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Just because your best friend runs into a burning building does not mean you should run after her. That was a life lesson Nino probably should have figured out by now.

Still, here he was, racing through the lobby of the Gabriel-Fashion-Design-Studio-thing (okay, he didn’t really know what it was called. Fashion was more of Marinette’s thing, alright?) after the disappearing form of Alya Cesaire.

“Okay, Nino, this is completely ridiculous,” he told himself. “You need to leave right now before Alya gets you both killed.”

He kept running after her.

“ Why ?” he groaned.

Nino pushed open the door to the stairwell, trying frantically to keep up with her on the steep steps. 

“Alya!” he shouted after her. “We really should get out of-”

The door to one of the floors above slammed shut.

“-here.”

“Typical,” he grumbled, slowly trudging after her.

The higher he got up the staircase, the stronger the acrid smoke scraping across his lungs became. He pushed open a door at random, praying it was the right one. 

From the giant cloud of smoke that erupted from it, he was fairly certain it wasn’t. Still, Nino ripped off his scarf and drenched it with some water from a nearby water dispenser. Clenching the scarf over his mouth and nose, he forced himself down the hallway.

A few rogue flames licked at designs stacked on desks, probably destroying months worth of work. Nino ignored them, pushing onwards. 

Finally, he reached the end of the hallway- in more ways than one. 

The entire rest of the floor was burnt away, cut off to form some sort of giant spherical arena with Hawkmoth’s champion blazing in the center.

From one of the floors above, a yo-yo came darting out like a striking cobra. It wrapped around the legs of the champion, coils growing tighter with every moment he hesitated. 

He really shouldn’t be here.

From somewhere above him Ladybug pulled the string taut. 

For a brief moment, the champion locked his blazing gaze on him, eyes terrified as Paris’ most feared supervillain quite literally brought him to his knees. 

Nino was pinned in place, unable to move as Burn Out scorched his way through the floor he was standing on and crashed onto the one beneath it. 

Every instinct in his body screamed at him to run as Ladybug swung down from the rafters. 

“Come on Chat!” she laughed, far too much pure glee and exhilaration dancing through her eyes than any supervillain deserved to have. “I bet I can find his papillionized object before you!”

“No way!” Chat Noir shot back, that stupid mischievous smirk that seemed to make all of his classmate’s hearts skip a beat flashing across his lips. “We didn’t even need your Lucky Charm this time. Maybe today we’ll get home before dinner.”

“Keep dreaming, Chaton,” Ladybug teased.

Together they landed on the floor below him, standing tall with triumph as they stood over their helpless prey.

Ashes fluttered down like snow to join the inferno that Burn Out created as he struggled to free himself.

Ladybug stared down at the champion, eyes hard with a sick superiority as he wrestled her yo-yo.

“Give up, Burn Out,” she ordered. “We have you cornered.”

“And tell Hawkmoth to go die in a hole while you’re at it,” Chat jumped in.

“Never,” Burn Out snarled, blazing with a martyr’s rage.

Chat Noir sighed, pulling his baton from his belt. “My a paw logies, little bug, but it looks like we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes, struggling to hide her fond smile. “Just get this over with, kittycat.”

Her partner dipped into a bow. “Your wish is my command.”

In the instant before Chat descended into the arena, Nino looked away. This was always the worst part. When Chat Noir and Ladybug stalked their prey across the city, they toyed with them as they were cornered. Nino had only ever witnessed Hawkmoth’s defeats

Swallowing down his guilt, Nino crept closer to the edge. Hawkmoth would survive another disappointment, but Nino would never survive an encounter with the wielder of infinite destruction.

That’s when Alya jumped off of the floor above the villains and tackled Chat Noir.

“Leave him alone!” his best friend screeched, attempting to somehow pin him to the ground. 

The two of them crumpled to the floor as Alya wrestled to hold him down. Chat Noir didn’t even bother to attempt to defend himself, still frozen with shock.

He groaned as Alya accidentally kneed him in the stomach. “A little help, bug?” 

Ladybug chuckled, reaching down to peel Alya off of her partner, dangling her over the. “Are you seriously telling me you can’t handle a single teenager?”

Chat Noir brushed the rubble off his suit as he got to his feet, attempting to look somewhat dignified. “She caught me by surprise, that’s all.”

Ladybug raised her eyebrows skeptically. “Sure, chaton. I’ll believe it when I-” She nearly dropped Alya over the edge when the girl kicked her in the shins. “Ow! Seriously? ”

Nino resisted the urge to roll his eyes at his best friend’s defiant expression. 

Alya’s voice rang out, loud and clear as it echoed off the crumbling walls of the office building. “I will do whatever’s necessary to protect Paris.”

Burn Out shifted below them, snarling with the ravenous hunger of a starved volcano.

All of a sudden, Ladybug’s yo-yo zipped back to its owner, the unbreakable wire blazing an eerie bright orange. 

Ladybug and Chat Noir exchanged a glance. 

“You know what,” Ladybug announced, actually looking a little rattled. “We don’t have time for civilians trying to be heroes. I’ll take care of Alya while my yo-yo cools down. Chaton, can you-”

Chat nodded and dove down to the level of the champion. 

Alya scrambled away against the edge as Ladybug advanced, her gaze hard. His best friend plastered a defiant expression to her face but only people who knew her would recognize the panic in her gaze. 

Neither of them wanted to know what the villainess’ definition of ‘taking care of Alya’ was, but based on the stories they’d heard, it couldn’t be good.

“You’re the girl who runs the Ladyblog, aren’t you?” Ladybug asked, taking a careful stride forward. 

“What’s it to you?” Alya challenged. 

“Oh, I just thought your content was interesting,” Ladybug grinned. “It could do with a little less speculation on my identity though.”

The building trembled as the two girls stared each other down. 

“To be honest, you’re kinda the person whose opinion I care about the least on that,” Alya shot back. 

The ceiling above them groaned as Burn Out melted another support pillar.

“Get Alya out of here!” Chat shouted, knocking Burn Out to the ground with his baton. “I’ll take care of the champion.”

Ladybug scooped Alya up in her arms as ashes and charred plaster rained down from the ceiling. With a final desperate glance at her partner, she kicked in a nearby window and leapt out of it, clutching Alya like a traitorous knight stealing away the king’s daughter.

“Alya!” Nino shouted, rushing after her.

The floorboards complained with each and every stride. 

Flames of fury erupted from the arena below him. The fire blazed through the floor, creeping closer and closer until he was pressed back against the wall.

Two floors beneath him, Chat Noir and Burn Our wrestled to pin the other down. Burn Out thundered after the obnoxious cat vigilante like a charging bull, barely missing Chat Noir as he flippantly cartwheeled away.

Surely at some point Hawkmoth would notice him and come to his rescue. All he needed to do was wait- and slide to the right as another fireball threatened to singe his left eyebrow

“You’re going to have to be faster than that if you want to take my miraculous,” Chat Noir taunted. “It’s as if you aren’t even trying.”

“You won’t be making your foolish jokes when I burn the flesh from your bones,” Burn Out growled. 

Chat Noir snorted. “Not even trying to keep up the facade anymore, are you?”

Another poorly aimed fireball blasted through the floor to his right, sparing Gabriel Agreste the expense of putting in a toddler sized window. 

Nino edged towards the center of the platform, broken glass crunching beneath his feet. His foot began to slide on the finely ground shards. He lunged to grab the windowsill as one foot tumbled over the edge, quickly joined by the other.

His arms quivered as he raised his head, deciding he was done waiting for Burn Out to come rescue him. 

“Help!” he screamed. 

“Never fear, brave civilian,” Burn Out recited, not even bothering to look his way. “In mere moments I shall neutralize the threat and then I can escort you to safety.”

His arm shuddered under the weight of the rest of his body.

He froze for a brief moment, forcing himself not to look away as one finger after another slipped off the ledge. 

At the last moment, Nino reached up and latched his fingers onto the floor where he had just been standing. Blisteringly hot glass sliced into his flesh. He yelped and released the surface, finally freefalling towards the flames. 

Nino stared at Burn Out as he fell, waiting for Hawkmoth to make his move. 

Maybe he would make his papillon release his hold on Burn Out and claim Nino as his champion instead. Maybe he would send Burn Out to rescue him instead of fighting Chat Noir.

Burn Out’s unblinking arson-blue eyes met his for a mere instant. Then they locked on Chat Noir’s ring. And he pounced. 

Unfortunately for Hawkmoth, Chat Noir didn’t even give him a chance to seize his miraculous. In a single bound, he leapt from the floor and wrapped his arms around Nino protectively. 

Using spare limbs to shield the rest of Nino’s body, he angled his shoulder so it would take most of the force as they crashed through the nearest window.

The impact sent them somersaulting on the roof of the warehouse next door. 

Chat Noir only gave him a moment to recover before leaping to his feet and scooping Nino up in his arms without giving him a chance to protest.

Burn Out roared with fury as Chat Noir cleared entire streets in one bound. 

When Nino finally twisted around in Chat Noir’s arms enough to feel more like an awkward kidnapped bride and less like a squirming sack of potatoes, they were already halfway across the city.

“What are you doing?” Chat asked, an amused grin dancing across his lips. 

“I’m not just going to sit around and let you kidnap me,” Nino pointed out, driving his elbow into Chat’s chest.

The villain grunted and lost his footing for a moment, but quickly recovered.

“That might not be a good idea,” Chat groaned. “We’re pretty high up. Are you sure you want me to drop you?”

The rooftop dropped away as the vigilante cleared another alleyway and Nino’s heart thundered in his ears as he spotted a trio of dumpsters far, far below. 

He glanced up at Chat who immediately sent him the most obnoxious grin to curse the face of the earth. Nino was tempted to knee his ribs just to get the expression off his face for a moment. 

“Where are you taking me?”

The cat-vigilante’s ears flicked towards him as the hero shrugged. “Where do you want to go? I can take you back to your school if you want.”

“That should work,” Nino sighed. 

Chat Noir pivoted quickly, bounding across the tops of lamp posts as if they were stepping stones in the direction of his school. 

The midafternoon sun gently heated the villain's armor, causing his natural warmth to blanket Nino as they strode across the rooftops in the late-September afternoon. 

His golden curls swept across his forehead in a way that somehow came across as ruffled, rather than a tangled bird’s nest. 

It was very annoying.  

“So…” the villain stretched the word out. “Friendly suggestion: maybe next time don’t run straight into a fire.”

Nino ground his teeth. “Friendly suggestion: maybe next time don’t become a terrorist.”

To his surprise, Chat Noir laughed. “I’ll get back to you on that.” He hummed as he launched them both off of another rooftop. “You’re refreshing.”

Nino blinked. “What?”

Chat Noir shrugged. “Not many civilians do much more than cower around me. You’re a nice change of pace.”

“Oh, sorry,” Nino snapped. “I’ll just go and hide in a corner now. I wouldn’t want to be making life better for a supervillain .”

Chat Noir snorted. 

Nino tried not to look down at the pavement several stories down as they leapt over Marinette’s balcony, onto the roof of the school and finally on the sidewalk of the entryway. 

“Stay here and out of sight,” Chat Noir instructed, sending a quick wink over his shoulder. Nino ignored the traitorous way his cheeks burned. “We’ve got this covered.”

And then he was gone. 

“Nino!”

Before he could even get used to the solid ground beneath his feet again, Alya materialized behind him and tackled him in a hug. 

“I was so worried,” she gushed, burying her face in his shoulder. 

“ You were worried?” Nino asked, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her back so he could look her in the eyes. “Remind me of which one of us ran into the burning building in the first place?”

Alya looked away. “It is my job.”

“A self-imposed one,” he reminded her. “That you promised you wouldn't bring you in harm’s way.”

His best friend sighed. The sheer number of times that they had this discussion reminded them both that this was an argument she couldn’t win. 

“You’ve gotten lucky so far that you’ve only run into battles that Ladybug has used her Miraculous Ladybug on.”

Alya sighed. “I know, I know. Let’s go find Mari and Adrien. I’m sure that they’ve been driving themselves crazy with anxiety.”

“Especially Marinette,” Nino muttered under his breath. 

“What?” Alya asked absently. 

Nino found a particularly interesting bird poop stain on the pavement to examine. “Nothing.”

Alya squinted at him for a long moment before seeming to accept his answer. Nino tried not to breathe a sigh of relief. Marinette would never forgive him if he spilled the beans like that. 

The two of them hurried up the steps of the school and made the long and windy trip to the art room where Nino and Adrien had been supposed to be helping Alix and Kim with their group project.

When M. Monlataing had agreed to let them work in the art room after school, he probably hadn’t expected for two of the other groups to join them after getting kicked out of the library. 

Calming instrumental music battled 2000s American pop for control of the speakers as Sabrina and Juleka fought to connect their phones. Alya sighed as she spotted her group mates bickering, far too large smiles on their face for them to be taking it seriously. Chloé- the final member of their group watched with amusement from the corner. 

Nino waved goodbye to his best friend before heading over to his table. Alix groaned as Kim changed all the fonts on their Google Slides presentation to Comic Sans MS again. 

“I’m telling you, it looks better!” Kim protested. 

“It looks unprofessional!” Alix shot back. 

“Well, at least it’s better than whatever size 11 Times New Roman you had it at!”

“Remind me why we aren’t just going with Arial, again?” Nino jumped in as he pulled a stool to their table. 

Kim and Alix groaned in unison. “That’s such a boring font.”

“Yeah but it’s effective,” Nino pointed out. He squinted at the rest of the room, trying to spot the last member of their group. “Where’s Adrien?”

Kim shrugged. “He took off pretty much right after you did and hasn’t come back yet.”

“I think Mari was getting him a free pastry from the bakery or something?” Alix squinted. “It was kind of unclear.”

Right on cue, the pair appeared in the doorway. Both looked absolutely exhausted as they discussed something too quietly for anyone else to hear over the sound of Juleka and Sabrina’s impromptu Battle of the Bands. Marinette’s disheveled hair was frantically trying to escape from her ponytail. 

From across the room, Alya visibly lit up. “Mari! Sunshine! You’re back!”

“Alya!” Marinette beamed. Nino was worried that she might drown in the flood of life and pink rushing into her cheeks. 

Sending an apologetic grin at Kim and Alix, Nino got to his feet and began making his way over. 

Alya raced across the room like she was going to tackle the two of them in a hug, hesitating at the last second and landing breathless in front of them. 

“Where did you two go?” she asked, bouncing on the balls of her feet. 

Marinette held up a crumpled up to-go bag from her parent’s bakery. She reached over and flicked a flake of ash off of Alya’s shoulder. “I would ask you the same question, but I happen to be subscribed to your blog.”

Alya’s shoulders dropped. 

“Alya,” Marinette’s voice grew quieter. “I’m not going to tell you what to do with your life, and I’m proud of how you’re pursuing your interests, but if the roles were flipped and I was the one running into a burning building with no protection, no superpowers, no anything- would you want me to stop?”

Alya sighed. “I know I should have listened to Nino, but I haven’t gotten any interviews with Hawkmoth’s champions since Animal Shelterer last month and I’m starved for content.” She stared at the ground for a long moment. “I wasn’t really thinking.”

“Well… maybe a less dangerous option would be interviewing Ladybug-” Adrien abruptly cut himself off at Marinette’s sharp expression. 

“That’s an idea,” Nino snickered. As if interviewing a literal terrorist could ever be safer, even outside of the context of a fight. “Not perhaps the safe alternative we’re looking for here, but it is an idea.”

“We’ll think of something,” Marinette insisted. She held out a hand to Alya with a fond expression. “For now, we should probably get back to our groups.”

With a sigh, Alya accepted her hand. She gently squeezed, and Marinette’s entire face flushed pink. 

Nino tried to hide his grin as Marinette refused to meet his eyes. Adrien nudged his arm and they exchanged a knowing glance as they made their way back to their group.

“Hey Sunshine,” Alix called. “You’re the tie breaker. Times New Roman or Comic Sans?”

Adrien blinked in confusion as both Alix and Kim fixed their determined stares upon him.

“How much did I miss?” He asked, nudging Nino’s arm. 

Nino laughed, pointedly ignoring the way that sparks felt like they were crawling down the place Adrien had touched. “Dude, you have no idea.”

