⏾ Summary: Steven, your new neighbour, is unpredictable, sure. But only when a series of crash-bang-wallops brings you to his door (and the chance of imminent death), do you realise quite how unpredictable. As it turns out, that makes two of you.
Basically, being saved by the Moonboys!
⏾ Warnings/Tags: Steven Grant x Reader, Marc Spector x Reader, socially anxious!Reader, no use of Y/N, Steven being adorable, Marc being distant (as per usual) until it counts, unnamed attacker, threat of death, entrapment, brief kissing without consent, vague injury detail, reader with a backstory
⋆.˚ ☾⭒.˚
Following the arrival of your new neighbour, ‘Late For Work’ (your inventive title) rapidly becomes the norm.
Every chance to flash a wave, or exchange a greeting, he’ll be LFM. Around a corner, with every dart of ebony – like the accidentals of a piano – you come to expect he’ll be pressed to his phone, rapt in conversation. You long abandoned all hope of learning his name. Although, a couple of times in mounting frustration, he does puff out a name.
Marc.
A colleague? you wonder, tucking this information into your catalogue. Maybe his brother. Or is it his partner?
Systemizing mediocre life details is like sustenance. You stuff loosely related events into patterns, patterns lending rules. Like with your neighbour, the pattern says he’s occupied, so the rule demands that, every time your paths collide, you smile, meet his eye, and exchange a ‘hi’, ‘hello’. Like at work, two weeks is fortunately enough time to measure up different coworkers’ expectations: Alice, who is loud, but doesn’t expect reciprocation; Pete, who enjoys intermittent conversation; Rahish, who tends to stick to short phrases about work itself, and on and on and on.
It’s not until today that a succession of crash-bang-wallops tears you from your music. You remove an earbud. And breaks the pattern, your neighbour’s anonymity.
A rap on the wood: the latch slides free.
“Oh, hello. You alright?”
Your preloaded question, he fires right back at you.
And whether it’s the politeness of his expression, or the airiness of his tone (or his hair, which is slightly skew-whiff), you stiffen.
You glance down. Hot water bottle.
Then, catching yourself, “Hi,” you say. “Sorry, I don’t want to int—int—int.” You break off, forcing a self-deprecating smile, and it’s usually at this point that the one on the receiving end fills in the blank.
He doesn’t. His attention diverts to the bottle with a small, “Oop.” Hands shrugged inside the little pocket, he scoffs at himself before flinging it to the carpet. When his gaze lifts, the upturn of his lips is soft, as if sharing in your inconvenience.
“Start again,” you say. “I don’t want to interrupt. I heard a bang, that’s all, so I just wanted to check everything’s okay?”
“Okay? Oh, yeah. Yeah, don’t worry. I am an absolute menace for hanging everything up on the floor. Well—first example right there. Thank you, though. For checking. I’m sorry, I should have said before. Steven.”
You balk. Your cheeks flush.
“Err, I’m sorry?”
“Oh!” He flings a hand between you. “I’m Steven. You are…?”
Accepting his offer, you say your name, which he repeats under his breath before releasing you.
“Really, I would have introduced myself sooner. My neck of the woods, you keel over in the middle of the road, and someone might, might get out the car to have a go.” You chortle, and he hops back in: “‘S’alright, I don’t mean that, like, literally. I’m not that accident-prone, swear.”
“You’re not. I am.”
“Really?” His eyes light up expectantly, and you realise you hadn’t anticipated that far.
“Well… Yeah. The other day I—I was preparing this meal and I…” With each word, that familiar hole widens, that self-sabotaging voice that chants, ‘you’re about to forget what you want to say’, ‘you’re going to forget’, ‘forget, forget, forget.’ “I made an absolute mess.”
When it clicks for him that you have nothing left to add, “Snap. Don’t get me started, mate,” he says. “I can make you a late welcoming meal if by ‘make’, you don’t mind me banging her in the oven. Food absolutely disagrees with me, and not in the stomach way. Cooking? Pfft, nope. I usually leave that bit.”
“Oh, you don’t live alone?” you ask innocently.
Dread inks down Steven’s features.
“What? No. No, I do live alone.”
“Oh. You just said about leaving the cooking, so I…” Your voice starts to wane, a tell-tale sign that the rest of that sentence isn’t going to escape ungarbled. You swallow. But it doesn’t matter: you’re not certain Steven heard you in the first place.
His focus pulls away. A fog creeps down over his focus. He’s gone. For a second, he’s completely gone.
“Are you—"
“I’m sorry,” he suddenly says, collecting himself. “It’s lovely talking to you, it really is. But I just remembered I’ve got to accept some silly call in a minute or two.”
“Oh. Course. Don’t wanna miss that.”
His fingers curl around the doorframe.
“It’s nice meeting you, too. But I won’t be keeping you.”
“Cheers.”
He raises a hand. Several farewells manage to squeeze through the gap before he disappears. Even then, you stare at his door, just as readable.
Did you say something wrong?
You slip your headphones back on before you let yourself back into your flat. One inside, you crash into your chair and crank your music ear-scathingly high. You look past your phone screen, dimly aware that your concentration is liquifying.
Several minutes later, you awaken from the trance.
The jingling of keys. It’s coming from next door. You press pause.
A rumble sails through the wall. The sound had become a familiar companion, but only now do you register its source, and as you listen closer, Steven’s intonation. He jangles the keys again.
“That’s what you are. ‘Stop talking. Stop talking.’ Well if you... harping on in my ear… actually think straight.”
You frown. So maybe you did say something wrong. But it wasn’t about your shared neighbour.
It didn’t even cross your mind, the innumerable phone calls day in, day out. You asked him whether he lived alone. Perhaps, literally, Steven didn’t, but by the sounds of it, someone was taunting his life day-in, day-out. An ugly long-distance relationship.
At least, that’s the opinion you carry until another unexceptional weekday.
It starts when the lift begins to slide shut.
Stifling a curse, you surge ahead, tote bag enclosed in an iron grip, and call out a belated, “Excuse me!”
The doors pause.
You close the distance in a heartbeat, hopping over the threshold and mentally singing the figure’s praises as you crash against the wall. In your month and a bit, you’ve never been late to work. You will not let a buggered alarm clock fizzle that streak.
“Thank you,” you breathe.
Only once secure in the fact you’re not going to be rejected like a foreign organ do you look up.
“Oh. Hi,” you say.
Steven presses his lips together in greeting. Silence weighs in, digging into your sides.
“Slept in,” you joke, because it’s easier than the real explanation. You just need a first step up for Steven to bridge the quiet.
This time, he offers a curt nod. Tighter, he tugs the line of his mouth. His focus melts through the floor as if he hopes to discern the impending ground, and unease ripples in your gut. That wasn’t the reaction you’d anticipated.
You twist as if to meet your reflection, and you drift towards the circles pressed beneath Steven’s eyes, narrower than usual, and the hardiness of his low-hanging brow. It isn’t just the silence. It’s something indescribable, an alarm of otherness that the rational mind scolds, but for all it tries, can’t push down.
His attention flickers in your direction.
He steps out first. A second sooner and he’d have slammed into the door. A transactional wave, and he marches for the exit. You watch him go as you release your hold on the shoulder of your tote. You stretch your fingers, the colour rushing back into the tips.
That feeling… Maybe if he hadn’t been so fast, you would have been the first to beat a quick retreat. It’s nonsense, you swear, it really is, but the thought won’t leave your head. He didn’t look like Steven. The features were there, plain and simple, except you’ve always had an ineptitude in facial recognition. It’s the other things you find yourself clinging to, like hair colour, build, mannerisms. He carried his features incorrectly, almost as if someone—or something had tucked itself away beneath the folds of his skin.
You suppose that’s what happens when you hyper-theorise around mediocre life details. Next stop, delusion.
You have to reshuffle your system to accommodate this new Steven. It’s accompanied by an odd sense of grief, which is, again, odd, because what was there really to lose? You spoke a grand total of once. No doubt the encounter meant significantly more to you than it did him, which is fine. You let yourself get too far ahead, picturing you would become part of the world where people are good acquaintances and chat with their neighbours. You see now that that’s not going to happen.
It starts off simply and unintentionally: he strides your way, you duck down a perpendicular corridor; he locks up his apartment, you wait a moment longer before following suit; he waves at you and he’s Steven again, you wave back but don’t speak a word. You’re a teen again, missing cake ingredients because someone was stood in front of the shelf, being late for school because your neighbour was fastening her kids’ seatbelts.
After a little while, he stops saying hi. After a while, that conversation you shared becomes a distant memory with stretched edges, rewrapped and reshaped in your vault, until he was never that chatty, until the smile didn’t really meet his eyes and he was just being polite.
The only confirmation the conversation happened in the first place is, one spring morning, is a striking sense of déjà vu.
A slam. A muffled cry.
You don’t jump-to like the first time. Should you go to check considering last time’s events? It’ll probably be just another continuation of his saga against static objects. Besides, he’s already made it abundantly clear he would rather keep you on the receiving end of a wave than a conversation.
But concern soon wins out against embarrassment. At the risk of making a muppet of yourself, only a moment later do you wind up outside his door.
A rap on the wood.
You leave it a second. Silence hunches over your shoulders, scrutiny in tow.
You knock again, then again.
“Steven?” You didn’t intend to practically whisper. Your raise your voice. “I’m just harassing you again… I heard next door… Are you okay?”
Nothing. Uneasiness begins to take root, prickling down your neck, as you incline an ear towards the door. He’s in there. You know he’s in there not because you hear him, but because he got back from work. Didn’t he? Yes, he was earlier than usual, around 3 instead of after 5:30.
What if he came back to the flat early because of sickness? Could it have been bad enough to pass out? If he passed out, would he have had enough time to react? Could he have landed on something and gone under?
A tangible warmth curls around your ears, pulsing and expanding. If you don’t do something right now, something terrible is going to happen. What if it already has? What if you’re wasting time?
“Steven!” Fuck. “Steven, please let me know you’re there.” The pretence of politeness evades you now as you pound a fist against timber. “Listen,” you shout, “if you can hear me, don’t worry. I’m coming in.”
Before you can even assess the next port of call – the time-intensiveness of the landlord, the silliness of ramming your foot against the door, the simpleness of checking if it’s even unlocked in the first place – the door cracks ajar.
Darkness stares into you.
“Steven?”
Could he have dragged it open?
“Steven?” You cross over the entrance. “I don’t…” Without thought, you flick the light switch.
A man is stood in Steven’s flat.
He marches towards you; you recoil.
Your balance gives.
And he’s there, this stranger, who eloquently wraps his arms around your waist and steers you to your feet. In a beat, he releases you.
“Woah, nelly!” he says with a grin, clapping his hands together. “Woah. Be cool. I’m a friend.”
Is this… Marc?
“Sorry, who are you?”
“Told you. Just a friend, collecting something. Don’t mind me. I’ll get out of his hair—”
This is stupid. This is so stupid. You should just let him go. You should just ignore the bulge in the back of his pocket, or the absence of keys, or the fact he drew the curtains, or the dark shape swirling behind the figure’s eyes. But then you go and ask,
“What’s your friend’s name?”
He chortles. Filling the beat of silence that precedes that answer.
And that’s all the confirmation you need.
“Steven,” he says.
When he caught you, he brought you deeper into the room. He’s now blocking your only exit.
Your mouth snaps shut.
Your breath punches against the muzzle: the texture of skin. You sink your teeth inside, spluttering, choking, as salt, iron swashes against your tongue. Something edged bristles against your spine.
“Stop.” The ‘p’ sound ricochets off the internal chambers of your ear.
No, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
“Fucks sake,” the man murmurs, as he slides the door shut with his boot. It clicks.
NO.
Instinct possesses like a familiar ghost, the compulsion to kick, to thrash. But it doesn’t understand this entrapment. Not only in this man’s cage, but in your own limbs, which betray for their inability to slice through skin. Whilst your mind, ablaze with horror, could do it easily.
“Now, you’ve made me another job, haven’t you? So, we’re going to have to take this to your room. Do me a favour. Which side?”
You tilt your head to the left.
“Leave the door unlocked?”
You nod.
“Beautiful. Going to scream?”
You shake your head–he tears an incision across your side. You scream into his hand. As you fight to abate each breath, chest heaving up, down with the weight of each exhale, he pivots until you’re facing dead-on, the switchblade, towards your stomach.
“Again for me. Are you. Going to. Scream.”
The cut – it’s small like a dash of kerosene, your skin set alight.
You shake your head.
He slowly removes the pressure from around your mouth and drapes himself over your shoulder. The other, he buries beneath your jacket as if hugging the small of your back, the honed edge of his blade only a hair’s breadth away.
You have to do it. You have to propel yourself forward, then scream as all hell.
“No time like the present.”
You can do it.
Just don’t think about the knife.
You open the door, and he bows his head. The camera is directly above, flashing its red bulb. But before you can cross the threshold, he smashes his lips against yours.
Nausea lurches in your throat. He pushes you into the corridor; you slam against your own apartment. You practically fall inside, him fumbling the lock, and by then, it’s too late. He shoves you aside, and he has the fucking audacity to wrinkle his nose in disgust as he snaps the door—
—shut.
It’s too late. You didn’t have time to think.
You didn’t.
Immediately, you feel it rising. You shake your head. No, no, no. A bawl of warning escapes caged lips. Don’t cry. Don’t. Exhales rush in shallow, painful gasps. As your focus sears through the floor, the pain pushes deeper, deeper against your ribs. You need to get out. Whatever that means, you just need out.
His gaze flickers to yours, and he must realise the crazed look in your eye because he’s there when you lunge for the lampshade. His fingers enclose around your forearms, twisting. You shrink. He rears closer. You smash into his nose. He barks, instinctively reaching to massage the inflicted spot. An opening: you shoot for the ankle.
Your stomach slams into the ground.
The scream cracks open. You scream until you can no longer breathe. You scream until, panting, acid pushes its way to freedom.
You will not die.
You scream into his hands. No one can hear you. No one can hear you.
He strikes your head against the floorboards. Pain erupts through your nostrils – you gag – followed by the sickly stench of iron. His footsteps recede.
Again, you try to scream, but your mouth is the texture of dried paint. Dimly, you hear the low shirrk as your curtains snap shut. You prop yourself atop trembling elbows, ignoring each strangled moan. Please. “Please.” Just keep going. Just keep moving.
His shadow descends, and with it comes the bobbled fabric of a towel. Bile explodes in your mouth, but it has no escape. The screech of floorboards, your chair, approach. You shudder. It doesn’t stop, the shuddering, not when he lifts you, not when he binds your arms, ankles. There’s nothing you can do.
This time, less temporarily, he vanishes from view. You watch the curtains. They’re still: no breeze.
You don’t sink into severance. It claims you. In the vault, there is safety in sedation, and you’re tucking yourself away.
You drum your fingers.
You can’t.
You have to think. You have to. You have to stay alive.
Skywards, you blink back your blurring vision. Your shoulders tremble in an irregular rhythm of hiccups and gasps. Softly, in the dark, a world revolves unperturbed. And this time, you let yourself panic.
You’re going to die.
He’s just biding his time. He’s waiting to take you somewhere more convenient.
You’re going to die.
You know how this works. Foot tapping, eyes darting, head bobbing. Energy coursing from crown to toe, you’re a lightning rod, conducting slashes of your own decimated corpse.
