#miracufic

[soundofez]

Have u read dis yet? miracufic(.)tumblr(.)com/post/160949151757/silk-hiding-steel

i haven’t read anything in ten thousand years rip but yo miracufic is Quality so i trust that this’ll be good: http://miracufic.tumblr.com/post/160949151757/silk-hiding-steel

[twilightscribbles]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 4/4 Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Nathanaël Kurtzberg & Sabrina Raincomprix, Chloé Bourgeois & Sabrina Raincomprix Characters: Nathanaël Kurtzberg, Sabrina Raincomprix, Chloé Bourgeois, Lila Rossi, Original Character Additional Tags: Fox! Sabrina, Peacock! Nathanael, Queen Bee (Original Character) as villain, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe Series: Part 1 of Paon and Renarde AU Summary:For the past few weeks, Paris has been plagued by bee-like spirits, who transform people into super-powered evil versions of themselves. A hero named Paon has reluctantly stepped up to the challenge, but it's been tough going without his partner.

Then, new student Lila Rossi arrives at Collège Françoise Dupont, claiming to be Volpina, the fox hero. Is she the partner that Paon has been told about?

Only Sabrina knows the truth: that she's the real fox holder. But fear of screwing things up have held her back from helping Paon. When Lila is transformed into Volpina and threatens to fool Paon out of his miraculous, however, she is forced to make a move.

The final chapter/epilogue is up! You can also read on FF.net!  Need to start from the beginning? AO3 / FF.net

[wild-mare-of-prosecution]

@miracufic

I wanted to keep your good vibes going; so here... have a thing!

=^w^=

[miracufic]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers (◠‿◠✿)

The fifth favorite thing that I’ve ever written is probably going to need to be The Inevitable University AU (AO3), just because of the sheer potential of the universe and the wonderful juxtaposition between Adrien and Marinette in what little I have got written down.  I’ve still got a few ideas chugging along for that, might revive it in future.

The fourth favorite thing that I’ve ever written is Heartspeak (AO3), yet another unfinished thing that I need to get back to work on at some point.  This one is where it is because it was the first one of my more serious things where I actually stopped to try to work out the logical implications of everything and tried to plan it out and it worked pretty well.  It was also one of the first where I tried to experiment a little with communicating with the format of the writing, where I thought that it came out decently.

The third favorite thing that I’ve ever written is The Lone and Level Sands (AO3), because I have a soft spot for historical!Miraculous Ladybug and because that was the first one where I thought that I got the pacing down really well.  Now, if I could just replicate that.

The second favorite thing that I’ve ever written is Ambience (AO3), a story of @larvesta‘s No Angst!AU, because I really, really like the premise and I adore how cute and fluffy it turned out.  I probably should’ve added more Tikki and Plagg to it, though.

My favorite thing that I’ve ever written is The Kitchen Gods (AO3), which I wrote for the inestimable @miraculousturtle.  That was the first long, semi-serious slice-of-life that I wrote for this fandom ever, and while I think that the pacing isn’t fantastic, I think it was still nicely solid for the attempt.  Chalk it down to nostalgia.

For anyone wondering why Have Your Cake (And Eat It Too) (AO3) isn’t on here, it’s not properly mine, since both lefty and I write for it in equal measure and she had most of the really good ideas for it so it’s more like 30/70 in her favor.

[loosescrewslefty]

good news everyone! Me and @miracufic are brainstorming for Have Your Cake again! <3

[miracufic]

Have Your Cake (And Eat it Too): Chapter 16

A collab fic with @loosescrewslefty, now found on AO3!

Inspired by @larvesta‘s post here.

< Previous Next >

In Which Two Steps Forward Are Taken

Alya glares at her homework with enough vicious intensity that the paper seems to shrink away out of sheer terror.  Through the wall she can hear the low arguing of her parents, which occasionally rises to a furious screech before her mother brings her voice back down. Probably to avoid disturbing her sisters.

How considerate of her.

Her phone, charging off on the side of her desk, buzzes.  Alya reaches over and unlocks it, glancing at the screen.

A message from Nino.  She taps the notification and opens it.

“Hey babe,” she reads.  “ur mom looked pretty angry earlier when she came by to pick u up”

She considers giving his commentary the degree of attention it deserves—which, considering that even blind-as-a-bat Nino sans glasses could’ve noticed the expression of barely-controlled rage on her mother’s face from twenty paces, probably merited only a flatly sarcastic “Really.” or “Wow, you think so?”—but refrains.  Nino wasn’t doing anything wrong, and it wasn’t fair of her to vent her spleen at him.

“Yeah, she decided to chew me out over what happened in school today,” she texts back.

“Ovr everyone going after chloe”

“Yeah.”

“U all right”

“Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.  I mean, aside from being grounded for a month.  And suspended.”

“Uh”

After a second, Nino follows up his message with a concisely eloquent “What.”

