Chapter Text
He had just been trying to lighten the mood a little. It had started like this:
"I have a game we can play."
From his left, Ladybug groans. Though his gaze had settled over the city of Paris, cast now in the pinks and purples of the twilight sky, Chat still knows his Lady was rolling her eyes.
"I don't want to play any of your games, Chat."
It's the answer he's expecting, but he can tell his plan is already working. There's a curiosity resting on the edges of her words, a lilt that tells him she's more interested than she'd letting on.
“Surely My Lady isn’t afraid of losing to this lowly alley cat?” he presses.
Chat turns to her and raises one eyebrow dramatically. He’s able to duck away from the swat she aims towards the side of his head, but he’s completely incapable of ignoring the hot twist in his gut when Ladybug lets loose a laugh at his antics.
Laughter had been scarce their last few meetings. While he had no idea what life was like for the girl on the other side of the spotted mask, the slump of her shoulders when they met to patrol and the weary sighs that escaped her lips once the thrill of a successful akuma cleansing had cooled told him that all was not well. She’d seemed tired, and distant, and Chat knew he had been little better. School was becoming more demanding, photoshoots and runway appearances more frequent, and akuma attacks more direct. They were up to three attacks a week, on average, with one awful week maxing out at six. Almost always someone he knew. As much as he loved every moment spent saving the city with Ladybug, it was getting harder to enjoy when it meant hours of aching bones and blearily half-completed homework afterwards. He was getting tired of fighting his friends.
“Please,” she says with a snort, “It’s almost not worth playing when we both know I’ll sweep the floor with your fuzzy behind.”
“That sounds like something someone afraid of losing would say,” he teases. He delights in the indignant flush that lights up the skin along the edges of her mask. Ladybug’s cheeks puff out; his heart stammers in his chest.
“Are you calling me… a scaredy cat?”
Chat could kiss her. Truth be told, it doesn’t take much for him to feel that way, but there’s something irresistible about the way her lips quirk up when she turns his awful jokes back on him.
“Me? Call you a scaredy cat? That’s something I would never do on purrpose, My Lady.”
This time he lets her land the light smack on his shoulder; the ensuing giggle is worth it. Ladybug pulls her legs up from where she’d been letting them dangle over the edge of the roof and turns to face him. She crosses her arms over her chest, and dieu did the challenge sparking behind her electrifyingly blue eyes send a jolt to his system.
“Fine. What’s this game of yours? It doesn’t involve little mouse toys or string, does it Chaton?”
I wouldn’t play any game with you and string in public he thinks, and Chat’s glad he has the sense to chew the words back before he makes a fool of himself, because really, did that even make sense?
He settles for a purred, “Not this time,” and swings his legs back onto the roof. Chat crosses them and turns to face her - their knees brush.
“The game’s simple: two truths and a lie. Each of us will tell the other person three things. Then the other person will say if they’re right or not. Whoever gets the most right, wins.”
Ladybug tenses, ready to pull away. A frown graces her features.
“You know how I feel about discussing our… other lives.”
“It doesn't have to be about anything like that,” he says hurriedly. He places a hand on her knee, as if that would really keep her there should she change her mind. His Lady was nothing if not a force of her own.
“It’s bound to be personal,” Ladybug argues. She neatly sweeps his hand away and begins to stand. Her reaction was far from what he’s intended, and he scrambles to fix it.
“I loathe Camembert cheese,” he starts, “and I’m allergic to feathers. My favorite color is green.”
Curiosity killed the cat, he thinks. Ladybug hovers, no longer sitting, not fully upright. Her eyes scan his face, then flick upwards. Whether she realizes it or not, she nibbles lightly on her bottom lip.
“The last one is the lie,” she says slowly.
Satisfaction brought it back, he finishes. It’s difficult to keep his expression cool: Chat loves when he’s right about his partner-in-not-crime. Done thinking it through, Ladybug’s eyes refocus and slide back to him. Waiting.
“Absolutely correct, My Lady. How’d you know?”
Ladybug sits back down, and a smile flickers across her face.