For half an hour, there is no hope for you. Your world is ending, and it will not be missed. You die and you die and you die.
After half an hour, your tears begin to dry up.
Your heartrate slows. The energy concentrates to a narrow point.
And you think.
With your neighbour’s door unlocked and his belongings tossed in disarray, Steven’s intruder must have pictured himself long gone by his return. Vague scuffles interject your thoughts. Why he’s pillaging your belongings, you can only presume. This isn’t just a regular break-in. He had to be looking for something in particular, otherwise, what kind of thief would scoff at Steven’s wall of pricey collectables? So he thinks you possess the object of his interest. That, or more likely, he only wants to discern who will notice your absence.
But you can’t think like that. It’s much more solvable to pretend this is a treasure hunt, and you’re the only one who can lead him towards the X.
In your periphery, the man straightens from beneath your bed and suspends something in the light. You twist to get a read.
“Now this is lovely.”
The light traces your friend’s face.
The man runs a thumb across the frame.
“Who is she, I wonder?”
Someone who’ll miss you? you think, completing his sentence.
Now’s your chance. You mumble into your gag.
“What’s that? You’ve got something important you want to share?” He closes some of the distance. “Wow. Wow, that’s really interesting. You know what? I must hear all about—” He tosses the picture onto your bed. “That was rhetorical. Learn to tell the difference.”
Someone knocks.
Hope plunges through you like a harpoon. Someone’s at your door. Shit. Someone’s at your door. You crane your neck until it throbs. Another knock.
Then a voice, his voice. “You in? It’s just a quick one!”
Steven.
“Fucking piccadilly circus, this place,” the intruder hisses between his teeth, marching behind you.
Already, Steven’s footsteps begin to retreat. No. You will not let this opportunity fly.
You shove your weight, and your heart skips a beat. You bite down. Hard. A roaring ache, like a dozen bared nails, tears into your side. But it’s all worth it. Lying skywards, you raise your head from the crook of your neck. Because Steven is rattling a fist against the door.
“Hello?” Voice pitched with anxiety, “Is everything okay in there?” he shouts.
“You little shit,” The intruder is by your side, yanking the chair upright. You recoil as he squeezes your arm. “You repugnant little shit.” His breaths fly quick and hot, all the while Steven is rattling the handle, calling your name.
Then he lets his hands fall.
Steven is about to make a scene. Good. Please, Steven, shout all you can.
He takes a knee. Confusion breaks through your dread. That’s when, as methodical as a worker bee, he frantically begins untying your binds. Before you can think to move, it prickles against your neck. You inhale sharply.
With a moment’s hesitation, he wrenches you to your feet. The next thing is your gag, which he tosses to the ground. He assesses you, snatches a hoodie from the floor.
“Up and over.”
He tugs it down – “Hey, if you can hear me, I’m gonna go get the landlord, yeah?” Steven calls – and, as you brace, pats it into place.
“You fell and hit your nose. Comprende?” he whispers, as he steers you to the door.
When he releases his grip, a fist balled within the plush lining of your sleeve, you slide the key from the hook. Just before you open the door, the man gives you pause.
“Tell me… does he sound like a fighter to you?”
Steven breaks off.
Relief wells within you when the gap falls away and reveals his matching expression. For a moment, you forget the blade that punctuates the space between your ribs.
“Jesus. You gave me a fright.” His arm jumps from his side. “Oh fuck! What happened? You need a first-aid kit. I have all sorts of—”
“No, no. It’s okay,” you cut in, gesturing for him to cool off. But, unbeknownst to your captor, you’re fluttering your eyelids. Only pausing for a beat in between to widen, narrow your eyes. Help, you silently cry. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you. Tripped. That’s all.”
It fleets across his features, an apparition of bewilderment. As you prop an arm against the door, his focus chases towards the trail slithering down your wrist, moulding into comprehension.
“I’ll be fine.”
He snaps back to you as you continue to blink. Please.
“My fault, really, for making my apartment a deathtrap.”
“Oh.” As he clings to you with wide eyes, the buoyancy in his voice gives the uncanny impression of clambering from another’s mouth. “Thank God for that.” He nods, pressing down on the air to signal for you to stop. “Speaking of deathtraps, your mum’s not coming round anytime soon is she? I mean, I’d be safe if I wanted to pop over this weekend?”
“Don’t know about safe,” you say slowly. “She might just be psychic. Doesn’t matter where, when, how. I swear, she’s got a watchdog on me. You can bet anything she’ll know I’ve got a man around.”
“Yeah, well mums can be a bit like that sometimes.” He laughs. It’s like watching the rumble of a tomb. “Take it from me, at least you’ve got the safety of distance. Where abouts is she?”
He glances left and right in question.
You copy the former. That’s all it takes.
He hurls at you like a man possessed. The entryway screeches against its hinges, discordant against the thrumming of Steven’s footsteps.
With one hand, he shields you against the door; with the other, he twists the man’s blade and grinds it into his shoulder. A shriek – he cages the man’s mouth, heat reeling from his breath as he meets him against the wall, the blade pushing deeper. You don’t think before bolting your captor’s escape. His eyes bubble with tears as they scramble for something, anything, to grab on to. Steven sends a boot to his shin.
When he whirls, time disintegrates.
You stagger.
This is wrong. You’re slipping. You squeeze the cut on your arm to sharpen your senses, but this man’s face, which lies somewhere between imagination and a loose conjure, swims and shifts, from a thinning mouth to an atypical nose, from exchanging kindred smiles, not counterfeit, but with crinkled eyes and lips curving upward with ease, to rage. It’s just the dark. It has to be.
Your attacker dislodges the blade.
“Steven!”
His mouth springs open in protest.
“No!”
A knee adjoins his stomach and sends him to the ground.
The instinct to surge forwards evaporates: your attacker wastes no time clambering over Steven’s coiled frame. And you just bolted the door. He drags his feet with a monotonous thump, thump, thump.
You seize a side-table and bring it down hard. Its severed legs, you snap and wield in mid-air.
Panting like a dog, he slides a grin into the corner of his cheek.
He hits the ground.
And you don’t hesitate. You don’t care about the mummified hand enclosed around your attacker’s ankle, or the fist rising to beat your attacker’s head in.
You strike.
Someone is calling your name.
You strike again.
“Can you hear me? You’re okay.”
In your periphery, that hand now hovers. With each hit, it wavers.
“He’s done.”
The second skin retreats, revealing Steven’s unfamiliar familiar face. What—
You drop them. They clatter against the ground. You step back. The world sways. Your captor lies in a whimpering heap, blood oozing from his back.
“Hey.” Steven shadows him, snatching you back from unreality. “Concentrate on your breath. You’ll get through this. Just focus on breathing in… and out.” But his accent is all wrong. This whole thing is all wrong. How is he on two feet? “Can you tell me where you’re hurt?”
As if awaking for the first time, you pull away from him.
“Where are you hurt?”
His pace racing, “I will explain everything, I swear, but now is not the time,” Steven says. “Look, I get it, that you’re in shock, but right now, I really think I should—”
“Stay away from me.”
“—take a look.”
So you have an ineptitude in facial recognition. But right now, you know exactly where you’ve seen this face before.
You’re shaking your head as you retreat. “No, no. Are you kidding? I don’t even know what you are. You were… You were stabbed. I saw it…” Your gaze falls to the intruder, the pool of red seeping between your feet. “I am fine!” you all but yell, despite the throbbing in your side. “You shouldn’t be!”
And you don’t miss it, the way he instinctively looks to your arm, guilt bleeding through his composure.
“What the hell even are you? Who are you, when you’re not hiding behind this stupid ‘Steven’ act—”
“Steven is not—” He encloses the words in a fist. He exhales. Then, as if compelled by some sudden irritation, folds his shirt sleeves, clawing them up one by one. “It wasn’t a lie,” he says, slowly. “I am real; Steven… Steven is real. It’s just difficult for me to explain right now. I’m trying to help. That’s all.”
You stare. When your lips part, he glances away, jaw tightening as if preparing for your reproach.
“Can I speak to Steven?”
Surprise flutters across his features.
“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay, if you need.”
You watch it happen. That alarm of otherness rings out as his eyebrows lift, his eyes widening somewhat. His shoulders slacken. Immediately, he takes a step closer, and, without thinking, you flinch.
“Ah, sorry. Sorry!” He withdraws. “We’re both speaking to you. We’re trying,” he says, and he’s Steven again. Actual Steven, accent and all.
Is this a joke? part of you demands to snap, but you can’t. No, not can’t. It would be all too easy, given the events of the last hour, to launch your anger. But you won’t. Why? Because you’re worried you might upset him? The man that just ground a knife into someone’s shoulder without a second thought? Except, that wasn’t really him, was it?
On the ground, your attacker emits a low groan. Something flickers in Steven’s expression.
He stalks towards the body and, with a shout, boots him in the face.
“Plug-ugly bastard,” he murmurs with his retreat. His face softens. “Sorry.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I mean we’re really really both in here.”
Do you actually believe him? Them?
“So, you’re Steven…”
He hardens. “Marc.”
“Two of you,” you murmur.
“Two of us.”
Marc.
When you speak, Marc’s isn’t the only voice that sounds foreign. Yours is too eccentric, whilst your stare lingers in the air as though misplaced. “To be honest, that was the last thing I was actually going to ask.” The amusement slips from your face as fast as it sprung.
“I have a medi-kit in my apartment. I’d understand, given the circumstances, if you didn’t want to. But I think it’s best we get you away from that body.”
You nod.
“Okay.”
He looks past your shoulder, a beat of silence passing between you.
⏾ Summary: Steven, your new neighbour, is unpredictable, sure. But only when a series of crash-bang-wallops brings you to his door (and the chance of imminent death), do you realise quite how unpredictable. As it turns out, that makes two of you.
Basically, being saved by the Moonboys!
⏾ Warnings/Tags: Steven Grant x Reader, Marc Spector x Reader, socially anxious!Reader, no use of Y/N, Steven being adorable, Marc being distant (as per usual) until it counts, unnamed attacker, threat of death, entrapment, brief kissing without consent, vague injury detail, reader with a backstory
⋆.˚ ☾⭒.˚
Marc enters his apartment at a crawler’s pace. He toggles the light, gaze darting across the ground as he trails the litter of books and trinkets tossed asunder. You make to follow – only to catch yourself on the door. Marc’s attention snags on his target and he marches from view. You’re left to bar your arms across your chest. And cave against the frame.
What accompanies his disappearance is monumental. You stare through unseeing eyes, severance once again threatening to swallow you whole, and all that exists is an unmoved vessel, save for your fingers. Your fingers travel of their own compulsion, tracing your attacker’s phantom touch. Chasing the memory of being steered deeper into this room.
A groan stirs in the base of your throat.
With no one to pull you back.
“Hey.”
Your hands fall. You blink.
Marc stands watching you, a slim box hanging by his side. His stare is inscrutable. He might have been there for a while. But when he speaks, his tone is undeniably soft.
“Here.”
It’s no surprise he doesn’t ask you how you’re feeling.
It’s a blur after stepping over the threshold.
Marc sets the first-aid kit between you, and although you keep your eyes down, your periphery brushes against the man’s furtive onceovers. He withdraws the contents. Unused. He slips a key into your palm.
“Five minutes. I promise,” he assures, the time it will take to attend to your room and any passersby who got wise of the scuffle. ‘Your room’, you notice he says. Not the body.
So you dress your wounds in silence. Not a mercy, but a convenience, the cut to your side isn’t too deep. Blood showing on CCTV wouldn’t have boded well for your attacker’s escape. The thought only reminds you of the sound Marc made when he hit the ground. You pause, scissors poised to slice the end of the bandage.
God.
What the hell are you doing here?
Yes, Marc, Steven, whoever, saved your life. That doesn’t mean they’re not the second to last people you should trust. The winner of that title lies face down on your apartment floor. But maybe he shouldn’t be – the winner, that is: you’d sooner see him dead if not for the necessity of answers. As for the man who owns this apartment, you know next to nothing about him—fuck, them. Something… happened to them in there. And it’s not like your attacker was looking for nothing.
For all you know, you could have traded one grave for another.
You finish tying off the bandage just as a double-knock sounds from the hall.
“It’s me!” someone calls, English this time. You pocket the scissors.
“Thank you,” Steven says, as you close the door behind him. A warm flush permeates his cheeks; he was longer than Marc promised. “Did you need any help?”
“Hmm? Oh. No. No, I’m fine.”
When he remains stationary, you instinctively look up, but he simply rocks on the balls of his feet. Then, starting as if electrocuted, “Would you like a drink?” he asks, already making a beeline for the kettle. “Do you use cow milk? I keep oat if you’d prefer. Or I could buzz to the shops to get something else. Soy… Almond…”
“Where is he?”
“I even saw they had pea milk in the other da—sorry?”
“Where—” You swallow. “Where did you take him?”
For a moment, he really looks as though he might tell you. Then his eyelids shutter, shoulders coiling like wire.
“No,” Marc murmurs. They flutter open. “I’m sorry. It’s not a good idea for you to know.”
“For you to know.” His words crash over you in droves.
“It’s… what?” Your lips twist into a smile, and you hate yourself even more. You skim the scissors in your pocket. Inhale. “Not a good idea.” “I’m sorry?”
“Look. I—” He shakes his head. “I get it. I do. How are you feeling?”
“Confused,” you splutter. “Like I should know what’s going on.”
“I’ve secured your apartment. You say the word, and I promise you, you will never see from me, hear from me, ever again—”
Your mind is a fortress at sea. Every drove a lashing. Chips of your detachment devoured by the tide.
“I’m sorry.”
The weight of your anger leaves you gasping for air. You eject it the only way you know how. You bark out a laugh. “But—but you can’t—you… You can’t just up and leave. Without telling me anything.”
“This was never supposed to happen. I tried to avoid this, I told Steven not to tell you his fricking name, hell, not to talk to you at all.” When he says this, you swear he fires his glare at the mirror. “I know you deserve answers,” he continues. “But I’m not doing niceties. I’m keeping you alive, and that means keeping you out. Like you should have been from the start.”
You stare at him, slack-jawed. Energy surges to your fingertips, and for a moment, you know exactly what you should do, to knock ‘Marc’ straight out of him.
Instead, you back against the door. “I need to talk to Steven again.”
He almost smiles. “You want good cop? Sorry. That’s not how this works.”
“Then explain it to me! Please!” you cry. Warmth wells behind your eyes. But you’re too angry to brush it away. “Tell me how it works! Tell me Steven—he’s not just some… some superhero alias. Tell me that man didn’t hurt me just to steal from you. Tell me what he was so desperateto have, he’d trap me, threaten me, assault me, kill me!”
With every word Marc is sinking lower. His hands open and close at his sides. He peels apart the floor with his stare. You implore him with your own. Then,
“I can’t,” he whispers.
You don’t give him time to react: you snatch the handle. He calls your name, but it’s too late. When you slam the key into the lock, which you’d tucked snug against the scissors, his voice hitches, enraged. By the time he’s wrangling the door, you’ve already made the corner. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
You want to scream.
Instead, you bite into your lip as needles tear incisions along your side. You tear up the steps. A crash of sickness accompanies each flight; it changes nothing. At the summit, your balance gives, and you thrust your palms against the fire exit. You gasp.
Someone’s disabled the alarm.