“Yeah, it turns out that fucking spineless tit Damocles doesn’t like being called a corrupt pig chained to the petty whims of a vain teenaged brat of a girl.”

A few more seconds pass before Nino replies, “You what”.

“I may have lost my temper at him.  Slightly.”

“After the rest of us left huh”

“Yeah.”

“Babe i love u”

“I sense a but coming.”

“But you really really need to cool it with the whole provoking chloe thing”

Alya quashes the shrieking, rising tide of rage and goes intead with a measured, “Nino, I would choose your next words.  Very.  Carefully.”

“Oh for crying out loud just wait a sec”

She waits a second.  Then a minute.

“Well?”

“Look we all get it,” Nino writes.  “We all love mari and we all hate that chloe likes to pick on her and letting that stuff slide makes none of us happy.  But ur the only one of us whose mom actually works for her.  Do u think that shes not going to be petty enough to go after ur fam?”

The entire apartment goes still.  A quiet, high-pitched ringing fills her ears.

“Babe?

Uh babe

Babe u havent said anything

Its been like a minute

Oh fuck

Did ur mom lose her job”

“No,” Alya types in quickly, “no, we’re fine, Nino.”

“Oh good”

“I had not thought of that, damn.”  Alya stops and chews on her upper lip.  “But look, I don’t”

“Look I know u dont want to not do the right thing,” Nino texts before she can finish.  “Uh if you get my point”

“I do, thank you Nino.”

“But u need to take care of urself too

Mari wouldnt want u to ruin ur life for her”

“Look, even /she/ can’t get Mom fired that easily, there are too many ways they’d get screwed over legally.”

“U think she cares abt laws?  Or knows abt them?”

“No, but her father does.”

A pause.  Then, “Point but I still think u should back off a bit.  U dont need to keep going after chloe all the time, we can do tht. Just focus on helping mari.”

Alya stares at the message for a few seconds before tapping in, “Look, can you take a call right now?”

“Sure”

A second later, her phone rings.  She accepts the call and turns on the speakerphone.

“Hey babe,” Nino says.

“Nino, I can’t do that,” Alya says.  “No, let me finish.  Marinette needs someone who’ll always be there to stand up for her, and—I’m trying not to be too judgmental here, but you guys have dropped the ball consistently there.”

“Okay,” Nino says after a moment.  “Harsh, but yeah, I get what you’re saying.”

“So I—can’t, Nino,” Alya says, “I can’t just do that to her.”

“I thought you’d say that,” Nino says with a sigh.  “How long are you going to be out of class?”

“Eight days starting tomorrow,” Alya says.  “So I’ll be back, uh, next next Tuesday, I think.  Yeah, Tuesday.”

“All right,” Nino says.  “I’ll talk to Adrien, see if the four of us can’t hang out at your place sometime this weekend.”

“That is probably not going to work,” Alya says, sticking her tongue out in the direction of the living room.  “Grounded, remember?  I sincerely doubt Mom’d let me have friends over.”

“Yeesh,” Nino says.  “Think that telling her that we’re bringing class notes would work?  We have that test in math the Friday you get back.”

“I think the automatic response to that would be ‘why don’t you just email them to her?’” Alya says, making a face.  “You’re welcome to give it a shot, though.”

“Sometimes I forget how harsh your mom is,” Nino says.  Someone says something in the background, the words indistinct.  Nino responds, “Yeah, give me a sec.”

“You need to go?”

“Chores,” Nino says.

“Wow,” Alya says.  “Bummer.”

“Your mockery is noted and unappreciated,” Nino says with a haughty sniff. “Love you, babe.  Talk to you later.”

“Love you, Nino.”

Alya sets her phone down on her desk with a quiet click as Nino hangs up and slumps back into her chair, letting the noises of her apartment fill her room.

It’s just that the noises are about ninety percent her parents arguing.

“What’s going to happen the next time she decides to do that to an authority figure?” her mother shouts, the words punching easily through the intervening walls.  “She could get arrested!  Or shot!”

“And what kind of message do you think we’re sending to her,” her father replies, his basso voice a heated rumble, “to her sisters?  That if someone powerful and influential does something wrong they should just shuffle along and pretend that nothing wrong is going on?”

“There is a time and a place for these things, and neither of them is right in front of the Headmaster, to the Headmaster’s face!”

“Then where?  Then when? When is a good time to point out the obvious injustice of her situation?”

“She goes to the rector, or someone else up the ladder from the Headmaster,” her mother says.  “She uses some common sense and good judgment instead of rash bullheadedness!”

Alya sighs, heads to her bed, and stuffs her head beneath her pillow, muffling her father’s reply.

At some point, she falls asleep.

“Morning, Nino,” Marinette says the next morning as he walks in with Adrien at his heels; Adrien slides his torn bag across to Marinette with a wink that makes something flush hotly in her chest.  “M-Morning, Adrien.  Hey,” Marinette says, “did either of you see Alya on your way in?”

