I’m in Love With Someone Else
Summary: Chat Noir visits Marinette after a bad day, and it's all downhill from there as they start growing closer! Eventually, Chat Noir feels like he needs to ask Ladybug something, and manages to accidentally reveal himself in the same breath.
August 5th is one of my best friend’s birthdays ! I wrote her a Marichat Fic to celebrate since I believe it may just be her favorite of the love square. The title is a reference to a Parachute song.
This was posted earlier on
ao3
and
ff.net
-- aka, the places I knew she wouldn’t check...
Enjoy!
“Ch-Chat? Chat Noir? What are you doing here?” asked the girl, rubbing her arms which had been covered with goosebumps the moment she stepped out onto the balcony. It wasn’t snowy tonight, but she could feel the winter cold etching itself deep in her bones. It made her sort of sleepy.
Chat Noir was standing, almost posing, by the railing, one clawed hand having slid down it, his other strategically placed on his cocked hip. Green eyes glittered at her in the cloudy night, being the thing she most easily made out. She saw the rest of him, faintly under the half moon when it broke through the clouds, but it was his eyes held her.
This is how Marinette felt when she was on patrol as the heroine Ladybug, when the two of them raced across Paris and met at the highest points of the Eiffel Tower. They learned of each other there, among old architecture that would not whisper their secrets to anyone else. They shared the stories they could, made jokes. His eyes now reminded her of when they leaned in, shoulder-to-shoulder, sometimes drifting closer than preferred to the land of dreams. It was never romantic. But it was always bordering intimate.
That’s how it felt now, to her. He did not know. He would never know. But to her, the look in his eyes was everything. He was looking at her not like she was Ladybug, but the way he looked out into the city, lonely and pained. When they went on patrol and they sat together, there was something forlorn about him. Something he hid when the sun was out, that showed in his most vulnerable moments of their conversations.
“I — ” he paused. She wondered in his silence. Did he know? Could he? “I saw your lights on, Princess, I guess I’ve had sort of a bad day so I was looking for some company! I hope you don’t mind to have this alley cat stopping by, but, well, Ladybug’s nowhere to be found…”
“Um — ” Marinette wished she knew what to say. She knew what Ladybug would say, but she had to be careful. She couldn’t give away who she was; should she act less sassy? More like a fangirl again? She wasn’t sure how long she could keep the second charade up. But she couldn’t tease him for the alley-cat remark, either.
He looked dejected by her hesitance.
She found words, quicker than she expected at his new look, as she strode over easily with a quip of, “Would you like some hot chocolate? It’s awfully cold out here.”
A grin stretched on his shadowed face, one she barely saw at all in the dark of the night, but she heard it in his voice. “Of course! How could anyone turn down hot chocolate from a princess like you?”
She laughed. “Okay! I’ll be right back. Are you okay staying out here?”
“Of course, what sort of purr-ince would I be to intrude on a pretty lady’s home?” he flirted in response with a wink that made Marinette’s heart do a jump it had only done in the presence of another blonde. Confused, she nodded at him and smiled, confident he could see such a smile with his night vision, and made her way back into her room, somewhat put off.
She had to slide into the kitchen to make the hot chocolate, but her mind was whirling as she made her way down there. He didn’t know she was Ladybug, he couldn’t; and he was no Adrien. Yet, he flirted with her and her heart was still pounding in her throat. She wasn’t sure if she would walk up there and nervously push his advances away with her usual sassy flair, or if she would turn into — well… how she was around Adrien.
Marinette’s parents had gone to sleep long ago, so she was tiptoeing around the house. As bakers, they commonly went to bed around 7 or 8 and were often up before Marinette had even fallen asleep. She had given her mother a scare once or twice, coming down into a dark house at 2 or 3 in the morning when she should have been asleep.
Luckily, making hot chocolate was decently quiet, as long as Marinette was quick about it. Nothing really needed to boil, anyway.
It only took about 10 minutes, so she was back on her balcony in no time at all. Chat Noir was lounging about like the alley cat he was on her lawn chair by the time she made it back up with two cups in hand. He perked up instantaneously, his traditional cheshire grin growing on his face.