Alya glared at him as she pulled open the door to her apartment. 

“Here to taunt me?” She grumbled.

Nino laughed, passing over a bright blue binder and textbook. “No, I’m actually here to return this.”

Alya accepted her school supplies with a reluctant sigh. 

“Who is it, sweetie?” her father’s voice called from inside. 

“It’s Nino!” Alya called over her shoulder. 

“Invite him in!” Mrs. Césaire called, laughter ringing in her voice. 

Alya sighed, letting the door swing wide open. 

“Why is it that your parents seem more excited to see me than you?” Nino asked, following after her.

Alya let out a long breath, dropping her voice into a whisper. “It’s not you. They just get so weird when I have any guy friends over.”

Nino drew his lips back into a straight line. “Got it.”

Then they turned the corner, where Alya’s entire family was lounging in the living room. Alya’s older brother and their girlfriend were both trying to fit onto the couch cushion closest to the balcony, ignoring the empty rest of the sofa. They both were laughing as they watched Ella and Etta try to reenact what seemed to be a crossover of Star Trek and Sleeping Beauty. 

In the kitchen, Mrs. Césaire had one arm resting on the kitchen counter, the other snacking on a pear from the fruit bowl. Mr. Césaire’s brow was furrowed trying to figure out how to grill some sort of seafood on the oven. His head jerked up, almost banging on the cupboard as the two of them entered the room. 

“Nino!” he called out. “Come! Take a seat!”

Alya and Nino exchanged a glance as he settled on one of the stools beside Mrs. Césaire. 

Alya held the binder and textbook up, biting her lip before finally saying. “I’m just gonna go drop this off in my room.”

Mrs. Césaire beamed. “Of course, sweetheart.”

Awkward silence filled their little corner of the kitchen. Nino tapped his heels against his chair, pretending to scan pictures on the cream-colored walls.

“So,” Alya’s father asked, stretching out the vowel. “How long have you and Alya been friends?”

The way he lilted his voice implied that he was asking a very different question. 

Nino set his cap on the table and ran his hands through his hair, needing something to fidget with. 

“Since the beginning of the school year, I guess?” Nino shrugged. 

Alya’s parents exchanged a smug glance. 

“And how has that been going?” Mr. Césaire asked with an obnoxious wink.

Nino dropped his gaze to his fingers, focusing on twisting them together. “Alright, I guess?”

“Just alright?” Alya’s mother teased. “You know she talks about you all the time.”

Nino coughed awkwardly, unsure of how to break the news that there was no chance of that ever happening. 

Alya stormed back into the room, eyes locked on her parents and blazing with all the fury of a growing tempest.

“Mom!” Alya exclaimed, her face flushing in anger and embarrassment. “What are you doing?”

Mrs. Césaire sat back, a self-satisfied smile flashing across her lips.

Alya’s hands curled into fists, and she looked seconds away from launching into a lecture when her sister cut in. 

“Mom!” Ella whined, her nose wrinkled. “Nora and Quinn are flirting again!”

“ Lies, ” Nora called, winking at his girlfriend. She barked out a laugh, reaching over and teasingly kissing their nose. 

Nino laughed, grateful for the distraction.

“Hey dude!” he called, unsubtly getting to his feet and settling down on the living room couch instead. “How have you been?”

Nora twisted his baby blue he/they beaded bracelet absentmindedly as they winked at him. “Fabulous.”

They patted the cushion next to them and Nino scooted closer eagerly. 

“What have you been getting up to, Cappie?” Nora asked. 

“Oh, you know,” Nino shrugged, unable to stop the smile growing on his face at Nora’s presence. “Writing some music, trying to keep Alya out of danger, almost dying twice a week. The usual.”

Alya scoffed indignantly. “Excuse you! I can keep myself out of danger just fine!”

Nino and Nora raised their eyebrows at her in terrifying unison. 

“Okay, fine,” Alya conceded, holding her hands up in surrender. “But I am trying to get better.”

“You are,” Nino agreed. “And your blog is getting better by the day.”

Alya flushed. “Well, I don’t know about that-”

“Have you seen her latest Ladybug identity theory video,” Nino asked, always eager to rant about his best friend’s accomplishments. 

Nora’s girlfriend brushed her lilac hair from her eyes and leaned forward. “No, I haven’t.”

“Well, you have got to see it,” Nino said, glancing at Alya for permission before pulling out his phone and playing the video, pausing every few seconds to explain how much work Alya had poured into a specific section.

Nora grinned proudly at their younger sister as Nino continued his explanation. By the time dinner was done, all of the Césaire children had gathered around. Ella and Etta sat listening at the foot of the couch as Alya ranted about how hard it was to find footage for a specific section.

“Are you two able to stay for dinner?” Mrs. Césaire asked. 

Nora’s girlfriend- who’s name he had eventually been informed was Quinn- nodded, thanking Mrs. Césaire for her generosity. Nino shot off a quick text to his mom who quickly gave her consent. 

As soon as Mrs. Césaire gave the signal, all of her children sprinted to the Césaire’s only shared bathroom. 

“You two seem to get along well,” Quinn commented innocently as they waited for their turn to use the sink.

Nino grinned. “For the sheer amount I’ve almost died to keep her alive, I sure hope we do.”

Alya shrieked indignantly as the twins drenched her and Nora in water from the sink.

The evening was filled with laughter and unsubtle glances across the table, leaving Nino buzzing with leftover joy as he biked his way home. The sky was streaked with the final reminders of the day, violets and blues and blood orange.

The mass of tourists was practically nonexistent in this corner of the city, with cream-colored apartments towering over narrow streets. 

Nino admired the plants weaving their way off balconies, startling when he heard a woman shouting from above him.

“Get out of here, you alley cat!” 

Nino barely swerved out of the way of a lamp post in surprise, only allowing for a moment of relief before Chat Noir dropped out of the sky and nearly knocked him off his bike. 

“Sorry, sorry, sorry !” The villain’s cat ears were pressed against his head as he grabbed Nino’s arm to keep him from scraping across the pavement. 

Nino only had a second to yank his arm out of Chat Noir’s grasp before the vigilante grabbed it again, barely pulling him out of the way of a flower pot the woman had decided to drop after them to finish the job.

“Find someone else’s balcony to perch on!” the woman shouted. “I don’t want terrorists anywhere near my hydrangeas!”
Chat Noir sunk into his hunched shoulders as to the loud bang of her slamming the door overhead.

“Dude, are you okay?” Nino blurted out.

The vigilante stepped back, checking if any shards had embedded themself in Nino’s ankles. “I could ask you the same question.”

Nino shrugged, determined to keep his inner screaming from showing on his face. “I’m a little rattled, but overall fine.”

“That’s good,” Chat Noir said slowly, like he was scared Nino was going to drop a flower pot on his head too.

“Yeah,” Nino agreed, carefully grabbing his bicycle and wheeling it around the shards of flower pot on the ground. He froze as he spotted a streak of red dripping down the vigilante’s ankle. He followed the stream up to Chat Noir’s knee, gagging at the massive gash dug in around a gigantic shard of the flower pot. “ Dude , do you need medical attention?”

“No,” Chat Noir said quickly, taking a wobbly step backwards. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about-”

He slipped on the edge of the curb, putting all of the weight on his knee and yelping in pain. 

Nino dumped his bike by the nearest light post, hurrying over to the vigilante’s side and pulling out his phone. Chat Noir tensed as he quickly pounded in his passcode, using the flashlight to examine the wound.

Nino’s stomach rolled as he realized just how deep into the skin the shard was wedged. 

“Dude, you’re going to need to go to the doctor or something,” he told the vigilante. 

“Sure,” Chat Noir joked, his words blending together a little. “I’ll just go and, uh, do that.”

It was hard to tell in the ever deepening twilight, but Nino could have sworn that Chat Noir’s skin looked about three shades paler than it was supposed to. 

Blood was still streaming out of the gash. Nino glanced around for anything he could use to stop it from soaking the pavement. Shrugging off his second favorite light gray sweatshirt, Nino carefully wrapped it around the wound, leaving the shard sticking out like the nurse had taught them during a school assembly a few years ago. He tied it with a loose knot.

“How is this even happening?” he asked. “Isn’t your suit supposed to be resistant to attacks or something?”

“Only magical ones,” Chat Noir answered, blinking rapidly as if he was trying to jolt himself back into reality. “It’ll be fine in a few days. Superpowered healing and all that.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Nino asked. “Do you need me to call someone?”

Chat Noir shrugged and slowly took out his baton, flicking it open to reveal a communicator. Nino resisted the urge to lean forward and examine it. This was something Alya would be fascinated with. “Ladybug will be here in a minute or two.”

“Right,” Nino curtly responded, suddenly extremely aware of the fact that he was sitting next to a supervillain.

Chat Noir’s lips curled into a tight smile, as if he knew what Nino was thinking. “You should probably get out of here.”

Nino nodded about ten more times than he needed to. “Okay. I’m gonna go. I’ll see you around?”

Chat Noir chuckled as if he was in on a joke that Nino wasn’t. “See you around.”

Glancing nervously up at the rooftops, Nino grabbed the handles of his bike and swung himself onto the seat. He slowly pedaled his way to the end of the block and turned the corner, but he couldn’t bring himself to move from his hiding place until a spotted villainess dropped down beside her partner and carefully helped him to his feet. 

“Thanks for coming, Little Bug,” he heard as he began to pedal away. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“I’m an idiot,” Nino admitted, burying his face into the table in front of Alya.

“You kinda are,” she teased. “First of all, what a hypocrite. You go from telling me not to get mixed up with Ladybug and Chat Noir to literally helping wrap Chat Noir’s knee. ”

“I know,” he groaned, not even bothering to look up. 

“Also, since when are we helping the literal terrorists,” Alya pointed out. “I just feel like that’s a bad idea on all kinds of levels.”

“See this is why I need you in my life,” Nino moaned. “I make all sorts of stupid decisions without you there as a voice of reason.”

Nino jolted as he heard Adrien snort. “I don’t know how effective it is if Alya is your voice of reason”

Carefully lifting his head off the table, Nino spotted Adrien somehow managing to fit four cups woven between his fingers. Marinette was still waiting at the counter of the cafe, scrolling through her phone as she waited for their food.

“Shut up, sunshine,” Alya laughed. 

“And deprive the world of my brilliance?” Adrien joked. “That would be too cruel.”

He set a deep blue glass in front of each of them, carefully not to spill the liquid all over the table. “Iced tea for Alya,” he recited. “Lemonade for Marinette, and root beer for me and Nino.”

He settled in the empty seat beside Nino. “So, what are we talking about?”

Nino sighed. “Just how I’m a complete and utter idiot .”

Adrien snorted. 

“He decided it would be a good idea to stop Chat Noir from bleeding to death on the streets,” Alya explained. 

Nino flicked the paper from his straw at Alya. “That wasn’t the worst part!”

“What was the worst part?” Adrien asked hesitantly.

“Dude, I gave him my second favorite sweatshirt,” Nino groaned. “I’m never getting that back.”

“Your second favorite sweatshirt,” Adrien repeated. 

“I guess that’s what I get for helping a terrorist,” Nino shrugged, taking a long sip of his root beer. 

Adrien was still a little dazed when Marinette got back to the table. “Alright,” she laughed. “We’re ready.”

If Adrien had been a cat, Nino would have been able to see his ears perk up in excitement. Still, that didn’t stop the anxiety from curdling in his chest.

“I only have one set of earbuds,” he tried, slowly untangling the giant knot they had gotten themselves tangled into.

“That’s fine,” Alya laughed. “I’ve already heard all the songs.”

“You don’t have to show us if you aren’t ready,” Adrien reminded him.

Nino took a deep, steading breath as he plugged his earbuds into his phone. He glanced over at where Marinette was practically vibrating in anticipation to remind himself why he was doing this and slid the phone across the table. 

He handed each of them a single earbud.

“No,” he decided. “I'm ready.”

Adrien’s lips curled into an eager smile as he tucked the earbud in one of his ears. Marinette grinned at him.

And with that, he pressed play.

Nino’s debut EP wasn’t anything special- at least in his opinion. It was nothing like Luka’s heart-wrenching first acoustic album that wasn’t doing half-bad on Spotify. It only had four songs on it, inner thoughts buried amongst quick beats and melodies he had spent far too many late nights obsessing over. 

His chest tightened with nerves as Marinette drummed her fingers along to the beat, a thoughtful expression on her face. 

Alya gently kicked his shin under the table. 

“They’re going to love it,” she mouthed.

Nino couldn’t quite bring himself to smile, but he nodded in acknowledgement and went back to staring at the numbers counting down to the end of the song. He was starting to wish he had made these songs a little less personal.

The first song, Can You Hear Me Yet? was a musical plea of a boy who just wanted to feel heard. He’d never even told Rahim he made music, and even if he did his older brother would probably never put the pieces together that this was the song he’d written the day Rahim had thundered out the door to their apartment and vowed to never come back. 

Burn Out , a collab crafted with Kitty Section after an hour-long rant with Ivan came next. Chords of fury over academic pressures and long nights blearily staring down textbooks and essays that were never quite good enough left a sour, yet cathartic aftertaste. After their run in with the champion, Nino had almost changed the name, but at this point he was too emotionally attached to do anything about it. Generational Apathy held the same bitter energy, but from him alone as he watched Chris come to terms with the reality of the universe.

It hadn’t exactly occurred to him when he was picking which songs to finish that his friends would be wanting to hear them. Otherwise, he never would have picked Sunshine hair, sunshine eyes . Anxiety curdled in his stomach as Adrien sat back, listening to the gentle melody of the stupid love song. He kept waiting for Adrien to glance up, to realize exactly who the song was about. 

Instead, his eyes stayed closed and his neutral expression didn’t shift. 

When the numbers finally ticked down to zero, Marinette pulled the earbud out of her ear and pressed it into his palm. 

“I love it!” she said excitedly. 

Nino twisted his fingers back and forth and tried to smile. “Thanks.”

They all turned to Adrien. His eyes were still closed. 

Slowly, his long, dark eyelashes fluttered open and he blinked like he was trying to pull himself back into reality.

“Wow,” he breathed, his careful smile sending delighted shivers down Nino’s spine. “That was-”

Whatever he was going to say was cut off by all of their phones villain alerts going off in unison. 

Ladybug and Chat Noir arriving in the area, the message read. Please make your way to the nearest shelter in a safe and orderly manner. 

“Shoot,” Marinette breathed, grabbing her bag and shooting a frantic glance at Adrien for some reason. “I promised my parents I would help them fill out this massive order, like, twenty minutes ago.”

Before any of them could stop her, she turned and bolted out the door. 

Alya’s eyebrows nearly shot off her forehead as she watched her go. “And she tells me to be careful.”

“Come on,” Nino called, grabbing both of his friends' hands so they wouldn’t get lost in the sea of bodies. “Let’s get to the subway so we can get out of here.”

In the center of the street, what was likely once a twelve-year-old boy hovered over the street, above the civilians scurrying to find places to hide with an excited grin on his face. His cape flared majestically behind him as he scanned the rooftops for any sign of Ladybug or Chat Noir.

“God I wish that was me,” Alya said dreamily.

Adrien muttered something Nino couldn’t hear under his breath. 

He pulled them both along, refusing to let go of their hands. Without fully realizing what he was doing, Nino began scanning the rooftops, checking for any sign of the villains. 

“I don’t see Ladybug or Chat Noir,” he commented, without really thinking about it. “They must be waiting for the right time to strike.”

“Maybe Chat Noir’s just waiting for the chance to give you the sweatshirt back,” Alya teased as they arrived at the entrance to the subway tunnel. 

Nino snorted. “I doubt he even remembers what I look like, much less plans on giving my sweatshirt back.”

Adrien opened his mouth, like he was planning on saying something. But when Nino turned to hear what he had to say, he slammed his leg into the curb.

Instantly, Adrien crumpled. 

Nino and Alya rushed to his side. 

“Dude, are you okay?” Nino asked. 

Adrien glared at his leg, carefully forcing it to straighten. “I’m alright.”

The three of them hobbled down the first steps into the subway tunnel, people rushing past.