“You made it obvious. I already knew about the feathers from Monsieur Pigeon, and over the summer you’d mentioned how mad you were over Plagg leaving a wedge of Camembert in your pocket and it melting over your stuff. I think you said something like ‘If I never saw another piece of Camembert again, that would be the happiest day of my life.’”
She rolls her eyes, likely reliving his hyperbole. “But it’s obvious even without that,” Ladybug continues, “You like green, and probably wear it a lot, because it’s a flattering color for your complexion - skin and hair and all. But it’s not your favorite color. You only wear it all of the time because other people like it on you, and you always give in when it comes to things you think people like.”
Chat’s jaw drops, leaving him looking for all the world like a fish trying to gulp in air.
“I-” he starts, but the words fail him, bad luck. “I think it’s your turn.”
The lingering look Ladybug leaves him makes it clear that his avoidance of her words hasn't gone unnoticed, but he thinks the game might be compelling enough for her to drop it. Her gaze slides back to the sky - darkening now, and spots of stars peeking out - and gently lifts a finger to her lips.
She’s quiet for the next minute, and Chat wonders what will come out. What little he’s learned of her has been through inattention or accident: she goes to a local lycee, they’re around the same age, it is her mother who is Chinese. She has a crush on someone from her school. She’s achingly insecure about her Miraculous-less self.
“I like fairy tales best, I have a younger brother, and my favorite color is pink,” she finally says. She still avoids his stare; she still looks nervous.
It strikes him, how instantly he seems to know the answer. For as little as they’d shared, how long had they been together? It was impossible not to know the person he fought beside for over a year.
“You don't have any other siblings,” Chat says decisively.
Ladybug’s look of surprise melts into a smile. If he had a kiss for every time she rolled her eyes at him…
“I am the best at this game, non?”
“Yeah, yeah, you got it right,” she says, flapping a hand at him dismissively, “Care to explain your sudden stroke of genius?”
“Please, I am always this brilliant,” Chat purrs. He leans forward, resting his hands on her shoulders, and whispers conspiratorially, “Whenever children are in danger from an akuma attack, you always hesitate, just for a second, before picking them up. It’s not because you don't want to rescue them - it’s more like you're figuring out how to haul them off without hurting them or something. If you had a younger sibling, you’d be so used to scooping them up that there would be no delay, no question.”
Her eyebrows raise far over the top of her mask - if he had to read her expression, he would say impressed.
“That… is pretty brilliant,” she admits, “I’d never noticed that myself.”
“I only ever noticed because I do the exact same thing.”
Chat knows she’ll document that tidbit. Unlike her, he’s been dropping hints about himself from the start. As time passes, the clues feel more like breadcrumbs laid out with intention; it’s all he can do not to grab her by the shoulders and shout ‘Follow the trail! Find me!’ (or, when he’s feeling low, more like now, ‘I'm alone at the other end of this, and so are you. Please, let’s meet in the middle.’).
“Your turn.”
For nearly twenty minutes they meander through each other's lives. Ladybug proves more willing with each round to reveal a fraction more about herself - Chat can't tell if it's a function of the game, lowering her defenses, or if all of that resistance she’d offered for so long wasn't more of a strain on her than she’d really wanted. Regardless, he commit each detail, every implication, to memory: she preferred tea to coffee (he’d gotten that one wrong); she was interested in fashion and design; she never read the Ladyblog unless she had to (he confessed he had every update sent to his phone - Chat Noir would never miss an opportunity to see his Ladybug - and let her laugh over his blush); she made incredible macarons. Most surprisingly, Ladybug personally knew the girl who ran the Ladyblog, though she had no clue. He wants to say he knows Alya too, that maybe they do know each other, but he refuses to risk ruining the good luck he’s had in the game.
In turn, he proved there was still some mystery behind the mask. She’d guessed incorrectly when he told her he had a large extended family (‘I can’t believe it, you’re so over the top, you had to be fighting for attention from cousins!’. Chat keeps the cold, empty halls of his father’s mansion to himself), and while Ladybug had gotten his prestigious, well-off upbringing right, she’d seemed surprised when he confirmed it. The tinkling giggle she let loose when he went into an in-depth description of formal place settings had been worth the memory of his father, scolding him over a misplaced salad fork.
