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lexdrabbles · 1 year

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Thought You Should Know

Hi! Happy New Year! I promise I didn’t abandon this fic, life just got REALLY in the way. Alternatively: Yes There Is A Third Chapter To This Fic. Remember how I said it’s built around a dream? No? Well, it is. Here you go. Please enjoy: Son Boy Comfort Ultimate.

Word count: 3,684 (Chapter 3)

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug

Ship: Love Square (Mainly Adrinette)

Warnings: None

Read on AO3

(Chapter 1) (Chapter 2)

Chapter 3: A Consideration of Everything that is Right and Wrong in The World

Chat Noir’s first akuma after making the discovery was… well. To say it was harsh would be an understatement.

It was the end of the day, but they had still been at school. Adrien would not have known what to do with himself if he had been home. He felt like a bit of a delinquent: Nino, Alya and Marinette had talked him into skipping fencing to go to the cinema with them and watch the first showing of a movie Nino had been raving about for months. He got Kagami to cover for him and everything had been going to plan until that point, but then again why should he ever get to have nice things? He was pretty sure that was not allowed.

As soon as the first ball of slime splashed and stuck to the courtyard floor, the group exchanged looks and a quick “meet back at the theater” before running to hide separately. Nino bolted upstairs to the classrooms, Alya and Marinette ran into a bathroom; he quickly ducked into a broom closet and transformed, ready to get the whole thing over with as soon as he could. He was trying really, really hard not to think.

The akuma’s… suit? Whatever they were wearing— it was really ugly. It looked like a crafts store had thrown up on them: they were covered in the same indescribable-colored slime (purple? Orange? Blue? Brown? All of the above?) their projectiles seemed to be made of, embedded with every imaginable shade of little balls and beads and glitter, and what looked like random bits of plastic. They also had a pair of huge, chunky, bright hot pink headphones. They had leaped into the middle of the courtyard almost right as Chat Noir emerged from his hiding spot, and their voice was a loud, grating whisper.

“Come on out, children! Don’t you want to look at all the pretty slime mixing together?”

“Has anyone ever told you you have a terrible fashion sense?” He clocked the figure in the back with his baton and sent them flying off like a weird, lumpy baseball straight into the locker rooms, leaving a thin strand of purple-green goo stuck to the end that made contact.

They kicked out the double doors and exited looking even more scrambled than before, the slime over their body shifting and writhing.

“It’s not about fashion, street cat, it’s about the feeling!" They shot a ball of slime out of their extended palm and Chat jumped out of the way just a fraction of a second too late; it caught on his right hand and dragged him back fully before sticking (hand included) to the wall behind him with a gross squelch.

“You’d think a fashion designer would have better judgment” he muttered, using all the anger stirring within him to struggle against the sticky, glittery substance (why on earth was it warm? Actually, scratch that. He did not want to know). The villain approached him at a stalking pace, absolutely convinced they had Chat right where they wanted him.

“One down, one to—” A loud creak rang out from behind them and they stopped in their tracks. Chat Noir could not resist looking at the wall across the courtyard and saw Alya peeking out of the bathroom. As his friend’s eyes widened, the villain followed Chat Noir’s line of sight: they turned around just in time to catch the slightest glimpse of her head popping back in before shutting the door again. The akumatized pile of slime turned back to him and contorted its face in what could only be described as a smooshed smirk.

“Be right back, kitty cat”. They seemed to eye him up and down before taking off in the opposite direction, running toward the bathroom door with slime projectiles at the ready.

The bathroom where Marinette was hiding.

“You kids should subscribe to The Whisperer!”

… And Alya— where Marinette and Alya were hiding. Both of them.

He was barely using his brain when he finally yelled “Cataclysm!” —perhaps louder than he may have wanted to—, immediately dissolving the goo on his right hand into a foul-smelling pile of ash. He saw the Whisperer flinch halfway through the courtyard as the tips of a butterfly-shaped mask lit up at the front of their face —where eyes should have been— and peeked out at the sides of their head. That gave Chat the moment he needed to leap after them and trip them with his extended baton; using it once again like a golf club to swing the slimy form the other way and entirely out of the gates of Collège Françoise Dupont.

