Chapter Text
Chat Noir had always wondered, in that morbid way one may wonder, how it feels to know you're going to die.
He'd seen movies. Read books. Heard of tales of seeing 'the light', of God's name on dying mouths, of every prayer from every religion bouncing across skulls until the very last moment. Adrien had never been religious, but he had always wondered if that would change if he were about to die.
And maybe it did. Because, when it came to it, he was praying, too. A constant, repetitive prayer, one that screamed above every other thought in his mind.
Ladybug.
Ladybug.
Ladybug.
Ladybug .
Yes, he supposed he did become religious.
All the way until his head smashed against metal and stars exploded across his vision.
It had been his own fault. She'd demanded him to get back on the ground and walk back home after patrol — it wasn't safe to be on rooftops when their transformations were so close to running out. And he usually listened to her about these things, but he was already late, and Nathalie finding his bedroom empty at midnight had seemed much scarier than de-transforming between rooftops. So, after leaving Ladybug's line of sight, he'd leapt back up onto a rooftop across the road with guilt twisting in his gut.
De-transforming between rooftops was much scarier than Nathalie finding his bedroom empty at midnight. He always had the 'went for a walk in the garden' excuse up his sleeve. He couldn't get out of a sixty-metre drop so easily.
Unless, of course, by some blessed miracle, he happened to fall onto a balcony.
(Maybe praying was effective).
He lay there, breathing hard, waiting for the ringing in his ears to subside. He knew he wasn't dead because there was no moon in the sky and the balcony was cold and Plagg was yelling far too loudly about cheese and Adrien was sure he was a good enough person for his afterlife to be a little better than this. He put a hand to the back of his head and it came back clean. It hadn't split open like he'd thought, despite the pain.
Ladybug .
Ladybug.
Ladybug.
Ladybug .
Her name rolled through his mind like rosary beads, over and over and over again.
She'd taken his inertia lightly, laughing as she stood over him and telling him he was in no position to chide her for sleeping late when he was taking catnaps during patrol. When she pushed his hair from his eyes to make sure he was looking when she laughed again, the throb in his head that'd been torturing him for the past week disappeared.
“Hey,” he said. “Something scary happened a while ago.”
“Aw, chaton . Did you jump at your own shadow again?”
He bit his lip. Chat Noir eased himself onto his back, turning his face to the sky.
Maybe he shouldn't tell her. She was joking around today, something she hadn't been doing for a while now. Would it really be worth it to bring this up now? It'd been a week, after all.
He remembered the metal. The balcony smashing against his head. The way her name tasted of blood in his mouth. That piercing fear that if he didn't make it out of that alive, she would've never known what had happened to him.
Chat Noir swallowed hard, biting against the bolt of pain that came with it.
“I fell," he said. "I missed the jump between two buildings and I fell.”
She snorted. " That's scary to you? Chat Noir, I've seen you drop down the side of Montparnasse Tower for the fun of it."
That could've been it. He could've stopped there. When she laughed, he could've laughed with her, made a joke about how she used to be the one shrieking whenever he missed a jump back in their first few days of superheroing, when they didn't fully understand the extent of their costumes' invincibility.
But it had been a week. And he was still shooting out of bed with his pyjama shirt pasted to his back after yet another dream where there was no balcony to catch him.
"It was… while I was de-transformed, actually," he said.
At that, she turned around. He couldn't tilt his head to look at her. Not with his headache.
"You jumped off a building while you were de-transformed?" she asked.
"No, I…" He fiddled with his ring, watching the reflection of the stars swim through the band. "I de-transformed in the middle of the jump. My timer ran out. And I fell."
The silence that followed was thick and heavy.
He still wouldn't look at her. But it wasn't just because of his headache, now.
"Oh my God," she said softly. "But— didn't you walk home?"
"No… I didn't." He pressed his lips together. "I was in a rush. It was stupid. I thought I'd be able to make it."
Just thinking about it made him want to smack himself. He'd felt the thrum of his ring against his finger. He'd felt the hot threads of his transformation wearing away. Why hadn't he just recharged before making his way back? How could he have taken a risk like that?
She came over, kneeling beside him. Then, in a gesture so tender he felt his heart stutter, Ladybug pushed a lock of hair away from his eyes.
"Are you okay?" she said.
"Yeah, I guess." By now, her hand had moved away from his face, and he was tempted to pull it back. "I fell onto a balcony. Thank God."
"Thank God," she repeated. "I'm sorry you had to go through that. It must've been scary."
"It was… it was really scary." He clasped his hands tight. He didn't want her to see them shaking. "I was afraid that… that I'd…"
"Sssh. It's okay." She reached down and intertwined their fingers. "It's fine. You're fine. Let me know someplace that's close to your house. I'll drop you off there as long as you need. Okay?"
He let out a deep breath and squeezed her hand. "Okay."