Streetlights below suddenly flicker to life, warming the streets with their orange glow. Chat would like to think they spark to attention for her, as her laugh had done the same to him countless times before. Paris erupts into brightness all around them, and Chat barely contains a gasp. It had been too long since the City of Lights had taken his breath away, but in this moment it dawns on him that it is as much the girl at his side as the city below. Chat stares at her and smiles. It’s his turn.
“I am in love with the most incredible girl,” he says, softly, “I have never met someone more beautiful, and becoming Chat Noir and meeting Ladybug is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
Sitting there on the edge of the roof, knees touching, leaning in to one another, high above the tranquilly bustling city, seems like the perfect moment to confess, and so he does. There’s no way it comes as a surprise to her, but he’s never managed to string all of the words together. The last time he’d tried had been St. Valentin’s, and had ended poorly.
He’s ready for rejection. As playfully as she’d rebuked his advances before, he knows. He’s even prepared to be laughed at, swatted off, turned away with the delicate flush of cheeks only Ladybug can seem to produce. A minuscule part of him - the Adrien part, the hopeless romantic - is even ready for her to lean in, close the distance between them, say yes.
What Chat is not ready for is the way Ladybug deflates. Without warning she buries her face in her hands and bows her head. Shoulders hunch forward, knees jerk up to her chest - she’s curled in on herself.
“That’s not the way the game is played, Chat,” she says.
“I know, ma cherie,” Chat says, “I cheated and told three truths instead.”
But that's not what she wants to hear either; her fingers tangle up into her hair and she tugs miserably. He still can't see her face, but the gesture strikes him as so familiar it almost gives him pause. The thought is swept aside when Ladybug speaks.
“The boy I like barely knows that I exist. I’m not good enough for the affection of my partner, the only person who knows about this side of my life, the only person I can truly trust. Becoming Ladybug has never made me happier or confused me more.”
Each word hits like a bullet.
He doesn't want to hear the muffled sob in her voice, but there it is. He doesn't want to hear the conflict, doesn't want to hear about another man, doesn't want to hear the promise, the implication in her last statements. Chat reaches out to her. He starts for her shoulder then, second-guessing himself, ends up settling once more for her knee.
“That’s not the way the game is played, Ladybug. It’s called two truths and a lie, not three very obvious lies.”
Chat’s brain plays a quick game of connect-the-Ladybug-spots: he doesn’t like the picture he sees, but the weariness, the sighs, the weeks of exhaustion and unhappiness in his partner suddenly come together. Before, he’d blamed school and the work, but never would he have thought that her feelings for him, clearly at odds with her attraction to this other boy, had been the root of her gloom. The longer he thinks on it though, the more his heart seems to beat back his own despondency. He might just have a chance.
“Besides,” he continues, “Who would be foolish enough not to notice you?”
Her answer is mumbled but unmistakable.
“Adrien Agreste. And he’s not a fool, I am.”
His hands slide from her knees. Face still obscured, Ladybug doesn’t see the way his eyes widen, or how he covers his mouth.
“You’ve heard of him, I’m guessing,” Ladybug says, “He goes to my school. I’ve sat behind him in class almost every day for the last year, and still, I can’t get one coherent sentence out around him.”
But that means-
“I thought maybe it’d get easier, once, well, you know-” she peels a hand from her face and gestures vaguely at him, and no, he does not know what she means by that, “but I’m useless when I’m not Ladybug.”
That Ladybug-
Her other hand leaves her face, giving him no time to school his expression. Ladybug sees the look on his face and chuckles humorlessly.
“I know it must come as a shock, but it’s true. I’ve never wanted you to know who I am when I’m not Ladybug, because that girl is so pathetic, so… worthless that you’d be embarrassed if you actually knew her.”
The black hair. Those blue eyes. A love of pink. Knows Alya. Sits behind him in class. He struggles to register that she’s still talking; his head seems full to bursting as the pieces swirl together.
