he doesn't want to do that, not really. He wants to go back to class and rejoin his friends. His friends are looking for him, they do miss him. They've been worried about Adrien while he's been living as Chat Noir. His friends were concerned far before his father was.

If his father even is worried. The Gorilla is the one who'd reported him missing, after all, and Adrien's genuinely afraid the man's lost his job over it. He doesn't know how he could possibly find that out. He doesn't know what he could do about it if he did.

"It's all right not to know just yet," Sabine promises, starting to lever herself out of her chair. "You don't have to figure it out by yourselves. Tom and I have been doing research of our own, Chat Noir. You kids don't have to do this alone." She offers Adrien her hand.

Adrien clenches his own hand around Plagg's hiding spot without meaning to, conscious of his claws, but Sabine only waits patiently.

Hesitantly, Adrien starts to take her hand, but he falters at the last second.

Not only does he not particularly want Marinette's parents to see those obvious claws, Adrien's scratched himself repeatedly with them already. Even now he can feel the sting of the scratch on the back of his neck, more acute than the occasional spark of pain when his fangs catch his lip again.

"Sorry," he says faintly, curling his hand back towards himself and feeling his altered nails score across his palm again. "I've got claws, and they're... they're kind of sharp..." He trails off, unsure how to identify the emotion he feels at admitting that to Marinette's mother.

"I trust you to be careful, Chat Noir, but if you're concerned then I'm sure you have good reason for it." Sabine drops her hand and gets up. "Now, Tom and I have the stream from the Ladyblog pulled up on the television in the living room. I'm sure you need to know what's going on, and I don't think it's good for you to be alone right now. Would you like to join us?"

Adrien blinks at her, gratitude and fear warring in him. He shouldn't join them, not when if they look any more closely they'll realise right away that something's wrong, but he wants to. He wants to so badly.

And they want him to.

He doesn't remember the last time his father has spent time with him that Adrien hadn't had to beg for first. Even then, it's more usually met with repeated curt dismissals, with Father sometimes relenting at the last minute- long enough to play a single song together, long enough to watch a movie Adrien had wanted to see so badly that he'd had to sneak out and get help from Marinette.

Adrien ends up stammering out his affirmative, but it is an affirmative. Sabine only smiles in response to his faltering reply and doesn't seem bothered when he clutches a blanket close and brings it with him, slipping Nino's phone into his pocket as he goes. Sabine may have revealed that she at least suspects who he is, if she doesn't already know outright, but Adrien should still try not to be obvious about it. He really has to talk to Marinette again before he knows what to do about it. That's not a decision he should be making without her input.

Adrien isn't sure what to do about Snapdragon- surely she's not allowed any closer to the bakery than this- but when the cat gets up with a stretch and jumps down to follow the two of them out herself, Sabine doesn't stop her.

M. Dupain is in the living room, hunched over and glued to the live battle playing out on the TV. The video is still shaky and unprofessional, because Alya may have made it there somehow but it looks like she's the only one who has. There's no alternate video from Mme. Chamack, no indication that anyone besides Alya is filming.

Even Alya seems unwilling to get too close to this fight, Adrien notices. Usually it's a struggle to keep her from diving right into their battles, sometimes to the point of actively participating, and he thinks the only reason they've seen a decrease in that tendency is that usually Nino is with her now and can keep her from getting into too much danger.

But Nino obviously isn't with her now. Alya's currently keeping her distance on her own, something she very rarely does. She's never been afraid to put herself in just as much danger as the two of them and it's always been kind of terrifying. It would be even more terrifying if they didn't know how competent she actually is.

Adrien does wish Alya didn't put herself in danger quite so often. He knows she's capable, because he's seen her quick thinking at the edges of far more battles than just Snapdragon earlier, but it's still not safe for her to do this. She's out in the middle of the night in an increasingly vicious storm, staying just out of range of a supervillain throwing explosive blasts with wild abandon, and no one out there is safe at all.

Adrien shivers a little as he wonders whether Nino knows that Alya's there. He doesn't think Nino's going to be any happier about Alya in danger than he ever is, and this time Nino has the suit and powers to try and keep her protected.