“I was starting to think you weren’t going to come back,” he admitted shyly as she handed him a warm purple cup, whipped cream with flecks of chocolate all that was visible of the drink.
“Nah,” Marinette laughed breathily, sitting on the cold wooden deck. “I wouldn’t just leave you.”
“What a relief, since everyone else does!”
Taken back by his words, Marinette could only blink in response, her fingers tightening around the warm cup. He had said he had a bad day, hadn’t he? She wasn’t quite sure how he ended up here, or why, but it was clear something had happened.
Worried about her crime-fighting partner, she managed to ask a small question, something that may have gone unnoticed if he did not have cat ears because she whispered it more into her whipped cream than directly asked.
“What happened?”
His cat ears twitched and he sat back on the chair. Marinette felt an awful lot like a therapist for the superhero, sitting there, as he looked more at the cloudy sky than her.
“I wish I could tell you,” he admitted. “I don’t want to reveal too much, you might figure it all out…”
“Do I know you?” she laughed, mostly joking. She couldn’t figure it out if she didn’t know him, after all! But when he didn’t answer, she realized it from the look on his face — shit, she might know him. She must…
She forced herself not to think about it too much because their secret identities were important, so took a sip of her hot chocolate which promptly burned her tongue, as always. There were a lot of good things about hot chocolate — that wasn’t one of them. But she did feel a bit warmer, and as a result, more awake, so she pouted at him.
“Well, if you’re not here to rant…?”
“Just for company,” he confirmed. He immediately changed the topic, his eyes turning from her and towards the city. “Do you like the stars, Marinette?”
“I don’t know, we don’t really see them in the city,” she admitted, looking at the sky. There was too much light pollution to see anything in the sky. “I haven’t been outside it, much. They’re nice in my dreams. Once, when I was little, the power in most of the city went out and I could see them, kind of…”
“Ah,” he muttered, hesitating before speaking. “I’ve been out of the city a lot. The stars are beautiful. Paris is beautiful too, though.”
“Yeah?” she sighed. “I bet.”
They sat in comfortable silence after that, both sipping at their hot chocolates and looking at the sky. Marinette knew why she was comfortable with the superhero; he was her best friend when she was dressed in red. How could she be anything but comfortable? But it was strange he was so comfortable with her civilian identity.
The more she thought about it, the more she started to become anxious. Did she know Chat Noir outside the costume?
“I guess I should go,” Chat Noir said after a while had passed. She had long finished her hot chocolate but he hadn’t, so he gulped the rest down quickly, then stood up and stretched. Marinette rose slowly, placing her cup on the table next to where he put his.
“So soon?” she mumbled.
“We’ve been out here a while,” he laughed, grinning at her. He leaned in closer, their faces suddenly uncomfortably close. “If you don’t want me to go, I could, of course, stay…”
She pushed him away in a classic Ladybug move with one finger on the tip of his nose. “I’m alright, chaton,” she responded, a grin tugging at her features. “You’re always welcome to come back.”
He looked stunned, and she realized she might have gotten a little too Ladybug on him as she pulled her arm back, smile faltering.
Shit, shit, shit, I fucked up… !!!
“Well,” he said, blinking. “I’ll see you around, Marinette. Thanks for the chocolate.”
“Yeah,” she whispered, certain he could hear her even as he turned his back and raced across rooftops, disappearing into the night.
- - - -
Chat Noir never mentioned the how Ladybug that was of her, but he did come by. At least once a week, he would land on her balcony, tap on the glass, and she would climb to talk with him, or to sit in peaceful silence. She felt unnerved by it all, as if he had figured out that she was Ladybug, and that was why he came to visit; at this point, all thoughts of him being someone she knew had vanished, replaced by the worry that he knew!Still, he never once said anything about it.
One night in the early spring, she invited him into her room. Rather than sitting on the balcony in the cold as they did for many months, she thought it would be as good time as any to enjoy each other’s company in the warmth of her room.
After all this time, she built up the courage to ask him the question that plagued her mind.
“Do you know Ladybug’s secret identity, Chat Noir?”
His response was to laugh, but the laugh evaporated quickly when he was suddenly choking on the baguette slice he’d been chewing on. Marinette jumped out of her seat to help, but he had managed to cough it up by then. However, it didn’t stop him from breathily huffing and puffing at her.