“She didn’t tell you?” Nino says, his brows popping up for a moment.  “She decided to yell at Damocles for basically just doing whatever Chloe wants him to do instead of his job.  She got suspended.”

“Uh,” Adrien says.

“She what?” Marinette says.

“She, uh, basically called Damocles a sock puppet with Chloe’s Dad’s hand up his ass,” Nino says.

“To his face,” Marinette says.

“A-yup.”

Marinette swears under her breath as Adrien asks, “How long is she suspended for?”

“Two weeks,” Nino says.

“Wait, what?” Alix says.  She reaches up and pops out an earbud.  The sound of someone screeching loudly in Russian while an electric guitar howls in the background rings tinnily from it before she reaches down and pauses her music. “Chloe got Alya suspended?”

“This is going to get repetitive,” Nino mutters under his breath. “All right, so Alya got in a shouting match with Damocles, said some things she shouldn’t have, Damocles gave her a two-week suspension.  I don’t know if Chloe actually, y’know, told him to punish her or if she egged her on, but that’s all I know.”

“Aw, jeez,” Alix says, rolling her eyes and slumping back into her chair. “Your girlfriend is an idiot, Nino.”

“Sometimes,” Nino says.

They hear a haughty sniff from the door way and a rapid clat-clatter of heels on the floor.  Half a dozen heads—Adrien’s, Alix’s, Marinette’s, Nino’s, Kim’s, and Lila’s—turn towards Chloe as she struts to her seat, followed closely by Sabrina.

“Only a shame she couldn’t get expelled,” she says as she sits.  “But I’m sure she’ll slip up at some point.”

“We can only hope,” Alix says, attempting to make Chloe spontaneously combust with sheer force of will.

“Why, thank you—“

“I don’t think she was talking about you, Chloe,” Lila says.

“No,” Alix confirms, “I wasn’t.  Thank you for the clarification.  Some people needed it, apparently.”  She waves to Mylene and Ivan as they shuffle into class as well and puts her feet up on the desk and her hands behind her head.

“Excuse me?” Chloe says, bristling.

Alix takes a deep, satisfied breath.  “For the benefit of the idiot in the room,” she says, “I’ll repeat myself. One of these days, you’re going to let your gigantic ego get the better of you, and you’re going to do something so monumentally stupid even by your standards that even dear old daddy isn’t going to be able to cover for you, and all of us are going to be rid of your burden.”

Nino sighs and turns on his music, bringing up the volume until the sounds of Alix, Mylene, and Chloe screaming at each other are mostly drowned out.  Adrien slouches beside him and looks miserable. Marinette takes out her sketchbook and starts to scribble as the others file in.

“Uh, excuse me,” Rose asks Nino as she and Juleka come in a few minutes later. Nino pries his headphones loose and cocks an ear towards her.  “Where’s Al—“

“Later,” Nino groans, “please.”

Juleka approaches him later as everyone is queuing up to leave for lunch.

“Alya’s been suspended because she mouthed off to Damocles,” Nino says, “she’ll be back in a couple weeks.”

Juleka blinks at him.  “Uh,” she says.  “Yeah. I know.  Rose told me.”

“Oh thank god,” Nino says.  “You would not believe how many times I’ve needed to repeat myself today.”

“Fourteen times,” Juleka says.  “Max’s been keeping score.  Kim has a small betting pool going as to when you’ll crack.”

“He what?”

“He’s set up a betting pool as to how many times people will need to ask you where Alya is before you snap,” Juleka says.

“How much is in the pot?” Nino asks.

“Around twenty euros,” Juleka says.

“Who’s winning right now?”

“Rose and I,” Juleka says.  “We’ve put five euros in on you snapping at seventeen asks.”

Nino blinks at her, then lets his head sink into his hands.  “You guys suck,” he says, voice muffled.

“Love you too.  Anyways, what I was going to ask was whether you knew what was going on with Adrien and Marinette.”

Nino looks up, bemused.  “What do you mean ‘what’s going on’?”

“Rose says that they’ve been a lot touchier than usual,” Juleka says. “They seem a lot closer than they were yesterday,” she translates after a look at Nino’s expression.

Nino thinks it over, his intuition throwing sparks onto tinder at the back of his mind.

“Maybe something’s happened,” he says with a shrug.  “Tell you the truth, I hadn’t noticed anything really different.”

“Too worried about Alya?”

“Too worried about Chloe deciding to do something involving Alya,” Nino says.  “She’s not exactly a kind, wonderful, forgiving, charitable sort of person.”

Juleka makes a face.  “Don’t need to tell me twice,” she says.  She glances up at Rose, waiting patiently for her at the sidewalk.  “Look, I gotta go.  See you later?”

“Later.”

Nino watches the two of them go, absorbed in thought until Adrien’s hand lands lightly on his shoulder.

“Huh?  Oh, hey,” Nino says.

“Heading home for lunch?” Adrien asks, sitting next to him on the school’s front steps.

“Duh,” Nino says.