You were right. Of course you couldn’t be certain, but, opting for speed and discretion, the roof was your best and only bet. The realisation does little to relieve your urgency: that lock won’t hold them for long, and you throw yourself against the handle, propelling yourself into the open air. That’s when whatever little energy you had left evaporates.
He lies skywards, looking even more worse for wear than you last saw him.
Someone – who are you kidding – has stuffed a hand towel down your attacker’s throat. You gag. When you manage to drag your attention back, his forehead is slick with sweat, a crimson cavern seeping into his shoulder from where Marc…
One thing hasn’t changed. He’s gone to the world. Scissors in hand, you pace him. His arm and leg restraints don’t reduce your distance, but if you want answers, you’re going to have to bridge the distance somehow. You hurl glances between the figure and the fire exit, weighing up your options. Just as your thinking is obstructed by the scrape of footsteps.
His footsteps jar to a halt. The man registers your weapon. Slowly, he raises his hands, eyes wide. Steven.
Fingers chalking around the scissors, “I—I didn’t mean—I just needed to know!” you say.
“I understand. Believe me, I really do. Please.” He gestures for you to lower them. “I’ve been there. Marc, he… he makes a habit of forgetting that being in the dark can be just as terrifying as seeing your nightmares up close.”
You receive him. Wind snaps against your arms. Jesus. You were so focused on distance you forgot your closeness to the edge of the roof.
You take a step forward.
“Do you know what he was after?” you ask.
Steven exhales. This time, some of the tension unravels from his jaw. “No. But I plan to find out.” As he speaks, he lowers to a crouch, only inches from the man’s face. He casts you a backwards look before snatching the gag from the man’s mouth.
He wakes with a start.
The man slams his head against the wall. With limited success, he swings his healthy arm, yowling as pain erupts through his shoulder. And his back, you remind yourself. You did that. It only takes him a moment to adjust. Massaging the inflicted spot, his attention soon zones on his captor. His lips upturn, thought in more grimace than grin.
“Spector,” he growls. “Or is it ‘St-St-St-Steven’. Didn’t take you for much of a method actor, but fine job, mate. Fine job.”
“Who are you?” Steven snaps. “What do you want?”
He almost chokes on his own laughter. “Fuck me. On second thought, you ever hire a dialect coach? What’s all this for? Is it for you?” He cocks his head, and cold ripples down your spine the instant his eyes set on you.
“Still not Marc,” Steven says. “But make no mistake.” He takes the man’s wrist. “You don’t stop talking out your arse, you’ll need a lot more than speech therapy. Mate.”
The man opens his mouth to scream, but Steven is quicker: he smothers him.
“Alright—”
“—what were you so desperate to steal?” you interject. You drop to your knees beside him. After a beat, Steven releases his mouth.
Your attacker looks between you two then, working his wrist. Slowly, he stitches back together his grin. And this time, it appears eerily genuine. He directs his answer square at you when he says, “Crafty. So that’s what you told him, is it? I’m a common thief out for treasure? I take great offence to that.”
“I haven’t been told a word,” Steven says. “I saw. You tore our flat to bits.”
“‘Our’? Now that’s the kinda crazy I heard about. If you’d believe me, I was actually tryna save your hide. Not without a bit of perusing though, of course. Had to know what the crack is before I know you’re worth saving.”
“I take it from the stabbing us, you’re ‘perusing’ didn’t pull up anything good.”
“Oi! If you hadn’t barrelled in all guns-blazing, I might have spoken some sense to ya then. Hell, if you hadn’t started crying out in that phony accent of yours, I’d have known who the fuck you are!”
“And who is that exactly?”
“Someone dumb enough to protect the person out to kill you.”
Steven smiles. Actually smiles, firing you a glance. “Wow. F me,” he says. “We’ve lived side by side for almost two months. I think I’d have noticed the glass in my morning porridge by now.” The laughter dies on his lips. He fastens on you. A newfound wariness sifts between his brows, gaze flickering to the scissors by your side.
You blink at him. “What?”
“I just thought… I saw the damage. But you were in your flat when we found you. I mean, if you somehow knew someone meant to harm you, you’d be able to manipulate a hostage situation to earn our trust… Hitting two birds with one stone.”
“No. No. What?” you shout, with more urgency than is wise. But you can’t stop yourself, or your rising volume. “I didn’t do anything wrong! He tried to fucking kill me!”
But now Steven moves with you, not taking his eyes off you, even when the man spits, “I don’t give a rat’s arse whether Moon Man lives or dies. All I care about is tracking down one stinking breed. Bastards seem to have it in for Moonie just as much as I do them. Before I burned up their little commune, I happened on an address. Figured it wouldn’t be long before one of them reared their sick, homicidal head.”
Your mind flashes to the man’s hands around your waist in Steven’s flat, one slipping too close to the hem of your shirt – but it wasn’t the hem. He’d brushed your arm. Only momentarily, but maybe just enough to show skin. Oh fuck.
Oh fuck.
Moon Man.
Moon Knight.
Without looking at him, “Who?” Steven demands from your attacker. “Who are you hunting?”
That’s when your attacker hurtles right towards you. You have less than a second to remember the handcuffs, his broken wrist, the rope around his ankle – less than second, as, an inch from the impending drop, you suck in a breath.
“How’s this for justice?” he whispers.
Then no one is holding your arm.
Your stomach drops. The wind snatches at you from every direction, desperate to break your fall. But there is nothing to stop you, nothing but concrete, and it is concrete that awaits you, promising to be quick.
Swirling lights come first.
When people talk of death, you’d always assumed they meant they saw one unfolding beam. Not that you care much for superstition. Not anymore. Yet, somehow, you stir. Wait. You can move. You flex a palm, closing on something rough, like used bandages.
“Hey. Look at me. Are you okay?” The bright lights narrow beneath his cowl.
And you recognise that voice.
“You’re… him,” you murmur, only semi-lucid.
“It's me. I've got you, alright? You're gonna be just fine. I’ll see to it.”
“No.” You try to push him away, but you only succeed in gently brushing his arm. Those lights begin to dim, and, though he’s speaking, you only manage to rasp one more word before darkness steals away the rest.
I'm writing a fic where she figures out Adrien is chat noir from heartfixer and steals the twin rings in order to Ruin His Life and decided to draw them
˚₊‧ʚ🐞ɞ‧₊˚ Warnings/Tags: Adrinette, Marichat, Ladynoir, Ladrien (have them all!!), Adrien's POV, ftm!Adrien, Adrien is going through it, Ladybug gets akumatized, hints of transphobia and self-harm, angst angst angst, hurt-comfort, bittersweet ending, bits of fluff, early-seasons coded
"I just wanted everything to stop.”
He thought of her bottomless optimism, the smile she could proffer should anyone ask for it. For the first time, he saw the gap between his own teeth.
“I know,” he said.
Check it out on AO3!
“Their—bracelet!”
Chat Noir narrowed his gaze.
Ten metres adjacent, and, with the whirl of his staff to parry strike after slash, he scoured for that elusive object. Which arm? he griped to himself. Leg? And there was so many of them, each knotted limb as unrelenting as the last. She couldn’t hold them for much longer. At this rate, finding the damned thing would be like trying to find an akuma in all of Paris.
Fear Knot sent their head back in frustration.
You and me too, buddy, Chat thought. Instead, “Gonna need another clue, M’lady!” he called back. She didn’t respond. He looked to her.
And Chat lost all air. Ladybug’s yo-yo had fled her grip.
Feigning left – Chat ducked as a yard of rope snapped for his wrist – he doubled back and extended his staff, pitching himself high into the open air. A metallic clink: he disabled it as higher, he soared, his claws outstretched, his heart the beat of a hummingbird’s wings.
“—don’t!” Ladybug shouted.
He choked.
Panic rapped against his chest. Tighter, the ropes seized. His legs thrashed, fists pummelled. His vision drowned with tears. If he could just extend his—his staff slipped through his fingers. His jabs began to lose momentum, aiming at nothing. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see… Couldn’t…
Cou
ld
n
Then, something whistled by his hair. His binds slashed open. The earth opened up beneath him. He screeched, oxygen rushing into his lungs in one fell swoop. His lady’s yo-yo hadn’t yet retracted to her palm. Mid-air, he caught her mouth springing open in horror. He cast the bracelet. Like clock-work, one moment his boots scuffed the earth, the next, with a satisfying snap, a tangle of beads rolled towards them as Ladybug tugged the chain in half. Instantly, he bent double.
But with a high-pitched scream, it was no longer him in free-fall.
“I’ve—"
“—got it!” Chat interjected, scooping up his staff. He jolted upwards, seizing the woman in his arms with a whoomph. She gasped. His arms, she gripped almost violently, her attention fluttering too fast for him to follow as,
“Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay. You’re okay,” Chat said. He shifted her weight slightly, hoping to relieve her discomfort. Her hold tightened. “You’re you.” He sucked in a breath. And smiled. “Promise.”
Whilst Ladybug reset the stage, erupting into a de-evilizing shout, Chat wished, longed to drag back the curtains. They landed on scene like space-invaders in a soap opera, swinging microphones and thrusting their cameras through the barrage of spectators. He fought to prevent his mouth morphing into a scowl.
His focus snapped back when the woman staggered, and his hand flew to her shoulder. Camera flare glittered in her irises.
Using her shoulder to manoeuvre her away from the gawk of their lenses, “Don’t worry,” he insisted. “That nausea you’re feeling, it’ll pass.”
The woman shook her head, brushing him off. She gestured to her ear.
In response, he tapped his own ear, then his mouth. Deaf?
Her expression filled with relief, laughter lines deepening. Yes, she signed back.
Everything’s going to be okay.
“Let me through!”
Chat spun, the woman chasing his eyeline to the raising female voice. Behind them, a kaleidoscope of butterflies chased across the sky, undoing the akuma’s (and a little bit of their own) damage.
“Please!” the stranger cried. “Please, I know her!”
“Hey!” He directed his answer at the crowd. “Don’t ignore her. Let her through!”
With some delay, they conceded. The crowd peeled apart, and before as much as a foot could fall in her wake, with a zip of Ladybug’s yo-yo, they wrestled against an impromptu barricade. Their grumbles were lost to the choked sound by Chat’s side.
He looked to her in alarm, but she was beaming. She patted his arm. Then, with surprising speed…
The couple crashed into one another.
Chat stepped back as the newcomer cradled the woman’s cheeks, as they enveloped the other in a fierce embrace, trembling with adrenaline and relief and joy and terror. Their palms held the weight of a lifetime of history, of memories unearthed, and love left to give. Though their knees buckled and their tears threatened to burst, they held on. Unyielding.
Chat watched on. So he could never begin to understand the feeling the awaited those he protected – that didn’t stop him fighting for it every single day.
“Are you okay?”
Ladybug sidestepped him, roaming him up, down, left to right, but before she could dwell any further, with more instinct than intent, her reached out to brush her hands, guiding her attention up.
With a laugh, “There’s knot a scratch on me, M’lady,” he said, and released her. “I’ve got you to thank for that.”
“I know. I-I-I’m so sorry. I swear, I-I won’t let it happen again.”
His face fell. “Wha—‘Sorry’? Ladybug.” She skirted his gaze. “I said you saved me. If you hadn’t broken me out—”
“If I hadn’t let go of my stupid yo-yo…”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have got caught? That was on me. Hey.” He reached for her, then thinking better of it, “Do you wanna talk?” he asked, softly. He glanced towards the expectant crowd, acutely aware the cameras had already begun rolling. “We’ll wrap this up quick, okay? Two minutes.”
As if one cue, Ladybug’s Miraculous flashed. Without responding, she cradled her ear and made a beeline for their audience. He allowed himself a beat before following her lead. He sprung to her side, arming himself with a grin, and the shuttering of lenses quadrupled. The couple had already launched their escape. Satisfied, Chat returned his look to the cameras, flashing a wave.
Blood pounded in his ears.
They exchanged a glance, and unlike his, Ladybug’s eyes widened with a purpose, asking for his approval. Chat leant towards her, delight rippling through the crowd as she closed the distance between them and hooked an arm through his.
“Please, only brief questions!” he said. “We’re kinda short on—”
“Ladybug! Right here! Why the recent surge of akuma alerts?” one voice demanded. “Is Hawk Moth growing more confident, or is the public losing its support?”
“Ladybug, what have you done to discover Hawk Moth’s true identity?”
Ladybug squeezed his arm a little tighter.
He squeezed his staff. His jaw stiffened like oven-baked clay.
“Hey, Ladybug—”
“Sorry, but has anyone got any questions they want to ask me?” Chat said, not kindly. He took a step ahead, and, as he shadowed his partner’s, fought to school his expression. “As I said, we don’t have enough time to answer complex question right now. We’ll respond to any and all of the public’s concerns live with Nadja Chamack next Tuesday. So, please…” But the victim and her partner were gone. His ring flared. “Oh, no. Would you look at that?”
And now, it was their turn to vanish.
“Wow, me too! Better disappear before we transform back!” Ladybug echoed.
She recalled her yo-yo, Chat his staff, and without another word, the pair broke into a sprint. They tore for the skies, voices crying out in their wake but carrying only so far in the cacophony. The tussle of wind and blaring of horns did well to mask his displeasure. He hit the tiles of an adjacent roof, equally protected from prying eyes.
“One day, I’m gonna…” he said, cheeks growing warm. Except, no sooner had he straightened than he realised Ladybug hadn’t dropped down to meet him. “Bug?”
He beat out a message. He wandered the cityscape for almost a full minute, gaze fluttering every which way for signs of her telltale red. Ladybug had chosen this vantage, of the eight or so the pair had claimed across the city: on a billboard overhead, his own likeness razed over him, lips tilted upwards in glee.
Only at the last second did he plummet behind the school. The transformation words were on his lips before the poor kwami even had chance to swallow, and, without wasting a second, Chat had staff in hand. His opened the phone app, hovered a finger over dial…
The staff landed by his side with a clink. He dragged his hands down his face with a smile. And sunk against the wall.
˚₊‧ʚ🐞ɞ‧₊˚
“Where are you, dude?” Nino called, just as his best friend seized him by the shoulders. Adrien grinned.
Rounding the corner, Alya rewarded him by thwacking him over the head. The boys parted, Adrien dusting his hair, but not without, “Aw, did Ady-Baby miss me? Does he need a hug?” Nino teased with his best Zombizou impression. Adrien started to defend his honour, then: “Seriously, dude. What gives? You just took off! Is this your way of auditioning to replace MIA-nette?”
“Is Marinette not with you?” he asked. “I saw her when she was leading people—”
“She’s cool.” Alya flashed her phone. “Just text back. Says she’s gone for a bathroom break.”
“That’s if she hasn’t already fallen in the bowl.”
The three glanced up.
Chloé, her eyes glued also to her phone, stalked down the distant end of the corridor. In an instant, they darted wide.
“Sorry!” she said, fingers flying to her mouth. “I was adding to my story. Old habits die slowly.”
“Isn’t it—”
“That’s fine, Chlo,” Adrien interjected.
Hard, Alya finished for her boyfriend, mouthing as Chloé slunk from view. Adrien brushed her off with a wave and a grin. “At least she’s trying.”
“Yeah, that’s one word for her…”
“Well,” Alya suddenly said, clapping her hands together. “I’ll go rescue MIA-nette. You two, on the other hand, clearly haven’t seen each for, how long? Five minutes?”
With a sheepish chuckle, Nino dropped the arm draped around Adrien’s neck.