Her cheeks flamed as he continued to snigger.
“Know Ladybug’s identity!” he sighed wistfully with another breathy laugh. “Isn’t that the dream?”
Sudden relief poured down Marinette’s spine, but it was quickly replaced with a burning curiosity that bellowed up from her stomach to her heart. Frankly, Marinette was stunned by Chat’s words, the way he whispered the last word with a sort of longing she could only personally match in ferocity with another blonde-haired, green-eyed boy. The raw emotion in his voice made her feel a bit down. It was Ladybug that he spoke of — he was talking about her. Marinette. He just didn’t know it. But she could not see herself returning any such feeling, not any time soon.
Marinette was not the type to love because she was loved. Chat Noir could tell her millions of times. Every jump in front of her, every smirk that took his lips, and every pun he made, she knew those were his quiet ways of speaking his feelings. And she did love him, of course, because how could she not love the partner who was always there with her? She loved his humor and dedication, his loyalty and kindness.
Her heart was not so easily swayed. Adrien was everything Chat Noir was, but she knew Adrien in a way she’d never know Chat Noir. She knew his insecurities, his home problems. She could count the amount of times she’d seen a genuine smile in the last month on one hand.
And as much as she may like or even love Chat Noir, she could not love the secret identities. There was something there could not be passed anytime soon.
Besides, Chat Noir? He was all genuine smiles.
“Is that your dream?” Marinette asked, pushing.
“Of course, Princess!” he told her, taking another bite from his bread. “I love my lady, you know, I’ve told you many times. But to know her outsidethe mask… That’s truly something I’d love. But likewise, I’m happy just knowing her.”
Touched and heart pounding a bit faster than she thought possible, Marinette couldn’t think of anything to say in response. She let the conversation end there, watching him for a moment as he greedily devoured bread. She wondered if he ate enough at home.
“Hey!” she said, suddenly.
He sat upright, looking over at her.
“Do you wanna do make-overs?” she asked. His only response was a blink, which morphed to a smirk.
“Okay!”
- - - -
The first time Chat Noir stayed the night, it was obviously an accident. Marinette was a good girl, with good grades, and had a strict no-nonsense policy with boys. Especially if they happened to be dressed up in a leather catsuit, running around Paris for fun.
Months after his first venture to her balcony, Chat showed up dripping wet, having leaped across Parisian rooftops in the rain. His ears drooped, and he wouldn’t meet her curious gaze. Marinette, to her credit, didn’t pry and pulled out the iPad she had just purchased that day. They were surprisingly good for designing new clothes, she bashfully admitted, but also there was no reason they couldn’t watch some TV to make him feel better.
He blushed when she said that.
Of course, watching TV on an iPad required close proximity. They laid on her bed — Chat apologized for getting the bed wet, and Marinette laughed it off (because she was used to it, Ladybug always got the bed wet when it was raining but what Chat didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him) — and took turns holding it up, making fun of bad acting, complimenting better acting, but neither really paying too much attention to the show as much as each other.
Something, at some point, had changed. Marinette couldn’t say what or when it was, but the next morning sunlight was streaming in through the door to her balcony. She sat up immediately, but Chat didn’t stir, didn’t even move. Blushing, the girl concluded that his shoulder or upper arm had become her pillow last night…
She realized she wasn’t as embarrassed as she should be. In fact, maybe it was just how exhausted she was, but she found herself laying right back down with him, his arm her pillow.
He sighed, and Marinette realized he must be awake as he tightened his arms around her, pulling her in with a soft mutter of, “Thanks for letting me stay.”
Marinette wasn’t surprised at all when he appeared 2 nights later.
- - - -
“Do you think Ladybug will ever return your affections, kitty?” Marinette asked one day while she was playing games and he was watching idly behind her. It was midnight. He was probably going to stay there again. They’d lost count how many times he’d stayed, at this point.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if she didn’t. What about that boy, Marinette? The one you like.”
“Adrien doesn’t like me like that,” she responded, scarcely aware that was her first time admitting his name to Chat Noir as she crushed her unsuspecting enemy in the game.
Marinette jumped up with a cheer of “YES!!” in her victory and turned to hi-five Chat, as she had many times before, to find him just staring up at her with a look of clear disbelief in his green eyes.