Suddenly, the herd of civilians turned in eerie unison and raced the other way.

“Back! Back! Back!” someone shouted, people shoving them to the sides of the staircase as they madly dashed from the subway.

Just as the last civilians were racing from the subway station, Nino spotted her over their heads. 

Spinning her razor-sharp yo-yo between her hands, Ladybug watched the crowd flee with an almost amused expression on her face.

Despite regularly running into burning buildings (and having a run-in with the villainess just a week ago), Alya still sucked in a nervous breath. She pulled the three of them towards the exit, pressing them against the wall when Ladybug sauntered past, now spinning her yo-yo dangerously.

Just when Nino thought that the villainess would pass them, she turned, locking bright blue eyes that twinkled ominously upon them.

Nino forced his expression to stay neutral. He had literally talked with Chat Noir the night before. He could handle a few seconds under Ladybug’s scrutiny.

But he wasn’t the one she was looking at.

“Hey,” Ladybug called. “Alya- I think that’s your name? You’re the one that runs that Hawkmoth fanblog, right?”

Looking more nervous in that moment than when Ladybug was literally holding her over a fire, Alya gave a shaky nod.

“Maybe next time don’t go running into burning buildings,” the villainess offered. She let out what sounded sort of like a nervous laugh. “I mean, I don’t know you personally, and I can’t tell you what to do with your life, but just as a general suggestion I think that would be good.” She flushed. “And now I’m rambling.”

“I’ll do that,” Alya nodded cautiously.

“Great!” the villainess beamed. “I’m just… gonna go now.”

For a brief second, she turned and met Adrien’s eyes, looking as though she was trying to telepathically communicate nuclear launch codes or something directly into his brain.

But before anyone could say another word (or Nino could comment on how her cheeks were matching her suit), Ladybug turned and raced from the subway station.

Heavy silence hung over them for a long moment. 

“We need to get out of here,” Alya said finally. “Chat Noir could literally be in this subway tunnel right now. ”

“Agreed,” Nino nodded.

Adrien glanced back at the tunnel illuminated with sickeningly white fluorescent lights. “I actually have to-” 

“Dude, I’m pretty sure whatever your father wants you to do can wait until you are in immediate threat of dying.”

“Ladybug and Chat Noir have never killed anyone before,” Adrien protested weakly. 

“There’s always a first time for anything,” Nino reminded him, urging him back up the steps and behind the nearest cover the three of them could find to watch the unfolding battle- the knocked over umbrella from one of the tables at a nearby restaurant. 

“I honestly think we might have been safer in the subway,” Alya commented. 

“You’re welcome to go get cataclysmed by a supervillain,” Nino hissed back.

Alya snorted, conceding the point. 

In the center of the now-abandoned street, Ladybug and the boy faced each other.

The world held its breath, waiting for the first strike. 

“A kid?” Ladybug laughed, a cocky smile darting across her lips. “Hawkmoth, this is a new low, even for you.”

“Ladybug, you continue to rob the people of Paris,” the champion said, brow furrowed as he listened to Hawkmoth’s orders. “Also, Hawkmoth says that you’re the worst and he hates you.”

The supervillain let out a startled laugh, yo-yo dancing between her fingertips. 

The champion curled in on himself a little, bobbing a bit closer to the ground. “Was I not supposed to say that?”

Nino could practically hear Hawkmoth’s groan. 

“Alright, I’m getting a little tired of feeling short,” Ladybug called up at the boy. “So I’m going to give you a choice. Do you want to do this the easy way, or the hard way?”

The boy rolled his eyes. “Are you seriously quoting that cliche line at-”

Casually, Ladybug tossed her yo-yo into the air. It wrapped around the boy’s ankle, dragging him towards the pavement. 

“Nice try, Ladybug,” the champion called. He closed his eyes in concentration.

And promptly launched himself into the sky, Ladybug hanging from his ankle like a… bug on a string? Nino couldn’t exactly think of a good analogy as her face twisted from surprise to concentration.

Nino felt the tension drain from his shoulders as he got to his feet. 

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” he declared, brushing the rubble off of his third favorite sweatshirt. He held out a hand to help Adrien and Alya to their feet. 

Together, the three of them made their way towards the subway station, to head home and continue with their day. Adrien kept shooting glances over his shoulder, but he left for a photo shoot pretty much immediately, so Nino didn’t get the chance to ask him about it. 

“They’ll be fine,” Alya laughed when he started anxiously kneading his fingers together. “Marinette and Adrien have been dealing with Ladybug and Chat Noir just as long as we have. They know how to avoid them. Besides, the battle will be over soon anyway.”

But it wasn’t. 

In hindsight, Nino probably should have found it odd how Ladybug’s magical cure never washed over the tiny dents made by gravel in his hands. 

But he was too busy drumming his fingers on his desk as he stared down the Google slides presentation at midnight, watching Kim and Alix change the font over and over again. 

But by the time their presentation was due the next Wednesday, No one had seen Ladybug or the unnamed champion in a week.

Chapter Text

Nino shuffled all of his index cards in a pile and tapped them against the table nervously. Once, twice, three times. 

“I still think we should have brought real props,” Kim groaned, slumping dramatically against the wall.

“Principal Damoclés was not amicable to you bringing sixty knives to class, regardless of your dedication to reenacting the assassination of Julius Caesar,” Madame Bustier reminded him, pulling out her clipboard.

“First of all,” Alix retorted, “we would only have needed to bring enough knives for the class. Having sixty just feels extensive.”

“This whole thing feels extensive,” Kim agreed. “Why get so many senators to stab one guy. I feel like one knife and a solid attempt should do the trick.”

Max buried his face in his hands.

“We’re still waiting on Adrien,” Madame Bustier remarked, glancing down at her watch as the last few classmates trickled in from the hall. A crease furrowed between her eyebrows. “It’s not like him to be this late.”

With Adrien’s rigid schedule, he typically arrived on the school steps fifteen minutes before classes began for his regularly scheduled “social hour.” Adrien had fought for the privilege for weeks, eventually gaining victory as he reminded his father that a lack of time spent with peers might stunt his social development.

Adrien had never squandered that chance in the past, but now, for the entirety of the past week, he had been inching closer and closer to his first tardy. Each day, he seemed more like a wrung out rag, the bags under his eyes flirting with the color of grape jelly.

“It wouldn’t even be bad!” Alix protested, from somewhere outside of Nino’s anxieties. “We would only be consensually hunting Kim for sport. He volunteered!”

“I feel like that has to be against at least fifteen laws,” Juleka pointed out, giving Rose a quick morning peck on the lips before settling into her seat. 

“What if I signed an NDA?” Kim offered hopefully.

Max let out a long-suffering sigh. “You’re thinking of the wrong legal document.”

It wasn’t exactly unusual for Marinette to be sprinting across the courtyard to class at the last minute, but her seat beside Alya still felt conspicuously empty. While Adrien seemed more and more hollow, Marinette had mysteriously vanished. 

“Her parents were being really weird when I went to drop off her notes last night,” Alya had told him on call. “I think something might have happened.”

“Why wouldn’t they tell us?” Nino pointed out. “If she’s really sick or something, they should let us know.”

Alya paused, presumably to make sure her family was on the other side of the apartment. She lowered her voice down to a murmur. “That’s what else is strange. She hasn’t been returning my calls or texts. And her parents looked like they had been crying. They literally forgot to take Marinette’s notes. I think something might have happened to her.”

“You don’t think she’s dead?’ Nino asked.

“Not dead, missing ,” Alya corrected, although she didn’t quite sound sure. 

The second hand on the clock ticked closer and closer to the final bell, and Adrien was still nowhere to be found.

Thirty seconds left. Fifteen. Ten-

Adrien stumbled through the door like an intoxicated octopus, all wayward limbs and desperate flailing. He was carrying a caffeinated beverage that had decidedly not been approved by his nutritious, and looked more prepared to do a live reenactment of All Quiet On The Western Front, than Julius Caesar.

Nino met Alya’s gaze from the second row. She gnawed at her lip worriedly, eyes widening as Adrien’s boot scruffed against the rug, sending him tumbling.

Thoughtlessly, Nino slid into his path, one hand gripping his shoulders, one hand holding the wrist that held his can of toxins. Adrien gaped at him, frozen like a fawn staring straight into headlights. Belatedly, Nino realized that any of Adrien’s free fingers clutched at him like a lifeboat.

Lowering his voice for just the two of them, Nino murmured. “Are you doing alright?”

Blinking his eyes even wider, Adrien swallowed. From this close, you could see the tiny golden hairs on the back of his neck, as well as the ever deepening wrinkle between his brow.

The question didn’t just apply to his fall, but Nino knew Adrien would never say anything other than—

“I’m fine,” Adrien murmured, almost breathlessly.

Forcing himself to step away, Nino pulled Adrien’s stack of index cards from the greater deck.

Of course he was. They were all doing just fine.

From back at her laptop, madame Bustier choked on breath, struggling to fix her own lungs. Kim pushed himself off the wall and over to her on the back to clear her lungs. 

The second Madame Bustier could breathe again, she turned back to her computer, sharing deep into the computer’s soul. 

“What up?” Kim called, the ghost of a grin still on his lips. “Is Principal Damoclés up for a live reenactment in the gym?”

Madame Bustier’s cheeks paled the farther she read. She dropped the laptop down on her desk, stepping back to run frantic hands through her carefully sculped bun.

Glancing at the teacher for permission, Alix stepped up to the laptop and began to read. Glancing up at the class, she swallowed.

“The parents of Marinette Dupain-Cheng have officially filed a missing persons report.”

It wasn’t unheard of for Marinette to not pick up her phone for hours on end, but after a day of calls going immediately to voicemail, Nino was starting to get worried. 

He flopped down on his bed again, pressing the call button once more for good measure. Nino was so engrossed in listening to the buzzing sound that he almost missed the rustling at his window.

Jolting to his feet, Nino whirled around, expecting to see some sort of pigeon. Instead, he found a cat themed supervillain with eyes blown wide as if he had just been caught stuffing an extra handful of candy from the obligatory bowl at pretty much every doctor’s office in his pocket. 

The two of them remained frozen for a long second, Chat Noir grabbing the edge of the fire escape ladder for balance.

The supervillain glanced over his shoulder, contemplating making a run for it. 

Nino didn’t give him the chance as he took two long strides over to the window and pulled it open.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed, sticking his head out the window.

Chat Noir flinched, dropping his gaze to the metal railing of the fire escape, hastily painted pine needle green by whoever had originally built the building.

“I, uh, came to-” he sucked in a nervous breath, thrusting something into Nino’s arms. “Here.”

Nino stumbled back a step, needing a second to register the light gray sweatshirt tangled up in his arms.

Chat Noir let out a long breath, all his words gushing out like a giant had punched a hole in a dam.

“I just wanted to say thank you,” he began, his cheeks growing an oddly endearing hue of pink, “nobody ever really does things like that for me and Ladybug and since I don’t need it to stop the bleeding I figured that now would be a good time to give it back, especially considering that I don’t have much else to do. Anyway, I know I’m probably interrupting your evening so I’m just gonna go and-”

“Want to come in?” Nino asked on instinct, hours upon hours of his mother’s hospitality lectures finally manifesting at the worst possible moment.

Chat Noir froze, glancing over his shoulder at the rain pouring off the roofs of Paris by the bucketload. 

What was he doing? What was he saying?!?

“It’s raining pretty hard,” Nino commented, peering around him. “You should definitely come in before you get pneumonia.”

Chat Noir bit his lip. “What if your parents come in?”

Nino snorted. “Dude, it’s like, 10 pm. My mom won’t be showing her face until morning. I’ll lock the door, though, if it makes you feel better.”

Chat Noir hesitated for a moment, right as a sudden rumble of thunder shook the railings of the fire escape. Shaking his head to dislodge any water droplets from his hair (and getting some in Nino’s eyes in the process), he dropped down to the floor of the fire escape and crawled through the window. 

The first thing Nino should have considered before inviting Chat Noir into his room was that he really should have thought to clean it first. 

Honestly, it wasn’t that bad, considering he had remembered to clean it the night before. A small pile of dirty laundry was piled up in front of his closet, and his desk was completely covered by homework -including the keyboard of his computer. His bed was only slightly wrinkled, and Post-it notes containing midnight song lyric ideas were scattered across the floor.

The second thing Nino should have considered was that Chat Noir was dripping water all over his rug. Nino grabbed a towel that he prayed was clean off the corner of his bed and handed it to the villain.

Chat Noir accepted it with a quiet “thanks,” and continued sweeping his eyes across every surface of his room, awe and curiosity in his gaze.

That led to the third, and final thing that Nino had failed to consider: Chat Noir was in his room.

Why had he let an evil supervillain into his room? Because he looked cold? 

You fool, Nino’s brain frantically reminded him. When he cataclysms this entire building, your mother’s brutally-taught manners will be your downfall.

The vigilante in question seemed oblivious to Nino’s crisis. Setting down the borrowed towel on the seat of Nino’s desk, Chat Noir began to wander, observing the contents of Nino’s room like he was walking through a museum rather than around Nino’s mismatched sock pile.

Nino felt his cheeks heat for some indiscernible reason.

He busied himself by pulling the window closed and fiddled with the latch. 

When he turned back around, Chat was squinting at the pride flag attached to his wall.

“Hey, I’m pretty sure I recognize this one. It’s demisexual,” he proclaimed a little proudly. He glanced back at Nino like he was checking to make sure. “Right?”

Nino nodded. 

Chat Noir grinned, suddenly breaking his eye contact as his toe brushed one of Nino’s Post-it notes. He crouched down and squinted at the words.

“Oh! Is this for one of your songs?”

Nino’s heart leapt into his throat. 

“How do you know about those?” he demanded.

Chat Noir froze.

“I, uh, may have decided to check out the links on your Ladyblog bio after our last encounter,” he admitted, the tips of his ears- the human ones, not the cat ones- tinting pink. “And I may have decided to listen to all of your released music for the fun of it.”

“All three singles?” Nino asked skeptically.

“And your collab with Kitty Section,” Chat admitted.

Nino snorted. “Now that’s dedication.”

“You have it linked in one of your Spotify playlists,” the supervillain informed him. “It wasn’t that hard to find!”

Nino snickered. “Stalker.”

Chat Noir flushed, but Nino couldn’t find anything to say in response, so the room fell into awkward silence.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Chat shrugged. “It was just sprinkling when I left, so I figured I could drop off your sweatshirt and finish patrol by the time it really started. I guess I was wrong.”

“Not that,” Nino interrupted. “Just, here as in here in general. As far as literally everyone knows, Ladybug has been missing for a week. Why are you devoting time to returning sweatshirts to random teenagers instead of looking for her?”

Chat Noir slumped, deflating onto his carpet with a sigh. 

“I have no idea where to look,” he admitted, flopping his head back onto Nino’s bed.

Nino sat down beside him, turning his head so he was facing the supervillain.

“She’s been gone for ages,” Chat whispered, sounding horrified at the reminder. “Her family has been missing her for a week and I have found no leads, no clues, nothing. ”

Chat Noir stared numbly down at his hands as if expecting them to give him some sort of answer- but it didn’t look like they were much help as he just curled them slowly into fists.

He looked so sad and pathetic and pointedly not unlike a wet kitten left shivering out in the cold. 

“I’m sure she’ll turn up eventually,” Nino said, awkwardly patting his arm because what else was he supposed to do?

Chat Noir let out a sigh like he didn’t believe him (which was fair, Nino wouldn’t believe himself either.)

“Here,” Nino said finally, so incredibly sick of feeling like he couldn’t do anything. “I’ll help.”

The supervillain startled. “You will?”

He would?

Nino brushed off his regret with a reminder that this was hardly the first time he had offered to help Chat Noir. Besides, the odds of him actually helping Chat Noir find his partner were next to nothing.

“Sure,” he agreed, getting to his feet and offering Chat Noir a hand.

This was a bad idea. This was such a bad idea. Why wasn’t he putting his hand away?!?

Chat stared at it for a long moment, green eyes darting between his fingers and up to his face. Gently, he reached up and accepted it.

Nino led him over to his desk, shoving the wet towel off his chair and the homework to the floor and pressed the power button.