He gave the bathroom door a knowing smile and a nod, partly wishing Marinette knew - knew that her help and her kindness and her friendship did not go uncompensated. That he planned on making her feel as safe as he did with her. Him and Ladybug would make sure she was protected.

He stopped in his tracks at the school door, watching as the Whisperer still struggled to get a hold of their slimy form. Where was Ladybug, anyway? As used as he had gotten to villains being dealt with in minutes, with new heroes popping up seemingly out of thin air before he could even get to the team, he had been fighting alone for several minutes now, with no signs of backup to be seen.

Had she found out somehow?

This was no moment to get in his own head, but after the humanoid slime being reformed, every attack got harder and harder to dodge or counter. What if she had? It was ridiculous. It was not as if she could just know (about his horrible, awful, selfish choice to keep quiet) and have decided to leave him to fend for himself. How would she? And even if she somehow had, how would she know it had anything to do with Chat Noir? His mind offered terrible excuses, each one worse than the last, for why the worst-case scenarios were not so far-fetched— Maybe she has known it was me all along, maybe she just hates me that much . The longer she was not there, the more difficult it got for him to keep the Whisperer in check. He had no idea how much time went by, but when he noticed, he had just barely dragged the villain out on the rooftops and was dodging slime projectiles by the skin of his teeth. He had been feeling better, he had started to actually let himself go through this, reassured himself it was only temporary, that he was doing his best with the situation. Where had it gone all of a sudden?

Before he even had time to begin formulating a hurtful answer to his own questions, he felt himself be lightly lifted and whisked up into the air.

He had not let himself realize how much he was looking forward to seeing her until she was zipping him masterfully away from the fight.

Ladybug put him down on solid ground- what looked like the back of a store with enough going on to hide out for a moment. He must have been staring, because her expression went from concentration to worry in a second.

“Are you okay?” She grabbed his right hand and looked at his ring as the second paw pad blinked off (had he missed the first one?).

He quickly tried to fall back on their established dynamic. It was easy, it was familiar, it was what worked . “All good. Thanks for that, my Lady, that one was a whisker away from getting me” except that the pun was as dry as sandpaper in his mouth and sounded all wrong; his least practiced smile felt off and did not reach his eyes, as much as he tried (he had never had to try before. Not for her).

She looked him up and down with concern and clocked a bruised cheek and a still-slime-stained arm. “I am so sorry Chat, I got held up transforming and then I had to track you down, and—”

“Bugaboo” he interrupted, planting both hands on her shoulders (like Marinette had done to him when he had started spiraling). She was there and she was worried, and she was apologizing for some wild, unfathomable reason. “I’m okay. Really”.

It was true that it had been a while since he had to fight one of those things alone. The same little voice in his head that kept pushing for him to actually think instead of just playing video games all day demanded that he take the apology; just this once. He had recently begun teaching himself to listen to it.

Ladybug breathed in and sighed in an attempt to relax into Chat’s reassuring gesture, but their regrouping session was cut short by loud, approaching splats .

“Let’s just do this, okay?” She spoke looking in his direction but did not once look into his eyes. “You and me, like it’s always been.” She smiled and it was one of the saddest he had ever seen on her. He wanted to ask, but knew there was no time.

He held his baton like one would a sword and they settled into a hurried fighting stance. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

The fight was unusually quiet —On the heroes’ side, at least. The Whisperer would not shut up and their voice felt like it was just short of sanding their eardrums down to dust—. They communicated only in short phrases, looks and the occasional hand gesture. You could have cut the tension with a knife, and the living slime’s irritating remarks (“you just need to relax and listen to my voice”, “feeling the tingles yet?”, “maybe some slime will help you calm down!”) did nothing but add insult to injury. Chat was trying so hard to be in sync with Ladybug, to fall into the usual lull of battle, and he could see she was trying, too, but it just did not come. Everything about the fight was off— every move was mechanical; every tactic, strained. When she called her Lucky Charm, he had to keep himself from physically flinching.

They were done with the akuma faster than expected, but it took everything out of them— The fight was over, and nothing was fine.

The victim (some poor failed YouTuber named Ethan) insisted he could get home by himself and left the heroes alone to part ways. After a fist bump that felt as routine and hollow as everything else in the past few minutes, Chat extended his baton and began to turn around to leave before feeling a hand wrap around his wrist.