- - - -
“Um — My Lady, I was hoping we could talk tonight, before you left,” Chat Noir mumbled, rapping the tips of his fingers together nervously.
Ladybug thought this was not so unusual, knowing him to often ask her to stay a bit longer. They had done much together since they first started working together; small, midnight picnics on the top of the eiffel tower, deep talks about what they could say only to each other about the struggles of two identities on the roof of Notre Dame. That struggle had only grown in recent weeks for the both of them. Sometimes Ladybug wanted nothing more than to tell him, to scream It’s ME it’s always been me I gave you hot chocolate we cuddled on MY bed it’s ME Chat Noir
“What’s wrong, kitten?” Ladybug teased, tapping his bell. “Can’t bear to see me go?”
“No, I-I wanted your opinion on something,” he admitted, chuckling lowly. “Gosh, how to even begin? Um…”
Ladybug watched him uneasily, not sure what to expect. He seemed nervous, so she was preparing herself for some kind of love declaration, the kinds of which had only reached Marinette’s ears. She had long seen it coming, steeled herself for that sort of thing. But as time passed, she felt like maybe she didn’t need to be so steely. A part of her heart might always be dedicated to Adrien Agreste, but there was another part that Chat Noir had snuck into, months ago. Maybe even a year ago when he first landed on her balcony.
She wasn’t so sure, anymore, that she would turn him down.
If she was honest, she didn’t want to. Not at all. She wanted to be entrapped in his arms, enthralled by his whispering voice. To top it all off, as of late, she’d been looking at his lips, and she’d be lying if she said they didn’t look positively kissable every second she caught herself looking. She had caught herself looking — a lot. More than she’d care to admit.
In fact, she was looking at them right now.
Stop it, Marinette.
He was just looking at her, ears flat.
“Kitty?”
“There’s this girl,” he finally managed. Her heart plummeted. Not for one second did she think it could be her.
Her instinct was to tease. Not to panic. Do not panic. “A girl? My, my, Chat, are you finally moving on from your lady?”
Chat Noir managed a bashful smile and rubbed the back of his neck. Her heart shattered, just a bit, though her head whispered to remain calm. Wasn’t she Lady Luck? How had she managed to fall for two boys and have neither of them return her affections?
“Well — um,” he laughed. “I don’t even know how to ask you this, Ladybug.”
“Ask me — ask me what?”
“Do you remember Marinette?” he suddenly blurted, and she was taken back. “She helped with that one akuma, um, the one whose drawings came to life? Shoot, I can’t remember the name…”
Me… He’s talking about me…
Right, the only girl he’d been hanging out with lately. He had mentioned that to her, once, when she put powder on his face and wondered when he’d gotten so used to that. Maybe she was a bit quick to assume the worst.
She nodded. “Yes, I remember, of course.”
“Well — well,” he laughed, nervously. “I sort of want to reveal myself to her.”
Then the alarm bells went off.
It must have shown on her face. Chat was quick to say something, but she couldn’t hear it. Gee, was her partner finicky! Was he going around thinking about revealing his identity to every girl in sight? Was this going to be a reoccurring problem? Sure, it was Marinette this time, but what if it was — what if it was Chloe next time!
“Ladybug? My Lady? Are you listening?”
“What? No! Chat — ”
He groaned. “Did you hear ANYTHING I just said?”
She knew she was blushing but her face suddenly got hotter. “Okay, I admit I didn’t in a slight bout of panic, but you can’t just reveal yourself! It’d just put her and her family in danger!”
“Ladybug, all this time, I thought I was in love with you — but, I fell in love with someone else,” he mumbled. “I don’t know how, but if I thought you were the sun, then Marinette surely must be the stars…”
Though she was smiling, Ladybug couldn’t resist an eye roll. “Okay, if you’re done being a poet?”
“I can’t imagine not being a poet when I feel like this,” he said with a sigh. Ladybug wondered if it was possible to blush any harder. “It’s just, she has a crush on my civilian self, but, I can’t approach her like that, I just can’t, and I — ”
DID HE JUST SAY — ?
“ADRIEN?” Ladybug screeched, cutting him off, cutting everything off.