While they waited the agonizing minute and a half it took for his computer to slowly come to life, Nino grabbed a piece of notebook paper and a pen and handed them to Chat Noir.

“What’s the plan, Sherlock?” the supervillain asked, standing over his shoulder. He set a hand on the back of Nino’s chair, making him hyper aware of the way his neck heated.

Nino forced himself to focus. 

Here’s to praying they would find nothing. Or something. It was unclear which was worse, helping a literal terrorist, or witnessing Chat Noir look like a kicked puppy.

This was already going poorly and they hadn’t even started.

“On the Ladyblog’s forums, there’s an ongoing channel discussing champion or villain sightings,” Nino explained, clicking the spacebar in hopes that it would help his computer wake up faster. “Ever since the battle last week, people have been going wild posting anything they can figure out regarding Ladybug and the champion’s whereabouts.”

His computer finally flickered to life, and Nino fumbled on his password three times in his haste. Pulling up Alya’s bright pink blog, he clicked instantly to the forums- specifically the page that Alya had been complaining about recently.

A tiny red number in the corner of the page told him that there had been 218 new comments since the last time he had checked the page- a new record.

“Pull up a chair,” he suggested. “Something tells me we’re going to be here awhile.”

Nino pointedly ignored the ticking of the clock as the two of them worked late into the evening. The hours grew long, slowly meandering towards morning as he called out locations and Chat Noir scribbled down the ones he hadn’t checked. 

By the time they had reached the end of the comment chain, the rain had resorted to pitter-pattering against the roof, rather than thundering. Chat let out an exhausted sigh, collapsing back in his chair against the back of Nino’s bed. In mock exhaustion, he flopped off the chair and tumbled to the ground, arms stretched wide as he stared up at the ceiling.

“This is impossible,” Chat groaned melodramatically.

With a laugh, Nino lowered himself to the ground beside him. Chat propped himself up on his arms to look at him.

“We could organize them by neighborhood if you’d like,” Nino offered, sitting cross-legged.

“That’s too much work,” Chat responded theatrically, letting himself fall back onto the rug.

Nino ignored the protesting of his limbs as he sagged to the ground beside him, staring up at the odd shadows made from the light of his computer meeting his stippled ceiling.

Everything felt a little blurry, lack of sleep making everything feel like a dream. 

That was probably why Nino turned his head to the side, until he was staring at Chat Noir’s ear. 

“You know, for a supervillain, you aren’t that bad.” 

Chat Noir snorted, eyes slightly unfocused as he turned to meet Nino’s gaze.

“Can I tell you a secret,” Chat whispered, voice lowering like he was admitting to something grave. 

Nino nodded.

Secretive smile on his lips, he leaned in. “I’m not actually a villain.”

Scoffing, Nino rolled over to face him. “Yeah, right.”

“It’s true,” Chat insisted, his mouth falling into a dopey and unguarded grin. “No one believes me when I tell them.”

Nino laughed, dry eyes from hours spent staring at a screen fluttering closed without his consent. 

“Then why do you keep telling them?”

He couldn’t see Chat Noir shrug, but he could almost hear it in his tone. “Because maybe one day they’ll believe me.”

“That’s so dumb,” he laughed, only halfway aware of where he was.

“Yeah, it kinda is,” Chat admitted, his voice coming from across a chasm, but still right beside his ear. “But I really want it to work for once.”

“Why?” Nino wasn’t sure what compelled him to ask, but the question felt more right the longer it hung there, in the space between them. 

“Because maybe you’ll stop looking at me like I’m a monster,” Chat admitted, shifting a little so his shoulder was brushing against Nino’s elbow. Without truly thinking it through, Nino leaned into the touch until their ankles were brushing.

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” Nino said blearily, cutting his train of thought off with a yawn. “You’re too cuddly for that.”

Chat Noir might have laughed. Nino couldn’t tell. Everything was so heavy, and all of reality focused on the way their ankles brushed and the way the tiny hairs on his arms could almost feel the protective armor wrapped around Chat’s shoulder. 

Nino tried to force himself to wake up, but by that time his feet belonged to the abyss and his legs were next and it was way too much effort to fight it.

His neck was never going to forgive him for this. 

Nino rolled over, trying to force his bleary eyes open. His fingers dug into the woven strands of his rug and Nino went through the five stages of grief in a matter of seconds.

He stumbled to his feet, memories of the night before racing through his head. Nino shot a glance at his computer- which was still shining the bright blue of his home screen across his gray walls.

4:37 am.

They’d been asleep for over three hours?

Nino darted to Chat Noir’s side, nudging his arm with his fuzzy pink sock.

“Go away, Plague,” Chat moaned, batting him away and turning to bury his face in Nino’s bedpost. “It’s too early.”

Briefly feeling guilty about waking him up this early, Nino nudged his arm again.

“Dude, we fell asleep. You need to get home before your parents think you were kidnapped or something.”

Chat Noir rolled over, expression unimpressed even with his eyes screwed shut.

Nino snorted, tapping a short rhythm into Chat’s shoulder. 

“I believe in you,” he sang.

With visible effort, Chat forced his eyes open. He glanced around, eyes slowly adjusting to the room around them. 

There was a heartbeat of silence as the gears in the vigilante’s brain started to turn again.

Then, in an instant, his eyes grew wide.

“We fell asleep,” Nino blurted out again, feeling his cheeks flame for some reason. He shifted from one foot to the other, holding out a hand for the vigilante.

“Oh,” Chat whispered, human ears tinting pink. He accepted Nino’s hand and got to his feet, rolling his shoulders. Nino winced at the symphony of his joints cracking back into place. His neck had to be just as bad– probably worse.

“I just figured you should know,” Nino blurted, not sure why he kept overexplaining everything. 

Chat rubbed the back of his neck. “Thanks.” His ears flushed even more. “I’m sorry for… all this.”

“It’s no problem,” Nino said quickly. He snatched the sheet of paper off his desk and practically shoved it into Chat’s hands. “Here.”

“Thanks,” Chat said again. 

Sending him an awkward smile, Nino hurried towards the window and swung it open, relieved to see the rain had relented for the night. 

Chat ran his fingers through his bed head as he climbed out the window, sending one last smirk over his shoulder as he leapt into his head. 

And for some reason, that smirk decided to clear space to live rent-free in Nino’s head. He couldn’t shove it from his head, even after he turned his computer and dove into bed.

Nino burrowed deep under his blankets and failed to force his thoughts away from the way Chat Noir’s human ears had flushed pink.

Nino ducked his head beneath the railing of the Liberty right before Rose could spot him. From across the deck, Juleka narrowed her eyes at him. Considering that he had almost blown their cover, he sort of deserved it. 

There was only a week before the Harvest Dance and Juleka was determined to ask her girlfriend out in the most dramatic way possible.

As soon as Rose’s foot made contact with the boards of the Liberty, they burst out from the various hiding places and began one of the most atrocious covers of a Girl in Red song known to humanity.

Rose gasped, dropping her rainbow bouquet of flowers to the deck as Juleka raced out from among the commotion. 

“Rose,” she began eloquently, she glanced down at her hands for the bouquet of flowers she was supposed to be presenting to her girlfriend, only to find that she had left them on the seat of the sofa she had been crouched behind. “You are one of the most amazing people I have ever meant, and these past two years spent together have been two of the most amazing years of my life.”

Despite the fact that Rose had been dating Juleka for several years and should definitely be adjusted to her girlfriend’s declarations by this point, she still managed to flush an adorable bright pink.

“Rose, dearest, light of my life,” Juleka continued. “Will you do me the incredible honor of accompanying me to the Harvest Ball?”

Rose froze, glancing around at their classmates with an expression Nino couldn’t read. 

“Is that what this is all about?” she said hesitantly. 

Nino missed a note, glancing at Kim to see if he knew what was going on. But Kim was looking at Max for answers who was looking at Alix who was looking at Mylene who was looking at Ivan who was looking at Nathaniel who was looking at Lila and on and on it went until their song died out.

Rose narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to beat my Harvest Ball proposal from last year?”

Juleka glanced away guiltily, unable to stop the mischievous grin that was spreading across her face. “Maybe.”

Rose laughed and Nino instantly felt the tension drain from his shoulders. 

“Oh, come on,” Adrien groaned from right over his shoulder. 

Nino yelped, jumping three feet in the air. 

“Sorry,” Adrien flushed. He let out a long sigh. “But, seriously? I leave for like, two minutes and the whole thing is over already?”

Alya giggled, handing him one of the complimentary mango lemonades Juleka had used to bribe them to attend (as if they wouldn’t all come anyway). “You missed my glorious singing. You seriously missed out, sunshine.”

“I’m sure I did,” Adrien laughed. 

“It truly is a travesty,” Nino jumped in without thinking. “I mean, how would we even go on without your dashing good looks.”

He belatedly realized that he had not bothered to include enough sarcasm in that statement. Adrien and Alya froze, staring at him.

Nino felt his face grow warm beneath their gaze.

Adrien let out an awkward laugh. “I mean, yeah! Such a shame!”

“Speaking of dashing good looks,” Alya said, leaning against the railing of the Liberty as Juleka and Rose teased each other in the background. “Are you going to the dance with anyone, sunshine?”

Adrien froze. A conflicted look crossed his face, and Alya glanced back at Nino with her eyebrows raised. 

He was pretty sure he was going to melt of embarrassment and ooze straight off the deck of the ship, leaving his friends and family no context for his disappearance.

Visibly gathering his thoughts, Adrien turned to Alya and plastered a teasing grin on his face. “Why? Are you asking?”

He began obnoxiously wiggling his eyebrows.

Alya snorted like a dying mule. “You wish.”

Adrien burst out a laugh. 

“The people are desperately hanging onto your every word,” Alya teased, with the kind of easygoing confidence that Nino would never possess.

“Well, the people are going to have to deal with the fact that I have no idea,” Adrien shot back. 

Alya raised her eyebrows in the same way she did whenever she was about to get the scoop of the century. “Oh? So there’s nobody you’d want to invite?”

Adrien hesitated for the briefest of moments, his cheeks bursting an adorable hue of pink. 

Alya smirked, taking that as her answer. “Anything you want to share with the class?”

Adrien shook his head frantically, as if that could clear any traitorous thoughts. “I’m not even sure whether he-” he cut himself off. “It’s complicated.”

Alya shot him a glance over her shoulder again, as if making sure that he had caught that.

It wasn’t like he could miss it. His brain had latched onto the word, plastering it on every available surface in his mind and hijacking every thought.

Adrien… liked boys?

“Besides,” Adrien continued. “Finding Marinette is my priority. Everything else comes later.”

Nino actively shoved all other thoughts from his mind, guilt clawing at his throat. Why was he so focused on… other things when one of his closest friends was gone. He forced himself to focus entirely on nodding. “Of course. That’s mine too.”

Alya let out a long sigh. “I know. I can’t stop thinking about her. I don’t know how else to help find her.”

Adrien gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, but Nino’s mind was reeling.

Maybe there wasn’t anything else that Alya could do, but him? He had connections to Chat Noir, who was probably maybe technically in his debt after his offer to help find Ladybug.

Hawkmoth was more focused on the general good of Paris, not one missing teenager. But Chat Noir? Nino could take advantage of the way that supervillains were allowed to have selfish motives and ask him to keep an eye out. 

“Hey Nino,” Adrien asked, suddenly jolting him back to real life. “Are you alright?”

“Of course,” Nino said, nodding furiously. “I’m just worried about Marinette.”

His friends' strained smiles betrayed their sympathy. Out of sheer habit, Nino pulled out his phone, fingers instinctively finding his messages with their absent final member. He hit the refresh button, but no new messages appeared. He shoved his phone in his back pocket.

“We’ll find her,” he vowed. 

Alya hummed in agreement, reaching out and giving both of their hands a reassuring squeeze.

And they would. Because now they had a supervillain on their side. 

Nino would make sure of it.

It took approximately five more hours for Chat Noir to knock on his window again, startling him out of blankly staring at the exact same math problem.

Shoving back his chair, Nino raced to the window, throwing it open with far more enthusiasm than was probably necessary.

“You look happy to see me,” Chat teased, maneuvering his lanky knees through the windowsill. “That’s not an expression I’m used to seeing.”

“Wow,” Nino pretended to be wounded as he clenched at his chest, pulling the window closed to block the gusts of frigid autumn air. “If I’d have known you’d make fun of me, I’d have left you outside.”

“Rude,” Chat called back, rubbing his arms with his hands.

“I prefer beautiful, but that’s also fair,” Nino teased, tossing him a fuzzy blanket from off his bed.

Chat caught it in one hand and swung it around his shoulders. 

“Do you want to know how my investigation is going or not?” he grumbled, the hint of a grin tugging at the corner of his lips. His cat ears peeked out from his fluffy blonde hair. 

“ Our investigation , you mean,” Nino corrected. 

The vigilante startled. “What?”

Nino shrugged. “Of course that’s only if you still want my help.”

Chat nearly fell over as he bounded over to Nino’s side. “ Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Nino shot back, unable to help his grin as the supervillain bounced on his toes. “On one condition.”

Chat Noir hesitated.

“Don’t worry.” The words spewed from Nino’s mouth before he could stop them. “It’s nothing major, it’s just that one of my friends kind of needs my help and I, here-”

In a desperate attempt to stop the flow of barely comprehensible ranting, Nino thrust his phone towards Chat Noir’s face.

The supervillain blinked as his eyes adjusted to the picture a little too close to his face. After agonizing for hours over the perfect way to present this all to Chat Noir, Nino had finally settled on a picture of Marinette from a picnic they had in some random park. She was perched on the edge of a fountain, with Adrien desperately trying not to sneeze himself into the water in the background as a flock of pigeons had all decided to have a social hour. Due to Nino’s… revolutionary photo taking skills, you could probably see every pixel in Marinette’s face.

It was also Alya’s favorite picture. She’d ranted to their lunch table for a solid half an hour about the composition of it all while all of them stared at her blankly. Well, except for Adrien who actually managed to ask half-way decent questions.

He didn’t remember a whole lot about that afternoon, but he was pretty sure there was something about spacing and how the light caught in Marinette’s “beautiful bluebell eyes” (those were her words, not his) and he’d gotten to watch Marinette dissolve into a flustered mess of bright pink cheeks and stammered words 

“Her name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng, and she went missing about a week ago,” Nino blurted out. “Tom and Sabine –her parents– keep telling us not to worry about it, but they filed a missing persons report and no one has seen her for a week.”

Chat’s gaze flicked back towards him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Can you just keep an eye out,” he begged, hating how desperate he sounded. “We’re all worried and having you on the lookout for her would really help.”

The vigilante hesitated and Nino’s heart sank. Something flashed behind his eyes, but it was gone before Nino could even hope to decipher it.

“Of course,” he said awkwardly. 

Nino couldn’t help the smile that burst onto his face.

Chat rubbed at the back of his neck, quickly glancing away as if he was scared Nino would catch him staring. “Now that we have that covered, are you ready to get some updates on the investigation?”

“Of course.” He flopped back onto his bed, propping himself up so he could face the supervillain without having to untangle from his covers. 

Chat Noir smirked. “I was thinking of having you as a more… active participant.”

He tossed a small box across the room, which Nino’s reaction time missed by a solid three seconds. It made a light crack when it slammed into his headboard, making Chat Noir wince. 

Scooping it up, Nino cupped the weirdly hexagonal box in his palms, running his thumb over the red markings on the lid.

He squinted at Chat Noir impatiently as he tapped his foot impatiently. “This isn’t going to explode, is it?”

Chat snorted. “That would be unproductive, wouldn’t it.”

Tentatively, without taking his eyes off of the supervillain, Nino cracked the lid open.

Instantly, a bright green light filled the room. Nino covered his eyes as Chat crowed with laughter. When he finally worked up the nerve to peek through his palms, there was a small turtle sitting on his pillowcase.

Nino shrieked, darting across the bed. 

“Oh, yeah,” Chat said casually, as if this was an expected outcome. “That’s Wayzz. He’s here to give you your miraculous powers.”

Wayzz waved one of his flippers. “Hello.”