“Wait. Can we talk for a bit?” Ladybug looked up at him, and he was reminded why he could never say no to those wide, honest blue eyes. Even if she looked worried and he did not think going there was a good idea.

She pulled both of them into an empty backstreet between two nearby buildings, secluded enough that it guaranteed privacy. And she asked the question he had been fearing that entire time.

“What’s wrong?”

He could not even bring himself to say it was nothing. He just looked at the ground and fiddled with the tail end of his belt. He knew he had to say something, anything, to explain himself and his pathetic performance, but his throat stayed locked shut as he did his best to fight back the incipient prickling at the back of his eyes.

“That bad?” Her voice was not mocking or admonishing as he had expected. It was soft. There was something there that knew, on some level, what he was going through. She took a step closer to him and he tried to look up at her, but got no further than her shoulders; the tips of her pigtails messily falling over them.

“We could recharge and talk about it, if you want.” He watched as she raised a hand and placed it, gently, over his shoulder. He wanted to step back, to keep her at a distance, but he could not react fast enough, and it was too late.

He melted right then and there.

“I’m sorry, Ladybug, I am so sorry!” All his defenses broke and tears flowed down his face all at once, like they had been accumulating behind a dam.

“Chat, you don’t—”

“I failed you, I basically lied to you! I can’t even— I—” He could not have stopped himself from letting everything out for her to see if he had wanted to (he did not, and perhaps that was the worst part of it all).

The tears stung at his eyes and nose, and he felt her hands on his shoulders, grabbing at him desperately. “What do you mean? Chat? Are you okay? Chat, your miraculous, it’s—!”

He could not pay attention to a word she was saying as his legs gave out under him and he fell on the rough cement ground, barely registering the fuzz of magic washing over his body, leaving him exposed to her sight. He squeezed his eyes shut and wiped them furiously with his hands, maybe even trying, on some level, to conceal his face. He looked at the ground, the tears giving way to a wave of dry, exhausted anger.

“I could have ended this days ago. I— I should have done it,” he sobbed, “and I didn’t.”

Ladybug made no sound as she continued to tower over him, feet frozen as if nailed to the floor.

Adrien rubbed at his eyes again and made sure they could stay open. They did not sting anymore; instead, they just felt heavy. He used all the strength he had left in him to look up at her, to look directly into her eyes.

“I know who he is, Ladybug. I found out Shadow Moth’s identity.”

In her expression, he could see nothing but deep pain. He could not hold her gaze.

He did not know why she remained quiet. She did not yell at him, she did not leave. She stayed as he laid kneeling on the ground, looking at the gray cement under his knees, and spoke. He told her his story. He fidgeted with the ring on his right hand as he talked about the study, and the glint of the peacock miraculous and the book and how it had made his chest hurt. He began crying when he recounted how big of an idiot he had been the first time his father became the Collector. He had been so close, they had been so close, and if he had just used his brain instead of letting his affection-starved little dumbass heart fool him into thinking that maybe his father actually loved him, maybe, just maybe… he could have… he…

His throat locked up again and he wanted to tear his hair out, to compress himself into a minuscule marble and be launched onto the surface of the sun. He wanted to melt into the ground and rip the streets of Paris apart and swing his father into the Eiffel tower like a baseball and scream until the farthest reaches of the universe could feel his pain. All he managed was for the tears to burn their way down his cheeks again.

He did not see so much as feel Ladybug throwing herself on the ground in front of him, and through the stinging salt in his eyes he managed to see her.

She was crying, too. Shaking her head and grabbing at his shoulders again.

“Stop it. Adrien, stop that right now. This isn’t— you’re not—”

She cupped his face in her hands and wiped his tears away, even though they kept flowing and flowing out of his eyes. “Just… stop it, okay?” He did not understand why she was crying, why she insisted. He shook his head and tried to remove her hands, but they were so soft, and the tears hurt so much, he ended up holding them instead. He looked at her, concerned, empathetic, painfully kind, and let himself fantasize about a world where he was not so selfish; where he deserved her. She just kept him close. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

And she hugged him. It seemed like something impossible and wrong and like everything that was right with this messed up world they were living in when Ladybug hugged Adrien Agreste and held him tight like he was the most precious thing she had ever laid hands on. He closed his eyes and let himself melt into her arms— and he did not need to feel the electric fuzz of magic or see the soft pink glow of her detransformation behind closed eyelids to recognize her and kick himself for not figuring it out sooner. He held onto her because she still felt like a towering shield around him and like no harm would ever come to him as long as he had her, and she was just as precious to him in that moment as he felt he was for her. He loved her as much as he ever had— maybe even more.

