Chapter Text
Chloe squeezed her eyes shut against the morning light streaming through the curtains and rolled over, curling up tighter beneath the soft sheets. She hadn’t felt this relaxed in ages, not since she learned the true price of having her Miraculous full time: Hawkmoth was nocturnal. Midnight Akumas constantly robbed her of her beauty sleep, but here and now? She felt comfortable and at ease. Her hands stretched out and she felt...something. It was warm, whatever it was, so she shifted closer to it and wrapped an arm around it. The warmth groaned and shifted, but she held on that much tighter.
In her half awake state, she barely registered the grunt from beneath her, but she quite clearly heard an unfamiliar voice say, “...the hell?”
She blinked herself out of her slumber and it took two seconds to realize she wasn’t in her own bed. It took only one second more to realize that, whoever’s bed she was in, she wasn’t alone. She lifted her gaze to a man, an older man, who she didn’t recognize. His long red hair and turquoise eyes seemed familiar but the only things she registered were that she didn’t know who he was and he was in the bed with her.
She screamed and shoved away from him, sliding across the sheets and off the bed opposite him. She stood, ready to demand some damn answers, but when the man’s gaze landed on her, his face turned as red as his hair, and he turned his head away with a hand over his eyes. Chloe opened her mouth to ask what his problem was, but a draft dropped her attention away from him and down to her bare body.
The man protested when she snatched the sheets off the bed and hastily wrapped them around herself. She may have, in the process of yanking the covers away from him, caught an eyeful of something that turned her own face red, but he was thankfully quick to cover up with a pillow.
“Okay, Red. You have ten seconds to explain why the hell you’re in my bed and why we’re...naked.”
“I...I have no idea how we got here, but, um…” His eyes dropped towards Chloe’s chest.
“Hey, hey!” She snapped her fingers at him and pointed at her face. “Eyes are up here, pervo!”
“I’m not looking…” He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. After easing it between his lips, he said, “I think I know why we were in bed together. Look at your left hand.”
Chloe had the sheets clutched to her chest with her left hand. Okay, so he wasn’t looking at her breasts. She shifted her grip on the sheets and looked at her left hand. Her eyes immediately fell on the magnificent ring on her fourth finger: a diamond flanked by a trio of citrine, ruby, and sapphire on either side, and set on a black band with a single gold stripe circling the entire ring. Next to it sat a plain gold band, and when she lifted her eyes back to the man, he had his left hand held up, displaying the gold band on his own finger.
“No, no no no no way in hell!” Chloe looked form the man, back to her hand, then back to him. “We’re...married?”
“Seems like it.”
“Uh uh, no way. A, if I’m marrying anyone, it’s going to be Adrien Agreste, not whoever the hell you are, and B, last I checked I’m only 15, a little too young to be married.”
“You don’t look 15.”
“I don’t recall asking for your opinion.” Though he did have a point. Her body felt different, taller and curvier than she normally was. She shook her head and grumbled, “This has to be the work of that Akuma I was just fighting.” She glanced down around her feet and, thankfully, found some clothes. Black panties and a yellow tank top, but it was better than walking around with a sheet wrapped around her. She sat on the bed with her back to the man and dropped the sheet to get dressed.
“Wait, fighting an Akuma?” Chloe heard some shifting behind her, so she assumed he was searching for some clothes himself.
“Yeah, you don’t recognize Queen Bee?” She pulled the tank top over heard head and pulled her loose hair from the collar. “One of Paris’ great superheroes?”
The sounds of movement stopped. “Wha...Ch-Chloe?!”
“Uh, yeah, who did you think I was?” She stood, working the panties up her legs. With them in place, she turned to address this stranger but stopped when Pollen and a blue kwami she didn’t recognize phased through the door.
“Good morning, my Queen, my King,” Pollen greeted with a small bow.
“May I have some berries please?” the blue kwami asked, rubbing its tummy. “I’m hungry.”
“Duusu!” The man, now clad in dark blue boxer briefs, lunged at the kwami and clamped his hands down around it, but when he turned his gaze back to Chloe, he knew the damage had been done.
“Duusu…” Chloe’s eyes widened. She knew that kwami's name, just as she now knew who the man was. She scolded herself for not realizing it sooner; she would have recognized that red hair anywhere.
“Paon.”
Neither of them moved or took their eyes off of each other for ten full seconds. Chloe chanced a glance to his bedside table and spotted what she knew was his Miraculous. His eyes darted to her table and back, and she knew her own Miraculous sat there. They waited. Waited for the other to make the first move, with Pollen hovering between them and appearing more and more perplexed as the moment drew out.