Ladybug leans back, propping herself up to stare at the sky. The motion catches his attention - he has to focus, because what she says next is going to be important.
“Take, for example, Adrien’s last birthday. I made a scarf for him. Saved up every bit of my allowance for the right kind of yarn and spent days making sure it was right. I must have unravelled and re-knit that scarf four times before it was perfect.”
He thought he’d been hit before, that her words had taken a large enough bite out of him that he’d be fine with anything else. But then there’s a blue cashmere scarf, soft and fine, tucked under his pillow - a gift from his father.
“And then I clammed up. Tried to give him the gift and instead freaked out and made an idiot of myself. So then I delivered it to his house, but forgot to sign my name - an idiot, again - and then snuck back in to sign the gift, but then Nino became possessed by an akuma and well, you were there for that, and then- and then the very next day, Adrien shows up to school. Wearing the scarf I had made him.”
Chat doesn’t want her to look back at him, because surely she’d read everything there: the confusion, the understanding, the hurt he knows she’d misinterpret. Ladybug lets out a sharp huff, sounding less tearful and more annoyed with herself.
“He said it had been a gift from his father, that it was the best gift he’d ever gotten from him. And Adrien just smiled. I’d never seen him like that before, and I caved. I couldn’t tell him. It made me so happy to see him smile like that. I couldn’t ruin it for him. But maybe if I’d said something…”
Ladybug groans and shakes her head.
This whole time- and his father-
“And I can’t ruin this for you. This person you think I am, this person you lo- care about so much. She’s the one you deserve. She’s the one who has taken too long to realize just how… miraculous you are.”
Straightening, she levels Chat with a look somewhere between amused and heartbroken. Her eyes are too blue, too easy to read, and he wonders how he didn’t see it before.
“This was a stupid game, Chat.”
It had started out as a game, really. Just a little something to lighten the deep hue of melancholy they’d both been painted in. Facile.
And it wasn't like he’d planned on letting that cat out of the bag; it was more like he’d opened the bag expecting a treat and instead found that drenched and hissing beast at the bottom.
“Chat?”
Any other moment would have found him shuddering in delight at the honey-laced worry of his name on her lips. Tonight, the shudder that trips down his spine is ignorant of the girl who leans in and places a red-clad hand on his shoulder. On the narrow ledge of the roof he can feel the heat of her body. He stands.
“What is it? Cat got your tongue?”
The frantic note in her voice undermines the joke. She too stands and peers up at him, trying to catch his gaze.
He thinks he manages a choked “I'm fine,” before he turns and launches himself over to the next rooftop, but he’s not entirely sure.
…
By the next morning, Adrien’s feelings had settled from an angry yowl to an agitated flick of the tail - metaphorically speaking. Plagg didn’t push him, didn’t say much at all. Were he not so wrapped up in his own head, Adrien might have noticed just how strangely subdued the kwami chose to act.
Only once the night before did Plagg intrude into his thoughts. The little kwami, who tended to spend his nights buried in a pile of Adrien’s clothes (they smelled like cheese!) or floating just above his head, instead tucked himself onto Adrien’s pillow, right against his cheek. The space had been devoid of warmth or weight, empty of the scarf he normally slept with. It felt better with Plagg there, though his presence seemed to highlight its absence. Abandoned to the floor, the scarf huddled in a sad, limp pile.
“You realize this means she likes both of you? Or all of you, I guess. Or maybe it means she likes you and me...” Plagg muses quietly. His small body hums against Adrien's cheek. It's a small comfort, to know there is at least one person (or creature) who will always be there for him.
…
The first half of the next day was agony bundled in a blanket of misery. Truly, the only thing miraculous about it was that Adrien didn’t keel over and die before lunch.
Despite having never spent much time regarding the girl who sat behind him, Adrien was aware from the moment she stepped through the door that something was wrong. Marinette’s greeting, normally cheerful if not incomprehensible through her nervous stammering, came to him flat and fluid. The simplest realization that Marinette always said good morning to him, and that he'd never registered the habit before floored him. Did he always return the kindness? Or had he just replied in automatic politeness? How many days had she greeted him only to find him distracted, likely thinking of Ladybug, to the point that he didn't respond?