Chat Noir: hey bug
Chat Noir: i’m okay. come back up to our rooftop
Chat Noir held Ladybug for so long it felt like their bodies had fused together. As if, once she stepped back, she'd tear his epidermis away with her.
If Adrien hadn't crossed the road when he had, if he'd spent a second longer looking for Plagg's camembert in his pockets before heading out of the alleyway, he would've been plastered to the mangled pedestrian signal with windscreen glass in his face.
He'd gotten lucky. Maybe because he was thinking of her before it had happened, thinking about how she'd smiled at him when he promised to buy her favourite sweets before he came back.
But she hadn't known that. All she had known was that there had been an accident on the same street he'd ducked into to recharge his transformation so they could prolong their time together after battle. All she'd known was that he was de-transformed, a civilian, unprotected and breakable , on the same street a van driver had lost control of the wheel, smashed into a crosswalk, and capsized.
Their wicker basket was flipped open. Chicken sandwiches for him, and cheese for her, tucked in neatly with apple and orange juice boxes and slices of cake wrapped in cellophane. Their picnic blanket was still there, half-folded from where she must have stopped spreading it out to run to the scene. It had all happened so fast, he wondered if he'd just dreamt it all up. How could that have happened after this ?
"I don't think I've ever been so scared in my entire life," she said quietly. "You… you went down the street... and not even two minutes later…"
His arms tightened around her. "But I'm okay."
Her breaths were loud but slow. He recognised the intervals they entered and left her. Four seconds. Seven seconds. Eight seconds. He'd read about that online some time ago while researching ways to calm himself down after arguing with his father.
She leaned back, not too far to let go of him, but enough to see his face. "Totally okay?"
He nodded.
Her hand twitched on his chest, but didn't move any further than that. "How close were you?"
Chat Noir hesitated. "Not too close," he lied. "I mean, I didn't get hurt, if that's what you're asking. The driver was okay, too. I checked in with the paramedics after recharging."
She set her forehead back on his chest, breathing deeply.
"Okay," she finally said, standing up properly. "Okay. Maybe we should… tidy up?" She gestured towards the picnic.
"No," he said quickly. "No, I… I think I need to spend some time with you after all that."
Ladybug nodded and lowered herself to the picnic blanket, reaching out for his hand once they were both sat down.
They ate together as usual, and pretended they couldn't see each other's hands shaking.
In his rush to get to the scene, he hadn't had a chance to catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He was too busy launching himself from rooftop to rooftop and biting back against the headache metastasising from his head to the backs of his eyes and nose.
He'd found Ladybug crouched in an alleyway, peering at the akuma over the wall.
She turned to him, and her eyes widened. "You're bleeding."
Chat Noir blinked at her.
He reached up and scrubbed at a wet trail dripping down his brow.
Huh. That was blood.
The headache made a lot more sense now.
The ground juddered. Chat Noir slipped beside Ladybug against the wall, trying to wipe the rest of the blood off his face.
"Why are you bleeding?" she said. Her hand flew up to turn him by the chin. Pain shot through his skull. "What happened?"
Chat Noir chewed on his lips, saying nothing.
" Chaton ," she said, firmly but not unkindly, "what happened?"
Maybe he should've checked himself in the mirror. Because if he could remember one thing in the midst of the adrenaline clouding his brain, it was that Ladybug should never know about this.
Crashes ruptured through the silence from the street ahead.
Ladybug didn't even flinch.
He looked away, eyes fixed on the polka dots on her costume around her knees.
"I… had a run-in with the akuma," he said. "A run-in before I managed to transform."
"What kind of run-in?" Her voice was steady, but her fingers dug into his chin.
"Uh…" A bolt of pain pulsated in his head. He closed his eyes against it. "I was… in a trailer. And the akuma flipped it over while I was on the way out."
His head throbbed . It was as if his cerebellum had been swapped with his heart.
"A… a trailer…" Ladybug murmured under her breath.
He just prayed she wouldn't push that any further. He wasn't sure how far he could take his explanation about the trailer before— oh, who else is a blond, green-eyed guy around their age that models in his free time?
She didn't push it, though. But she didn't say anything either.
"I got lucky though," he hurried to add, opening his eyes. "I'm not concussed or anything." Though he wasn't totally sure how true that was and didn't really want to find out. "I still managed to get here, didn't I?"
Ladybug just stared at him, an unreadable look on her face.
"And no one else was in there but me," he said. "So no casualties."
"You were… all alone? No one realised you were hurt?"
"N-no, but…" His stomach twisted. "I'm fine. I swear, My Lady."
Ladybug dropped her hand. The look on her face didn't clear.
"We'll talk about this later," she said quietly, and headed out of the alley.
The cut on his brow had scabbed over. Ladybug pushed back his fringe, paused, then let it fall back in place.
Gently, eyes still closed, he guided her hand away from the cut and to the top of his head instead. She sighed, adjusted him in her lap, and continued brushing her fingers through his hair.