Not that Adrien's sure that's a good idea with Alya. He's not certain, but he suspects Alya is someone who might take offence at the suggestion she would need protection.

"You don't have to stand in the doorway, you know. Come and join us." Sabine takes a seat on the couch and waves Adrien over after her.

M. Dupain looks up and his expression lightens considerably when he sees Adrien standing there. "Chat Noir! We were worried when we didn't see you!" He nods at the screen. "Alya got there late, we weren't sure..." He trails off, eyes running over Adrien in a way that makes Adrien clutch his blanket closer and Plagg start purring again. He's doing that a lot tonight. "I'm glad you're all right, son."

"Thank you, sir," Adrien says, voice not much louder than a whisper, because he doesn't know what else to say. M. Dupain isn't asking him why he's not at the fight, or demanding to know why he isn't protecting Ladybug like he should be, anymore than Sabine had before and it's-

It's enough to make his legs weak with relief, but it also raises the hairs along the back of his neck because he still feels like they should be angry with him. He keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the rug to be pulled out from under his feet, for one or both of them to laugh and say gotcha or for them to kick him out altogether when they realise he isn't doing his job.

"Chat Noir," Sabine says, gently. "Come here and sit down, please. I feel a lot better knowing where you are, now."

He forces his leaden feet to move as he tries to figure out if she means more than she's saying with that statement, if that's a hidden accusation he hears in her words or just his own imagination working overtime.

As soon as Adrien takes a seat (very gingerly, at the edge of the couch, suddenly acutely aware that he really should have asked Marinette if he could shower again, especially after all the fights they've been in today), Sabine twists to tug the throw from the back of the couch and then passes it along to him, draping it across them both. A moment later Snapdragon leaps up with a loud chirr and settles herself firmly in Adrien's lap again.

"I'm glad you two found yourself another teammate," M. Dupain says, nodding to the television screen. They have the sound turned way down, but that doesn't stop Adrien from picking up every shout and cry from his friends. It definitely doesn't help the way he's practically vibrating from how badly he wants to go and join them.

Adrien barely registers it when M. Dupain starts speaking to him again, until he hears, "I was afraid you were running yourself ragged."

Adrien drags his attention from the television screen long enough to look up at Marinette's father, startled and unsure all over again.

Sabine puts a gentle hand on his shoulder and he turns back to her.

"Chat," she says, gently. "Why is it so hard to believe we were worried for you?"

"I," Adrien starts, and finds he has nothing to follow it with. He doesn't know how to put words to the restless, unsettled feeling their concern gives rise to. He very definitely doesn't know how to explain that every time they tell him they were worried or afraid for him, he's touched, but he's also nervous in a way that makes him want to retreat- makes him want to get out of the house entirely, just in case.

The bakery doesn't have the kind of security system the mansion does. They wouldn't stop him going.

"Oh," Sabine says, softly, like his non-answer told her something anyway. "You don't have to answer that, Chat. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry." She nods back at the screen, but doesn't take her hand from his shoulder. She's not pressing or- or anything, he could easily move away, but he doesn't. "You would know a lot more than we do. Isn't this the same villain from earlier?"

Adrien swallows, but he still can't find any hint of accusation in her question. "He's the first one we fought today- yesterday," he corrects quickly, catching a glimpse of the clock. It's late. "He ran off, though. We never found out why he was akumatised in the first place." His eyebrows draw together. "We never found out why VoltHeir was akumatised, either. He ran off, too."

"VoltHeir?" Marinette's father asks, leaning forwards with interest. He's still turning to check Alya's footage frequently, but he's giving Adrien most of his attention now. "Would that be the lightning one that no one seems to know very much about?"

Adrien's hands twitch involuntarily, buzzing with remembered pain, and Snapdragon's quiet rumble from his lap doesn't help as much as he'd hoped. Adrien shuts his eyes, shutting out the sudden overlay of light blanking out his vision, the memory of fire running through his veins. There have been other akuma that haunt him or Ladybug or both of them but he thinks VoltHeir is going to be different. "Ye- yeah. He was."

