Chapter Text
“Kid,” Plagg says quietly, hovering around Adrien’s head for a moment before settling snugly into the boy’s shirt collar. “You know…if it’s something you have to do…not to get sappy on you, but I’m on your side. No one else’s.”
Smiling a little sadly, Adrien reached over to scratch behind Plagg’s ears. “Not even Ladybug’s?”
"Ladybug is on your side."
Sighing, Adrien tilts his head back against the window. “She’s on Chat Noir’s side.”
“Ladybug is on your side,” Plagg repeats.
“Sure.” Adrien sighs again, this time deeply enough to briefly unsettle his kwami. Cupping a hand protectively over his shirt, Adrien says, “Look, it probably won’t come up. School is like the only thing I ever really fought him on.”
Plagg doesn’t say anything this time, but they both know what he’s thinking.
That’s why it probably will come up.
It comes up. Of course it does.
Sooner than he’d thought, but not sooner than he’d prepared for.
His father says school’s gotten too dangerous. He says it’s been targeted by too many akuma attacks. It’s not safe to be around his classmates, either- most of them have been akumatized.
(Somewhere deep down, Adrien wishes he was daring enough as himself to ask if he could still hang out with Marinette then, because the two of them haven’t been yet. Hell, he’s pretty sure he’s seen Marinette protect some of their classmates from akumas, just by talking them through their emotions).
He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say much of anything, though he tries- for this, he tries, because he can already feel the bars closing in and he doesn’t think he can survive that again.
He barely gets a word in, and those he does are roundly ignored, spoken over, stomped on, to the point where a very paranoid part of him is constantly scanning his surroundings for an out-of-place butterfly.
Two hours later he’s standing in his room, breathing hard, back to the securely locked door as he stares out the window.
“I don’t know how much Camembert I’ll be able to get my claws on, Plagg,” he says quietly. He has some in the bag at his side, and he has some cash, but he’s not sure how well he’ll be able to spend said cash.
His kwami settles on his shoulder, nudging him gently, unusually affectionate for the little cat. “It’ll be alright, kid. I wouldn’t leave you.”
Plagg being so openly sentimental is a bad sign.
Adrien’s grateful anyway.
“Thanks, Plagg,” he says quietly, and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t really want to be alone. He won’t be, not really, but it isn’t the same as having Plagg with him and he doesn’t know how much time he’ll really be able to spend as Adrien. “You were my first friend, you know? You and Ladybug.” He can’t dismiss Nino, and even Alya and Marinette now, but he also can’t think of them just at the moment. It’s too painful.
Plagg headbutts him. “You’re stalling.”
“Yeah.” Another breath. “Claws out.”
He spends that first night on the roof of the school. It’s too close, and it’s a bad idea, but he doesn’t know when he’ll get to see it again (outside of an akuma attack, probably). Nobody will be looking for him yet and he’ll leave before dawn. He stays transformed, anyway. Chat Noir’s never slept transformed before, but it’s apparently possible, and he spends the night huddled in the shadow of a higher part of the roof.
He’s not well-rested when the sky starts to lighten incrementally but he’s actually doing better than he would have had he stayed in his room. He checks the area thoroughly before taking off for a different part of the city.
He vaults off Marinette’s balcony at one point, and spares a moment to wish it wasn’t both too close and too well-used, because it looks very comfortable. (And it would leave him close to a friend). But it’s not somewhere he can stay.
(He can hear Marinette singing Try Everything to herself inside and- why is she awake at this hour, but- the song makes him smile for the first time all night).
Adrien left on a Friday night. He won’t be missed for a while, and akuma attacks are less frequent on the weekends- less stress to target, he and Ladybug both think. He had lessons and a photo shoot this weekend, but not until later, so he has plenty of time before anyone realizes he isn’t where he’s supposed to be.
He wonders how long it will take them to realize he isn’t coming back.
Chat Noir lands on a distant rooftop and ducks into the shelter formed where several roofs meet and form a sort of nook. There are supplies here- a sleeping bag, food that he doesn’t plan to touch until he has to, Camembert for Plagg, carefully-sealed cookies because Ladybug had once mentioned that’s what her kwami likes.
It’s sheltered. It’s safe. He has a dozen more of these hiding spots scattered around Paris. They were supposed to be for if they needed some place to go quickly after a battle (and if Ladybug trusted him enough for it) but- they’ll do for this, too. Chat Noir had never even had a chance to show Ladybug most of them, which he’s thankful for, suddenly. She’s going to know something is wrong- she knows him- but he doesn’t really want her to know how wrong.