“Want a ride?  The Gorilla should be here in a few.”

“Sure,” Nino says.

His mind flits back to what Juleka had said.  Adrien had been closer to Marinette, had he?  Well, he had offered her his help in snagging him way back when, and it wasn’t like it’d hurt to give him just a little nudge. And they didn’t have anything else to do.

“Hey, is everything all right with Mari?” Nino asks, giving Adrien a sidelong glance.  “She seemed really shaken up the other day.”

“Hm?  Oh, yeah,” Adrien says.  “She looked a lot better when I left.  You and Alya went to visit after school, right?”

“Yeah,” Nino says.  “Seemed a little tense, but at least she wasn’t actually freaking out.”

“That’s good,” Adrien says.

Nino leans back onto his elbows.  “Hey,” he says, “do you know why she had all those band-aids on her fingers?”

“Oh, burned herself on a hot pan,” Adrien says, then hastily adds, “that’s my best guess at any rate.  She does a lot of baking, doesn’t she?”

“Probably,” Nino says.  “Someone’ll need to help her with stuff.”

“Probably,” Adrien echoes.  “Real question is, will she let herself be helped.”

“Pride goeth,” Nino says.

“Hey, at least one of us will be there to catch her if she trips, right?” Adrien says.  He shoots Nino a sunny, wolfish smile.  “What are friends for, anyways?”

Nino mirrors his smile and offers up his fist.  Adrien taps his knuckles to his as a car pulls up to the curb.  “Come on,” Adrien says.  “Let’s go.”

“Hey, is your hand doing better?” Adrien asks Marinette.  “Your blisters are healing well?”

“Yes, they are,” Marinette says with a patient sigh and a small smile.  “Please stop fussing, I’m not an invalid, Adrien.”

Rose coos at them while Chloe glowers, fuming so ferociously that for a second Nino is forcibly reminded of Mt. Etna, looming over the innocent and unaware citizens of Catania, ready to obliterate them and their little lives in a moment’s notice.

Nino lets his attention drift to more important matters once he’s satisfied that Chloe isn’t going to explode and try to claw someone’s eyes out.  At least in the immediate future.

Marinette and Adrien had been, well, the only word that really fit was odd, over the past week.

Adrien had been fairly normal, aside from the aggressively keen interest he’d started showing in Marinette—Nino lets himself preen a little at that, go him.  Just one week and Adrien was already well on the way to asking her out, Alya was going to freak.  But their every interaction had been tempered with a sense of coiled restraint on Adrien’s part, like he’d desperately wanted to do something or to say something but had felt that the time or the place or the company wasn’t quite right.  Although Chloe’s constant, hovering presence all three were more or less the case.

And, well, Marinette.  She should’ve been over the moon with Adrien’s constant, focused attention, Nino was sure.  He knew that he wasn’t exactly a master at reading people but Marinette could be counted on to be as ecstatic as Chloe was incensed whenever Adrien paid her the least bit of attention.

Or, she had been, at least.  Now she was distant and distracted half the time; but why?  It probably wasn’t anything Chloe had done, every other time this week she’d made an attempt to crack Marinette’s composure they’d put a stop to it before things could get, ahem, messy.  Maybe the aftereffects of Chloe’s dumb trick with the honey?  But she’d seemed practically normal just a couple days after that.  Maybe she was just worried for Alya?  That felt a lot more likely, but his gut was still telling him that there was something off about that guess.

Nino grumbles under his breath.  He needs Alya for this.  Well, a couple more days and she’ll be back, and then maybe they’d be able to figure this mess out.

But first, of course, he needs to pass this dumb exam, or his parents would have his head.  He turns his thoughts away from his friends’ relationship drama and back towards the mass of incomprehensible squiggles on the board.

“I—“

Thunk.

“—hate—“

Thunk.

“—this.”

Thunk.

“I’m pretty sure that concussing yourself isn’t going to help, Nino,” Adrien says from where he lounges on Marinette’s floor.  Marinette lobs a croissant at his head; Adrien catches it, shoots a wink back her way, and bites off one of the horns.

“Not all of us have fancy math tutors to help us, Mr. ‘I’m already learning calculus’,” Nino mutters darkly.  He catches the pain au chocolat that Marinette throws to him and starts chewing steadily through it, not bothering to brush away the crumbs that fall into the spine of his open math textbook.  “Seriously, this is all Greek to me.”

“You did pretty well on the homework for this section, didn’t you?” Marinette says.  She takes the last pastry, a cheese danish, from the plate on her desk, folds it in half, and takes a bite.

“I thought I did,” Nino says.  “But since I don’t get a single thing this book is saying, I’m having second thoughts about that.”

“In fairness, this isn’t the best resource in the first place,” Adrien says, “according to my tutor anyways.  Frankly I think he just has a personal vendetta against the author or the publisher or something.”

“Well, it is an American publishing house,” Marinette says, flipping through page after page of arcane scrawl with a glazed, disinterested air. “Think that has something to do with it?”