"Chat Noir?" Sabine's voice is hesitant, and after a moment she withdraws her hand. "You don't have to tell us. We'd understand."

"You deserve to know," Adrien mumbles, even though he can hardly articulate why. They deserve to know because their daughter saved him, but he can't tell them that. No matter how certain Marinette is that they know there's no way Adrien can say anything that would confirm it.

"We don't, Chat," M. Dupain says, drawing Adrien out of his own thoughts. "We trust you. If you have a reason to keep it to yourself, we understand."

"But," Adrien starts, his heart aching. They really do deserve an explanation. He hadn't wanted to tell Nino, and he doesn't particularly want to tell Marinette's parents either, but Plagg is suspiciously still and not giving him any nudges towards answering one way or another.

"You really don't have to tell us. You and Ladybug do not owe us any of your secrets," M. Dupain says, his usually open face going suddenly unreadable.

Adrien can't help his full-body shiver at the expression. He's still trying to get used to being around people who are expressive, who show him emotions that aren't frustration and irritation when they show him emotions at all, and it's jarring to see M. Dupain's whole expression suddenly turn to stone.

Except that it turns back a moment later, going open and friendly as though that jarring change had never happened in the first place. "Of course, if it's something you want to tell us, then of course you can. But we never want you to feel like you have to."

Adrien buries his hands deep in Snapdragon's fur to hide their shaking. This isn't a situation he's ever been in and he doesn't know how he's supposed to react. He doesn't know how much he should tell them. They already obviously know so much of what he and Marinette have been hiding, but he can't admit to any more of it, but he thinks they're saying that he doesn't have to.

Adrien's only now starting to realise just how overwhelmed he's been. He thinks part of that is probably related to going from sleeping on empty rooftops to the safety of Marinette's room to a room that can't be anything but his, can't be the guest room they've claimed when they've made it so clear by the room itself that it is for him.

He thinks the rest of it is is the focused attention from Marinette's parents.

Another thing he hadn't realised is just how long it's been since Father paid attention to him like this. On the rare occasions Father actually does want to speak to him, it's never- it's never concern. At least, not like this. Father's concern manifests in needling questions, in demands that Adrien account for himself, in promises to change that are never going to be kept.

Father's concern hurts, and while this does too it's a very different kind of hurt.

Adrien's learned to tolerate the strange, dull ache in his heart whenever Father focuses on him, the quiet hope that maybe this time he'll finally be good enough. Good enough to warrant Father wanting to spend time with him. Good enough to warrant some kind of praise.

It doesn't have to be praise. Adrien would have settled for acknowledgement.

Marinette's parents are quiet, and he can see Sabine's attention shifting between Alya's shaky recording and Adrien himself.

Guilt wells up in him and twists through his insides when he realises it's him she's paying more attention to. She shouldn't be. She shouldn't be, not when that's her daughter on the screen, out there in the storm, fighting a villain that had landed a blow on Adrien earlier that he still feels the shadow of even after all of Ladybug's Cures.

Miraculous Cure doesn't help with phantom pains, or with the panic-blurred memories of plans that cut it far too close, or with bolting up out of their sleep in the dead of night panting with fear for each other- they've learned the hard way that miracles have limits, especially for them. There are more akuma than Adrien wants to admit to that no one else but the two of them (and, presumably, Hawkmoth) retain any memory of, now.

It's never been unusual for him and Ladybug to meet up on the roofs or by the river late at night when they each know the other won't be able to sleep. And they do know- they know from seeing each other during the day, from the way he's quieter and more fidgety or the way her body language starts getting wilder, turning to sweeping arms and fluttering hands more and more as their stresses pile up.

They've always known when to go to each other. They've always needed it at the same time.

"Chat Noir." Sabine leans forward, pulling one hand back like she'd been reaching for him and had thought better of it. Adrien's not all that certain he wants her to have thought better of it. "Honey, are you okay? If it bothers you to watch..." She waves vaguely towards the screen, and Adrien's seen Ladybug use her exact gesture a hundred times. "You don't have to watch it."