Nino’s brain latched onto a singular thought as he numbly pulled what was apparently called the “turtle miraculous” over his wrist, not even bothering to process the full instructions Chat Noir rambled off.

There was a turtle on his bed. And it could talk.

This was somehow not the strangest thing that had happened to him this week. 

Chat wrapped up his instructions with a gleeful “when you’re ready, just say ‘Shell On.’”

Still in a daze, Nino echoed the words, forcefully dragged back into his head as a bright green light washed over him. The glare bounced off his glasses, forcing his eyes closed.

When he finally peeled his eyes open, he glanced down and froze.

That was definitely not his pajamas.

He appeared to be dressed in some sort of… armor? Was that the best word to describe it?

The clunky green shield felt awkward in his grasp as he turned to Chat Noir, at a complete loss for words. 

In hindsight, he was pretty sure that this was the suit the supervillain had been rambling about earlier. 

He held out his arms, twirling in a flirtatious circle. “So… how do I look?”

“Like you’re ready to help me look for Ladybug,” Chat answered with a grin, turning towards the window.

“Hold on a second,” Nino called, snatching a pad of paper from his desk and a highlighter since that was the only thing he could reach without tripping on these new boots and falling flat on his face. “I should leave at least some sort of note.”

“Like what?” Chat asked, slipping easily into sarcasm. “Hey Mom, just heading out to play hero with a notorious supervillain. Don’t worry- I’ll be back by midnight!”

Nino tossed a pillow at his head, somehow accidentally nailing him right in the face. 

“Excellent suggestion,” he teased, scribbling something down about needing fresh air. 

The odds of his mom actually coming into his room were practically nonexistent, but it would be best to have an alibi- so long as she didn’t point out that he could get a fair share of fresh air on his balcony. 

Or panic that her son may have joined the missing people ranks.

He placed it on his nightstand and followed Chat out the window.

“This feels wrong,” Nino laughed, trying to hide how much blood was draining from his cheeks as he stared down about a dozen or so stories.

“Don’t worry, you’ll pick it up easily,” Chat promised, holding out a hand. “I’ll be with you every step. I promise.”

His insides swirled with a kaleidoscope of butterflies as he reached over, gently twining their fingers together. 

Chat squeezed his fingers reassuringly, and all Nino could see was the way his lips twisted into a nervous smile and how the cold air nipped at his ears, tinting them cherry blossom pink. 

And then they were off. 

Apparently Chat was determined to murder him, because Nino took to rooftop parkour like a fish takes to a career in archaeology- floppily and often flat on his face. The supervillain insisted on dragging him across every arrondissement of Paris in search of his partner. Occasionally, he would give Nino a moment of reprieve as he pulled out the list of possible sightings he had evidently printed off a few nights before and crosssed off a location. His only reprieve from the constant aching of his muscles was the gentle brush of fingertips against his as Chat helped him to his feet over and over again.

The last glimpses of twilight had faded away about an hour before Chat squinted at his sheet, smoothing over the folds in his paper- and hesitated. 

“What is it?” Nino asked immediately, trying to peer over Chat’s shoulder. 

There were only four uncrossed addresses remaining and one of them had a note scribbled in the margin beside it.

“It’s not important,” Chat announced, folding the paper far too quickly for it to be nothing. I can check the rest of these tomorrow. We should head back.”

“Or…” Nino let the word hang in the air. “Alternative suggestion: we finish the list and I take you out for celebratory gelato afterwards.”

“Take me out?” Chat echoed.

Nino’s heart rate spiked. 

“Yeah,” he said, letting out an anxious laugh. “You know, for bro gelato. For friends? The kind you get platonically?”

Why was his laugh so high pitched?

Nino’s cheeks flamed. 

Thankfully, Chat didn’t comment on whatever the hell that was, instead scruffing the roof with his boot.

“Right,” he said slowly, “but the last few of these aren’t even in Paris. I’ll just check them later-”

“Let’s try and hit at least one more tonight,” Nino suggested. “As long as they’re sort-of in the area.”

“Are you sure?” Chat asked hesitantly. “You look kind of tired. I don’t want to make you miserable.”

“I’ll be fine,” Nino laughed. (Like a fool. Like an idiot who had no idea that he had just volunteered to travel just over fifteen kilometers.)

Nino was a lot of things: tired, sweaty, extremely gay.

One thing he was not was fine.

Every tendon in his legs sobbed for help. Shooting pain spiraled through his shins with every step. Something twisted in his lungs, forcing all his air to try harder to actually provide him with oxygen.

Everything burned as he trailed farther and farther behind Chat Noir, who kept glancing over his shoulder to check if he’d fainted yet. 

“We’re almost there!” Chat called over his shoulder, tail flicking eagerly. “Just a kilometer or two to go.”

That wasn’t exactly helping either.

Nino collapsed on the outskirts of the town, trying not to cry in relief. Really, really trying not to think about the trip home.

“You do that every day? ” Nino wheezed. 

Chat shrugged. “I guess?”

Burying his face in the pavement, Nino muttered, “you’re actually the worst, I hope you know that.”

Chat snorted. 

Claws reached out in the edges of his blurring vision and he exhaustedly accepted them.

“Come on, Cappy, we’re almost there.”

With a groan, Nino peeled himself off the sidewalk.

The streetlights blazed an aggressive white through the pavement. The crisp midnight air cradled the back of his neck, leaving goosebumps down his spine. Nino traced his fingers across a fencepost, carving spirals in the frost.

“Where are we headed?” he called ahead. 

Chat glanced up from where he had been staring at his communicator, zoomed in on a bright red pin in a map. He nodded towards the roundabout farther up the street. “The commenter claimed they saw Ladybug on that lamppost headed north, following Hawkmoth’s champion. Hopefully, I’ll be able to guess where she went when we get there.”

Trailing behind and humming a tune that hitched in his throat every time a car drowned them in its headlights, Nino watched as Chat used his baton to propel himself on top of the streetlight, squinting down the street.

Cautiously, he leapt forward, landing in the branches of a nearby tree and sending its few remaining leaves tumbling to the ground. 

Nino followed as Chat Noir carefully picked his way up the street, past a long row of identical tan houses tucked behind a brick fence. They came to a crossroads and Chat considered the two streets for a long minute before finally continuing with a decisive nod. 

Finally, they came to a stop in front of a deep gray building with a decently sized collection of identical rectangular windows. 

“We should check up there,” Chat declared, nodding to the roof. In one graceful leap he bounded across the street and onto the sidewalk, offering his arm. “Shall we?”

Locking their arms together, Nino slammed his eyes shut as Chat swept them up and onto the roof. Gravity hesitated for a brief second and Nino tripped over the railing, landing in a heap beside Chat Noir.  

The rooftop was dark and Nino’s eyes barely adjusted in time for him to stop himself from tripping across the tangled mess of wires. 

Chat scanned the rooftop, eyes wide and adorably hopeful, but Ladybug was nowhere to be found. Aside from a few discarded beer cans, some electrical equipment and a single cardboard box, the rooftop was deserted. 

Letting out a long sigh, Chat crumpled to the rooftop in exhaustion, staring blankly at the street below them. 

“I really thought this would be the one,” he whispered. 

Nino gently squeezed his shoulder. “You’re trying your best, that’s what matters.”

Chat nodded blankly, looking a little like he wanted to argue. “Can I have a minute?”
“Of course,” Nino murmured. 

Trying to give the vigilante some space, he carefully stepped across the rooftop. He ran his fingers across the cool metal of the sort of half-railing. He kicked at the cardboard box, sending it toppling over as it skidded across the roof.

Something small and plastic screeched across the concrete. Curiosity getting the better of him, Nino scooped it into his palm, stepping into the glare of the streetlights to get a better look. 

He was a little ashamed to admit that if he and Chris hadn’t begged their grandmother to let them binge her entire collection of old Bollywood movies, he probably wouldn’t be able to recognize the VHS tape in the poor lighting. 

“What did you find?” Chat called, getting to his feet.

Nino shrugged. “Some old tape. My grandmother used to use them to record pirated versions of her favorite movies.”

Flipping it over, he squinted at the title. 

Instead of an actual title, someone had stamped a bright green sticker over the top with the words For Your Eyes Only written in fresh black sharpie. 

“Are you ready to head out?” Chat called. 

Nino groaned. “I guess.”

Chat let out a weak chuckle. “It’s only fifteen kilometers.”

“Don’t remind me.”

It was at least one in the morning when the two of them finally crawled back through Nino’s window. The exhaustion made his brain feel fuzzy as he practically sprinted towards his bed. 

Chat Noir snickered. “I know the feeling. I’ll leave you to rest.” Resting a hand on the window frame, he hesitated. He glanced back over his shoulder.

“Thank you,” Chat said softly. “For all your help tonight… and every night, I guess.”

He turned to leave.

“Wait!” Nino called without even thinking about it.

Chat froze, staring back towards him. Ears burning, Nino opened his mouth to say… something. He wasn’t exactly sure what the plan was. 

Giving up on the part of his brain that was supposed to come up with some sort of heartfelt response, Nino tossed the VHS tape onto the floor, swung his legs over the side of the bed and strode over.

Chat’s breath hitched as their gazes met, electricity shooting down Nino’s spine. Both of them stared, wide-eyed and refusing to look away as Nino scrambled to think of something, anything to say.

Chat glanced away first, breaking the spell. 

Nino coughed awkwardly. “I just wanted to let you know that Ladybug is lucky to have a partner like you.”

Chat’s cheeks glowed in the light of Nino’s lamp. “Thanks.”

Slowly, he reached for Nino’s hand, cupping it in his palms in a way that made Nino forget to breathe.

Hesitantly, he raised it to his lips, pressing a delicate kiss to the back of Nino’s hand. Goosebumps burst across his skin in the cool night air. 

“It’s an honor working with you.”

Suddenly struck with the same impulsiveness as earlier, Nino stepped close enough that he could see the triplet of freckles dotting his jaw. Without releasing his grip on the vigilante’s hand, Nino pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of his pale pink lips.

Nino froze as he pulled back and met Chat’s stunned eyes, his heart skidding to a stop. 

Why did he do that? Why, of all things, would he do that?

“Sorry,” he stuttered out, dropping Chat’s hand like it was on fire and stepping back. “I shouldn’t have– especially without asking-”

Chat blinked, stumbling back a step as he finally crashed back to earth. He gaped at Nino like he had materialized before his eyes.

Throat suddenly incredibly dry, Nino managed to whisper, “I’m sorry.”

Chat nodded in acknowledgement of Nino’s apologies, brushing his worries away with his gloved thumb across the edge of Nino’s cheek. When he finally responded his voice was shaky and hoarse. 

“Can I kiss you?”

Nino’s breath hitched. 

Slowly, he nodded. 

Veins tingling with nerves, they met eyes for assurance. Chat leaned closer, hesitating for a single breath that brushed across Nino’s already dry lips.

Their fingers tangled together as their soft lips met and Nino felt Chat smile. 

Chat tasted like strawberry chapstick and sunrises, danger and sweat and the gaps between the stars. 

He’s evil , some part of his brain tried to whisper. 

Shut up, Nino shot back, He’s really good at his.

It was getting harder to reconcile the Supervillain Chat Noir and the boy standing in the middle of Nino’s room.

“Maybe you’ll stop looking at me like I’m a monster,” Chat Noir had said sleepily that first night.

Nino wasn’t sure he could keep looking at him that way if he tried. 

Nino wasn’t sure how long they stood there, his free hand burying in Chat’s hair while the vigilante left tiny grins across Nino’s lips. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, surely, but it felt like an eternity. 

Finally, they pressed their foreheads together, teasing each other with stolen pecks when the other glanced away. 

Chat’s hand cupped Nino’s cheek, and he leaned into the contact, grinning at the flustered pink blossoming across his cheeks.

“You’re so pink,” he teased, leaving gentle kisses on Chat’s blush. “Awww. Do you think I’m cute?”

“Shut up,” Chat muttered, glancing away in a failed attempt to hide how red he was getting. “Besides, you’ve been flushed for ages.”

“Maybe I just think you’re adorable,” Nino shot back with a smile. 

Chat fumbled for some sort of reply, losing it under the furious blaze creeping towards his neck. 

Satisfaction blossomed in his chest at the way Chat dissolved into a flustered mess at his teasing. 

“Yup,” he continued, booping him on the nose. “Adorable and incredibly sweet and maybe just a little bit hot.”

Chat suddenly went still under his fingers, blush vanishing as his cheeks paled. 

Instantly, Nino pulled back. “Is everything okay?”

“What?” Chat asked incredulously, voice about an octave above normal. “Yeah, of course.”

Nino raised his eyebrows expectantly, staying quiet for Chat to share if he felt ready. 

Chat rubbed the back of his neck, glancing towards the floor as he considered. He sighed, cat ears twitching nervously. 

Finally, he stepped forward, grabbing Nino’s hands. 

“I really like you,” he burst out.

“I kind of figured,” Nino joked. Sparks burst on the tips of his ears, but it wasn’t about that right now. 

Chat shook his head. “No, I really like you.” He took a deep breath. “Just… not like that. I just don’t get what it means to find someone hot. Ladybug tried to explain it once, and honestly it made no sense. I think you’re wonderful and I want to kiss you and take you out for gelato and everything, but, I can’t find you hot, no matter how hard I try.”

Nino squeezed his fingers in reassurance. “That’s fine.”

Chat glanced up nervously. “It is?”

A giggle burst past his lips. “Of course!” He nodded towards the pride flag pinned to his wall. “I’m demisexual, remember? If anyone was going to understand the ‘not finding people hot’ thing, it would be me.”

Chat chuckled, sounding more than a little relieved. “Right.”

“Do you know if you’re on the ace-spectrum?” Nino asked. “It’s fine if you don’t, or if you don’t use labels or anything.”

“I think I might be ace,” Chat admitted, a slight grin tugging at his lips. “The only person I’ve ever told that to is Ladybug.”

“Well, I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to tell me,” Nino beamed, he ducked his head, letting out a massive yawn into his hand. “I’d totally be up for discussing any sort of boundaries that we want to set in place, but-”

“You really should be getting to bed,” Chat teased. “I’ve kept you up long enough.”

“Hey!” Nino protested. “You need sleep just as bad as I do! Go home!” He shooed Chat off onto the balcony, both of them laughing the entire way.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Chat promised, pressing one last kiss to his the back of his hand. 

Nino watched under the light-polluted sky as Chat bounded across the rooftops, ramming into a random chimney when he turned to wave. Maybe it’s nowhere near a classic romance with fireworks and sunsets but it’s so incredibly, hopelessly them and Nino loves it. 

He finally ducked back inside his window, groaning when he spotted the box containing the turtle miraculous on his desk. He shoved it under a pile of papers, so it wouldn’t be visible until Chat could come and pick it up the next day. 

Nino buried himself under the covers, fumbling to pull his glasses off and shove them onto his nightstand, reaching over to click off his lamp. 

He was definitely too tired to reconcile with all of his racing thoughts. 

In the dark, he finally let himself drift off. 

Unfortunately, the VHS tape had other plans. 

He’d honestly forgotten about it, sticking out of his pillows like a sword in a stone, but it seemed determined to keep him up. It started out as a gentle green glow, blinking on and off in time with his breaths. 

With a groan, Nino rolled over, shoving his face into a pillow, but the light just grew brighter, searing his retinas. Glancing over at his clock, he was unimpressed to see it turn to 2:13 am.

The blinking grew brighter, and more frantic, if that was even possible. Nino launched the VHS tape across the roof, where it bounced harmlessly against a beanbag chair. 

He groaned, burrowing under his blankets, but it didn’t help. 

After three minutes of attempting to merge his face with the mattress, Nino finally peeled himself out of bed. He stumbled across the room, squinting at the VHS tape as it sent pulses of light to the corners of his room. 

In hindsight, he probably should have realized that there was something off about a magic, glowing VHS tape. Instead, Nino spent at least ten minutes trying to hide the tape under a box, with a stack of a half dozen textbooks pinning it to the floor. Somehow the light found a way through the cracks and folds, sending rays streaking into the night. 

With a defeated sigh, Nino pulled the VHS tape out from under the box and stared at it. The green tape plastering the message was folded in the corner and made it way easier to peel the tape off. Holding the VHS tape up to his phone to read the scribbled writing, Nino froze.