“Maybe,” Adrien says.

“Oh, yeah, do you mind if I drop by and use your scanner later, Adrien?” Nino says.

“Mm?  Yeah, sure, why?”

“Alya’s still under house arrest, remember?” Nino says.  “She’s going to need our notes.”

Adrien pauses in the middle of copying out an equation, shakes his head with a slight frown, and continues.  “Shoot, can’t believe I forgot that.  Think her mom will let her Skype in?”

“Probably,” Nino says.

“I’ll text her and see if she’s open,” Marinette says, pulling out her phone and tapping a quick message.

“I’ll pop down and return the plate,” Adrien says.

Nino groans and rolls onto his back as Adrien hauls open the trapdoor and trots downstairs, sitting up and stretching out his back and neck with a succession of loud pops.

“Seriously, how the heck does Adrien remember all this stuff?” Marinette grumbles, opening a drawer and taking out a sheet of lined paper.  “I’ve been staring at this for half an hour and I still can’t remember all the identities.”

“Fancy expensive math tutor, remember?” Nino says.

“Ah.  Right.”

Nino stares at her back as Marinette starts scribbling, slowly and carefully, her gaze darting back and forth between the text and her notes.

“On the subject of Adrien,” he says carefully.  “Is it just me, or has he been paying a lot more attention to you recently?”

Marinette pauses for a second, then erases a line from her notes. “That’s possible,” she says.

“You’re taking this calmly.”

“You were expecting something else?”

“Yes,” Nino says.  “More flailing, freaking out, panicking, that sort of thing.”

Marinette turns around in her chair and raises an eyebrow at him. “Excuse me?”

“Just saying,” Nino says, “you have, in general, tended to freak whenever Adrien was involved.”

“I have not,” Marinette says, with a coloring of mild indignation to her words.

“Marinette, even Adrien was picking up on how weird you were acting around him,” Nino says.

Marinette frowns slightly.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, before all this stupid crap with Chloe and stuff, back when you first met him,” Nino says.  “The flailing, the random squealing, the whole ‘hiding behind the nearest solid object or Alya whenever he’s around’ thing.”

Marinette blinks, a slow blush burning down from her ears into her cheeks and upwards from her shoulders.  After a minute, she looks down and mumbles, “Well, things have changed.”

“Dude,” Nino says.  “You’ve had him fawning over you for an entire week and you’ve kept your cool the entire time?  I’d say ‘things have changed’ is the understatement of the year.”

“No kidding,” Marinette says with a little laugh.

“Hey,” Adrien says, popping his head up through the trapdoor, making them both jump.  “Hey, Nino, you free for dinner?  Marinette’s parents want to know.”

“Uh, probably not,” Nino says.

“All right.”  Adrien shuts the trapdoor behind him and tromps down the stairs.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this while Adrien’s around,” Marinette says.

“Yeah,” Nino says.

Marinette stands and stretches, wincing at the sharp-dull, sharp-dull aching pulse in her back, and brushes a sweat-damp lock of her hair back behind an ear.

She really ought to thank her dad after this.  She’d almost forgotten how much ass cleaning out the ovens sucked.

But hey, on the bright side making sure that the ovens were sparkling now meant less labor for the rest of the month.  Theoretically.

She just wishes that it felt like a plus, instead of like a herniated disc.

Well, punishment wasn’t supposed to be an all-expenses paid vacation, and it wasn’t as though she didn’t kinda sorta deserve it for going behind her parents’ back like that.

She was going to be grounded for so long when they found out about the Ladybug thing.

Her thoughts inexorably shift to Tikki, currently sulking nearby atop one of the counters.

A week had not changed the little spirit’s mind on the whole “tell my boyfriend, who is Chat Noir, that I am Ladybug, who also happens to have been the girl he has pined after for literally his entire career, which granted is only a few months at this point but will definitely help clear up any issues in the future and make our dating life much less awkward in the long run”, or made them more talkative on the subject.  Not a peep, not a word, not a single damn hint as to why they were so reluctant to let her tell him.

Frustrating in the extreme.

And what makes it worse, she reflects as she starts scrubbing the next oven, is that the kwami wouldn’t be so insistent if they didn’t have a very, very good reason.

She crawls inside the oven, wriggling flat on her back to fit, and bangs her head on something when she hears a sudden sharp rapping on the bakery’s front door.

“Ow,” she growls as she shimmies her way back out, rubbing the spot—that was going to leave a bruise.  Who the hell would come by at this hour?  Well, burglars, maybe, but they’d just try to smash in one of the windows, they wouldn’t knock.

Rap rap rap rap.

“All right, all right, I’m coming, what the hell do you—“

Adrien—Chat Noir, she corrects herself mentally—is standing on her front step.

She goggles at him for a moment as he waves cheerily.

“What the hell are you doing here this late,” Marinette hisses at him as she unlocks the door.  “Keep it down, we’re dead meat if Mama and Papa hear us.”