The idea of turning Alya's running commentary off, of losing his link to his Lady when he can't be there, hurts so badly it steals the air from his lungs. It takes Adrien far longer than it should to say, hoarsely, "Please don't turn it off. I need to- I need to see."

That's not a lie.

It's not enough, he needs to be there with them and he needs to be at her side and he needs to be protecting them, but at the very least he needs to see them. He needs to-

Adrien doesn't realise the way his thoughts are tangling into that spiralling descent until he's snapped out of them entirely.

By Alya, who's leaning in front of her recording device now- which is, he notices faintly, apparently not her phone- and giving the camera a smile full of strange shadows, brandishing a lighter and a-

He's not sure what that is.

It looks like not much more than a twist of tinfoil, not much larger than some of Snapdragon's cat toys. (Adrien's cat toys). It's almost comet shaped; he isn't sure what else to compare it to, anyway.

Alya's voice is gleeful, even as she ducks out of view of the fight with whatever it is she's recording with. She's found somewhere out of the worst of the wind and the rain and her voice surges through the screen just as strong as ever, even in the storm. "So! This, loyal viewers, is something my friends Rose and Juleka taught me how to make. We won't know exactly how well it holds up for another few minutes, but if it does, well, the instructions are already on the Ladyblog- they're easy to make at home. Check out the pinned post on our main page for more info on the recent updates to the akuma laws and why this is not illegal. It's tricky to get'em to work in the rain, but definitely not impossible!"

Her expression changes, grin slipping away to be replaced with concern as she glances back towards the sound of the battle. "These things do have a real strong smell, so you'll want to check with Chat Noir first if you're going to use them around him. I was gonna ask myself, but-" Alya winces, either at her words or at another explosion from much too near her hiding place.

She slides further into the shelter she's found, which looks like it might be the corner of someone's fire escape, but after she checks that she's not in the akuma victim's line of sight she turns back to the screen. "This might be about to get pretty hard to follow on screen for a bit, guys, but before I leave you I've still got a message. Chat Noir?"

Alya pauses, like she's waiting for a response, and Adrien couldn't give one if she was in the room with him. He hadn't been ready for her to address him at all, and he's already hunching down into his hoodie with dread snaking through his limbs, and he can't spare any attention for how Marinette's parents might be reacting or even to the way all of Plagg's claws are suddenly pointedly jabbing at him.

Of course Alya's noticed that he's not there when he's always there. Of course she's going to say-

"We all hope you're all right." The light in Alya's eyes doesn't dim the worry in her smile in the slightest. "You've gotta be having a real rough time if you're not here with Ladybug, and everyone from the Ladyblog wants you to know that we'll do everything we can to protect her 'til you can take back over, okay?" Her smile turns rueful. "I don't think me and our new turtle hero are gonna be anywhere near enough to equal her partner, but we'll do our best. Okay, Ladyblog- wish me luck!"

Alya touches the lighter to the twist of foil, grins awkwardly as she starts jogging backwards, and throws it towards the battle. Almost as soon as the ball of foil leaves her hand she's fishing another one out of her bag.

This time, she draws out a slingshot too, one that vanishes into a sudden upswelling of colourful smoke as she looses another foil twist along with it.

Because Alya has smoke bombs.

Alya has smoke bombs, and Chat watches with a sharp spike of horror in his chest as Alya gives the screen another haunting, devilish grin. She bounces another smoke bomb he never even saw her take out in one hand, the fingers of her other hand still wrapped tight around the handle of her slingshot. "'Cause we're gonna need that luck if we wanna measure up to you, Chat Noir."

And then Alya turns and dives into the edges of the battle, throwing that last smoke bomb as she goes, and orange smoke obscures the screen entirely.

Notes:

A NEW CHALLENGER APPEARS

Chapter 35: skulk

Notes:

i live

much thanks to shinobicyrus for the beta!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Adrien doesn't realise he's on his feet until he registers there are hands on him, and then he jerks away so suddenly he trips and falls back into the couch and nearly squashes Snapdragon. He doesn't even remember moving Snapdragon.