In shaky pencil, someone had written, message for Chat Noir (final draft).

Okay, to be entirely honest, he had no idea what that meant, or why it sent him stumbling across his apartment, digging through boxes until he finally found his grandmother’s old VCR at the bottom of a box. Dragging it to his room, he pushed the door shut behind him with his foot.

It took him awhile (and at least three Youtube tutorials) to figure out how to get the thing to turn on, much less start playing, but Nino barely resisted whooping in victory when he finally stuck the VHS tape and the screen flickered to life, showing Hawkmoth’s stern gaze. 

Fumbling to press play, the volume blasted for a moment as he scrambled to turn it down. 

He waited in silence for a moment, creeping to the door to glance around the apartment. For an agonizingly long minute, he listened for sounds of stirring, every creak in the floorboards making him tense. 

Finally, he crept back to the VCR and pressed play. 

“Are you sure that this is the best way to do this?” Hawkmoth asked someone behind the camera. “I mean, he’s what, twelve? Are we sure Chat Noir even knows what a VHS tape is?”

“Sir, you’re the one who proposed the idea,” a clipped voice responded. “Besides, the camera is rolling. It’s too late now.”

Hawkmoth startled. “It is? Can we restart it?”

“Not at this point, sir,” the lady responded dryly. 

Hawkmoth let out a sigh, straightening his shoulders and taking a deep breath. “Right.”

He fixed the camera with a stare that seemed to slice through the screen and hold Nino in place. 

“Chat Noir, if you have somehow managed to find these tapes-”

“Again, it was your idea.”

“And I hire you to stop my bad ideas,” Hawkmoth shot back. The voice snickered and Hawkmoth rolled his eyes. Raising his eyebrows, he continued. “ If you have somehow managed to find these tapes , I am here to tell you, we have Ladybug.” He let out a wry chuckle. “Of course, your partner is holding her own, battling my champion and the sleep deprivation at the same time. Very impressive.”

The camera swung around to reveal an sleek, white observation platform, with one-sided glass showing a flurry of movement in a warehouse sized concrete box. As the video adjusted to the new angle it sharpened, showing Ladybug and the champion circling each other, occasionally lashing out to exchange blows before darting back. 

“She could call upon her Lucky Charm of course, but that would mean that she’d still need to find some way to escape within five minutes and, trust me-” he chuckled “-there’s no way out of that box. We made sure of that. She’d spend her final moments before detransforming wandering around, blearily searching for an exit that doesn’t exist.” He settled down in an armchair, drumming his gloved fingertips on the armrest. “That’s where you come in.”

Nino swallowed as Hawkmoth, a man who he had always looked up to, fixed a glare on him. He spat his words like venom seeping from a snake bite. “You have two days. Hand yourself over at the following coordinates or your partner will be finding out exactly what the Parisian legal system does with domestic terrorists. Give me your miraculous and I might be a little more lenient.”

A string of numbers flashed across the screen and Nino scrambled to write them down before the screen went black. 

Hands trembling, he pulled the now normal looking VHS tape from the VCR and stared at it. It wasn’t glowing green anymore, which was a small victory, all things considered. 

There wasn’t a single doubt in his mind that if Chat Noir found this recording, he would turn himself over in an instant. 

And Nino… wasn’t sure if he wanted him to do that.

He chuckled aloud at the idea. That was so incredibly stupid. Due to some stupid teenage crush, Nino selfishly wanted someone, that until a week ago he’d believed was a literal domestic terrorist, to walk peacefully into the hands of the authorities.

But it was true.

He was also way too tired for this.

Somehow the sliver of willpower remaining in his sleep-deprived brain worked up the motivation to drag the VCR into the corner behind his bed, which he desperately crawled into and promptly fell asleep. 

Chapter Text

Okay, so maybe trying to complete a bio lab with only four and a half hours of sleep and a threat from the greatest superhero Paris had ever known was not his best idea. 

Nino, admittedly, wasn’t sure what they were supposed to be doing. He had dozed off during Mendeleiv’s instructions and now was being instructed to hold onto a group of vials while nodding occasionally to pretend he knew what was going on. 

As the sole survivor of his entire lab group who had somehow all managed to catch a fever, Kim had been unceremoniously dumped at their lab table and was currently offering about as much assistance to the project as Nino- objectively very little.

“Are you sure I should be the one handling the pipette-syringe thing?” Kim announced loudly, the sarcastic edge to his tone indicating that he was joking. “I feel like there’s a statistically significant probability that my massively muscular hands will just stab right through the Jello and ruin the entire experiment.”

“It’s called a Gel Electrophoresis chamber, Kim,” Mendeleiev said dryly as she swept past their table. “And yes, your so-called ‘massive muscles’ do not exempt you from this experiment.”

“ Right ,” Kim nodded slowly, like he understood any of the words that she’d just used. The feeling was mutual.

Alya had spent the last ten minutes squinting at the instruction sheet while Adrien took test tubes of DNA from Nino’s hands and arranged them in varying patterns around the holder.

“Do any of you have any idea what this sentence says?” Alya groaned, sliding the instruction sheet into the middle of the table for them all to examine. The weird cursive font that Mendeleiev had used swooped together in a way that made anything below size 14 illegible. The letters scuttled across the page like little ants, which was hopefully due to how impossibly tiny the instructions were, rather than sleep deprivation. 

Nino rubbed his eyes, trying to get them to stop watering. He’d grabbed a dirty chai on the way to school, praying that the caffeine kept him awake long enough to get to lunch. It was already failing him.

Alya shook his shoulder, abruptly jolting him from the meandering of his head.

“Are you alright?” she hissed as Adrien stared down the pipettes, which were stubbornly refusing to do their job. “You’ve been zoning out all morning. Did you sleep at all last night?”

Well, he had certainly tried. 

Sure, Nino had managed to doze off for a few precious hours, but when his alarm had burst him awake at 6:30 it had managed to land right in the middle of a sleep cycle, cutting off pretty much any relief his REM sleep might have given him.

“I’m doing better than Adrien at least,” Nino protested, nodding to where the boy was mid-yawn with a pipette deep in the tube of DNA. His eyebags blossomed purple like bruises and he looked about ready to collapse into the table.

“Unfortunately true,” Alya acknowledged. “Mari’s disappearance has been hitting all of us hard.”

Her voice was as clear and polished as the ice on a frozen lake as she spoke, but her fist trembled like ripples beneath the surface.

The sudden remembrance of who this was all for crashed over him like a tsunami, drowning his sleep deprived mind in sudden clarity.

Alya’s eyes darted around the classroom, but everyone was paying attention to where Nathaniel had knocked over one of the vials across the lab tables. 

Chloè wasn’t helping things as she scrambled back, shrieking about cholera, even though that definitely isn’t one of the gene-based diseases they were studying today.

Leaning across the table, Alya whispered, “I might have a solid lead.”

“On Mari?”

Alya’s expression twisted into something unreadable, but she nodded. 

Nino moved to ask more questions, cut off only by the challenging gleam in Alya’s gaze.

He sighed, passing one of the pipettes across the table to Adrien. Their fingers brushed for a moment and Adrien jolted like he’d been struck by lightning.

If Alya’s eyebrows could raise any higher they’d be off her face. Still, she let out a long sigh, one that shook of sorrow and late nights just as well as the caffeine beneath Nino’s fingernails or the bags under Adrien's eyes. 

He wasn’t the only one who wanted Marinette home.

Usually, when Nino was stressed, he’d call Alya and they’d spend hours on the phone talking in circles about whatever was on their minds.

He hadn’t done that in… a long while. There wasn’t even a reason for it, it just felt like life had started racing along faster than he could run and Nino was so desperate to catch up that he’d neglected everything he cared about before.

“Are you available tonight?” he hissed, his whisper buried under the sounds of Kim and Adrien’s lighthearted bickering. 

Alya paused to consider, accidentally stabbing the pipette through the delicate gel. At this point it was starting to look more like swiss cheese than an actual piece of scientific equipment.

“The twins leave for their swimming lesson at six thirty,” she whispered. “Nora might be hanging around with her girlfriend and Jalil for some sort of study-movie night thing, but apart from them the apartment will be pretty empty.”

“So… seven?” Nino offered.

“Seven works for me.”

The silence that hung over their whole table, or even their whole classroom wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t heavy either. It was just… expectant. Everyone knew that Marinette was missing, and none of them knew quite what to do about it. Even Alya.

Chat Noir might know. Chat Noir with his impossibly soft blond hair and faintly chapped lips and Hawkmoth on his tail.

Nino shoved all thoughts of the vigilante out of his head. 

Here he was, moping about some boy he barely knew while Marinette was missing. 

Sure, Chat had offered to help with the search, but at the end of the day, his top priority was finding Ladybug. It had been over a week, with no progress on finding Marinette and no new updates from Chat Noir.

Currently, with his connections to Chat Noir and the VHS tape shoved under his mattress, Nino was probably the best shot to find either of them, and he was doing nothing.

The bell for lunch rang like a plea for mercy and Nino was so relieved he hardly registered what he was doing as he helped rinse out the pipettes.

He grabbed his lunch from his locker, running headfirst into Adrien on the way out the door.

Adrien stumbled back as Nino rammed into him, somehow managing to stay upright as Nino scrambled to grab ahold of the wall before he could fall to the floor.

Adrien’s back was ramrod straight as he turned to stare at him. His eyes were blown wide like a deer in the headlights. 

Cautiously, Nino stepped towards him. “Are you alright?”

Adrien stared back, pink slowly starting to creep up his cheeks. 

“I like your face,” he blurted.

Nino blinked. “What?”

“Your face,” he stammered, cheeks growing redder by the second. “It’s very pretty. You should try modelling.”

“Okay?” Nino said slowly, ignoring the sensation of his cheeks heating. He had just been kissing Chat Noir the night before, he could handle this sweet, adorable boy acting strange. “Adrien, are you doing alright? Do you need to go to the nurse?”

Adrien shook his head suddenly like he was trying to shake off the thought. “I’m fine.”

He stared at him like he was waiting for him to say something in response. 

Nino gathered his lunch bag. “I’m going to head out now. Stay healthy, alright?”

“Alright,” Adrien agreed blankly, with that same distracted look in his gaze.

His meeting with Alya could not come soon enough.

Alya had already set out a pair of popcorn bowls when he arrived.

“I quadruple checked with my mom that this is halal,” she announced as the two of them settled down in her bed, burrowing themselves under a pile of blankets. “That didn’t stop Nora from stealing most of it though, so you better conserve it.”

Nino popped one of the kernels into his mouth, humming contentedly. He’d trust Alya’s mother’s expertise over his own any day of the month. 

Nino buried his face in one of Alya’s fluffy blankets, resolving to never leave. 

“I have an update,” Alya promoted, propping herself up on one arm. 

“Mmphf,” Nino protested, tunneling into the pillows. 

If Alya’s tone could have grown her skeptical eyebrows, it would. “You can handle being social for five whole minutes.”

He ignored her as he tugged a blanket further and further over his head. He really hadn’t gotten enough sleep for at least a week at this point. And it was so comfy.

“You’ll be fine. Come on, Nino.”

He peeled his face from the blanket just long enough to send a glare her way. 

Alya sighed, reaching over and pulling him to a sitting position, with the blanket in question wrapped around his shoulders. Nino grumbled the entire time, but in the end he ended up wrapped in a sheer fluffy goodness and probably looked a bit like a potato. A really comfy potato.

“Fine, you can show me,” he huffed, feeling a bit like a petulant child.

Bouncing a bit in her excitement, Alya pulled up her phone. She must have already had the tab open, because she only needed a moment before launching it at his head.

Nino ducked just in time, watching as the phone careened into her Majestia poster. “Hey!”

“Sorry,” Alya winced sheepishly. “I’m a little excited.”

“I can see that.” Nino peeled back at the poster to check for a dent in the drywall before scooping the phone off her phone.

The phone was open to her email, stuck on the latest on a variety of responses in a thread. Nadja Chamack had responded with a simple “see you there!”

Nino did not like where this was going.

Clicking on the first email, Nino’s heart sank as he spotted Hawkmoth’s official Public Relations email. It had been sent to every Parisian news site or TV channel he could even think of.

Greetings,

I am taking this opportunity to preemptively alert you to a possible final confrontation with Paris’ domestic terrorists at the recently abandoned Gabriel Fashion Offices tomorrow night at 10:30 pm. Do not enter the premises. 

Kind regards,

Hawkmoth and associates

“You’re not going,” Nino said before he had even finished reading.

Alya folded her arms across her chest. “There’s no way I’m missing this.”

Skipping quickly through the various responses, all affirmations and a short debate on whether the camera crews should collectively rent a room at the building across the street to get all their equipment into place.

This morning, Nino hadn’t had the chance to check the actual coordinates of Hawkmoth’s VCR threat, but he could bet every single kernel of his halal popcorn that the rendezvous point was actually at Gabriel Agreste’s design studios.

Good. Hopefully a little bit more of the Agreste fashion empire would get trashed in the process.

Nino was a little too eager to see the irritation in Gabriel Agreste’s brow when someone shoved a camera in his face and demanded to know how they were going to get out the Winter line if Chat Noir had cataclysmed another warehouse.

Dangling the phone in between two fingers, Nino hissed, “do your parents know about this?”

“Do I look like an idiot to you?” she shot right back.

Nino clenched his jaw. “Do you want an honest answer to that question right now?”

Snatching her phone out from between her fingers, Alya glowered at him. 

“You said you were done,” Nino pointed out.

“I’m not done until Mari’s back,” Alya snapped.

Nino… wasn’t sure what to do with that.

Alya could sense his hesitation upon her treading on sacred ground. She let out a long sigh, smiling a little in apology.

“I’ve been trying to get in contact with Hawkmoth all week,” Alya admitted, staring down at her hands. “This is the first time he's responded to my emails.”

“I still don’t think this counts as responding to your emails,” Nino pointed out. 

Alya pursed her lips in acknowledgement of the point, but continued regardless. “He’s helped out civilians in the past. Like that one time Tomoe Tsurugi lost her daughter in Paris. I thought maybe he could do something similar for Mari. He just needs to get rid of Ladybug and Chat Noir as distractions first.”

The terrible thing was that Nino could see the logic of it. With Hawkmoth finally free to leave Ladybug and Chat Noir in the past, he would finally be able to use his powers primarily for the sake of all of Paris.

If only he couldn’t hear the strain in Chat Noir’s voice, pleading for someone to finally help him within his memories.

Alya looked up at him, her golden-umber eyes capturing his own.

“I need to be there, Nino. I need to talk to him as soon as they’re finally gone.”

There was more to it. Of course there was.

Alya had always been ravenous for victory, but that hunger was not just for satisfaction. There was a haunting tint of fear to it all. Alya had been present to usher Ladybug and Chat Noir into their world; she wanted to witness their departure.

She needed to know, for her family, for her friends, for herself that they were finally gone.

Alya was the boulder tied to a rope around his ankle. When the universe tossed it into the depths, Nino had no choice but to fall after.

Nino knew that Alya could tell the exact moment he made up his mind – this was such a bad idea– but he still made her wait a few moments longer for his surrender.

“I’m going with you,” he announced.

Alya beamed with gratitude.

“You better not be scheming to run after supervillains again.”

Both of them scrambled to attention as they whirled to find Nora leaning against the doorway. They were using their upper arm to prop themself up, displaying some impressive biceps.

They opened their mouth to make some loud declaration, before noticing the frantic way Alya had raced to shield her phone. 

“Is this some sort of stalking-your-crushs’-Instagram thing?” they asked, sounding a little bit intimidated. “Or did the Ladyblog crash again? Alya, I told you months ago that it was a bad idea to host the website yourself. Listen, Jalil might be able to salvage it, but from how he explained it I’m not optimistic that it’ll be up within the week-”

Alya switched off her phone, tossing it onto the night stand. “What do you want, Nora?”

Nora clasped their hands behind their back innocently. “Am I not allowed to check on my talented and brilliant sister for innocent and completely non suspicious reasons?” 

“Not when you clearly want something,” Alya said dryly, already swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “What’s up?”