He’d had the foresight to leave books here (he’d left his phone behind, too easy to trace) so he curls up in the corner with the sleeping bag and starts to read now that the sun’s risen enough to see. He should detransform, really, but- he doesn’t want to be Adrien right now. Even the desire for Plagg’s company isn’t strong enough for him to want to face what he’s doing here.
Eventually he manages to get some real sleep so that he’s well-rested by the time he turns up for patrol that night.
(Is anyone looking for Adrien yet? -he can’t think about that on patrol).
“You’re quiet tonight,” Ladybug notes, less than an hour after they start.
There’s more than a little worry in her voice and it warms him to hear it. He smiles slightly as he looks up and admits, “I had a bad night.”
Her answering smile is soft and still concerned. “Well, let’s make this a good one, then.” She reaches out a hand to pull him across a gap between buildings, entirely unnecessarily, and adds, “Race you to the Seine.”
“Aw, Ladybug,” he whines, smiling wider despite himself. “You know cats don’t like water.”
She only laughs at him before swinging away and then, well, it’s a race.
She wins (they’re pretty evenly matched, but she usually wins, even if he’s faster on the ground) and he catches up to her on the riverbank, tucked out of sight from casual passersby.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” she beckons with a grin from her seat on the ground, and he goes willingly, only to be startled when she reaches up and pulls him down to sit next to her.
“What-” he starts, and whatever he was about to say is swallowed in an embarrassingly loud purr as she reaches up to scratch gently behind his ear. He melts into her side and she wraps one arm around him, shifting so she doesn’t have to stop scratching.
This- is weird. This is weird, right? Not that he has a problem with it, he very adamantly does not, but- this isn’t really a ‘casual friends’ sort of position. Not that they’re casual friends, but they’re not not, either.
He’s overthinking this. Is it that obvious to Ladybug just how far from okay he is right now?
Chat Noir leans heavily into her side and purrs louder as she finds a spot that makes him go boneless with relaxation. His eyes slide shut, and he thinks she laughs, but he’s too comfortable (and comforted) to care.
He thinks, now that he can look back and compare, that he’s always been a little touch-starved but being Chat Noir seems to exaggerate it. Being held- being pet- feels wonderful and that’s something Ladybug had picked up on right away. Still, it’s always been in more of a ‘not shying away from physical contact’ way, not... this. She’s never outright cuddled with him before and he desperately hopes this isn’t a one-time-only thing.
If she has any ladybug side effects besides an increased sensitivity to the cold, she’s never said, and none of his curiosity-fueled ladybug research has helped him any there. She certainly doesn’t have an off-putting scent (far from it), and if she has any kind of reflexive bleeding capabilities he really doesn’t want to know, and he’s tried bringing her flowers before since she’s been nothing but supportive of his more feline traits but flowers are too easily misconstrued.
He has no idea how much later it is when Ladybug’s hand falls away at last, though she doesn’t take her arm from around him.
“Better, kitten?” she asks quietly, still hugging him close.
Chat Noir sighs and snuggles closer to her and she lets him. Maybe he’s died and gone to heaven. “Y-yeah,” he mumbles, hoping if he keeps his eyes shut she won’t realize how furiously he’s blushing. “Thanks.”
“You, ah, looked like you needed it. Are you still up for patrol?”
He actually really doesn’t want to move, but he wants to go back to his lonely rooftop even less, so he sighs again, and repeats, “Yeah.”
Ladybug shifts away, but only to help him up, and when he looks up at her at last her gaze is searching. “Chat Noir, are you sure? We can always patrol tomorrow night...”
Despite wanting to stay by the banks of the Seine with Ladybug for the rest of forever, at a minimum, Chat summons up a grin and suggests, “We could do that anyway.”
Ladybug rolls her eyes, but to his surprise doesn’t actually say no. “Come on, kitten. Paris is waiting.”
There’s no akuma that night (honestly, there’s no akuma most Saturday nights) but they patrol long past when they’d usually have gone their separate ways. In fact, the first light of dawn is in the sky by the time Ladybug says, “I had better get going.”
He flinches before he can help it, tries to turn it into a huddle that he can pass off as being cold.
Ladybug lands lightly beside him and, wonder of wonders, wraps an arm around his shoulders again in a sideways hug. “We can patrol again tonight, Chat Noir. It’s been too quiet recently.”
No it hasn’t, there was an akuma attack Friday afternoon, but if Ladybug isn't going to mention that then Chat Noir isn’t about to point it out.
“Only if you’re up to it too, my Lady,” he says instead, tail flicking up to curl briefly around Ladybug’s waist before dropping down again. “I have kept you up all night.”
“Chat Noir, I could have gone home anytime,” she chides gently, letting go of him. “I chose to patrol, too. Let’s go before we’re missed, I’ll see you tonight.”
She swings off before he can react to that, which is for the best.