Plagg must feel him tense - a moment later he delivers a sharp pinch right under Adrien’s collar. It snaps him out of his dizzying thoughts long enough to pipe up with a high-pitched, “Good morning, Marinette.”
She jumps a little at his response and nearly drops her bag. Marinette recovers quickly, sliding into the seat behind him. Papers rustle as she digs through her bag. It’s evident she doesn’t expect further conversation from him.
The boy I like barely knows that I exist.
“Did you, uh, have a nice evening yesterday?” Adrien asks. In an instant he’s cursing himself - what a stupid, bland question to ask, what a way to try too hard.
Looking up, Marinette furrows her brows. How often had he seen that exact expression from behind a red and black mask? Adrien fights the urge to slink out of the classroom, alley cat that he is. There is next to no way he doesn’t botch everything.
“It was fine,” she says slowly. No stammer interrupts her words, and she sounds so much like his lady that it hurts. How much sooner would be have figured it out if she'd been able to string together a normal conversation with him before?
“Papa made me work for a few hours after school, which I wouldn't mind if I weren't always on the register and were in the kitchen instead. I met up with a friend but…” she pauses to bite her bottom lip. For an entire year, he’d been blind. “But I think we got into a fight.”
“Friend? Fight? I know you two aren’t talking about me.”
Rambunctious as always, Alya slides right into her seat and the conversation with a grin. Her chin plops down on her hand and she looks from Adrien to Marinette with big, delighted eyes. Marinette lets out a startled laugh, while Adrien merely blinks.
“Yes, Alya,” Marinette says once she’s recovered, “You. Me. Alley behind the building. A fight to the death!”
They roll their eyes at each other, synchronized.
“Not everything is about you-” Marinette continues.
“Well it should be-”
“But I was talking about, well, you know before you so rudely interjected.”
Adrien is certain he’s been dropped from the girls’ conversation until Alya looks over a moment later and smirks.
“Our little Marinette has a mysterious male acquaintance that she keeps spending all of her time with. Apparently he goes to ‘another school’ and ‘nobody knows him’. I haven’t met him, but according to Mari they’re ‘mostly just friends’.”
Alya puts air quotes around the last part and watches Adrien’s reaction with a keen eye. Marinette tucks her face into her hands, moaning something about how embarrassing her friend is. It’s the longest conversation he’s been involved in with Marinette (as Marinette), but he feels a ripple of blistering jealousy at the mention of this friend of hers. The jealous feelings only half make sense - he’d only ever half known her, after all. But they make even less sense when Adrien puts Marinette’s words and his own night together and realizes that, if he’s right, he is the mysterious friend in question.
Adrien is saved from his thoughts and any further idiocy by the appearance of the teacher, bringing along with her the first bell of a very long day.
…
He should have just stayed home, for all school was wasted on him. But home would mean no Marinette, and no Marinette would mean no answers, and he’s not about to let himself chase his own tail over that. But where does he start? Pry and charm out information until every suspicion is confirmed (or worse, denied)? Confront her head on, regardless of the risks? Adrien and Chat circle the same mouse, yet can’t agree on when to pounce.
There’s no clear answer, and the very presence of Marinette at his back all morning further muddies the water. Chat Noir’s enhanced hearing isn’t necessary to note each time she shifts in her chair or lets loose a quiet sigh. Hyper-aware, Adrien almost startles out of his skin when Marinette taps him on his shoulder and smoothly asks him if he could grab the pencil she’d dropped on accident. His hold on the pencil lingers as she thanks him and grabs it, and he lets himself stare a few moments longer than might be deemed acceptable. Marinette must notice, given the way she blushes and looks away.
…
Plan A is to go to the source itself. Fifteen minutes before class is released for lunch, Adrien begins to prepare himself. Breathe. Think of what you’re going to say. Don’t freak out, and don’t freak her out. The mantra beats a tattoo in his brain that matches the quake of his heart. As focused as he is on not panicking the moment the bell rings, he does not hear the bell ring.