Nora deflated. “I can’t remember where we keep the orange juice.”

Alya sighed. “The lowest shelf of the fridge, behind the oat milk-”

“Also,” Nora said sheepishly, cutting their sister off. “Jalil may or may not have exploded something in the microwave and I need some help finding the fire extinguisher before all the alarms go off.”

“And there it is,” Alya groaned. 

She turned back to Nino, already halfway out the door. “Want to witness the chaos?”

As if he would ever willingly miss a second of the dumpster fire that was the Cesaire siblings pretending to be functional.

His mother had declared that evening a movie night, a little jealous of all his time with the Cesaires. Chris was asleep, worn out from an afternoon of soccer practice and a very reluctant shower.

They were about halfway through the first season of Ted Lasso , and Nino only made it through a rib-aching episode and a half before his eyes fluttered shut. He woke at 3am, hunched over the arm of the sofa. His mother had cleared away all the snack bowls and draped a knitted blanket across his knees.

Trudging through the dimly lit appointment, Nino decided to attempt the controversial move of bypassing brushing his teeth, instead flopping facefirst into bed.

It wasn’t until the morning that he spotted the small bouquet of roses on his windowsill, tenderly wrapped in ribbon and accompanied by a small note. 

H gave me a lead on L’s location. I’ll take care of it. Enjoy your rest. <3

Nino crumpled the note and tossed it directly into the trash. Shit. He had been hoping to- okay, well, he wasn’t exactly sure what his plan had been, other than to improvise a plan when it came down to it.

But now he had no way of talking with Chat Noir. Chat Noir might be captured tonight, with no way for Nino to talk to him. Nino sure wasn’t sure how he felt about any of this. The supervillain thing. The kissing thing. He needed more time. He needed answers. He needed to meet Chat Noir there tonight.

First Nino, then Alya and the circling vultures of the press, finally Chat Noir. What a disaster of a evening this would be.

7:51

Alya Cesaire

are you still up for tonight

8:10

Nino Lahiffe

do I even have a choice

Alya Cesaire

i mean… in theory, yes. In practice, no.

Nino Lahiffe

A law, I need to sleeeeeeeeeeppppp

*Alya

SOme of us actual have a functional sleep schedule, unlike you

Alya Cesaire

First of all, RUDE

Second of all, fair

Nino Lahiffe

I know. That’s why i said it.

Alya Cesaire

>:P

Nino Lahiffe

That’s a new one

Alya Cesaire

>:3

Alya Cesaire

if you’re actually not up for it i will Respect that and try to find a different bodyguard/cameraperson

Nino Lahiffe

Or you could do the reasonable alternative and just not go

Alya Cesaire

you wouldn’t believe me for a second

Nino Lahiffe

Youre right I wouldn’t.

Alya Cesaire

i’m sorry but my inner reporter is calling

Nino Lahiffe

Didn’t ladybug just warn you the other day to not listen to it.

Alya Cesaire

exactly! all the more reason not to listen

8:19pm

Alya Cesaire

Nino?

8:35

Alya Cesaire

Should i take this as a no?

8:50

Nino Lahiffe

You know I really should tell your parents about this

Alya Cesaire

I know. this is the last time, i promise

Nino Lahiffe

Can you promise for Mari?

Alya Cesaire

what

Nino Lahiffe

You know, what Mari would want me to force you to do if she was here. ACTUALLY stay out of harms way.

Alya Cesaire

i promise.

Nino Lahiffe

Fine. I’m waiting outside your apartment

Alya Cesaire

thanks dude

Nino Lahiffe

I would say anytime, but I’m really hoping that this is the last time

See you in two minutes

The turtle miraculous burned a hole through the pocket of his jacket. With every jostle, the hexagonal box thudded against his side, never quite letting him forget its presence. 

Their breaths crystalized in the frigid autumn air. The faint beam of his flashlight barely illuminated their path through Paris’ side streets. Their bikes were stashed on the bike rack of a run-down McDonalds. 

“It’s not too late to turn back,” Nino reminded her.

Alya sighed. “For you, maybe.” She glanced over her shoulder, the rough set of her jaw betraying her resolve. “Seriously, Nino. This could be incredibly dangerous and maybe a tiny bit illegal. It’s not too late for you to just go home.”

He wouldn’t go home without her and they both knew it. Alya’s burning hunger to sate her curiosity and her drive to be the first to know kept her pinned to the pavement just as much as Nino’s loyalty. He couldn’t abandon her and she couldn’t abandon her scoop. 

Of course that wasn’t the only reason he was standing beside her, scruffing his boots on the pavement, but even without the turtle miraculous in his pocket or the memory of chapped lips brushing against his own, they would still be here.

“I’m staying.”

Alya looked like she wanted to protest, but she must have seen something in his face when she glanced back because she closed her mouth, took a deep, steading breath and continued following the coordinates. 

A few months ago, Marc had explained to him what they considered to be one of the essential keys in writing a tragedy. The actual explanation had been a long and winded in circles and they used some words like “foil characters” and “thematic elements” that Nino only half-understood, but the heart of it was this:

In the end, what made so many tragedies so heartbreaking was how the characters themselves led to the inevitability. The characters could only ever have made the choices that led to their end because of who they were. It was their own nature that led them to their doom. The very fibers of who they were made it impossible for them to make a different choice. They were trapped, tangled in a web of their own creation. 

Nino’s hands were freezing. 

Alya glanced back at him as he rubbed them together, shoving them in his deep pockets as if that would protect them from the wind. 

“We’re almost there,” she promised, staring down at Google Maps as if it held the secrets of the universe.

Nino had thought he was prepared, but the breath was punched from his lungs as they turned the corner. 

The automated navigator sounded like it was taunting them as it chirped “You have arrived at your destination!”

The ruins had stopped smoking. Of course, they’d probably stopped weeks ago, but in his nightmares this building was everburning, ceaseless flames clawing towards the skies. 

The sign for what had once been the door was impaled straight through a piece of rubble, mockingly declaring the premise as Gabriel Fashions: Design Studios.

“Are you ready?” Alya breathed, ducking under the caution tape lazily strewn across the rubble to keep intruders -like them , his brain supplied- out. 

“I guess we’ve gone full circle,” Nino quipped, following after her before he could chicken out.

The bones of what had once been a cramped office building  were now exposed to the elements- concrete and warped metal twisted into jagged teeth. A few scorched posters hung on the walls, promising the next trends for all the world to see. 

Blocking the entrance was a bright red and white sign only visible by the streetlights and from the beam from his phone that warned that the building was unstable. 

To her credit, Alya paused before it, glancing over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t uneasy. 

He wrapped his fingers around the edges of the turtle miraculous box. If he could only keep one person safe tonight, it would be her. 

The battery on his phone was fading fast, but it was still above thirty (a miracle in and of itself). The screen was blisteringly bright as he squinted at the time. 

10:02.

A few news vans were inconspicuously parked around the corner, their windows rolled down so they could have a distracted conversation over the passenger seat. None of them even glanced their way.

Nino had twenty-eight minutes to make sure each of those people went home safely.

“We definitely shouldn’t actually be in the building,” he announced, for probably the fifth time that evening.

“You’re welcome to leave at any point,” Alya reminded him, a little too hopefully.

“I’m going to go scout out the building,” Nino hissed, accidentally making Alya jump as she set up shop in the corner of what had once probably been a lobby. “Just to make sure that Ladybug and Chat aren’t planning on ambushing us or something.”

Alya gnawed at her lip. “What if you get caught?”

Nino gestured to himself. With his faded navy jacket, cap obscuring his eyes and eternally untied sneakers he looked like he’d decided last week to give teenage rebellion a try but he hadn’t quite gotten around to it. “Then I’m an aspiring urban explorer who’s not supposed to be out this late. I’ll be fine.”

Alya snorted. “You do look like you’re desperately hoping someone will explain what weed is.”

Nino elbowed her in the ribs, cutting off her chuckle in with a grunt. “ Rude. ”

His protests did little to stop Alya’s snickering, but after a very long and offensive thirty seconds, she sobered and let out a long sigh. “Fine. But if you’re not back in ten minutes, I’m calling 112.”

Great.

Nino sent a reassuring grin her way.  “I'm sure that won’t be necessary.” He pulled her into a quick hug- just in case. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Don’t get taken hostage by Chat Noir,” she called.

“Don’t fall through any unstable floorboards,” he shouted back.

She’d be fine. Probably. 

Hopefully.

Okay, this was definitely a bad idea.

Nino forced himself to stride past the receptionist’s desk and into the first row of offices.

The first office he came to had its roof caved in- a reassuring start. The next had floorboards that groaned like a class of preteens assigned five chapters for homework.

The third room had a roof that was suspiciously singed on the edges, but the walls were still intact and Nino even spotted a bright yellow mug proudly declaring Boomers Are People Too from the lightly toasted desk.

He pulled the box from his pocket and cracked it open, wincing as Wayzz’s bright green light lit up everything in the nearby vicinity. 

“Hello again!” the turtle exclaimed with far too much enthusiasm for someone who had been accidentally kidnapped. “Are we off to fight Hawkmoth or just meet up with-'' he wiggled an eyebrow –a trait turtles weren’t even supposed to have– “a certain someone.”

“It’s not important,” Nino declared, face flushing as he called on his transformation. Wayzz looked almost disappointed as he was sucked into the bracelet. Maybe he was lonely? Wayzz seemed like the kind of turtle to care a lot about botany and early 2000s pop music. Maybe Nino could catch him up to speed when he wasn’t busy literally saving Ladybug.

First things first he needed to find the stupid concrete box. A quick leap through the rafters confirmed that there was no arena sized concrete box hiding in the upper floors. That, unfortunately, left only one option. Nino considered the best way to go about finding a way below ground when one of his feet caught in a hole in the ashen floor. Struggling only made the rest of the floor slowly crumble around him.

Nino had about two seconds to regret every decision that had ever led him to this point in his life before the floor collapsed beneath him.

From the other side of the lobby, Alya let a small yelp slip out. 

After a long moment, she hesitantly called “are you alright?”

“Just peachy!” Nino lied through his teeth, trying to dig his arm out from the basement step it had embedded itself in. “I think a filing cabinet just fell over!”

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t at the top of his excuse game right now, but who could really blame him?

It took Nino way longer than it should have to connect the dots. Stairs leading down. Down meaning the basement. The basement is underground. So is the concrete box (probably).

He got there eventually. Mainly because he fell down the stairs again, but he doesn’t like to talk about that.

His vision glowed bright green for a long moment, adjusting to the dim lighting. A path was cleared in the rubble- leading into one of the old storage closets. 

The support beams leaned precariously to the side and tiny flakes of ash drifted down with each draft from above like falling snow.

The hinges of the door to the janitor’s closet screeched loud enough to leave his ears ringing, but miraculously Alya didn’t comment.

Hopefully, that was a good sign. 

The room behind the door was distinctly not a janitor’s closet. Rather, it was another staircase entombed in concrete with fluorescent white lights planted overhead every five steps. 

Nino clutched the metal railing and followed the spiral down. 

It occurred to him sometime around the eighth spiral that this was quite possibly the stupidest thing he’d ever done. Compared to this, Alya’s trespassing made her seem like Einstein. 

The air grew heavy and wet, like pool locker rooms that hadn’t been cleaned in at least a month. Tiny droplets of water traced rivulets down the cracks in the walls. The metal railing grew slippery and the baby blue painted peeled away in flakes.

The staircase just kept going.

When he finally stumbled out of the stairwell, Nino didn’t even realize that he’d stopped turning in tight circles until a concrete slab slammed down, effectively sealing him in.

Nino tried not to let it worry him. It was surprisingly easy. He was so incredibly anxious about so many things that one more ominous door fit right in.

It was only then that he caught sight of the room around him. 

He stood on a platform, probably about halfway up the giant concrete box, but the water went over his knees. The entire arena was filled with water that slowly crept up the walls, consuming the concrete brick by brick. 

In the very center of the room, on a flat concrete block about the size of Nino’s bedroom, was Ladybug.

Or, more precisely, what he assumed was Ladybug. The red shape that twisted and spun and struck out at her adversary was almost too quick to see. 

But then again, so was her opponent.

Nino barely recognized the young boy who had assumed the mantle of Hawkmoth’s champion the week before. His quick and confident grin stood out from his bright indigo blur. 

With a cry, Ladybug crumpled to the floor, clutching her ankle. In an instant, her opponent was on top of her, scrambling for her earrings with a starved desperation. 

With practiced ease, Ladybug flipped him over her shoulder, pinning him to the concrete. 

“Yield.”

The order was wheezed, barely above a whisper as it passed through Ladybug’s lips. Somehow, it echoed off the walls of the concrete arena, rippling across the water so Nino could hear every ounce of desperation in her tone. 

“You look a little tired,” the boy teased instead, staring her down in challenge. “I can do this all day.”

Ladybug’s shoulder’s shook, but she did not let him up.

“Three minute break,” a voice crackled over the intercom.

Ladybug collapsed in relief, every muscle shuddering.

The champion bounced to his feet, stretching his arms above his head with a casual, unworried ease. He didn’t even seem tired from the battle he’d been locked in mere moments before. 

The Ladyblog ’s comment section had spent every moment since his announcement theorizing, with most agreeing that Hawkmoth had probably given young Jeremy some combination of invulnerability, supernatural endurance, speed and flight which the more novice Hawkmoth stans were confident would ensure the villain’s defeat.

His parents were very proud.

The champion backflipped off the side of the island, diving deep into the cerulean waters with a cheerful whoop.

Ladybug looked like a corpse, dried blood still plastered to a cut on her cheek. Nino stared from the sidelines as she peeled herself from the pavement, fingers tentatively prodding her wounded ankle. She sucked in a breath that couldn’t mean anything good.

A mechanical click whirled and Hawkmoth ascended from a gap in the concrete island. Ladybug  wavered as she stumbled into a fighting stance.

His pristine purple suit looked impeccable as always and his expression was more stern than angry. Ladybug scrambled away as he took long, practiced strides towards her, her knee crumpling beneath her weight.

She shrank back as he offered her his hand.

“Come now, Ladybug,” he chuckled goodnaturedly. “By now, you should know that I’m not just going to take your earrings when I’ve given you a break.”

He tsked as she almost collapsed to the ground. “Come on, aren’t you better than this? Just take my hand and I’ll give you the rest that you so desperately want.”

Blood mixed with saliva as she spat at his feet, her husky voice faint but still enunciating every syllable. “Fuck. You.”

Hawkmoth simply raised his eyebrows, retracting his hand and folding them around his cane. “Really, Ladybug? That’s all you could come up with?”

“Paris is going to see what you’ve done to me,” she growled. “They’ll realize who they were blindly following all along.”

Hawkmoth chuckled as if she’d told a particularly charming joke. “Paris will see exactly what I see. A reckless, stubborn teenager so determined not to be wrong that she endangered the entire city just for her little power trip. It’s pathetic.”

Ladybug just snarled.

“Alright, be that way.” Hawkmoth spread his hands wide in surrender. “If that’s the last memory you want your partner to have of you.”

The effect was immediate. His words washed over Ladybug like a bucket of ice, freezing her in chilling yet unrelenting hope.

She knew to keep her desperation from her tone, shoving her frantic desire to be rescued beneath indifference.

But if Nino could hear it from all the way across the room, Hawkmoth could definitely from where he stood a few paces to her left. 

“ What ?”

Hawkmoth shrugged, a casual motion tinged with all the victory of knowing that his victim had taken the bait- hook, line and sinker.

“I invited him of course,” he said lightly. “He’ll be here in a minute or two, probably filled with delusions of grandeur. I told him he could exchange himself for your freedom- a lie, obviously, but I’m willing to tell it as long has he’ll walk through that door-”

And then he pointed to Nino.

Nino had never fully understood the saying “like a deer in the headlights.” Sure, he could imagine the fear as you watch your doom come hurtling towards you at a hundred kilometers per hour, but for all of his halfhearted attempts, nothing could have prepared him for the way his brain frantically shuffled between fight, freeze and flight and came up blank.

Every eye in the room was pinned on him, every expression unreadable as they tried to process what they were seeing. 

Nino, understandably, panicked. 