“Well, I had some time before my evening patrol,” Chat purrs as Marinette unlocks the security gate and pulls it open as quietly as she can.  “And I figured that I’d stop by to see my favorite—“

“Knock it off, Adrien,” Marinette says, “I’m serious, you’re not even supposed to be here unless it’s to help me study!  At least for another few weeks.”

Chat reaches behind him and pulls out a folded sheet of paper from his belt.  “I figured you might need this,” he says innocently.  “You know, for the test.”

Marinette stares blankly at it, then at his all-too-innocently-sunny expression.

Oh, fuck it.  She’d missed this.

“Come in,” she says resignedly, taking the paper from him and stuffing it into a pocket.  She pulls the security gate across and locks it again as Chat skips in, humming a little tune under his breath.

He engulfs her in a hug from behind, gently resting his chin on her shoulder.  Marinette jumps in surprise, nearly headbutting him as she instinctively jerks backwards, her heel twitching upwards in an entirely reflexive movement. Then she relaxes and sinks into the embrace.  Her hands move to rest languidly over his arms.

“I missed you,” he says.

Marinette snorts.  “You were here like, two hours ago.  And we’ll see each other tomorrow anyways.”

“I still missed you,” he says.  “And I missed this.  Being able to just be alone with you.”

“You are so needy,” she says, reaching up to scratch him behind an ear; he purrs and leans into her touch.  “And don’t pout at me like that.”

“You can’t even see my face,” he says.

“I can see your reflection in the glass, kitty,” Marinette says.  She pushes at his arms around her waist until he releases her, with many whines of protest.  “And don’t bother with the kitty eyes either.”

Chat turns the kitty eyes up to eleven as Marinette turns to face him with a small smile flitting about the edges of her composure, then up to twelve as she shows no sign of budging.

“I give,” he says after a minute.

“Hah!”  Marinette raises both fists in the air, walking a mock victory lap around Chat as he claps.  “Do I win anything, oh boyfriend-of-mine?”

The expression on his face drains, to be replaced nervous wariness.

“Uh, Chat?  What’s wrong?”

“Uh,” he says after a moment.  “That’s actually what I came here about, we never really got a chance to make it official, remember?”

“What?  Oh.”

Marinette, despite herself, flushes and looks down at her feet.

“You, uh,” Chat says, “um, ever done this before?”

“No,” Marinette says quickly, glancing up.  “No, you’d be my first.  I mean, if you want to be.”

“Oh, good,” he says.

The two stand a little bit apart from each other, staring at each other’s shoes, neither daring to make the first move.  Marinette almost laughs; they must’ve looked ridiculous, the two of them, standing there all bashful and coy and whatever.

And then, with that thought, her nervousness vanishes.

He was as nervous as she was.  Him. Perfect boy, whom she’d pined after for so long, was nervous, and she, little plain ol’ her, was the cause.  The sudden tide of light-headed relief almost makes her laugh.  She was standing here all sweaty and dirty and in her rumpled, baggy work clothes and Mr. Swoony Teenage Supermodel was the one looking for escape routes.

“You are such a dork,” Marinette says.

And then she stretches up on tiptoe and kisses him, lightly and chastely, on the lips.

Chat freezes as she leans into him, her hands on his shoulders, her eyes sliding shut, the corners of her mouth turning up in a small smile as she feels the warmth and the life and the trembling, breath-stealing fear in him as it drains away, to be replaced with the absolute reality of the moment and the unquestionable, unassailable truth of them, here and now, together.

He leans into the kiss, slowly, without passion, but with a growing and absolute surety in two unspoken things.

She’s his.

He’s hers.

After a timeless, breathless little eternity, Marinette pulls away and settles back onto her heels.  Her small smile grows wider as she sees the look on his face.

“Chat got your tongue?” she says.

Chat blinks and refocuses.  “I’m supposed to be the one with the terrible lines,” he says, reaching out to cup her cheek in one hand.  His ears twitch as Marinette leans into his touch, and he could swear that he hears the rapid thudding beat of her—or was it his?—heart as they hold each other’s gaze.

“So, uh,” Chat says after a long while.  He drops his hands to his sides.  “Do you need help with those?”

“Huh?”  Marinette blinks at him as she shifts mental gears.

“The ovens,” he says.

“Oh,” she says.  “Nah, I’m good.  I should be done in another ten, fifteen minutes.”

“It’d go faster if I helped.”

“It’s not big enough to fit both of us at the same time,” Marinette says, prodding him gently towards the front door.  “Besides, Mama and Papa would freak out if they saw you here.”

“I’m not entirely sure your parents are capable of that,” Chat says as she unlocks the gate.  “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow,” Marinette says.  She stretches up on tiptoe again and pecks him on the nose.  “Night.”

Chat takes her hand and presses a kiss to the back.  “Good evening, Princess,” he says.

Then he vanishes into the night.