By the time the ebb of students alerts him to the start of the lunch hour, someone else has already come to Marinette’s desk. Adrien turns to see Juleka, tears welling at the corners of her eyes, begging Marinette for help. He tries to say something - anything - to get Marinette’s attention, maybe to ask if she wanted to eat lunch together when she was done sewing the obvious gash in Juleka’s skirt, but his words drown in the warm waters of the soft smile she gives the other girl. Marinette is gone in an instant, guiding Juleka by the shoulder. So much for Plan A.
Plan B. Plan B will be easier. Adrien takes a deep breath and coaxes his mouth into action.
“Hey Alya - have a minute?”
How the girl managed to eat her lunch, update her blog, and complete her homework for her afternoon class all at the same time remained one of the major mysteries of the universe. Currently, half a sandwich hung from Alya’s mouth as she tapped out a paragraph for the infamous Ladyblog on her phone.
“‘Eah, whaffup?” she said through her food.
Deep breath. Like yanking off a bandaid.
“i just had a quick question. You know that blue scarf I wear?”
The flustered expression that rose to her face answered the question he hadn’t yet asked. Alya swallowed hard. Part of her sandwich caught in her throat, launching her into a coughing fit and Adrien into a mild panic. A few thumps on the back and a hurried apology later, Alya draws in a deep breath and answers.
“Yeah,” she says, “You got it for your birthday, right?”
“Last year. It was from my dad.”
He watches her reaction carefully. It’s a stroke of irregular good luck that Alya has such a terrible poker face; were she ever to discover Ladybug’s identity, there would be no chance of it remaining a secret. It’s a good thing she has no clue.
“It must be nice, with the weather getting cold soon,” Alya says, trying to keep her voice neutral. There’s still a rising tone there, a clutch of nervousness in her voice that mirrors the widening of her eyes.
"It is nice, it's one of the nicest gifts I've ever gotten."
"That's great!"
She looks strained now, eyes shifting to avoid his gaze.
"Alya?"
"Adrien?"
"Did Marinette make it?"
Alya is fortunate she'd put her sandwich down after their conversation began in earnest, as it's clear she would have choked on it once more. Her face flares, matching the red of her hair in seconds. There's some spluttering, frantic sounds that make their way through her lips - Adrien has never seen Alya act so much like her best friend than in that instant.
"Alya."
She can't look at him. She tries, once, but her eyes dart away. Her fingers toy at the wrapper of her sandwich.
"She did," Alya finally breathes.
Even though at his core he'd known it, the revelation doesn't make the ache that hits his chest any softer. Standing upright on solid ground, the breath evacuates Adrien's chest like it's been punched away by the force of a hard fall. He stares down at Alya, who peeks back up at him from under her bangs.
"Why- why didn't she-?"
But he can't finish the question, because the moment he tries to pull air back into his lungs, Adrien finds his heart jumpstarted into the midst of a marathon, and its relentless palpitations are painful.
"Marinette made it for your birthday last year," Alya says. "She wanted to give it to you in person, but she becomes the human equivalent of Jell-O whenever someone so much as breathes your name."
That should be news, if it means what he thinks it means, but right now it just feels like more debris swept into the hurricane of his confusion.
"So after school we went to your house so that she could deliver it to you. She left it in that weird delivery box outside of your house, but Mari forgot to sign the tag on it - what a mess. She went all the way back just to fix it, but I guess it didn't matter. The next day, you were showing off your scarf to Nino, and you mentioned it had been a gift from your father and, well..." Alya trails off, a bitter smile playing on her lips, "It was obvious what happened. But it was also obvious how happy the whole thing had made you... when Marinette saw that, she decided not to tell you." Alya looks up at him. Her mouth firms into a frown and her brows furrow just so. "She's amazing like that," she continues, her sharp tone a clear warning of what could happen if he disagreed.
There's a mute nod. He puts a hand to his temple, pounding, then fidgets to pull out his phone, changes his mind, and puts his hands back to his head. He's distinctly aware of the weight of each breath he takes, and how his breathing seems to be accelerating to match his racing pulse.