This was it. The safest place on earth. Right here, in Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s arms.

After they separated, silence settled between them. Adrien and Marinette were sitting on the ground of the alleyway cast in half-shadows from the tall buildings on either side; thin beams of sunlight striped the windowless walls that hid them from the rest of the world for the time being. They fed their kwamis, who shared an uncertain glance, and remained looking wordlessly at each other for what felt like hours, but was probably only a minute.

“I’m sorry.” It was Marinette who broke the silence first, at last averting her eyes to the ground.

This startled him more than anything else she could have said.

“About what?” His voice felt coarse after crying for so long. She seemed to think for a moment, as if going through a rolodex of instances to be sorry for in her head.

“I don’t know. About everything. About your dad, about not being able to help you, about not just… telling you?” She gestured to her earrings and to Tikki, who was digging into her second macaron and pretending to not hear them. “Maybe if I had just dealt with it as soon as you told me…”

“You were there for me, Marinette. I am so thankful for that.” Her name was sweet in his mouth, almost drowning out the bitter taste left behind by the past week. “It was all I asked for, and you went above and beyond, like you always do.”

“But you’re still not okay. We don’t know if…” He thought he saw something painful flash in her eyes, but she shook her head and it was gone. “I just wanted to make things okay for you.”

“I don’t think there’s anything you could do to make things okay.” It hurt, but it was true. “This is beyond even the best superhero Paris has ever seen.” He gave her a small smile. Seeing her look back up to meet his gaze, he could still barely believe his eyes. One of his closest friends, the one he had always been able to trust and confide in, who gave the best advice and had the most amazing ideas, was the person he loved and admired most in the world. The mix of feelings was a bit overwhelming— His chest and throat still ached from everything; from knowing too much, from not being able to do what was right for the greater good, to fulfill his duty. However, at the same time, he was sure his heart would burst out of the sheer love he felt for Marinette in that moment.

She smiled back at him. “Yeah, but you’ve kinda got a lot going on right now anyway.”

He rolled his eyes playfully at her. “I thought my job was being the clown of the team?”

She chuckled lightly at that. “Well, I always knew you were a versatile guy.” They both laughed and Marinette relaxed visibly, letting go of the strap of her purse she had been fidgeting with. Adrien noticed how much he had also needed this shared moment of levity.

He scooched forward and turned so that he was sitting next to her and leaned his head on hers, feeling her let her cheek rest on his shoulder. He reached out his hand for her to take, and after hesitating for a moment, she did. After a while of tracing over each other’s fingers with their own, it was Adrien who spoke up.

“Your hugs are firm,” he said, “it’s nice.” It was all he could do not to spurt out everything he felt when she was next to him; how safe, calm and at home she made him feel.

She let the sentence hang between them for a moment, as if she was examining it, and squeezed his hand lightly.

“Your hugs are gentle,” she squeezed his hand lightly, “I never want to let go.”

He squeezed her hand right back, brought it up to his lips and kissed it. He felt her cheek heat up through his t-shirt and a smile escaped onto his face.

“So, what now?” Marinette asked. Her voice was uncertain, but there was an unmistakable determination to it.

Adrien pulled back to look at her, but did not let go of her hand. He would never get tired of seeing her like this, fully and vehemently herself.

“I think we’ll have to figure it out together,” he said. “That’s what teams are for, isn’t it?”

She offered him her other hand and it made his heart grow at least thrice its own size.

“It’s you and me against the world, after all,”she said, a small smile painting her face a lovely shade of hope.

He took her hand and held it tight in a half-silent promise. “Just like it always has been, my Lady”.

#hi hello bumping this one again!!!#it's done check it out!!!#self reblog

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