Marinette locks up the bakery again and finishes cleaning the oven, then traipses upstairs, humming happily.

“Finished, dear?” Sabine asks as Marinette starts up the stairs to her room.

“Yes, Mama.”

“Good,” Sabine says.  “Don’t stay up too late, dear.”

“Or be entertaining any boys,” she calls as an afterthought.

“I promise, Mama,” Marinette says.

Marinette goes to her room, shuts the trapdoor, and is halfway through pulling her sleep clothes from her closet when she notices the phone on her rug.

“Huh.”

She glances over to where her own phone is charging on her desk, then back at the phone on her rug, then walks over and picks it up, turning it over in her hands.

Nino’s.  He must’ve dropped it during their study session.

She turns on the screen: four missed calls from a number labeled as “Home”. The calls must’ve come in when she was downstairs in the bakery.

Marinette shrugs and places the phone next to hers.  She can just give to him tomorrow, no big deal.

Marinette leaves and takes her shower, then, still floating along on cloud nine, curls up in her bed under her blankets, and falls asleep smiling.

Nino sprints down the sidewalk, legs churning, his every breath a knife in his chest.

Forget his phone, forget getting it back, forget all of that, there were more important things to worry about at the moment.  He needs to get back home, he needs to get to his computer, he needs to message Alya pronto, he needs to tell someone.

Holy.

Fuck.

Adrien was going to flip.

[princessofharte]

The "Taken" oneshot you reblogged was for Marichat May 2016, and it is part of a series with a rough continuity.

Yes! I went to the very first one and read them all the way through. They fit together very well, except for Taken, which is very intense compared to the idyllic and happy previous stories except the one with the gunman, but that one was nowhere near as intense as Taken.

[persephoneandherhades]