"Adrien? Are you... are you okay?"
"I- I'm fine," he says, but he can hear how distraught he sounds.
Alya's expression softens, though she sounds wary when she asks, "Are you mad?"
He thinks about it, if thinking is what the chaotic spin of words and feelings sweeping along his brain can be called.
"Mad, no. Upset, yes."
It's back in an instant, Alya's sharp defensiveness, but this time there's a fire to it. "You'd better not blame this on Marinette," she snaps, "All she wanted was for you to be happy."
It made me so happy to see him smile like that.
Adrien groans, letting his head slip to the desk.
"I'm not," he says, voice muffled, "I'm not upset with Marinette."
It's not entirely true, but it's not entirely false, either.
…
Plagg might still be tucked in the inside pocket if his undershirt, but it is nonetheless Chat who rears his angry head the moment Adrien steps foot in the Agreste mansion. Where to direct his rage is still uncertain. Nathalie for lying to him? Ladybug, for taking the comfort of his most precious gift and rendering it useless? Marinette, for refusing to stand up for herself?
But it hits him again that Ladybug and Marinette are the same person, and the new burst of anger sits lower in his gut, burns hotter, because this whole time, they could have been-
Months of Chat Noir pining over Ladybug, and Marinette swooning for Adrien, both of them too buried in their own feelings to see the person right beside them.
Adrien is, above all, livid with himself, but Nathalie makes the unknowing mistake of stepping into the hallway in front of him, and the claws immediately come out.
“Nathalie,” he snaps.
There’s rumble of satisfaction in his chest when she startles to attention - a reaction he’s only ever seen his father provoke. She glances up from her tablet, confirming that it is indeed not Gabriel Agreste before her. Yet Nathalie does not relax once she sees the displeasure on Adrien’s face. In one hand is clutched the blue scarf she’d delivered to him on his birthday months ago. Dark eyes move to the scarf, then back up to his face. Just like with Alya, Nathalie’s strained expression confirms everything he’s heard.
“Adrien?”
He has to admire how even her voice remains.
“At my last birthday, you brought me this as a present.”
“I did.”
“And you told me it came from my father.”
Her mouth tightens to a fine line. She raises her tablet, ready to dismiss him.
“I did. Now, if you’re done recounting basic fact-”
To finally speak is to break the spell. Any last vestiges of magic in a blue scarf, swept away.
“You lied to me.”
Nathalie sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. Some small bubble of vexation in his chest deflates. So that’s it. Not much else to be done.
“Adrien, it was almost a year ago,” she starts, “and you should be aware by now that your father is far too caught up in work to find the time to purchase gifts on his own. He trusts me to make those kinds of decisions.”
His grip on the scarf loosens. Marinette means nothing to the woman before him, and Adrien means little more. But Nathalie is just a facade, a bizarre cover for his own father who must, Adrien knows, be even less concerned.
“You didn’t even purchase it, Nathalie,” Adrien spits, “My friend made it and you passed it off as a gift from my father. I suppose you’re lucky that it’s flawless - imagine how upset père would have been to be associated with some handmade piece of garbage. Then again, he does associate with you, so he’s used to it.”
Blood drains from her face as Nathalie’s surprise turns into outrage.
“Why, you-!”
He turns on his heel and storms out of the house before she can continue, before she can decide to hold her tongue or hurl abuse.
Adrien makes it three blocks before the venom of his words addles his brain. Without a doubt there will be hell to pay when he gets home - from both Nathalie and his father. Adrien had been raised better than that, raised to be polite, to listen, to bend to his father’s indomitable force and never break. Whatever bond of pity he’d had with Nathalie had surely snapped in his outburst. His father, ever distant, would discipline without discretion, without ever trying to understand.
Chat had brought Adrien freedom, and Chat did not need Gabriel Agreste or Nathalie Sancouer. Neither did Adrien.
Marinette Dupain-Cheng made him a scarf by hand for his birthday. Marinette had saved his life, again and again and again. Chat needed Marinette, and so did Adrien.