“Go on,” she conceded. “Get. You must have plenty to catch up on.”
“Oh yeah, dude, like the fact I absolutely annihilated everyone at Gin Rummy…”
After an epic tale of betrayal, bravery, and bloodlust, Adrien dumped his bag and swung into an armchair, letting out a grateful sigh. They’d dropped on some seats in the library for the dwindling remainder of the day, though had they been forced to stand, he’d just as easily flopped onto a windowsill, or strewn himself across the radiator. He propped his head atop the armrest and wiggled his shoulders. Detransforming when wearing a binder was like being voluntarily slugged by a bag of bricks.
“This is what happens when you run amok,” Nino said. “Shoulda stuck with the crowd. We got free cookies. We even played Mecha when Als wasn’t grumbling about ‘missing’ everything.”
Scattered behind shelves, most scrolled absently; others chattered through stifled yawns. If they were Chloé, who’d stayed with Sabrina since Sabrina’s dad was busy remedying the situation, they animatedly narrated how they’d thrust themselves into harm's way to shield ‘poor, sweet Juleka’ from the walls’ implosion. She caught him looking, wasting no time in sticking her tongue out at him.
Whenever Queen Bee beat the cat to the punch, you could be certain Adrien would know about it.
“Unless that’s not why you can barely keep your eyes straight. What’s that I smell? Is that… Is that…” Nino stuck his nose in the air. “No. Not a whiff or radiance. And I don’t feel even the teeniest bit carefree. Something you wanna share?”
“Like the fact I skipped a shower this morning?”
“Come on. Her name must start with the same letter as something in this room. Please. Lemme guess. I’m literally on a roll.”
“If it does, my brain is too mushed up to think of an object that starts with ‘N’.”
“‘N’? Okay. Woah, man. I mean, I’m flattered but—"
“Nobody, Nino.” He but him with his elbow. “Nobody.”
But Nino had already whipped out his phone.
So it wasn’t precisely true on the no whos involved, but if he had come out with a ‘yes, there is a who, and that who is a wanted criminal’, Nino might have had a few more uncomfortable questions. At least, over scampering about Paris dressed in a fursuit, Nino placed Adrien’s seclusion as slightly likelier. He did have plenty of volunteers keeping him awake at night. The catch, they weren’t queuing up so much to snog him in the face as to slam him in it.
Leaning to get a closer look, “What are you doing now?” he moaned.
Nino battered him aside.
“Don’t mind me. Just letting everyone know I’ll be switching sides for this prom situ’. ‘Sorry… Als… Pals… before gals… XOXO…”
“Yeah, like I’m going,” Adrien said, smiling, but it made his friend stop typing, his mischievous grin falter.
“Shoot. Sorry about that, man.”
“Hmm? Oh, no, no, it’s fine.” When he failed to respond, expression still woven with sympathy, Adrien said, “Really. I’m just grateful I don’t have to do any more dress up.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
Nino gaped.
“Wait, who said anything about that? Wait, hold on. Are you for real? It’s, like… serious?” Covering his mouth, Adrien was suddenly grateful for their private nook in the corner. “No. Adrien, you’ve gotta help me. No, really! What am I gonna—hey, don’t laugh! What if I embarrass her? Shit, shit, shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Adrien!”
Wrong kind of suit, Adrien thought. Instead, enclosed in his friend’s iron-clad grip, “Nino, no offence, but I’m as new to this as you are.”
Nino’s gaze travelled to his footwear.
“Fair.”
“There is someone who might be able to help. An extra-special someone we know who’s familiar with fashion…?”
“Dude,” Nino whispered.
“Dude,” he said, nodding in satisfaction.
After that, Nino swiftly forgot his panic to a game of online chess, his phone occasionally resonating with the sound of artificial ivory. Adrien sank into his seat – another reason to be grateful for some secrecy – and launched the Ladyblog. Alya’s typing speed bordered on wizardry sometimes. But after scrolling idly, that familiar well widened inside his stomach.
He paused. She laughed back at him through the screen.
He’d taken this photo while on patrol a little over two months ago, back during they’re challenge of who could send Alya the dumbest picture. Ladybug had hated it on account of her eyes being opened at slightly different angles, and her mouth too wide. But for Chat, their competition had ended well before he sent it.
His cheeks flushed warm when something prodded his arm, Nino, dropping a beanie into his lap. He hadn’t even realised the fingers wrangling his hair.
He bumped him back affectionately and snapped the hair tie from his wrist.
The day he’d unearthed his friend’s hat collection, all his birthdays and Christmases had come at once. Literally. Nino still hadn’t figured out how to tell his relatives there was only one cap he particularly liked.
“Thank. God,” Nino finally boomed, vaulting from his seat as he was accompanied by a discordant choir of chairs. “If I have to stare at a single book a moment longer, my eyeballs are going to evaporate.”
Adrien tried responding when, “Wow, you do learn something,” another voice said. With a sweep of auburn, she emerged from behind a bookcase, Marinette in tow. Alya smirked. “Never heard anyone pronounce ‘phone’ that way before. Or are we spreading even more misinformation, now?”
He raised his hands. “I had no part in this.”
“Oh, don’t I know it,” Alya said, but she wasn’t looking at him. That smirk thinned as she perked up on her toes, tantalising her boyfriend with her closeness. “Girls before guys. ‘XOXO’,” she drawled, so soft he scarcely heard. Then, she spun in a 180, linking with Marinette.
Nino stopped dead, goldfish-mouthed, as the girls stalked ahead. Adrien trailed behind, though not without seizing the opportunity to smack him with his bag. “Come on, Romeo.”
At the entrance, discussions of next week’s dance, speedily dropped for Adrien’s benefit, turned to the afternoon’s Ultimate Mecha Strike tournament. Alya had outmatched Nino, as per usual. That wasn’t what surprised him. It was that, as the couple took turns recounting what he’d missed with trained ease, it became rapidly more apparent the story was as much for him as it was another.
“Did you find somewhere else to hide?” he asked. “Marinette?”
“Hmm? Oh. Yeah, I—the bathroom.”
Before he could respond, “We’ll see you two tomorrow then, yeah?” Alya said, as she melted her palm into Nino’s. She bumped his shoulder. “See how he fairs fighting for my hand. Rematch?”
“Rematch. But five euros says I come out on top tonight. Or ten. It could be ten.” Nino flailed under her watchful brow. “You’d vouch for me, right, dude? Wanna bet?”
Silence stretched between them.
“Sorry…” Adrien murmured, recoiling inwardly, to which Alya clapped in delight.
“Ha!”
“Wha—Well, okay, okay. Laugh all you want. But Dudette’s been giving me extra private lessons, and she says I show true promise.”
All eyes fell on Marinette.
“This true, girl?”
Preoccupied by the curb, Marinette started as if just having awoken from a dream. “I… Well…” She swung a glance in each of their directions. “Personally, I think what really matters is determination, not necessarily… not necessarily skill… But if he continued to train—”
“Stand down, soldier,” Alya said. “There’s one losing battle I want to see tonight, and it’s not—”
She was interrupted by a low growl, and Adrien’s attention left the dark-haired girl.
Placide, rolling down the car window, tapped his watch with thoughts fossilised beneath firm lines and an even firmer grip on the wheel.
“Yep, sorry. Be right with you!” Adrien called, but the couple were already taking leave.
Tipping his hat, “Sayonara, my dude. My dudette,” Nino said, and he mirrored the gesture. At least, the best you could with a beanie on your head. Alya waved by his side. Just before turning the corner, “Dudette!” he suddenly shouted. “Remind me! I’ll talk to you about something tomorrow!”
Chuckling, he turned to Marinette. “Nino was actually gonna ask—”
“I think I left something in my locker,” she blurted simultaneously. “Oh. Sorry. What were you—”
“That’s okay. I can come with you if you’d…?”
“What? Oh, no. Thank you, but you know, I’ll probably take a while. It’ll take me a while to r-r-r—it’ll take me a while to remember my code. It’s fine. Don’t leave your bodyguard waiting. You have a good evening though!” Her pitch clambered alongside each step, higher and higher, until, at the very top, she ducked under the caretaker’s reproachful stare.
The school doors slammed shut. Adrien lowered his wave. The smile washed from his face. He reached for the limo’s handle.
And yet, despite everything, despite Marinette’s lingering advice, despite his bodyguard’s impatience, despite his own impatience to reach tonight’s patrol and talk to Ladybug, his next step wavered. The school arced above him. He’d made this decision before, back on his first day, and today, it was just as easy.
He extended his wave to his bodyguard, plastering his face with apology, and he broke for the building.
˚₊‧ʚ🐞ɞ‧₊˚
Marinette didn’t hear him, not as he slunk into the locker room and took chase. He found her on the bench, Marinette’s name already on his lips when the girl jumped:
“Oh. Hi,” she breathed, at the same time.
Itching his ear like this might stop its exponential pinkening, Adrien laughed, and relief flooded him when she followed his lead.
“Sorry,” she said, glancing down. “Again. I just expected everywhere to be empty. You’re not going home?”
He dropped to a crouch, smiling faintly.
“My father won’t mind if I’m only delayed a few minutes,” he lied. “If it’s help with your code you need, I’ve been in a few tight spots before. Lockers, I mean. I’m sure I could get yours open.”
“Well, I might—might be able to remember. I’ll see.”
She stepped towards her locker, shielding Adrien’s view as he rose behind her, and toyed with the digits. After about ten seconds, the hinges revolted with a low moan.
“Hey, well done. Oh, I just remembered. About Nino’s question…” Adrien began, but his sentence fell away when, beneath a bundle of innocuous books and stationary, Marinette tugged out a dark fabric.
Breathless, Adrien roamed the jacket.
“He… He was going to ask…”
Hugging it to herself, “Ask?” she repeated.
“Who is that for?”
Marinette bowed her head. “I-I know it’s a bit much,” she said. She took a step back. “I wanted to give it you in person, but—”
You. What?
“—then I thought… well, I thought you’d feel embarrassed and not know how to react so I-I was just going to drop it by your house. Not that you have to come! I know you can’t make the dance. You don’t even have to wear it! I made it dark so it wouldn’t stand out. That’s if your father… y-you know. I just thought, you said you needed a little help balancing your proportions how you like them, and we’re all going to be dressed up and things.” She opened her arms. “It’s not fair for you to be left out.”
Except Adrien was lost.
Lost in the details, he retreated so he could absorb everything, following every curve as though tracing his friend’s phantom touch. His chest squeezed, almost painfully as the image alighted in his mind: the silk enwrapping his frame, him spinning circles about the school atrium, gushing with untapped euphoria. As he continued to stare, warmth welled up behind his eyes, threatening to spill.
He forced himself to look away. The rest of his body went cold.
“Hey—”
“Sorry,” she said, a jump in her pitch. “Lost myself. I’m honestly just so relieved you like it. You don’t have to try it on now, but what do you think of the colour? I wasn’t too sure I’d made the right decision. Is there anything you’d like me to change?”
Expelled in an instant, there was no denying the dark apparition that had passed over her features.
“I wouldn’t dare,” he said. “You know, you don’t need to apologise. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s no biggie.” He’d hate to think of anyone denying their feelings for his sake. “Besides, if you’re worried about something, it wouldn’t be like me giving help,” he persisted, leaning in conspiratorially, “only returning a favour.”
She stepped back. “No, no. What I was thinking about is the no biggie. Just a brain fart, that’s all. This is about you, and you need to answer my questions. Is it too short? Too long? I can extend the hemline with a border. What do you think? I also wasn’t sure about the—”
He swamped his friend in a hug, snatching the words from her mouth.
A heartbeat passed between them before, with a soft murmur, she squeezed back.
“I couldn’t think of anything more perfect, Marinette.”
Then he snook the jacket from her grasp.
“Hey. Wait, where are you going?”
Without looking back, Adrien scurried for the hills, slamming a hand against the lockers to catch his momentum as he swung around the corner. Marinette’s footsteps raced behind him, calling out affectionate obscenities.
At the doors to the girl’s bathroom, Adrien turned, and Marinette near rammed into him.
“What are you…?”
He pinned the jacket to his front, swishing the tail like an exotic bird.
“Oh God.”
Beaming, he paced his friend, sending her shuffling in circles, whilst his expression fought to maintain scandal, seduction, scorn. With each pose, he framed his face, chuckling as she tried to grab at his arm. Seamlessly, he reversed the hold, and, suddenly, they were in dance. Adrien swung out, and let go, spinning across the room.
“If this isn’t enough to sweeten the pot,” he said, breathlessness creeping into his voice, “I don’t know what is.”
He reached for his staff as a prop. His fingers only halted mid-air when they made contact with just that – air. Of course, he wasn’t transformed.
“I…” Marinette snickered into her palm, then, that palm shielding her vision, sunk down against the door. “You’re terrifying me.”
“Oh, come on.”
He dropped down opposite her, taking care to drape the jacket over his legs. He’d try it on for real another time. Something so special couldn’t be tainted by his teasing.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Adrien said. “I get it, if you really don’t want to. But can you explain why?”
“I just think, it’s not in anyone’s control, so what’s worth worrying?”
“I have unusual connections.”
With half-baked amusement, “Not this kind,” Marinette murmured. “I mean it. I express worry about them, I sow doubt. Whatever way you look at it, it’s only an act of betrayal.”
Oh.
When he failed to respond, mind tinkering away and his focus turning to the balled fabric, Marinette lowered her back to the ground.
“We express doubt, we give in to fear. We give in to fear, we become…” She exhaled. “That’s why I can’t.”
He nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. Understanding more than she could ever know. Slowly, he crossed his legs, and he rolled onto his side.
“I can’t speak for Ladybug,” he said, before adding, “or Chat Noir. But doing crazy stuff, taking the risk to protect people, that’s their job. Their superheroes. So ours isn’t half as demanding, but you’re not wrong for having doubts. You’re sane. Bottling up your emotions is exactly what Hawk Moth wants. That’s how they get flushed out. Believe me, nothing stays buried forever.”
At that, Marinette glanced over to him, just enough to offer him a meaningful look.
“No conflict was ever won with apathy,” Adrien went on. “That frustration, that anger, even your fear, you can use it. As ammunition. Just like today.”
“What—what do you mean?”
“Earlier. I saw you, how fast you were. You were guiding everyone, looking every sort of way for any signs of danger. It was incredible. And all because you were scared of what might have happened if you didn’t.”
Technically, Adrien didn’t usually think before transforming and bounding into danger, but that was with his Miraculous. He tried to imagine how it must have felt, to not bear the omnipresent weight of responsibility, that spur pushing him into action, that reminder that, whatever he did feel, it could never amount to the victim’s fear. But he doubted Marinette knew how to live without that feeling either. So Marinette wasn’t a holder, she wasn’t leaping from roof to roof by yo-yo or sparring with her staff, and yet, “Just seeing you, it put me on my own two feet at a time I thought it might be impossible.”
He inhaled, sending oxygen to the gaping hole left behind.
Marinette smiled.
God. It made him soar.
Altogether, she sat up on her knees. “Are you serious?”
“Am I—Damn it, Marinette,” he breathed, grinning. “Sometimes, I wish you believed the impact you have on other people.” He rose to his feet, folding the jacket over his arm. “I mean, this? It’s…”
“It’s?” Marinette prodded after a few spare seconds, injecting her voice with humour.
He swallowed, extending a hand. “Beautiful.”