The Fate of Black Cats Chapter 4

Alright I know this is ridiculously late but I couldn't seem to find an end to this story just yet! So today you are getting an extra long chapter and the promise of at least one more to come! Three days of bliss. The soulmates were practically inseparable. They caught up with their friends at lunch and explained, all the while holding hands. They begged their friends to switch seats so they could sit together. They doodled on each other’s arms all through class. By the end of the day, it seemed the whole school knew. Marinette had found her soulmate after all. After school, Marinette dragged him home with her to introduce him to her parents. They welcomed him with open arms and told him he was always welcome in their home. That night, they parted with great reluctance, though Marinette made sure he had a pen and her phone number before he left. They talked for hours, and eventually fell asleep to the sound of each other’s voices. The following day, their classmates seemed to have deemed it safe to approach. They asked them questions and offered congratulations up until class started. The pair were caught doodling on each other multiple times during class, to the point where the teacher threatened to take away their pens and leave them with only their tablets. When she saw Adrien flinch, she softened and warned them to stop. They kept the doodles to a minimum after that. Adrien was called away to a photoshoot after their first class. Marinette was in full pout mode as he left, only Alya’s antics could cheer her up. Once at the photoshoot, Adrien’s stylists were stunned to see Adrien’s arms covered in ink. For as long as they had worked with him, they had always been bare. When they went to scrub some of it off, Adrien shied away. “Not all of it is on my skin, some of it is on my soulmate’s, couldn’t we just cover it with makeup instead?” Once again, the stylists were stunned. They had all assumed that he didn’t have a soulmate. They quickly agreed and he was soon ready for the shoot. He knew word would get back to his father about the ink eventually, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. He finished with the photo shoot quicker than expected and so he was dismissed early. Adrien decided this would be the perfect opportunity to surprise Marinette and beat her home from school. Unfortunately, akumas never arrive on schedule. At a certain point, fighting akumas becomes a little routine. Distract, find the object, cataclysm, let Ladybug do her thing, repeat. Today’s akuma did not break from that template. The only difference was Marinette. He was diligent to protect everyone, but especially his classmates. They were too often caught in the middle of these fights. Now that he had Marinette, seeing her anywhere near the fighting just about gave him a heart attack. So, when he spotted her rounding the corner, frantically talking on her phone he wanted to pick her up and take her as far away as possible. When she looked up and spotted the fighting, she froze looking surprised, and then all at once determined, like she was going to jump in and single-handedly take down the akuma herself. “Get out of here!” he shouted to her. Her eyes snapped to him before nodding once and disappearing around the corner again, much to his relief. Ladybug joined him not long afterward. She looked tense and determined. After that, they made quick work of the akuma. Once they agreed on a patrol time tomorrow night, they both took off before their timers wore off. After transforming in an ally, Adrien rushed toward to Marinette’s house, only to bump into her half way there. She grabbed onto him and crushed him in a hug that he returned just as tight. “Adrien would you please just answer your freaking phone? I was so worried! I have been going nuts trying to get ahold of you! There was an akuma and you weren’t answering your phone, and I couldn't find you, and-“ she cut herself off and buried her face in his shirt. After a moment, she finished her sentence in a whisper. “I can’t lose you again.” The words hit him like a truck. She had spent years thinking he was dead, of course this would cause her to panic. He hugged her closer and mumbled comforting words to her while his mind raced. He couldn’t do this to her again. He couldn’t just disappear when there were akuma. He needed to help Ladybug, he needed to keep Marinette safe, he needed to make Paris a safe place for her, but he couldn’t do that if she was worried out her mind. He resolved to talk to Ladybug about it during tomorrow’s patrol. There had to be a way to do both, and he would find it. Once Marinette had calmed down, they walked back to the bakery. Tom and Sabine welcomed them and it wasn’t long before Marinette was smiling again. She never let go of his hand that night until he had to go home, and then only reluctantly. She gave him a wavering smile, trying to convince him that she was fine. He kissed her then until she was smiling her real smile once more and promised to call when he got home. He walked home lost in thought about the day’s events, but was jerked back to reality when he spotted Ladybug out of the corner of his eye. She was keeping pace with him up on the roofs, trying to be discreet. He stopped in his tracks and looked up at her. “Ladybug?” She jumped as if he had startled her before coming closer to the edge of the building and waving to him. She didn’t seem to want to respond, looking nervous and fiddling with her yoyo. “Ladybug, are you following me?” She seemed to grow embarrassed and shuffled her feet. “Well, you are young, walking alone in the middle of the night, so yes I am following you. I wanted to be sure you got to wherever you’re going without any trouble.” “Do you do that often then?” “No, only when I see a need.” “Well if you are going to escort me home, you may as well come down here and walk with me.” He couldn’t help but find the entire situation funny. Ladybug was escorting Chat Noir home; the world was full of surprises. She seemed reluctant to come down, but couldn’t find a reason not to, so she swung down and landed next to him. They began walking, Adrien looking bemused. “So, what has you up and about tonight?” he asked her. She shrugged and looked a little uncomfortable. "I was worried about my soulmate. He was close to the attack today, and he likes to wander at night alone. It scares me." She whispered the last part, and Adrien was shocked. Ladybug, the hero of Paris, the strongest woman he had ever met, was admitting that she was scared, to him, a civilian. He could have anticipated it as Chat Noir; they were friends, best friends even. But she didn't know Adrien. It left his head spinning. A moment later she seemed to shake it off. She looked up at him and smiled what he has come to know as her hero smile. It was the smile she wore when she didn't want Paris to know how tired she was, or how scared she was, or when she was hiding something. "Never mind that now, what has a young man like yourself walking alone on a night like this?" She sounded teasing but looked nervous. Adrien rubbed the back of his neck remembering Marinette's face when he left. He sighed. "I scared my soulmate today during the akuma attack. I'm so used to only looking after myself I forgot that she would be worried sick about me. We only just found each other after years of separation. When it was finally over, I went to see her and," he sighed again, "she was so scared. I'd forgotten what it was like to have someone care for you that much. So I'm taking the long way home trying to let that feeling soak in. She cares. She cares so much that she was running through the streets looking for me during an akuma attack. She's crazy, and wonderful, and smart, and so independent, and I'm in love with her." He let out a chuckle and peeked over at Ladybug. They were still walking but she had this look on her face that made him think that he had said just the opposite of what she expected. She looked stunned and he was suddenly embarrassed. Did he have to tell her that? Thankfully, they arrived at his house just a moment later. He turned to look at Ladybug with a sheepish look. "Well this is me. Thank you for the escort. I guess you're off to rescue other damsels in distress now?" She smiled back at him and looked a little teasing. "Of course, rescuing damsels in my sole purpose in life. I feed off gallantry." She uncoiled her yoyo from around her waist and he suddenly had a burning need to know the answer to a question that had been bouncing around his head from the moment she mentioned her soulmate. “Does your soulmate know that you’re Ladybug?” he blurted out before she could swing away. She stopped and looked at him for a long moment. He began to panic. Surely she would have told him as Chat Noir if anyone knew her identity. They were close, she would have told him. Wouldn’t she? “No, he doesn’t know.” She replied. She looked away and stared out into the night before she spoke again. She seemed to speak only to herself when she finished. “But he will.” After calling and letting Marinette know that he was safe at home, he noticed the missed calls from her along with a single voicemail. He didn’t know what to expect when he opened it, but it wasn’t anything like what he was expecting. He could hear her breathing hard as if she were running and talking. “Adrien, this is Marinette. There is an akuma and I just called and your photoshoot is over, so I’m just trying to see where you’re at.” He could tell she was trying to sound calm but she was tense and worried. He heard a muffled crash, as if something was happening in the distance. Marinette stopped trying to hide her worry after that. “Adrien please pick up your phone, I just want to make sure you’re not caught in the middle of the fighting. Please answer. I-“ She stopped mid-sentence and gasped. He heard himself in the background shouting for her to leave. With a mumbled curse, the message ended. Adrien stared at his phone for several minutes before he could make his way to bed. Her worried words made their way into his dreams that night, repeating over and over.