He finds himself trying so desperately to untangle himself from his sweatshirt and the cat and his own tail and get back to his feet that it takes Adrien far too long to realise it was only Sabine putting a cautious hand on his shoulder.

(Not his tail, that's the blanket, he is not tangled up in his tail because he's not transformed-)

"Sorry, Chat," Sabine says quickly. She's holding up both hands, palms out and empty. "You weren't responding, and I was afraid you were about to go out the window like that."

He should be going out the window. He should already be out the window. He should already be on his way, he should be there with his friends, he shouldn't have let them go without him in the first place. Ladybug needs him, she needs him and he isn't there.

He thinks Sabine says something else right after that, but he doesn't hear it. He can't look away from the storm. The battle's not visible from here, but he can't stop straining to see any hint of it anyway.

Plagg shifts, his claws digging against Adrien's skin as he lets out a tiny warning hiss and Adrien can't help but hunch his shoulders in. That makes Plagg's claws dig in harder than he thinks his kwami would ever have done intentionally, but the slight sting is enough to draw Adrien's attention back-

Until another strike of lightning lights up the night sky.

He flinches back, badly enough to startle a soft sound out of Marinette's father, but his eyes are still locked on the window as if magnetized there. Another flash of lightning sears across his vision and forces him to blink away tears, but he still steps closer to the window again and then stills as Sabine's voice filters through again.

"Chat." She doesn't move closer, and more than anything she sounds like Ladybug does when she's reassuring someone right after they've been de-akumatized. "Chat, are you alright? If-" She hesitates, then lowers her voice. "If you're hurt, sweetheart, you should stay here. You know she'd want you safe."

That sends a sharp pain arcing through him, but Adrien shakes his head, hard, because he can't stay here while she fights. It's his responsibility to keep her safe.

He needs to be out there. He needs to get to that battle. He knows Alya is capable, he knows that, and Marinette and Tikki know what they're doing and Nino has Wayzz now but what if that isn't enough? Nino's never used his powers before and Alya doesn't have superpowers at all.

The akuma today have been so much worse than usual. Chat should never have stayed behind. His partner's safety is supposed to be his priority, his partner and then the city, and now not only is Ladybug in danger but so are Nino and Alya and Wayzz and he's not out there to protect them.

"Chat?" M. Dupain ventures, carefully, as Adrien finally manages to stay steady on his feet again and hopes they can't see how hard he's trembling.

He's never going to like thunderstorms very much after today.

M. Dupain's expression is open and unguarded and so worried that Adrien flinches when he tries to meet the man's eyes. M. Dupain has a hand held half-out, fingers curled back towards himself like he'd also tried to reach for Adrien and then thought better of it, and Adrien has an ache spreading through his chest that has nothing to do with the crawling panic that still threatens at every reminder of the storm and the fight.

"She needs me," Adrien croaks out, his voice much hoarser than he's prepared for. " They need me." He can't let Alya or Nino get hurt or worse, and even if the fight isn't going as badly as he'd feared it's still a much stronger possibility than he'd like.

And Nino has his kwami to help him. Alya doesn't.

"Chat Noir." Sabine's voice is firm, firm enough that Adrien freezes. It's only for a moment, but it's long enough for Sabine to keep talking, gentling her voice in a way that makes him shiver. "Chat, I know how important her safety is, but you're important too. I know you wouldn't have stayed behind without good reason. Is it safe for you to go? Will you be alright?"

He can't answer her. Chat wraps his arms around himself and tries desperately to tear his gaze away from the window and back to Sabine but he can't make himself answer her, because he doesn't want to lie to her any more than he ever wants to lie to Ladybug, and he knows any answer he'd give her right now would be a lie.

Adrien tries to answer her anyway, because he owes her that, but his initial surge of fear washes back over him and steals the words from his throat. He probably does make some kind of noise but he can't imagine it was words. He's too scared for words.