Marinette eyed the offer. Finally, she seemed to decide something to herself. She accepted. And just before releasing her, so quietly he almost missed it,
“I believe you.”
˚₊‧ʚ🐞ɞ‧₊˚
With the wink of each passing streetlamp, the tighter Adrien’s chest squeezed. Their radiance, snatched away in a millisecond, tantalised him with their closeness. He rested an elbow on the car windowsill and breezed across a gymnasium’s worth of street signs to vault, bike barriers to cast. Moving would help him think. Getting out would help him think. Except now, for at least the next few hours, he was trapped.
He twisted his ring.
A familiar head peaked out from beneath the bundle of fabric. He zapped through the jacket, coming to land right between his eyes, and rendered his feline presence impossible to ignore. Nor was it ever when his needs weren’t met.
“Hi to you too,” Adrien said.
“You’re grumpy. Why are you grumpy? You were being quite the little flirt only five minutes ago, even without my help.”
“Flirt? No I wasn’t—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Plagg cut in, using his nose as a springboard as he returned to the air. Adrien pretended to swipe him. “Come on. We talked about this. Or someone talked to you about this, probably not me. Expressing your true feelings… Peace and love… Yada yada yada…”
“Well, it definitely wasn’t Father,” Adrien murmured. He removed the phone from his pocket, holding it close just in case his bodyguard decided to roll down the divider. “What’s his favourite saying? To spare the ‘idle chit-chat?’” He scoffed.
Unsurprisingly, Plagg dragged his paws down his face. “Oh, what’s new? Kid, I’m sorry. I mean, we know he’s this and he’s that and he’s awful. But you can’t be hung up on him again. Take a minute. Smell the roses. The weather’s great, you’ve got no homework, and if you do, I’ll just eat it. Don’t be wasting time thinking about some grumpy old, pardon my French—”
“Meanie,” Adrien supplied.
“Right. It’s like poison. You could be thinking about, hmm, I don’t know, literally anything else. Like food. That’s my humble suggestion.” A faraway look possessed him as Plagg’s mind delivered him to a land of tasty concoctions.
Adrien nudged him away, his smile a tad lopsided. “Thanks, meanie. But it’s not really Father I’m worried about.”
“No? Well, I know it’s not Ladybug, because you’ve certainly never needed an invitation to blab about her.”
“Rude.”
“But true.”
“Okay…” He shook out his shoulders as though in an effort to dispel Plagg’s eagle-eyed stare. Tilting his head skyward, “Marinette,” he grumbled. “It’s Marinette.” When the indiscreet kwami failed to respond, he had no choice but to continue, “I guess, I’m just so used to her being crazy upbeat, I forget sometimes… What am I saying? No one can be upbeat all the time. What I mean is, I hadn’t realised she was so afraid of voicing her feelings. I know we’re not as close as I’d like us to be, like, I miss a lot. I just hope she has somebody to talk to. I think there might be something more, something she’s afraid of telling me.”
“Wh—what do you mean?”
Adrien thought back to an ordinary day, not two weeks ago. An ordinary day when Adrien couldn’t breathe. When he’d stumbled into the room that was supposed to be empty and, at the tip of those words – “Are you okay?” – he’d sobbed so hard into Marinette’s shoulder he feared she might never look at him the same.
But she didn’t. Thank God, she didn’t.
“I wonder… Every time we speak, she’s always shifting the focus to others. I always took that to be her shyness, and her kindness every time she springs to help.” His smile waned. “I know how terrifying it is to be seen. So, what if there’s a part she’s trying to hide? Maybe—"
“I don’t want to put words into her mouth,” Plagg cut in, “but Marinette said it herself. She’s worried for the city, kid, just like everybody else. You, especially. Listen… Are you sure it’s really her you’re worried about? Because it sounds to me like, because things today didn’t go exactly as you planned, you’re filling in problems elsewhere. I’m sure you’ll fix things up with Ladybug.”
“No! I mean, I will. But this is different. Marinette, she—she’s not like everybody else. If she’s truly that worried about protecting Paris, if she continues to doubt Ladybug and I…” He yanked off his beanie, raking a hand through his hair, thoughts booming with terrible visions. “Today, she tried to help Ladybug and Chat Noir, and I-I encouraged her! God. Why did I say all that? I was telling her to do a superhero’s job. I was telling her to put herself in harm’s way—”
“Woah, woah, woah.” Plagg swam into his field of view. “Chill. No one’s done anything yet, have they? This is fixable. All she needs is a chat with Chat, and end of—Adrien, WATCH OUT!”
He lurched from the window, but his seatbelt snapped against the movement. Nothing but glass lay between him and the beat of its wings. With horrid warning gaped wide, he was powerless to watch the akuma hurtle past the car.
“It’s not for me,” he said. Then, realising what that meant, he snatched at his belt. “Hey, stop!”
He rapped on the divider, which slowly, infuriatingly, teeth-grindingly rolled down. Plagg dived into his jacket just in time. His bodyguard made a gruff sound that vaguely resembled a question.
“I’m really sorry. I’ll apologise to Father for all of the delays. I just need to go get my homework. Please. I won’t be longer than five minutes. I promise.”
His bodyguard flicked up a button, and the child lock came flying free. Not allowing himself an inch to breathe, Adrien fell out of the car door. He geared up to a sprint, his jacket frantically tussling against the gale, and already chartering the sky, ducked into an alley.
A minute already gone. The transformed Chat Noir summoned his staff to scale the nearest apartment complex. An ugly gasping and expanding thing, the knot in his chest grew tighter as he scoured street after street. With a shove of momentum, he hit an adjacent roof and pushed onwards.
“Come on, come on,” he hissed. Chat kicked off the tiles once more: he vaulted through the open air, breeze rushing through his fingertips. His lips sharpened to a determined line as his attention ranged left, then right.
He’d misread the distance.
“Shi—”
His boots scraped the roof tiles beneath him. An inch, and he would have made it. A howl, and he was in free-fall. The ground roared towards him.
Thankfully, he wasn’t so shot out of his gourd to forget to extend his staff. Sloppy. Stupid. But stupidly experienced in these predicaments. Clinging onto his staff to break some speed – there it was – he dropped to the ground and rolled. His suit absorbed most of the fall, and, spitting out a breath, his boots soon pounded against concrete in monophony with the rush of his ever-hurrying heart.
With a cry, he summoned his “cataclysm!” at his side, and bolted. He bolted with such ferocity his upper-middle could have been detached from his legs, and he wouldn’t have even noticed.
Claws held aloft, just when he thought he’d got it, the akuma swung around to alter its trajectory. He stumbled, almost lost his footing, but adrenaline, fear, confusion were swirling a cocktail through his veins. He seized a lamppost to shove himself back on course.
Down a set of steps he darted. The dusty stench of the canal clambered inside his nostrils. His ears pricked. Was that sniffling? He raised his cataclysm, though he could scarcely make out his own figure amidst the mist.
Squinting to adjust his heightened vision, he trod towards the source of the sound: a bowed head. As he advanced, it appeared to shudder.
The akuma.
He hurled himself forward. The girl lifted her head from her arms just in time, tear-soaked eyes brimming with terror as her name scalded the air.
With dawning realisation, “Marinette, move!” Chat yelled.
She scrambled to her feet. Chat tore for her.
His breath hitched in the back of his throat; he wrenched his cataclysm back. Too close, if he’d withdrawn a second later, he’d have scathed her bare skin. Clutching his own wrist, still alight with energy, the way one wields an atomic weapon, he slowly lifted his gaze. And staggered back.
“No, no, no, no.” At her side, Marinette crushed her pen with such ferocity that, across her knuckles, her efforts flashed white. “No!”
“Marinette, it’s me. It’s Chat Noir.” He couldn’t risk another step closer. But he still needed his cataclysm to destroy the akuma. Burning with helplessness, “Come on,” he begged, over his friend’s incessant hum, “you can do this. You can resist.” But Marinette had lost almost all connection to the outside world. This fact cemented itself when her eyes crammed shut, when her jaw popped with exertion.
The distance between them throbbed like an open wound. “I’m here,” he called. “Marinette, I’m here!”
She couldn’t hear him.
She was running out of time.
He snatched at his memory for pieces of their earlier conversation, if only he could discern some obscure clue, anything to alleviate her distress.
He could relinquish his cataclysm. He could rely on his words...
But words could snap, could break, could trip on the edge of his tongue when he needed them the most. He’d already failed her.
Just like you’ve already failed Ladybug.
“Chat!”
His name brought him back, but the wound between them stretched deeper. She reached for him. Chat stared down; his hands trembled violently. It hit him with such staggering strength, he choked aloud. What was he doing?
Hell. What was he doing?
Chat dropped low, pressed his cataclysm to the ground. A thin crack beat a path towards the canal, but he was faster: he was beside her. In one hand, Marinette wielded the pen; the other, Chat carefully took in his. Marinette released a low, guttural cry.
“I’m here,” Chat whispered. This time, he truly meant it. “I’ve got you.”
Tears mopped Marinette’s cheeks, blazon pink, as she tilted her forehead towards his. Chat let each remonstrance, each cry, flood through him as he spoke above the tide:
“I’m so sorry. I don’t understand what you’re going through. I don’t know what to say to make everything okay. I don’t even know if those words exist. But if I can promise you anything, it’s this. Whatever happens, I’ll still find a way to bring you back. If you can hear me… This cat’s going nowhere fast. I’ll be here.” With a delicate claw, he brushed aside the tear tucked beneath her chin. “I’ll save you.”
Marinette had stopped moving. A sob clung to the lid of Chat’s mouth as he squeezed her palm, a silent oath, and braced for the inevitable.
Marinette shoved him back.
And she hurled the pen to the ground.
“Leave me alone!” she screamed.
The akuma released its possessed object. It chased across the sky, a parting-kiss away. Then, Chat was in her arms. Marinette ensnared him in a fierce embrace, hugged him and didn’t let go. First momentarily stunned, relief washed over him as he buried himself in the crook of her shoulder.
“Chat,” Marinette breathed. “I was almost akumatized—I was almost akumatized—I heard—I nearly lost control—he knew something was wrong—he told me—”
“Hey, hey, hey.” Chat massaged a hand up and down her back. “Shh. Don’t speak for a minute. Just a minute, okay?”
“You’re going to detransform. You need to go.”
Chat’s hand froze. Marinette glanced up.
“I’m not going anywhere. Come on.” Carefully, he ushered her towards the steps. Their stone handrail provided an opportune barrier. Gesturing towards his chest, “In and out,” he murmured. “I’ll be right here.”
Chat waited on her nod before slipping behind the wall, sinking to the floor.
“Claws in.”
Plagg materialised right in front of him. Adrien summoned a hunk of camembert from his pocket, enabling his kwami to start nibbling away, as he spoke up,
“This wasn’t your fault.”
He outlined the bumps of his ring, awaiting her reply. When none came, he continued, “Marinette, you rejectedan akuma. All alone! Don’t you know how incredible that is? You did everything you could and you won. You made Hawk Moth feel small; you took away his one power.”
Nothing.
“Come on. Please. Can you respond to me?” Eyes widening, he looked to Plagg. “Marinette?” This time, his voice had a different edge. “Marinette? Are you okay?”
Dropping the cheese, Plagg zipped around the staircase. A moment later, “Oh no,” he whispered.
Already on his feet, Adrien stormed towards her.
“Wait! You’re not transformed!”
But Adrien was already crouched beside her.
“She’s passed out,” he snapped, without looking back. “Oh, God.” Then he began yanking his arms from his sleeves.
˚₊‧ʚ🐞ɞ‧₊˚
The sweet tinge of sundown burned into his retinas. As the sun cascaded from the skies, Chat cast his attention to those wonders above. A brilliant burst of watercolour, where strokes of crimson and orange blended in perfect matrimony, hung like God’s palm outstretched. Downstairs, he wondered whether Marinette had awoken yet.
About half an hour ago, he’d hoisted her up in his arms and ventured back to the bakery. After laying her atop her mattress and drawing the blanket up to her chin, he’d scribbled down a note: I’m keeping my promise. BRB - Chat x
He’d almost forgotten to remove Adrien’s jacket.
Then, he’d bolted back to the limo (“got that homework”), and on returning home, Nathalie had given him a stern look and a sterner word enquiring about his piano practice (“yes, of course, sorry”) before heralding him upstairs.
Adrien had just been propping up his phone on the piano when his bedroom door screeched open.
“Father.”
His phone fell behind the stand.
Adrien stood to attention. In his trained periphery, Plagg threw himself behind the sofa.
Gabriel Agreste stalked into the room. With hands folded behind his back, he perused his son’s possessions, the solar glare briefly rendering his eyes sharp, white slits. Adrien bit the inside of his cheek.
“I’m sorry, I would have called. I wasn’t sure you weren’t busy.”
“Your school was at the centre of another attack,” his father rejoined, the lines of his face staid. He advanced towards the table tennis table, picked up a ping pong ball, and bent to examine it. “Do I need a reason to express concern for my daughter’s wellbeing?” He cocked his head in challenge.
Adrien’s cheeks flushed. “Wha—No. I meant… With this new collection, I know you’ve been occupied.”
“You should know that when it comes to my work, family takes priority.”
“Yes, of course. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”
How odd it felt for his father to use such a word – family – to describe what they were. Ever since that day, such a word had been tainted with blasphemy. His father once reviled him for it, as if it meant mocking his mum’s very memory: how could they ever be a family again, he’d cried, without a mother?
Gabriel released the ball, bouncing it across the table. “Nathalie tells me you came to no harm.”
So she didn’t mention how horrendously late I was.
“No. The villain couldn’t get—” Adrien watched the ball bound over the edge and, instinctively, ducked to seize it “—close enough.”
“And your classmates? Safe, I presume?”
“Yes. My friend, Marinette, she helped to guide everyone indoors.”
Gabriel took a moment for the pinch of a smile to slide into the corner of his cheek. Adrien stared down at the ball in his hands, tracing its curve with his thumb.
“I’m glad. You seem to mention this Marinette girl more with each passing day. A good friend, I’m led to presume.”
“Yes. She’s… brilliant.”
“She’s the bakers’ daughter, hmm? I wonder, it must take a monumental amount of courage to take charge as you describe her. Not easily scared, that one, by all accounts?”
Adrien raised his chin, resolute under his father’s scrutiny. “She’s just as brave as Ladybug.”
Gabriel’s smile widened.
“Undoubtably.”
With a curt farewell, Gabriel had not long made himself scarce, and Adrien set his phone to music and laid it carefully beside the piano before dashing out of the window in normal fashion – except, typically, he was rushing to meet his partner.
Ladybug.
The unbidden reminder opened up a well inside his stomach, the day’s events lapping in like water. And what accompanied it, but a tide of fury: at Hawk Moth, at those damn reporters for spouting whatever clickbait might next go viral, at every paper in the city that benefited from the victims’ akumatization – whether it be using the attacks as grounds for his partner’s incompetence, speculating about their shared dating history, or even making reaches about the victims’ personal lives.
He’d recently seen an article that suggested queer individuals were twice as like to become akumatized. During Pride Month, nonetheless. Rather than citing a credible source, the article went on to string a tenuous connection between identifying as queer and being mentally ill. Ladybug’s reaction had rivalled his. The next day, they’d taken to the city’s billboards to embellish them with pride flags. Ladybug hadn’t understood his amusement decorating a billboard of the famous model.