Chat Noir froze, words cutting off and eyes widening. That was the only physical reaction she got out of him but who cared?
DID THE SON OF GABRIEL AGRESTE RUN AROUND PARIS IN A LEATHER CAT SUIT?
“Oh my god,” he breathed. Somehow, just like that, all her worries melted away. He must have been realizing his mistake, she thought; anyone could know Marinette’s crush, he didn’t know who Ladybug was! “Oh — shit, I shouldn’t have said that, Ladybug, oh shit… ”
Ladybug didn’t and probably never would know how she ended up laughing. But, she did. She stood on the top of whatever building they were on, maybe someone’s house, maybe some abandoned building, and she laughed. She laughed until her chest ached, until it felt like her lungs would always be this pleasant type of hurt. She laughed so hard that she must have waken up some citizens for sure, though the night was quiet as ever. If they were annoyed at the superhero who stood in the chilly night air and snorted, they definitely didn’t show it.
She looked back up at her partner and resisted the urge to laugh again. Maybe it was a form of stress relief. Maybe she was just so happy that a smile alone wouldn’t do it.
He, however, was confused. He was the opposite of happy. She could see it in his narrowing eyes, flattening ears.
“Oh, kitty,” she chided, though she was on cloud nine. “You don’t need my permission to tell your girlfriend who you are. Go see her tonight, tell her the truth. Or don’t. I — I need to go home. Sorry for laughing, I just — this is sort of funny, but I’ll have to tell you about it later.”
“Wait, but — ” he started, then hesitated. “You know who I am.”
“I know who you are,” she confirmed, and then turned from him and went home.
- - - -
It took Chat Noir at least an hour to work up the courage to visit Marinette. He couldn’t remember being so nervous before, but Ladybug hadn’t given him a good enough reason to not do it. In fact, she seemed to encourage it? He really wasn’t sure what all that laughing was about. Something, that was for sure. It was about something.
Either way, he felt good. He could do this. He could tell her, she wouldn’t be in any danger, as long as she didn’t tell anyone. And she wouldn’t. No one had to know.
Okay, maybe he was being a bit irrational.
Didn’t love do that, anyway?
As he landed on her balcony and rapped three times exactly for her to open up, something was off. She yelled for him to come in, something about it being unlocked. He hopped down, landing on her bed and quite nearly almost breaking her iPad. It was dark in the room, but that was no problem for Chat Noir. She was sitting on her lounge, rubbing circles into the palm of her hand.
In the darkness, their eyes met. He left the loft and made his way to stand in front of the lounge. “Hey — Marinette,” he said, a bit shyly. “There’s something I want to um, tell you.”
“Show,” she whispered, smiling at him. “Don’t tell.”
He blinked. Had she read her mind? Suddenly his nerves were reaching new heights. What if she wasn’t happy that he’d tricked her all this time, or what if this really wasn’t safe and Ladybug was just — just wrong?
His hesitation showed, even in the dark of her room. Something felt… off. The way Marinette was looking at him wasn’t quite Marinette anymore.
“I wanted to show you who I am,” he whispered. She stood up, familiar in the movement as she took her place in front of him. Her breath was harsh enough to almost, just barely, feel on his chin. “But… it might be dangerous.”
“I laugh in the face of danger,” she promised, quoting the movie they’d watched only nights ago.
He couldn’t help grinning. “How fitting for a purr-incess. If you’re sure?”
“I am. Are you, though?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Show me, then,” she said, softly, enticingly.
“Okay, okay… Plagg, Claws in — !”
“Tikki,” she called, unexpectedly. “Spots on!”
Suddenly Marinette’s dark room was awash in green and pink light.
Adrien wasn’t sure how it happened, but somehow he had known, coming in, that Ladybug had something to do with this. Maybe he had even let himself hope.
It was in the dark of her room that they reached for each other, when all their magic faded, his hands caressing up the sides of her face and hers curling around his neck. There was no hesitation in the movement for the both of them to lean in. But he did stop, right before their lips pressed together.
Adrien prodded, “Is — is this okay?”
Ladybug sighed, her breath tickling his lips. She didn’t seem annoyed, but she feigned it. “You have my full permission to kiss me senseless, youstupid cat.”