She needs him and he's not there.

Plagg nips him, claws digging in seconds later in clear agitation, but even Plagg can't stop the fear and worry that tears at Adrien from the inside. It takes him over all at once, turning his limbs to static and setting his head pounding. She needs him and he's not there -

"Chat Noir." Tom's voice is low and gentle as he takes a cautious step forward to stand at Sabine's back. He's very obviously making a conscious effort not to move too quickly or suddenly, and that stirs a whole other host of emotions in Adrien that he's not at all ready to examine. "Son, will you be alright if you go out there?"

Plagg scratches him. Urgently.

No.

But it's not safe for his friends, either. It's not safe for his partner.

It's never safe, not for them. Hawkmoth wants their Miraculous- wants their kwami, Adrien and Marinette and Plagg and Tikki haven't been safe since before they'd all met.

Chat is supposed to out there protecting them. That's what he's for.

But Nino is-

Nino is inexperienced.

Nino isn't Carapace yet, not in the way Adrien and Marinette are Chat Noir and Ladybug. Nino's never used his powers, and he only met Wayzz hours ago- he's barely had any chance to talk to his kwami, much less to form the kind of bond that Adrien has with Plagg or the kind that Marinette has with Tikki. Nino might have been chosen to wield protection, but he's never done this before, and Chat Noir isn't there to help and to protect his friends-

Chat startles, badly, when something falls heavily around his shoulders. It takes him a beat too long to recognise it as a coat, too big for him, fleece-lined and warm and comforting and smelling like bread and flour.

He means to hand it back, but instead his fingers grasp the edges of it, pulling it in closer around himself and his hoodie and just barely refraining from huddling into it like it's a warm blanket on a cold night.

"Don't think an umbrella would be real practical for you right now," M. Dupain says, still in that gentle talking-to-a-spooked-cat tone. He's not far off with that. "Maybe we can't keep you safe, son-" He pauses.

It's only when he pauses that Adrien realises how badly he'd flinched at those words.

M. Dupain steps back again, allowing Sabine to take his place. She reaches out (slowly, so slowly, he could move away so easily) and tugs the coat more snugly into place. It's way too big on Adrien, enveloping him from collar to knees and hanging loose in the shoulders, but even he knows the warmth he feels from it has very little to do with the coat itself.

Chat can't seem to untangle his claws from the coat. He tries to loosen his grip, but he doesn't succeed.

"We won't stop you going." Sabine steps back, and though she's smiling it looks sad. "But please, Chat- remember that none of us want to see you hurt, either. Please, son, be careful."

He nods, still not sure he can speak, and turns towards the window again.

"Chat," Sabine says. "You can use the door."

Chat freezes for a moment, feeling himself redden even as he turns back and heads for the door instead.

"Be careful, son," M. Dupain echoes Sabine, without moving from his spot behind her. "We'll be here when you get back, all right? We'll wait up for you."

Chat nearly misses a step at that, but he doesn't have the time to try and untangle the snarl of feelings it leaves lodged in his chest. He has to get to the fight, right now. He has to get to Ladybug so that he can help.

He has his hand on the doorknob before a new voice from the livestream stops him in his tracks.

It's so unexpected that it takes him longer than it should to place it, even though he'd heard it earlier today.

Chat looks back at the television screen.

Alix shoves her face in the camera, grinning, tossing another of those foil twists in one hand with a carelessness that makes Chat's ears twitch with anxiety-

His ears don't twitch. Adrien shoves that sensation away with such a sharp inhalation that it's painful. His ears don't twitch.

Adrien feels Plagg dig his claws in deeper than before on his exhale. The kwami has to be leaving marks by now, but Adrien's starting to think that's Plagg's anxiety manifesting itself, so he only tries not to flinch.