But he shook himself. Now, perched atop Marinette’s balcony, he fought to drag his thoughts back to his surroundings. He recalled from when he’d left her the drowsy tilt of her head; the fine blackthorns of her hair strewn across rosied cheeks.
She didn’t need his anger, or a retelling of his lady’s doubt. She needed him on top form tonight.
So top form he would be.
The hatch burst open. He leapt up with a cry.
His appearance suspended Marinette in motion. Still rocky from sleep, the girl’s voice broke as it bridged the distance: “Chat Noir?” she hissed, as she snapped the clasp. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be out on patrol?”
“Ladybug’ll understand. Besides, I made you a promise, didn’t I?”
“But you already kept it. Your day’s been long enough without me in it. Please,” stalking towards him, “look at me,” she demanded.
Moonlight washed over her.
Blue eyes, they crashed over Chat like the weight of sea spray. Something bubbled in his throat—
“I’m right here. I’m not going to get akumatized. You don’t have to worry.”
—a warm kind of surprise.
“Marinette, look at me… Do you really think that’s why I’m here?”
Silence stretched between them. They beheld the other until he no longer remembered how to breathe, and she must have seen something in him because she finally said, “Do you want to at least sit whilst you wait?”
He threw her a wink. “If I’d known the place did table service, I would have come a whole lot more often.”
“Like you don’t already. You’re almost as big a fan of my pa’s chouquettes as I am.”
Grinning, he dropped down to the wall and swivelled his legs to dangle over the streets below. Marinette bent beside him. Her feet tucked beneath her, she surveyed the streets below: the rush of cars blitzing here, there and everywhere; the shrieks, hysteric with humour, that itched at Chat’s reflexes. He followed her gaze.
Despite his suit’s resistance to cold, he found himself massaging his thighs.
“I just want you to know,” he began, “you don’t need to explain. I meant what I said, even though I don’t know how much you heard. This wasn’t your fault. Whatever the reason—”
“You were wrong,” she interjected, “when you said I rejected the akuma alone.”
His hands froze. He looked up. “What?”
“I have no idea how you knew, but you did. Fuck. I wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t.”
“No, no, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m no Ladybug: I don’t have the Miraculous of Creation, I don’t know what to say or do to make things better. What you did, what I saw you do alone, was one of the strongest things I’ve ever seen.”
“Strong?” She laughed. “All I accomplished was letting him in. I was this close to losing control. I think, deep down, I wanted to—to forget. I… I just wanted everything to stop.”
He thought of her bottomless optimism, the smile she could proffer should anyone ask for it. For the first time, he saw the gap between his own teeth.
“I know,” he said.
Through eyes unseeing, Chat watched the cars below. As their truths lay scattered between them, they’d thrown the first stone. Together. His focus sharpened when he glanced to her hand. She knew he was here. She knew he’d stay for however long she needed. So why, not in hers, did his hand still feel empty?
Marinette pressed into him.
Instinctively, he stirred, heart kicking into a gallop.
And yet, seeing the subtle rise and fall of her chest, the droop of her eyelids, the soft quirk of her lips, Chat’s motion stilled. With a deliberate exhale, he pressed back. The sounds of the city had subsided to a fleeting thump, thump, thump, and nothing could reach them up here besides a tender breeze. It ruffled through his hair, traced a sketch along his face. He closed his eyes.
When he finally came around some minutes later, Marinette had a pad in her lap and was furiously jotting something down. Chat tilted his chin up to catch a glance.
In a flash, she tossed the pad and pencil onto her chair.
“What were you…” Chat began, sitting up to reach for what she’d been working on, but she seized him back by the arm.
“Chat.” The abrupt disquiet in her voice reduced the pad to a distant memory. “Come on. You’re tired.”
“Are you?”
Releasing him, “No…” she said.
“Well, neither am I.” He swung his legs up to cross them on the wall, facing her. “I’ve got the suit, remember? I’m basically invulnerable.”
She turned. “Yeah. Right.”
“If you want me to leave, I will. But I’m getting the impression you think I should want to leave. Am I right?”
“I don’t want you to leave,” she said.
“But?”
“After the fight today… You took another big risk. I-I saw it in the news. Doesn’t it kill you to be—” She gestured to him. “—like this? Don’t you just want go home and be, I don’t know, normal?”
He couldn’t tell her that civilian life for Adrien Agreste was never normal.
“What is normal? I think I like this better.”
She didn’t seem convinced.
With a sigh, he leant forward, threading his arms over his knees. “I know everyone thinks the best part of being a superhero is the invulnerability: the freedom to kick ass, defy every law, ‘save Paris.’
“Ladybug and I, we got out every day, we fight, and believe me, I do love it. I love being able to protect people and make a difference. To feel like what I do actually matters. Like I…” He stopped himself before continuing. “But no one questions it anymore. We’re still expected to go home and be normal, and sometimes, that’s the worst part. Sometimes, I think without being here like this, with you, or Ladybug, I wouldn’t cope with the ‘normal’ stuff.”
“So me… being here with you… That’s helpful?”
He tilted his head. “In a way. Still, I don’t expect you to—”
Except Marinette was already vanishing beneath her trap door.
“I’ll be two secs!” she whispered, and he paused his answer by pressing a finger to the air. He smiled at the ground. What could she be up to this time?
Moments later, his staff beeped by his side.
“Hey, Kitty. Sorry I couldn’t respond to your messages. Something’s come up, but we’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”
At the melancholy in her voice, the well in his stomach widened. He stared at her icon, features aglow, and blinked rapidly. That picture, he’d taken on their first patrol. On the surface, there was no need for concern: just because some nights he couldn’t bear to return to his room didn’t mean she should feel the same. This was hardly the first time she’d skipped out.
“I need your help.”
He looked back at his staff, but there had only been one message.
The hatch burst open again, except this time, it didn’t take him nearly as much by surprise. Marinette rose her head with a grin – and in her hand, a steaming plate of croissants.
His mouth watered.
Closing the latch behind her, “Excuse some of the more… interesting specimens,” Marinette said. “These ones usually get donated, but after my fiasco yesterday, there’s a lot more where that came from.”
He chuckled as she landed beside him. She immediately scarfed up one with a suspiciously-shaped addition. “Dare I ask?”
“Safe to say, I was the one feeling a bit flaky.”
He took a croissant before she could suspend his privileges. “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling butter.”
She pretended to smack him, to which he bowed under her, ejecting a speel of apology. When he rose, his cheeks ached, and his smile faltered somewhat.
Marinette’s softened. “Something on your mind?”
Before responding, he took a deliberate bite. Considering Marinette’s worry for his and his partner’s wellbeing, was it really the smartest move to raise his concerns out loud? Except, even as he asked himself this, he knew his mind was already made up. Marinette had been honest with him. The least he could do was offer the same curtesy.
“I just got a message from Ladybug,” he said. “Something came up.”
“Oh. Is that a problem? You don’t see each other every night, do you?”
“No, no, only every few.” He took another bite, although he barely processed the taste. “We just didn’t get a chance to catch up earlier, that’s all, and she… she seemed like she had something she needed off her chest.”
Marinette shifted slightly beside him. “I’m sure she’ll reach out to you if she has a problem. Maybe she just needed some time to mull it over?”
“Yeah. Maybe. Yeah, it does kinda seem like she’s avoiding me on purpose.” He inserted a laugh to keep himself from sounding too self-pitying, expecting Marinette to return it. She didn’t. Her expression turned calculating as he went on, “Even if I can’t tell her the specifics, I can always tell her how I feel. I just hope she feels the same, or at least enough to tell me when she doesn’t want to. You know?”
“I can’t pretend to speak for her but… You said you fight side by each other’s side almost every day. You must trust in each other a lot more than just your emotions. Not ‘just’ emotions, but—”
He nodded. “No, you’re right. I’d give literally anything to keep her safe. I think she knows that.”
“She does.”
At the finality in her tone, he looked to her, but her hair shielded any chance of reading her expression. That was until, whipping the hair from her face, she turned to say, “I owe you one by the way.”
“You do, don’t you?”
Marinette wasted no time going in for a second swipe.
“No, no. No IOUs,” he amended. “Except if it’s the pastry kind, then I’ll take a hundred. Actually, that does remind me. I’ve been thinking. I’ve already got you the bestest name—”
“‘Bestest’?”
“For if you did happen to get akumatized.”
Marinette deadpanned him.
“But hear me out.” He hopped from the wall and framed the word with a wide gesture. “How about… Meganette?”
She squinted, giving him her not-amused-face, as she joined him. “That’s dreadful. What am I, Godzilla?”
“Do better, then.”
“Given the absolutely terrible circumstances, I’d rather not think about being akumatized right now, thank you very much. But… if I was, hypothetically, to get evilized, it’d be an even dumber name like… Miss Cucumber, or—oh! Water Woman. So I could frighten you off.”
“Very mature,” Chat said.
“Yeah, like I’m the one who suggested I get akumatized.”
“Fair.” He chuckled. “I do actually have one request. If any other time, you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’ll let someone know. Your friends, your family, me, whoever. Can you do that?”
She nodded. “Promise.”
“You’re not having me on? You swear—”
“God! I promise,” she groaned, stepping back. “Come on. Bed. Now.”
Chat’s attention hovered next to her: the drawing pad lying skywards, and an illustration of a sleeping kitty. Thoughtlessly, Marinette tore the drawing out and folded it into his hand.
“Here. It’s in ink.”
Warmth flushed Chat’s features. He stared down at the little scrap of paper for what felt like years, driven dizzy by the multitude of words popping and fizzing inside of him, threatening to bubble over. Ultimately, as he tucked the sketch into his breast pocket, “Thanks, Meganette,” he said. “Shit. Sorry. ‘Marionette’: that’s it! That’s your name!”
“Actually, it’s Water Woma—” A yawn cut her short. “Alright,” she said, trapping the sound. “I won’t say it again.” She unhooked the trap door. “Go home.”
Meeting her hushed volume, “Okay, okay. Oh, wait,” Chat added. “Earlier, you said Hawk Moth knew something was wrong. Did you mean anything by that in particular, or…?
“Did I? I don’t even remember saying that. I guess it was just nonsense? Probably.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t blame you.” Chat scooted over to the edge of the roof, summoning his staff from behind. He waited a moment longer, as long as he could, testing the silence. Finally, “Goodnight, Mari,” he said.
“You too, Chat. And—”
Just as he vanished into the night.
“—thank you. For staying.”
˚₊‧ʚ🐞ɞ‧₊˚
The following day, Adrien awoke with his body in pieces.
Pushing onto his back, “Ah, fuck,” he groaned, as he crossed his arms across his face. He hissed between his teeth: nettles wracked him crown to toe. He attempted shifting the weight between his shoulders.
“Ugh. Fuck me.”
“What’s the matter with you?” an unhelpful voice asked. “Haven’t heard that sound since Big Bird.”
“Big… What, the dinosaurs?”
“Well, I was going for Pharoah and the whole mummy thing, but either-or.”
Adrien didn’t need to disturb his arm-barrier to remember the special delivery they’d returned to last night. He screwed up his nose. Chloé. It was all well and good her encouraging Plagg’s acquired taste when she didn’t have to live with it.
But to answer his question, he had no idea. If not his binder, and he’d never sustained an injury the rejuvenating powers of the Miraculous couldn’t heal, what?
Tilting his head to the side, “Dead…” he murmured.
“That’s great!” Plagg plopped onto the sheet, crossing his paws behind his head. He sighed. “About time we got some rest.”
With a moan, the remainder of Adrien’s limbs followed suit and spilled over the side of the bed. The duvet went with him, and Plagg took to the air with a yelp. Adrien locked his knees against the mattress to stabilise his footing, forcing exaggerated blinks.
Plagg harrumphed. “Should have known. No rest—”
“—for the wicked,” he finished, just as he buried his face in the sock draw.
“Excuse me?”
Bang. Scraping the back of his head, Adrien started to attention. He glanced to his companion, which was now empty space. Gabriel Agreste appraised him with narrowed eyes.
“I—Father. Good morning.”
“I noticed your tardiness to breakfast this morning.”
His hand returned to the nape of his neck. “Oh. I-I’m sorry. I must have slept through my alarm. I’m a little tired, that’s all.”
“Tired?” With faster reflexes than a Miraculous holder, his fingers rested beneath Adrien’s chin. He tilted him skywards for inspection. His throat closed – for possibly the first time, he felt grateful for the weakness of his Adam’s apple. “Far too pale. Are you ill? Nauseas?”
Adrien forgot how to move. It was only when his father released him to mutter about, “public school implementing hygiene procedures,” that he staggered forward.
“No, no. I under-slept. I’m fine, I promise.”
The look Gabriel gave him stalled his approach. “Then we have another problem entirely,” he said. “Fortunately, I’ve already taken action to relieve you of your afternoon schedule. Vincent is dismissed.”
“Di-dismissed?”
“Yes. I visited you this morning, not on account of your unpunctuality, but to inform you Gabriel’s assets are due to go up for auction.”
“Vincent’s gone? But why—” His heart skipped a beat.
His father had already made for the door. It was only, squeezing the handle, that he glanced back. And had he not seen it for himself, he wouldn’t have believed it. His father. Smiled. Actually smiled! Not a strange arrangement of teeth with an upturned lip, but one as real, as honest as he remembered.
He’d all but begun to doubt his memories’ integrity.
“Is there anything else?” Gabriel asked, with a glint of amusement.
Adrien stood in place before remembering he still needed to respond. Even without a mirror, he knew he looked just like him when he said, “No. No, Father,” and slowly, as if testing muscles under-exercised, broke into a grin.
“Very well. You’ve left Nathalie long enough, don’t you think?” The door clicked shut behind him.
Auctioned.
Adrien planted his hands at his hips. And barked out a laugh of disbelief.
Auctioned.
Plagg zipped to his holder’s side. “He say anything?”
“Dude! You’ll never guess what!”
Twenty minutes later, Adrien whisper-shouted as he dropped into the seat beside Nino, bag thumping at his feet. The school drive had done little to diminish his hundred-watt grin, even when Nathalie made a note of the fact, combined with breakfast, which she always insisted he take, he’d be ten minutes late.
He’d occupied himself giddy as a schoolboy, patting his thighs as the streets whizzed by. More desperate, with each passing second, to unleash the gargled-down excitement brimming on the edge of his tongue.
“Please. Quiet, boys,” Miss Bustier said before he could finish. Adrien bit down.
Perhaps it was a sign: Mari hadn’t arrived yet, which wasn’t a particular stretch of the imagination. He’d tell them once they were all together. Except, as ten minutes became twenty, and twenty devolved into forty, Adrien’s plan begun to unravel before his very eyes. In the seat ahead of Nino, Alya’s attention hadn’t left her phone. She beat out text after text.
Something gnawed inside Adrien’s stomach.
“No, nor me,” he murmured when the bell rang, pocketing his phone. Marinette’s voicemail answered him, and, for the third time, Nino muted her with a huff.
“Why don’t we get Friend Tracker again?”
Miss Bustier was waiting for them at the door.
“Alya, boys, could I have a moment please?”
Only once the rest of their classmates had filtered out did her smile pale. She threaded her hands, her voice a soft hush: “You’re not in trouble, I assure you. I’ve notified Ms. Mendeleiev, so don’t worry about your lateness to next period—”
“Is this about Marinette?” Alya interjected.