"We should reveal ourselves," she said.
Chat Noir's eyes burst open. "What?"
She didn't reply for a while, eyes fixed on the stars struggling through the light-polluted sky.
He sat up. She still wouldn’t look at him.
“You want to… reveal ourselves?” he said softly. “Our identities?”
She looked down at her hands and nodded.
Identities. He ran the word through his mind so many times it almost lost its meaning.
His mouth ran dry. “I… you…"
What could he say? Where would he even begin? Did she want him to tell her his name? To just drop his transformation? He couldn’t do that. He’d thought about their reveal enough times to know he wanted to be wearing something nice beneath the costume, maybe one of the shirts from his father’s summer collection last year. He’d be wearing his favourite cologne — two spritzes at each pulse point, so she’d smell it when she hugged him. They would be giddy with excitement, smiles threatening to split their faces, holding each other close and laughing into each other’s hair.
Ladybug pulled up her legs and hugged them to her chest. “I’m really scared, Chat Noir.”
He stared at her for a few seconds. “Scared of what?”
She paused, looking out over the skyline. “Of… of something happening to you,” she said. “Of not knowing that— that you’re hurt somewhere, because you’re de-transformed and I can’t find you.”
The scab on his brow tingled, as if reopened.
Chat Noir took in a sharp breath. “Come on, My Lady,” he said. “You know that won’t happen—”
"But hasn't it already?" she snapped. Ladybug pressed her lips together. Swallowed. She turned to him, jaw clenched. "What about when you de-transformed while jumping off a building? Or when you were almost caught in a road accident? Or— or when an akuma flipped your trailer over while you were all by yourself?" He could taste the fire in her voice as she leaned closer, eyes ablaze. "What would've happened if you got hurt? How would I know? How would I know if— if you'd—"
Her face crumpled. She inhaled deeply, then lowered her gaze.
"It scares me," she said softly. "When you're a few minutes late to patrol. When I can't find you during akuma fights. In the middle of the night when I get this random sinking feeling in my gut. I… I never know you're okay, and… and it's…" She squeezed her eyes shut. "It's eating me alive."
He'd known this was coming. He'd known since his head had smashed against the balcony and all his thoughts had shot straight to Ladybug.
The realisation that his existence was intertwined with someone else's was a bizarre one indeed. His survival instinct had never been great, for one. He'd learnt a long time ago that he'd survive whether he liked it or not — his father would make sure of it, and make sure it all happened on his terms, not Adrien's.
But then he'd met Ladybug. And then they'd become partners. And now a flame had been lit in him, a mass of heat he'd never felt before, forcing him to live. Live, and choose to live. She needed him — needed him as desperately as he needed her.
And it was terrifying , because it was starting to look like it wasn't enough to just choose to live. The rest of the universe had to choose it, too.
Gently, Chat Noir pulled Ladybug in. Her head dropped against his shoulder.
"I know you're scared," he said, cheek moving against her hair. "I'm scared, too. But the rules—"
She lifted her head to look at him. They were closer than they had been before. If he hadn't leaned back in time, his nose would've brushed hers. "What rules?" she said.
"The rules , Ladybug. About our identities."
She furrowed her brow, just like she always did whenever he said something she didn't like.
"My Lady." He twisted around so she was against his chest. He focused on her freckles to keep his voice steady, regardless of how tenderly she had her hands wrapped around his waist. "You… you know I want to reveal ourselves. More than anything. But you're upset. Maybe you just need to take some time and—"
She kissed him.
Chat Noir had never thought himself religious, but he'd learnt that that changed the closer to death he was. It was no surprise that when Ladybug bruised his lips and slipped her hands into his hair to keep him where she wanted, he felt prayers rolling through his mind.
Ladybug.
Ladybug.
Ladybug.
Ladybug.
And, God, if it meant she'd kiss him like this again, he never wanted to die. But he tasted his own death on the slide of her tongue against his and he went back for more, because, regardless of how much he chose to live, there was no way in hell he'd be making out of this one alive.
He pulled back as his lungs began to burn and he really worried he'd die. She was panting, too, clutching onto his shoulders for dear life.
For a few long moments, they said nothing. Chat Noir listened to her breathe, then listened to himself breathe, then fascinated himself with the sound of them intertwined, ragged and ruined but so perfect when layered together.
His heart pounded dents into his sternum. Her hand slipped down, stroking it lovingly.
Ladybug looked at him. "I love you more than I care about any rule."
He barely had a chance to figure out how to breathe and talk and look at her all at the same time before she kissed him again, softer now, and he melted .
"Not tonight," she said, and it took far too long for him to realise what she was talking about. "I don't think I'm ready to reveal ourselves tonight. But soon. For sure. Okay?"
"Okay," he breathed, and took hold of her chin. "I'm going to kiss you again."
Ladybug laughed. "Okay."