"Hey, Paris," Alix says, leaning back and away from the camera, tilting her head as her grin goes sharp around the edges. She tosses the smoke bomb from hand to hand. "So our lovely Ladyblogger was not kidding about postin' those instructions on the Ladyblog, seriously, she got that right up there already. And hey, know what? These things are really easy to make. Easy and quick, took me like no time at all, so here I am." Alix's eyes glint, her expression turning predatory in a way that makes the fur- the hair on the back of Adrien's neck prickle. "And that's not the only thing Alya's right about, 'cause her and Donatello out there? We all know that's not gonna be equal to one Chat Noir, and it looks like he couldn't make it tonight. Hope you're okay, Chat- and since I know you're gonna be worryin', I brought your friends some cavalry."

The screen splits, then splits again.

"Hi Mom!" Kim says, waving from the middle screen. "I'm doing something dangerous!"

Very distantly, Adrien thinks he hears Marinette's father muffle laughter.

Alix is obviously on Alya's abandoned fire escape, while Kim's in an anonymous alley somewhere. The wind and rain and dark make it impossible to identify which alley, but the bursts of light and smoke from somewhere behind him make it clear that just like Alya and now Alix he's far too close to the battle site.

On the last of the split screen, Max adjusts his glasses briefly. "I am not in the habit of making spontaneous, ill-advised decisions such as this. For Ladybug and Chat Noir, however, I'm willing to make an exception."

Alix's grin grows, even as her camera starts to move, and Max's camera cuts abruptly to a different view. Now the screen shows the streets from high overheard, before suddenly zooming in on Alix skating quickly around and through debris.

Alix is moving quick, so her voice comes through the speakers in clicks and bursts of static. "Max is gonna keep us coordinated, Paris, 'cause he's got our buddy Markov keeping an eye on us all and you all know how upset our Ladyblogger would be if she missed all this just 'cause she couldn't keep herself outta the fight. So- time to ready, fire, aim!"

Alix ends on a shout and an overarm pitch, hurling her smoke bomb after the nearest flash of an explosion, and the camera swings dizzyingly as it shifts to Markov's point of view far above.

Max isn't visible anywhere, but Chat can just see Kim running down a street and cutting through an alley. Alix is a bright blur of movement, skating fearlessly into the battle, and coloured bursts of smoke swirl and vanish around her as she veers closer to the epicentre. The rain and wind snuffs out each smoke bomb in a matter of moments, but in those moments the explosions shift focus to the smoke instead of over where Ladybug and Carapace are still fighting fiercely.

Kim leaps onto a fire escape in easy reach of the fight and starts to yell at the top of his lungs. "Hey, ugly! You hug your mom with that mouth?"

"I don't think this is an advisable course of action, Kim," Max's voice says, dryly, though he doesn't reappear on any monitors. "Or that you have that saying even remotely correct."

"Close enough," Kim says, grinning bright and wild, and when the akuma swings to face him with an angry shout Kim pitches three smokes bombs at him in quick succession. Each burst of red smoke is quickly smothered by the driving rain, but they still aren't completely ineffective; the akuma roars and swipes at each burst of smoke, spinning in an agitated circle, and even as he does orange and pink smoke bursts around him as well.

The akumatized man manages to skip backwards from the pink smoke, but it takes him directly into three swift bursts of orange, and Chat's heart is in his throat because he sees what the man's going to do a moment before he does it and Chat's not there, he can't put himself in front to take the brunt of the damage and Alya isn't built for this-

A green shield glows into place just in time to protect Alya, Carapace's eyes wide and frightened behind his goggles as he glances back at his girlfriend and shouts something that no one's recording devices manage to pick up.

Ladybug swings past a moment later and then drops abruptly to the ground. Her yo-yo wraps around Alix nearly too fast to see, yanking her back to shelter behind the dome of the shield as another explosion rocks the area.

But Alya and Nino are under the dome of the shield. Alix and Ladybug are outside of it, hunkering on the side away from the akuma. The two of them are still exposed in a way Nino and Alya aren't now, and Chat can see the way Marinette's eyes flick up to scan frantically for Kim or Max or Markov even as she throws herself protectively over Alix before the next explosion can shatter itself against Nino's shield.

The shield holds, but Chat's out the window before he can see anything else.

(He does forget he can take the door).