Rather than scolding her, Miss Bustier nodded.
“Mr. Damoclès has requested you three join him in his office.”
Lateness was the last thing on any of the teens’ minds when Alya rose a fist to announce their presence. They exchanged glances, which was the closest any of them were willing to confront the myriad of possibilities – no one possibility more assuring than the last.
Before knocking on the door.
Mr Damoclès made it so much worse. His tone, like Miss Bustier’s, was far too soft, too controlled. Nino and Adrien sat. Alya refused.
Marinette’s parents had reported their daughter missing at 7am that morning. She hadn’t taken any clothes, or other personal items, including her phone. The police wanted to know whether Marinette had said anything to suggest her plans to leave home. She hadn’t. Alya asked when the police were going to launch a search-party. They already had.
“Although, kids, I highly suggest you go home. I have no control over your activities outside of school premises, but please. Use this absence to be comforted by your families.”
“Like hell am I going fucking home,” Alya snapped, the second they stepped out into the hall. “We need to get out there. Now.”
Nino said, “We should question her parents. Find out last she was seen.”
“But first, we have to flag Ladybug and Chat Noir. They can cover more ground. What do you think, Adrien? Adrien?”
Adrien was too busy grasping at his chest.
He couldn’t breathe. Fear Knot. That was the only explanation. He must have returned and broken into the school. He stumbled back. Their eyes followed him, pointed with accusal. Why were they staring at him? Couldn’t they see the akumatized villain currently crushing the air from his lungs?
He needed to get out. He needed—needed—
“Air,” he spluttered.
He broke into a sprint. Their voices bounded along the walls behind him, but their words were lost. The only to shove through the haze, Alya’s desperate plea – “See… bug… call me!”
He burst through the entrance, flying down the steps. Flying, until at the very bottom, his foot snagged on rubble. Fragments sank into his thigh, but that wasn’t why he cursed.
“Fucking—idiot!” he yelled. And when he then scraped his arm scrambling upright, he eagerly awaited the sensation. The friction of pavement against skin. The release of taking himself apart. Piece by piece. A half-thought winked across his mind, that he hadn’t had these desires since—but it didn’t matter. What mattered was amending his mistake. Before it was too late.
He transformed in an alley, but where a current of energy usually surged to resuscitate fatigued limbs, he felt nothing. Pure adrenaline drove him forwards. Raw and human, and too much like Adrien Agreste.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
He’d left her. He’d abandoned her all alone, even when he’d seen her hurting. How many times had Marinette sat by his side, lent an ear to every tantrum, coddled him for his own self-inflicted problems? As he scaled the nearest apartment building, he tapped his breast pocket, her drawing still there. Just yesterday, she’d given him a gift that had taken hours upon hours of dedication. And for her trouble, he’d abandoned her at her time of need.
Some friend.
This wasn’t about him. He wasn’t thinking straight when he plummeted into a well of his own self-pity. He needed a plan. First, call Ladybug; then, question Mr and Mrs Dupain-Cheng. They had to know something. Anything. Otherwise, that meant the last person to see their daughter was…
His partner picked up on the second dial.
“M’lady,” he panted, “I need your help. There’s someo—”
“Meet me at the Eiffel Tower. We’ll talk there.”
He headed her command. Only minutes later, he dropped down on the familiar metal framework and raced towards her. But when she turned, the falter in Ladybug’s voice stirred within him an unprecedented rupture of unease: “Chat Noir.”
He stalled.
“Ladybug. Is everything—”
“We need to talk.”
“Talk? But… I…” He couldn’t find the words. He only knew hers meant the world.
Their gravity dragged him to submission. To refuse her now, after weeks of trying – how could he articulate how he was feeling? He just knew he couldn’t make the same mistake twice.
But Marinette…
The police were already looking for her. By now, his schoolmates would have joined the search. He could spare a moment, if only for this. That was at least what he told himself.
He trailed Ladybug to the ledge. He scoured her expression for an explanation. On kneeling beside her, this became impossible. Ladybug’s hair fluttered across the right side of her face, casting her features in obscurity.
Quiet reaped upon them. Only broken, softly, by,
“I…” Ladybug’s voice chased away into the breeze. “I… I don’t…”
He softened a palm over hers. As though a lofty fist had seized him about the chest – they found one another, fleetingly, gently – he stopped breathing. A squall of rain swept past his ears.
Despite everything, “Take your time,” he said.
Ladybug’s lip wavered as she tried to speak.
“Hey. Come here.”
With a sharp inhale, Ladybug buried herself in Chat’s chest. He blinked in surprise. But instinct took hold, and he cushioned an arm around her. He ran a hand up and down her back, producing gentle shushing noises as his partner was overtaken by desperate clutches for air.
“Shh, you’re okay. You’re okay, hey?”
Ladybug gasped. “I-I—I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s fine. That’s totally fine. I know you can’t be specific, but what’s worrying you, is there any way you can explain it to me?”
Her eyes lifted, and Chat’s motion stilled.
“I don’t want to disappoint you.”
He felt something warm slide down his cheek. Absolved by such sudden compassion, Chat tore away. Blue eyes. For a moment, he was nothing: a speck of dust caught in a lapse between past and present, his expression shadowed by oblivion. Then, he cushioned Ladybug’s cheeks; the world dissolved around them.
“Try,” he breathed, with a smile.
Ladybug’s chin bobbed. Slowly, she rose her hands to entwine his. Anxiety jumped inside his stomach when those fingers traced the edges of his ring.
“There, now,” Chat said, glancing down, but her fingers had since moved on. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve found a replacement holder.”
He didn’t react at first. Because he must have not heard her right.
“What?” he suddenly snapped, and, without thinking, he jerked to his feet. She flinched, but he was too busy processing what she’d said to care. “What do you mean ‘replacement’? What have you done?”
He felt as though he was watching himself from the outside, cringing at his venom, but powerless to stop it.
Drawing her legs inwards, Ladybug blinked up at him. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t have a choice.”
“No. No, of course you do! You can’t do this. You—you can’t make me do this!”
She rose to his height. “Chat, it was you whodidn’t leave me a choice!”
Water swashed in his ears.
“Every time you sacrifice yourself, every time I have to watch you die…” Her lip wavered. “Have you ever given one thought to what you’re leaving behind? I wake up. Terrified. Every time, I think you’re going to do something I can no longer reverse.”
Her words sounded so broken, so unfamiliar falling from her lips that Chat tried, desperately, to reach for her. But she stepped aside, shaking her head.
“Don’t.”
“I’ve only ever sacrificed myself because I trust you—"
“I said don’t.”
“—to bring me back, and I’ve always put my trust in you, even when youdon’t. Because you’re capable of so much more than you know—”
“‘More’? You’ve never not seen me as exactly the person you wanted me to be!”
Chat stared. Realisation washed over him.
“Ladybug, who is this replacement for?”
Except, hands trembling at her sides, something in his partner’s expression flickered.Something unrecognisable came to light within her eyes, a fire beckoning deep below the surface.
Sotto voce, Ladybug breathed stillness into the air.
“I can’t do it anymore.”
She extended an open hand towards him.
“Wait a minute,” he said, taking an involuntary step back. “Let’s think about this for a second.”
“Let me save us. Both of us.”
Chat’s footsteps continued to recede as she advanced towards him. When he spoke, even with his Miraculous, he sounded airless.
“You don’t really want this.”
“Yes. I do. I know why we wear these masks. And I know you really believe it, that you see me for more than just my powers. But we wear these masks because we’re supposed to forget. It’s his design.”
Chat released a choked murmur: his back hit the wall.
“I’m done forgetting. I will notwake up in a world where I fight with a holder of the black cat Miraculous and not Chat Noir.”
In the shadow of Ladybug’s vision, Chat Noir’s claws moulded into fists. “This is a test,” he murmured.
Please. Please, whoever was listening, give him this. And yet, deep down, he already knew.
For every night he’d cursed these ridiculous rules, cursed their forced anonymity, there were two truths he’d bet his life on. One: Ladybug would never pressure him into anything, ever.
“If you hand me your Miraculous, I can find another eligible holder just like I did with mine. It’s what you’ve always wanted, right? To see each other. For real.”
Chat turned his back to her; his heart punching holes through his chest. A thin scowl stretched across his features. He braced his staff. And released a long, slow breath.
Two: Ladybug would never use his desires, his thoughts, his feelings against him. And now, another truth.
“There’s a problem there, Bug.”
“What’s that?”
Chat barrelled towards her. What was he doing? He couldn’t hurt her. Chat tried to grab her wrists, but she evaded his throw. He didn’t have time to regain his footing before Ladybug tugged him down. He landed hard with a yelp.
Ladybug locked him in place with her elbow, her terror tearing into him as she cried, “What are you doing?”
“Fight me; don’t fight me. But don’t pretend to be her,” Chat hissed, writhing from her grasp.
“Kitty, what do you…”
Chest heaving, Chat watched it happen. From the genuine, abject horror that snatched at his instincts, Ladybug’s eyes emptied. Her lips straightened into a narrow line; the stiffness in her spine melted.
“I’m saving your life, even if that means I have to take it from you first.”
Before she could snatch his ring, and before Chat could stop himself, he drove his knee into her stomach. She wrenched to the side; Chat scrambled to his feet. What had he promised? He couldn’t hurt her. But what other option did he have? He guarded his face and retreated, brain whirring with questions.
Where, where, where, every one screamed. Where was the akuma? Chat surveyed her once, and once again, but besides her yo-yo… Not her earrings.
His eyes stung.
It didn’t matter. He’d bring her back.
Hawk Moth knew Ladybug’s identity.
It didn’t matter.
Ladybug would never be safe until Hawk Moth was defeated.
Ladybug rose slowly, the veil of neutrality fluttering back into place.
“I know you can fight him,” Chat said, as he struggled to widen Ladybug’s advance.
“You ‘know’?” She snorted. It sounded agonisingly real. “Try ‘hope.’ I think you hope, more than you do for anything on this earth, that I’ll save myself. I think, deep down, there’s only one thing that really scares you.” She hurled her yo-yo; Chat avoided her with a narrow leap. “You’d rather die in that costume than live a day as what you really are.”
She darted towards him. In a jolt, Chat ducked behind a chimney to avert her strike. The chimney crumbled. A measly pile of bricks, Chat stared at the wreckage before grappling with Ladybug’s furious punches.
Was that really what she thought?
He ducked and rolled.
No. It couldn’t be. What had Marinette said, when he’d vowed to do anything to keep his partner safe?
“Wait!”
Ladybug already knew.
“I’ll do it. You hear me?” he shouted in fervour. His voice caught. “Stop. I said I’ll do it!”
Ladybug pulled her punches. Spinning her yo-yo in the air between them, a faux barrier, she said, “Nice to see you haven’t lost your sense of humour.”
“Really. No games.” Chat lowered himself to his knee, gasping. “You can have my Miraculous. If that’s what you really want, then it’s yours.” He raised his hands. “You’ve always been a person, not a piece of jewellery. It’s always been just you and me, M’lady. Miraculous, or not.”
She was right in front of him now, tilting her head.
“Granted, this isn’t quite how I imagined it, but I suppose I’ve wanted to tell you who I am since the moment I met you.” He laughed. “I guess I can afford to wait another—”
Ladybug slammed his face into the tiles. Pain erupted through Chat’s nose; tears sprung from his eyes. Ladybug wrung through his hair, and she yanked him upright. Lights danced in his vision.
Stooping low, Ladybug observed him with apathy.
“Lucky Charm,” she snapped.
She rose her yo-yo, and he recoiled, gritting his teeth. What power could possibly be gifted to the holder of the Miraculous of Creation?
Something clamped around his wrists. Horror wrenched through him – raw, animalistic horror. And he hit the ground. He tried to move, but his new wrist-restraints bound him to the tiles, as all around him brick walls begun to manifest into existence. He choked on his own surprise. Darkness swept over him, Ladybug’s shadow, and the roof came next. Trembling, his fingers clawed at the nothingness in the air.
He needed out.
Even if her voice sounded like home when she said, “I’m going to keep you safe.”
He needed to run.
“Cataclysm,” he stammered, before she could leer close enough. He stretched out as far as his arm could possibly take him.
His bounds, and the walls with them, turned to ash.
He surged to his feet, lunging for the rail. Only before extending his staff, scarcely able to hold on, did he glance over his shoulder.
Ladybug stared back, unperturbed. Despite everything, he refused to call her anything else.
Chat ran.
˚₊‧ʚ🐞ɞ‧₊˚
She’d tried to warn him.
Between snatches of air and buried words.
Throwing back a glance to check he hadn’t been shadowed, Chat hastened to escape that voice – her voice. His wrist still burned with the phantom of his partner’s touch, how her nails had sliced into his skin with such a surgical precision as to suggest she’d done it a million times over. How she’d twisted his ring, hunger sliding off her crooked lip.
She screamed after him.
Confused clamours swirling in his ears, he plummeted into an underground station. As he dodged over the turnstiles, voices crowed: “Chat”; “Was that…”; “Chat Noir?”
He hit the ground running. A sign overhead, its words crawling and twisting into a jagged script, illuminated with the bathroom symbol. Screw it. A hand seized him from the swarm. A cry punctured the air. He snatched his arm back. Worried faces flushed his vision. He crashed into a disabled toilet and bolted the lock, shoving his palms up against the door.
With head hung low, “Claws in,” he choked.
And he sank to the floor.
He shook his head.
Coward. Attention-seeker. Egotist.
He caged his mouth.
Hawk Moth had taken Ladybug.
Marinette was missing.
It was all his fault. If he’d just been there, if he’d said something different, if he’d disobeyed her request for space when she obviously needed his help…
He cracked a fist against the door.
A sharp tang stung his tongue. When he brushed his nose, withdrew, red ran through the cracks of his palm. The fine droplets accented his sleeve. It lashed across his mind, how it had felt for the crown of his head to crack against tile, for his eyes to eclipse, fluttering dimly in and out of focus. Why hadn’t he healed? He couldn’t process the implications.
He’d failed.
He drove strength into his legs, dug his fingernails into the toilet lid as he willed himself, get up! He hit the floor.
“Adrien. Hey! Hey!” A paw tugged on his arm.
He collected his surroundings; his gaze lifted from the ground. Immediately, shame washed over him for such an overt display, and for the way Plagg looked at him, like a wilted flower doused in rain. “Focus on my voice. It’s okay,” his kwami said. “You need to step back. Just breathe, yeah? Breathe, and we’ll think this through.”
But Adrien’s head was throbbing, and his hands were shaking, and he needed air, and he needed his mother, and he needed to protect her.
He clung to Plagg’s worry; he pleaded his name; he jut out his ring-finger. “Take it. You have to find someone. Now.” He subconsciously breezed a hand across his burning wrist, breath flying quick and hot. The cry ripped from him: “Plagg. I’m begging you. She needs help. Now!”
He’d let her down. He’d let her down, and he’d had. No. Idea. He wasn’t strong enough to protect the person who meant the most to him. Had he ever been? The greatest act of love a person could commit, he’d thought, was to give everything for them, even if it meant giving away his own life, just as his mother had once done for Adrien.
But Adrien’s everything wasn’t enough.
“What are you saying?”