There. The faintest twitch of his hand. Chloe’s own hand shot out, wrapped around the comb and she leapt over the bed just as she slipped the teeth into her hair and called for her transformation. The man ducked to the side and just as the golden sparks passed by Chloe’s eyes, he snatched up a pillow and threw it into her face, buying just enough time to affix his Miraculous to the waist of his boxers and call for Duusu to transform him.
He lunged, catching Queen Bee around the middle and crashing through the bedroom door and into a modest, sparsely decorated lounge area that all but proved they weren’t somewhere Chloe Bourgeois would call home. Queen Bee rolled backwards, drove her feet into Paon’s stomach throwing him behind her, then sprang to her feet to face him. He fell through a glass coffee table, but spun on his back just right so the tail of his coat swept a shower of glass shards upwards into his opponent’s face
Queen Bee lifted one hand to her eyes to block the glass, and with the other drew her trompo from her waist and spun it to deflect a barrage of feather darts. She flung out the top, but Paon sidestepped and, completely focused on Queen Bee, failed to notice it ricochet off of the refrigerator and slam into his back. Queen Bee whipped the trompo cord around him, catching the top on the end and using the momentum to wrap the line around him even tighter. She kicked him in the chest hard enough to knock him to the ground, leapt on top of him with her legs on either side of him, then caught her trompo.
The word to activate her power had just formed on her tongue when the handle to the front door jiggled, drawing her attention, and Paon’s. The door swung open and in strode a dark skinned woman with rust-colored hair in an undercut and a broad smile beneath her glasses. “Good morning Kurtzbergs! Put your pants on because I have a surpri-OH GODDAMMIT!” When she laid eyes on them, Queen Bee with Paon tied up beneath her, her face went from smile to disgust, to mild disappointment all in the span of two seconds. She spun back outside, swearing the entire way.
Queen Bee’s blood ran cold and she dropped her shocked gaze to the man tied up beneath her. “Kurtzberg? As in...Nathanael Kurtzberg?” Paon grimaced and turned his head away.
“What happened, Alya?” another woman asked just outside the door.
“I walked in on Chloe on top of Nath. They’re transformed and he’s tied up and-”
“Well, maybe this will teach you to knock from now on.” In walked another woman, this one with a dark pixie cut and bright blue eyes. “Okay you two. You’ve had all week to fuck each other’s brains out, now detransform and...Jesus, you broke the coffee table?” She groaned and slapped her hand over her eyes. “Do you have any idea how much Adrien spent on that?”
“Okay,” Queen Bee barked. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?”
The dark haired woman peeked out from under her hand. “Wait, what?”
“Hey, it could be my house,” Paon grunted indignantly.
“Shut it tomato brain. As if you could afford your own place drawing sub par Ladybug comics.”
Alya walked inside, seeming just as confused as her companion. “Tomato brain? You haven’t called him that in...like, ten years. Are you two having some kind of lover’s spat?”
Queen Bee rolled her eyes. “There’s no way I’m in love with, or married to, this absolute loser. This has to be the work of that Akuma his boss sicced on us.” She blinked at Alya. “And what the hell did you do to your hair?”
Alya lifted a hand to her undercut. “I...got this done, like...a couple months ago…”
“Tomato...Akuma...doesn’t recognize…” The dark haired woman narrowed her eyes at Queen Bee. “Chloe, what year is it?”
“2019, though I don’t exactly look 15 anymore, so I-”
She ignored whatever else Queen Bee had to say and dropped her eyes to Paon. “And Nath? Do you agree it’s 2019?”
Paon tilted his head to look at the woman, though she was upside down from his perspective. “Um, yeah, but how do you know who I am?”
She swore and turned to Alya. “Could you call Adrien and Nino please?”
“Team meeting?”
The woman nodded. “Team meeting.” Alya walked back outside, fishing her phone from her pcoket, and the dark haired woman crouched down. “Okay, this is gonna be a little shocking, but it’s 2029 and you two, at least the two of you from this timeline, got married last week. I know your identity-” she pointed to Paon “-because we’re not enemies anymore. We’re actually close friends. A little more than ten years ago, you betrayed Hawkmoth and helped us defeat him.”
“Us?” Queen Bee said. She looked the woman over. Dark hair, blue eyes, earrings… “Wait, Ladybug?”
The woman smiled. “Yeah, I’m Ladybug, and Chloe, I want you to promise me you won’t freak out too much when I tell you my name, oka-”
“Hey, Mari,” Alya walked back in and stuffed her phone back into her pocket. “The boys said they’ll be here in about-”
“Mari?” Paon turned his head to get a better look at the woman. “Marinette?”
“Marinette?” Queen Bee stopped breathing. “Dupain-Cheng?...Ladybu...wha…” Her breathing started back up, but far faster and shallower than it should have been.
Marinette slapped her hand over her eyes again and sighed. “Oh, goddammit.”