The thought of her, still in there as someone else’s words clawed from her lips, indomitable – how lonely she must have felt, how terrified… “Believe me, if I could, if I had the Miraculous of the snake, I wouldn’t stop fighting. No matter how many chances it took, no matter how long. I wouldn’t stop fighting until I got her back. But I don’t have those chances. It’s one shot, and… I’m too reckless. I make too many mistakes. And this is one mistake I won’t let myself make.”
“But how can you give up now? You can’t! Chat Noir protects. Chat—”
Fury alighted in him like striking steel to flint. “Chat Noir isn’t real!” he roared.
Plagg recoiled.
Despite the tears welling in Adrien’s eyes, he willed his features to not betray his own self-reproach. What he’d said crept around his neck like a vine of thorns. Even between burning clutches for air, he pleaded, “You need to leave. You need to find someone before it’s too late. If I refuse to stand up for her, I take the decision out of your hands. I don’t deserve to be a holder. So please.” He couldn’t breathe. “Don’t make me fail her again.”
He couldn’t—he balled a fist around his collar, realisation dawning over him. It announced its monstrous birth: the sob raked against his throat. They finally fell free. He bowed his head, overcome. A torrent of tears burst from the beds. And between pockets of air, between twisting stabs to his side – he barked out a laugh – a hand bristled his cheek.
Even if it wasn’t real, he knew it wasn’t real, the familiar imperfections of it, slightly worn with age, flooded him with relief. For the solace of release, for letting his layers unravel, his pent-up frustrations fly.
“Go.”
The hand morphed in texture, until it felt warm and soft, like fur.
“No,” Plagg whispered plainly.
“Why?” It was all he could muster.
“I could find someone else to save Ladybug, Tikki.” The little kwami alighted on Adrien’s shoulder. “But I won’t.”
He ran a hand under his nose, sniffed. “Why? Because I’m more capable than I think? Just like Ladybug?”
In his peripheral, Plagg flinched.
Finally, “No,” he said. “No.
“I forget sometimes that I’ve never… I’ve never had a holder so young. The word kind of implies you’re looking after me, right? It always has. I’ve never not thought of my powers as a gift. But that’s because, until you, I never understood what it meant to be responsible for someone.”
Adrien hoisted his head from his arms.
“I’m not going anywhere. Even if I’m proving myself to be a burden, I’m not leaving.”
The spark that Plagg had struck within him, a twisting fury, had grown.
But not in frenzy. Its crackle, a heartbeat, warmth flushed through him.
He dragged a hand across his cheek, then stared down at his ring-finger. His reflection glistened back at him under the lamplight. He thought of that startling, confusing, life-changing day: the day he’d transformed, and Plagg had opened a door in a blank wall, shown him a life he’d never known he could have.
“No,” he breathed. “No, Plagg.”
He mushed the kwami in a hug, and Plagg released a small yelp of surprise. He cradled him against his cheek.
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m sorry, but I won’t—"
“No—no, I meant…” As they parted, “You know I don’t see you like that.”
“You don’t?” Plagg asked.
He didn’t. He didn’t, he didn’t, he didn’t. Which was why it charred his blood to think of his next words. It didn’t make sense – these words, his actions – but he’d needed to embrace the kwami one last time. He needed that embrace now more than ever. If only he really did have the power of second chance.
“You’re worse,” he blurted. “You’re just like my father. You control everything: how I act when I’m transformed, what I can tell my friends, my life, and when I should throw it away. If you were truly responsible for me, if you truly cared about protecting me, you’d have left a long time ago!”
Plagg stared back, but his face didn’t reveal the hurt Adrien had anticipated.
“Only if that’s what you really want.”
Adrien held out the ring.
“It’s what I want,” he said, without vigour.
Plagg didn’t react, even as much as nod. He took the Miraculous and fazed, likely, through the air vent. Adrien didn’t watch him go. He stood, sobs clawing up his throat, and clutched the handle before the ground could take him.
The least he could do was buy the kwami some time.
˚₊‧ʚ🐞ɞ‧₊˚
He closed the door of the bathroom behind him, and he immediately knew.
Ladybug had attacked.
Crowding from the light, a swarm of Parisians groaned to accommodate the new body as Adrien pressed head to shoulder with a mother and her buggy. A man growled at him to “get back inside!” but he steeled himself. He could hardly make out the turnstiles amidst the mob, but he already knew exactly where he needed to be.
Teeth gritted, he made for the light.
“What on earth are you doing?” demanded the consensus as Adrien fought through a wall of locked arms and legs, young and old, streaming tears and vacant expressions. That feeling swelled within him, the feeling that made the ground feel so close. But his place was where it always had been, by his lady’s side. Even if it only meant buying her some time.
He murmured apologies to anyone who would look him in the eye, snatching pieces of conversation from those who cast him with glares, or those who had different priorities altogether:
“S-she’s not real, is she?”
“Don’t worry, baby. It’s probably all for show. Just another silly villain. The real Ladybug will show up soon, I promise.”
“Don’t do that, girl.”
He didn’t have time to react before the man gripped his arm. Adrien rose his head, jaw stiffening like oven-baked clay.
“Excuse me, sir,” Adrien repeated.
“Listen, kid. I’m trying to help you. You’ll only get yourself hurt.”
What the man didn’t know, was that there was little in this world that could hurt him now. With a grunt, he released his hold, and accompanied by shouts of protest, Adrien made the last step into the light.
He didn’t look back.
And low and behold, Adrien’s footfall permeated everything. Even with nimble steps, it seemed the whole city was holding its breath. Not one door had been left unlatched, not one blind forgotten. Had he not fought though the underground, he might have believed a city’s worth of Parisians had fled in a matter of minutes.
He’d always known that, without a Ladybug, Paris would fall to its knees. But somehow, he’d never imagined this.
On one street corner, he passed a billboard: thick lashes and cerulean liner crinkled with glee. He matched his own gaze. Then, the promotion phased out, replaced with his lady’s equally rosy-cheeked expression. Instead of Gabriel, the text behind her read one word.
Unstoppable
It was at that moment Adrien decided his sound no longer grated on him. His footsteps became stomps; his own breaths transformed into a shrill cry.
“Hello?” he shouted, projecting fear, confusion, and hardly a lie. “Is anyone there?” He rose his voice even louder, standing directly in the centre of the square. “Ladybug! Where are you?”
Except, it wasn’t Ladybug who responded to his call.
“Adrien! Here!”
His head shot up. He looked just about every direction before he saw him: Mr Dupain. The baker gestured wildly as, door ajar, “Come on, boy!” he shouted.
Like father like daughter, Adrien knew the futility of dissuasion. He froze up. Oh God. What should he do?
“Have you seen her?” His voice hitched up with a pleading note he’d thought impossible. “Have you seen my girl?”
Adrien’s skin went cold.
That was when a thin cord enwrapped Tom’s leg. Before Adrien could react, the cord snapped free and sent him sprawling.
“Mr Dupain!” he cried, stumbling forward.
It snaked around the bakery, sealing the door shut, and sealing Tom inside. Adrien spun when it returned to his partner’s hand.
Ladybug – despite everything, still Ladybug – received him. Her eyes narrowed when they met the light, her stare as sharp as glass. She advanced towards him.
He shrunk back, but he couldn’t think of anything else except that his vision had come true. Marinette was out there somewhere, in danger: he’d told her to use her fear as ammunition, to delve into the throes of chaos without a thought for her own safety. And now, without the Miraculous Ladybug—
Ladybug tossed her weapon, and his hands flew to shield his head.
Her yo-yo snagged his wrists, tugging them together. He didn’t act, even when she took hold of him by the restraints to utter,
“Why aren’t you—”
“Marinette,” he blurted. Her roaming gaze froze. Still, he held her eye. “You know her, right? I’m looking for my friend. Have you seen her?”
Without missing a beat, “She’s inside,” Ladybug said. “Safe. You should join her.”
He shook his head. “No. No, she’s not. She’s missing. He parents are terrified. I have to find her. I have to know she’s okay. Ladybug.” Ladybug’s hold on him loosened. “Please.”
Deliberating, his partner chewed the inside of her cheek. The simple action reminded him of the face she usually made whilst decoding her Lucky Charm.
Then his voice found freedom.
As the gale clawed against his face, clothes, hair, he shredded his lungs with protests. They toured the cityscape, swinging from one roof to the next, soaring over street after street. Instinctually, he buried his face in his partner’s shoulder, trembling without his suit.
And when he finally found grounding, “Is she… is she here?” he stammered.
Only when she moved away did he collect their surroundings. To his relief. Had she been any closer, he doubted she wouldn’t have noticed the grief that cast across his features.
Ladybug leant across the barrier of the Eiffel Tower.
He didn’t know what he’d been expecting. Streets in upheaval? An army of brainwashed citizens crying for his Miraculous? Ladybug regarding him with the same inscrutable apathy? Stillness crept across the city, a stillness he knew all too well. Up here, he could almost convince himself that nothing had changed.
An image came to him then, the two of them, their backs to the sun, content in the other’s silence, and it would have crushed him then and there had it not been for Ladybug’s sigh.
She sounded so much like her, so much like—“Marinette’s not here. Is she?” Adrien asked.
“No, I’m afraid not.”
Another beat passed in silence. That was, until her eyes found his, crinkled with mischief – God. It broke his heart to think of the things he would have done to achieve that smile.
“Do you know why Hawk Moth, all these months, has been so desperate to get his hands on my and Chat Noir’s Miraculous?”
He scrubbed his neck. “I think so. A wish, right? That’s what Alya wrote in her Ladyblog. Whoever possesses both at once would have the power to make a world-changing wish.”
“Right. I was told, a long time ago, that making that wish would have world-ending consequences. What I realise now, is that I was told to underestimate the one to make it.”
“B-But, you’d never eliminate the risk. If you saved one life, you’d be damning another. That’s the way it works,” Adrien stammered. Without thinking, he’d reached for the barrier to join his partner’s side.
“And if I said I’m not afraid of taking that risk?”
But he caught himself just in time, letting his hands fall limp.
“‘Creation, but not without destruction.’ Say I ensure the safety of your friend Marinette. I could choose onto who I inflict her fate.”
“But who would you choose? If Hawk Moth thought that it was even remotely possible, he’d—”
“He won’t.” And she said it with such finality, a shiver jerked down his spine. Only at that precise moment did it dawn on him.
“Is Hawk Moth… is he talking to you, right now?”
She chuckled. At least she didn’t sound angry. “We’ve reached an agreement. All he wants is one life, Adrien. All that fighting. All those risks…” She turned to face him, entreating his approval with a conviction he didn’t understand. “And we could have put a stop to it if we just listened.”
We did, Adrien thought. We listened to the terrified screams of an akumatized child. We heard the silence when Hawk Moth rendered it near impossible for vulnerable people to ask for help. What he said was, “What do you want, Ladybug?”
Her lips parted, then she shook her head. “All I ever wanted was to protect Paris. Including you, Adrien. I can make you free of your father.”
Your father.
His hairs electrified.
“What…” he breathed. “What are you talking about?”
“Free of your father,” she repeated, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s all you’ve ever wanted, isn’t it? To be free to choose your own path, your own company? You could dress how you wish, find your own hobbies. You wouldn’t have to be a model anymore. You could be as normal as you want. Whatever it is you want, I can help you.”
No. No, this wasn’t right. He staggered back. But it wasn’t the fact she knew about his father, no. He just hadn’t realised it at first. Jesus Christ, he was so stupid.
It had felt so natural, so normal. Ladybug followed him with widened eyes.
Blue eyes.
A crack of lightning sounded in his ears.
That day, he’d stumbled to find any vacant classroom.
Heat filled his cheeks.
That day, it had been the tip of one girl’s words, “Hey, are you okay?” that had inspired his fear she might never look at him the same.
His mind went empty.
That day, it had been one girl who understood him even as he said things he didn’t know he was capable of thinking.
“Adrien? Is everything—”
One girl who had been first to say his name.
He gripped her arms, meeting those eyes imploringly. He searched her, the fine blackthorns of her hair, her rosied cheeks, but deep down, he already knew – he’d found her. Her, from whom Adrien could run to the ends of the earth and still never be a foot further than the day he started. Her, who lived with him in his heart; who he heard humming with each one of his breaths. Now, his breaths dragged with shallow, painful gasps.
How many times had he seen this day?
He wanted to laugh, to shout, to cry out with joy. Instead, he began to cry. And before he could articulate any of this—
“Where’s Chat Noir?”
—she snatched herself back, shoving him as she rose above.
“He wouldn’t be this long if it weren’t part of his plan.”
“No, no. I wasn’t trying to…” Adrien said, scrambling to sit upright. “I’m not—”
Voice flaring, “Where is he?”, she already had her yo-yo.
“He’s… He’s…” Tears pulsed in his vision. “He…”
She loomed over him, readying her strike. If she destroyed him right here and now, who would he be when she created him anew? This girl, he realised, who’d never expected him to be anybody else?
Her Miraculous had lost its power.
Squinting through her yo-yo’s shield, squinting through his saturated vision, she posed a blurred silhouette. But from that moment, he knew he could never mistake her. Marinette. She held him in thrall. Forcefully, he took a breath. Her hums sounded not with anger, but fear – that Chat had taken everything for good. With this knowledge,
“You’re right,” he said. “He sent me.”
Marinette didn’t lower her weapon. What she did do, however, was stop.
“Why?” Softly.
In answer, he rifled through his pocket, feeling for that familiar companion. A gift. His fingers trembling, he withdrew the slip of paper. An ache unfastened within him.
“There were some things he wasn’t strong enough to tell you himself.”
“I’m so sorry. I don’t understand what you’re going through.”
“‘I’m so sorry that I didn’t recognise what you were going through,” Adrien said.
“I don’t know what to say to make everything okay. I don’t even know if those words exist.”
“I was looking for words to make everything okay. I couldn’t accept you needed more.”
“But if I can promise you anything…”
“Still, I made a promise. Whatever happened, I’d always find a way to bring you bac—” He choked, enclosing the sound in a fist. He exhaled, as if into a wound. He looked to her, not bothering to roam over the page. “If you’ll still listen to me, superhero or not, this cat’s going nowhere fast. I’m here.”
“I’ll save you.”
His final pledge dried up on the edge of his tongue.
In place of words, he rose to hand off the slip of paper. A sleeping kitty splashed across the page. She beheld her own handiwork, then her gaze matched his. She stared, transfixed. As a whole universe of understanding lapped between them, her irises glittered like diamonds.
When her knees gave out beneath her, he chased her to the ground, grasping her waist to break her fall. But she didn’t seem to notice. Those glittering diamonds didn’t waver, holding onto him as though, one look away, and he might disappear entirely. She brushed his outstretched arms as, rocking,
“You…” she said. “Adrien… You can’t be.”
He planted his chin upon the softness of her hair, steadying her movement.
“You were right, M’lady,” he whispered. “Every time I sacrificed myself, every time I knew you’d bring me back... It wasn’t protection. It was a sentence.” As he spoke, as he massaged his fingers through her pigtails, she gradually begun to slow. “I can free you from Chat Noir,” he said, with the flight of a white butterfly.
Her suit retracted, revealing an almost identical one beneath.
But only you can free yourself of Ladybug, he finished, just as his partner came to, blinking rapidly. She reeled back, and he gave her space – and in that moment, he could have sworn he caught the faint aroma of cheese. He swept their surroundings.
Plagg was nowhere in sight.
Realisation washed over him. Gratitude came next, its current stronger than ever for the kwami who had kept his same promise. He was smiling faintly when,
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