When Nino reached a certain state of distress in a social setting, beyond even that which could produce his frantic catastrophizing, he would resort to what Alya liked to call his “default settings,” meaning that he’d blurt out the first thing that came to mind and pray that it got him out of the situation as quickly as possible. 

Nino raised a hand, waved once and said with a disarming grin, “Hi! How’s it going?”

That was when all hell broke loose. 

The champion burst from the waves, eyes narrowed and his fingers clutched into a tight fist. Nino threw up his shield and the boy ricocheted back into the water.

From the other side of the door, Nino could hear muffled shouted demands of someone left outside. It sounded a little like Chat Noir, but Nino didn’t have the time to deal with that because suddenly Ladybug was whirling towards Hawkmoth, her yo-yo and his cane clanging against each other as the dance began. 

The champion launched himself back out of the water- which was now quickly rising towards Nino’s hips- and grabbed for his shield. Nino twisted him off, ducking as the boy darted behind him and rained down a series of blows right where his head had been. 

The concrete door crumbled to dust, revealing an incredibly confused, wet and sleep deprived Chat Noir. The champion didn’t give him a chance to process, clawing towards his throat.

Nino stepped in to intervene, and was promptly thrown into the shoulder-height water. 

The champion pinned him beneath the waves, ignoring his desperate thrashing for air. His lungs begged for mercy, filling with water right as the champion was wrestled off by Chat Noir. 

“You know,” Chat wheezed, whirling around to search for his opponent in the water. “Now would be a really useful time for you to use your power to trap this guy.”

“ What? ” Nino shouted back, barely able to make out the syllables over the sound of metal scraping against metal and Hawkmoth’s roars of fury.

“Just point at your target and shout Shell On! ” Chat called back, wincing as the champion’s sharp nails dug into his shoulder, straight through the suit. “It’ll be fine.”

Nino tried to spin in the water until he caught a glimpse of where the champion might have been and called “ Shell On! ”

He aimed high and the protective shield bounced off the wall and into the murky depths. 

The champion hovered overhead, cracking his knuckles tauntingly. 

“You seriously think you can catch me?” he laughed. “I’m far more powerful than you could ever be, villain.”

“I prefer the term vigilante,” Chat quipped, grabbing the boy’s ankle and yanking him into the water. He craned his neck over his shoulder towards Ladybug and shouted, “where’s the papillion?”

“His wrist cuffs,” Ladybug announced. “They’re friendship bracelets from-”

“Battle first, backstory later,” Chat called.

The champion twisted around like a snake, the water making the surface of his suit slick. Chat gritted his teeth as he tried to maintain his grip on the boy’s ankle. “Turtle guy, I could really use some help over here!”

Nino swam over, grabbing hold of one of the champion’s wrists while the boy was distracted and yanking the bracelet off.

“Turtle guy,” he grumbled. “ That’s the best you could come up with?”

“I’m thinking on the spot,” Chat protested. 

The champion’s transformation glitched once. Twice. Nino caught a glimpse of fleeing ivory wings. 

Everything was cut off by Ladybug’s scream as Hawkmoth dug his cane into her thigh, twisting so it dug further into the raw flesh.

Chat didn’t even spare the boy a glance, throwing the detransforming half-champion, half-child into a concrete wall where he landed with a smack, going limp and collapsing face down into the water below.

It took Nino seven strokes to swim to his side. Seven strokes for Chat Noir to burn with rage at the state of his partner, throwing Hawkmoth to the ground. 

The hero crawled to his elevator and Chat Noir slammed his fists on the closing door with an eternal inferno of fury.

Ladybug hadn’t gotten up from the pile where Hawkmoth had left her, broken and bleeding and hollow. She numbly pressed her hands to her open wound, but it was impossible to tell from this distance if the red that coated her hands was her blood or her suit.

The boy still had a pulse. It fluttered like a butterfly with a punctured wing. He wasn’t breathing.

In some ways, it was a relief when another one of the concrete slabs slid to the side and Mayura accepted the boy into her arms. 

She looked surprised when Nino asked if he would be taken immediately to the emergency room, but she promised that even if she had to use every ounce of magic in her shattered miraculous, the boy would live.

Somehow, the battle had been a failure on both sides, leaving them tattered and frayed and stumbling up twelve flights of spiraling stairs to the ashen remains of a building no more welcoming than the arena below.

The bright blue of police lights washed through every crack in the floorboards. Radios crackled and sirens split the night air. 

Nino stuck his head out first as Chat let Ladybug lean against him, her eyelids slowly drifting closed. Scorchingly bright flashlights shone through holes in the crumbling holes, but the basement was deserted. 

“We can’t use the stairs,” he hissed over his shoulder. “The police are practically infesting the upper floors and I don’t think that LB’s in any sort of state to fight them off.”

Chat nodded like he’d been expecting that. “There’s a secondary exit through the door to our right that leads to the warehouse.”

Nino’s eyebrows shot up. “And you know this how?”

Chat froze, eyes blown wide. “School… field trip?”

“To the Gabriel Design headquarters?”

“Technically this building held the offices for the marketing design team,” Chat corrected. “They were… having a bit of a spat with Gabriel when the building burned down. Something about his insensitive comments getting their Pride month selection canceled on Twitter. He used this as an excuse to fire basically all of them.”

Nino felt his eyebrows creeping higher.

Chat coughed as he noticed his expression, cheeks darkening. “Not that I’ve been keeping tabs on them or anything.”

“Definitely not,” Nino agreed quickly.

Chat busied himself with making sure Ladybug was alright. She rested her head on his shoulder, probably woozy from the blood loss. She had called for her lucky charm about halfway up the staircase and they’d used the first aid kit to wrap her leg wound, so she wasn’t currently leaving red streaks across the basement floor, but considering that none of them had any actual medical experience, beside what little Chat said he’d picked up, it was only a matter of time. 

Nino didn’t ask how Chat knew the code to punch into the door. He was probably safer not knowing.

The murmurs from above grew louder the longer they spent trying to find a way to hold the thick metal door open and help Ladybug hobble through the door. The walls of the tunnel were built of the same bleached white brick as the spiraling staircase, with pipes running the entire length of the ceiling.

The door slammed like a closing casket behind them, barely drowning out the frantic beeping of Chat Noir’s ring.

All three of them froze, staring at the miraculous as if they could somehow stop Chat’s transformation from ticking to a close.

Ladybug and Chat Noir exchanged a glance, both of them suddenly on high alert. Chat swallowed, avoiding his gaze.

“I won’t look,” Nino blurted. 

Chat blinked. “What?”

“I won’t look,” Nino repeated. He wasn’t exactly sure when he’d decided it. “Your secret identity is clearly important to you so I just… won’t look.”

He reached over, entwining their pinkies together. Chat’s breath hitched, eyes locked on the contact as his ring beeped more frantically.

Nino squeezed his eyes shut, bright green light still searing through the cracks as Chat’s glove vanished, leaving behind a delicate finger wrapped around his own. His own glove got in the way of feeling Chat’s skin on his own, but he didn’t care. Chat was right in front of him, as a civilian. All Nino needed to do was open his eyes.

He couldn’t.

Together, the three of them shuffled down the hallway, Chat exchanging quick words with his kwami before transforming again.

Nino didn’t have any snacks to feed Wayzz, so when his suit vanished in a beam of magical light, the kwami solemnly drifted at his side.

Ladybug clutched her partner’s hand like a lifeline as he shoved the door open with his shoulder. The two of them looked at each other like they were drowning and maybe if they could just hold on together a little longer, they could break through the surface and finally breathe again.

The warehouse was shoved full of boxes and bolts of fabric, stacks of months-old posters sat on countertops. The automatic lights flickered on as they passed, leaving a trail in their path.

Finally, Chat pulled them right into a nearby office and locked the deadbolt behind them. Even though the shutters were tilted to obscure them from the street below, the bright blue of police cars and floodlights danced across the ceiling.

 Nino’s back pressed to the door as the pair of vigilantes finally turned to face each other.

Chat took in the dried blood streaked across his partner’s cheek. Her muscles seemed to tremble just holding herself upright and she clutched the edge of the desk.

Whatever he was about to say died in his throat as tears welled up in his eyes.

“Chat?” Ladybug croaked out, the word strangled at the end. Her knee gave out beneath her and she fell towards the floor.

Chat rushed towards her, wrapping his arms around her to hold her up. She buried her head in his shoulder, racking with sobs.

Her partner folded his hands behind her back, whispering apologies into her hair as bright pink light washed over the room. 

Nino turned away, clutching his arms and trying desperately not to throw up. He gripped the door handle, flicked the lock and opened it just a crack to a hallway lit only by the red glow of the emergency exit sign at the end of the hall.

“Nino.” 

The single word freezed him in his tracks. He forced himself not to turn around, despite how terribly he wanted to.

Chat’s voice rang hollow and true. “Thank you.”

He nodded as he stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him.

Three blocks. That’s how far back the police had pulled the gathering crowds. The cleaning crews and a few office workers that had decided to pull an all-nighter had all taken refuge in the seating area of a 24 hour gas station and were almost done raiding the coffee machines by the time the chime on the door announced his arrival.

Alya and a pair of police officers who were busy glaring daggers at each other sat miserably in a booth in the far back corner.

The cashier who clearly did not get paid enough to deal with this sort of shit on her nightshift didn’t even look his way as he snagged one of the last few chairs stacked in the corner and dragged it across the tiles to Alya’s table. She met his eyes across the table, quickly turning away to avoid his gaze.

Her jacket suddenly looked far too thin as she shivered, her shoulders slumped. A streak of soot traced a trail along her neck.

“Alya?”

She stared out the window at the streetlights and slow crawl of police cars, drawing mazes in the condensation on the windowsill. “Go home, Nino.”

The chair left a streak of black across the floor as he dragged it closer. “What happened to you?”

Alya wouldn’t turn to look at him, her lips dragging up in a halfhearted attempt at a smile. “Nothing. Everything’s fine. Please just leave.”

He rested his chin in his hand, refusing to budge. “Not until you tell me what’s going on and how I can help.”

“You can help by leaving, ” Alya gritted out.

The police officers had abandoned their staring contest by that point and were unabashedly gawking.

“Not good enough,” Nino sang. “But good try.” He leaned back in his chair to grab Alya’s favorite type of candy- Starbursts, the pale pink she only bought when she was feeling down. 

He slid over to the register, sliding a few Euros across the counter at the incredibly exasperated cashier and ducking back into his seat. 

The janitors one booth over gratefully accepted the handful of Starbursts he dumped at their table, warming their freezing hands around poor excuses for lattes.

He slid the bag across the table towards Alya. She fidgeted with the bag and fished out a single Starburst. “Why can’t you just do what I tell you for once?” 

He shrugged, letting the hood of his jacket fall down to his shoulders. “I’m sure my mother asks herself that same question.”

Alya popped the candy in her mouth and began folding the wrapper into intricate little triangles. “Mine too. My parents are coming to pick me up in a few minutes. I’m pretty sure I’m grounded until college.”

“Well at least we’ll be grounded together,” Nino offered weakly.

Alya groaned, burying her face in her arms so her words were muffled. “Maybe if I had just done what I’d been told for once, Mari would still be here.”

His heart jolted to a stop. “What?”

Alya snorted, but there was no mirth behind it. “It’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? I can’t keep my head from poking into places it doesn’t belong and suddenly one of my closest friends is gone. It’s not that hard to put the puzzle pieces together.”
“You think… Ladybug took Marinette?” Nino asked slowly, not sure if he was getting this right. His brain felt like it was trying to navigate through fog, everything confusing and complicated without any real sense of direction.

Something was cracking inside him. Something he didn’t quite understand the shape of. Something cancerous and cruel.

Alya finally turned towards him, her fingertips buried in the roots of her hair. She stared at him through the scattered curtain of her locks, eyebrows raised as if she couldn’t imagine that it took him this long to figure out.

“One second, Ladybug’s telling me to essentially ‘mind my own business,’ the next, Marinette’s gone. Tell me how that’s not a threat.”

Gentle lips brushing his own. Whispered confessions when they really should be asleep. Had the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed ever been real?

Or was it just the aching, eternal desperation of someone who’s days were numbered and was willing to drag anyone below the surface with them if it gave them just one more second of air. 

Chat just kept coming back.

Nausea tugged at Nino’s stomach as the pieces clicked into place. The timeline was perfect. 

Ladybug threatened Alya to stay away from her identity. When Ladybug vanished, Chat Noir assumed that Alya had exposed her greatest weakness to Hawkmoth and enacted retribution: taking Marinette away. An eye for an eye.

Had he ever been genuine? Or had every late night laughing investigation only been his way of ensuring that Nino and his friends wouldn’t get any ideas about looking any deeper?

Alya let out a low, hollow laugh that sounded a little like she was being ripped in two.

Nino could sympathize.

But unlike Alya, he could actually do something about the deep simmering within his chest that was slowly being brought to a boil. 

Then what was tonight? Some small part of him whispered, Whatever Hawkmoth trapped Ladybug in was… inhumane.

People do horrible things when they’re desperate. Whether that desperation comes for a hero or a villain.

The ground was dropping away from him, and all Nino could see was the utter certainty of the rocks below, incredibly obvious. Incredibly merciless.

“Listen,” he fought to keep the growl from his tone. He felt like stabbing something. He felt like throwing up in a corner. He felt like kicking Chat Noir off of a skyscraper. “Whatever Ladybug and Chat Noir did- it is not your fault. You are not responsible for their actions.”

“I was hoping that if Hawkmoth finally brought them in tonight, then they would set Marinette free,” Alya admitted. “I’ve been trying to get into contact with Hawkmoth all week. This is the first time he’s actually responded to my emails.”

Her shaky sigh managed to break Nino from his rage for just a minute. Right now Alya didn’t need someone to jump headfirst into Hamlet -level revenge. 

A cherry red van pulled up to the curb outside and let out a long, demanding honk on the horn.

“If Mari isn’t at school tomorrow, I will personally hunt Hawkmoth down for you and make him find her,” Nino vowed as the police officers slid out of the booth and let Alya pass.

She sent him a weak attempt at a smile as she swept the bag of Starburst into her jacket pocket. The two of them shuffled towards the van which already had their bikes strapped to the back. 

Nora glanced at them with a mixture of sympathy and disappointment through the mirror, while Alya’s mother twisted around in the passenger’s seat. None of the lights were on, leaving them to fumble in the dark.

“Nino, your mother is on the phone,” Mrs. Cesaire promised darkly, handing over the device.

Alya pulled the broken automatic door shut behind them. 

As the lectures began –well deserved, they both would admit– the two of them reached across the middle seat, grasping each other's hand for strength and a little bit of a promise not to cry.

The only thing keeping Nino on his feet was the adrenaline. 

Logically, he knew that there was no way Chat Noir would be dropping by that evening. It was well past midnight, and his clock was slowly creeping towards one. Chat had a partner to take care of, wounds of his own to tend to and, if Alya was right, a hostage to visit.

With Ladybug so clearly out of commission, Chat had to have been the one taking hostages. Unless the duo had a third ally that Nino had never heard of before. 

Unfortunately, from the way his stomach was curdling, Nino was pretty sure that wasn’t the case.

How much did he know about him, really? Chat had just shown up one day with his sob stories and nervous smiles and Nino had been so willing to believe anything he said that he followed him into the lion’s den without thinking about it.

At every single news conference or interview or meet and greet, Hawkmoth had reminded them over and over again that these villains were dangerous and manipulative. That their only goal was to steal all the miraculous for some sort of delusional superpowered daydream. 

Nino had fallen for his act hook, line and sinker.

Chat didn’t care about him. Chat didn’t care about any of them. 

He was quite willing to leave Nino in the dark just for a shot at another ally or send an innocent kid to the hospital in critical condition.

Why had he done it? Was he planning on negotiating some sort of hostage trade for her with Hawkmoth? One civilian for Paris’ most dangerous supervillain.

Nausea rising in his throat, Nino reached for his phone to call Alya or Adrien or the police or something -

The screech of the opening window cut him off.

Nino and Chat stared at each other across the room, the space between them suddenly far too vast and yet not enough.

Every single accusation or insult or plan was cut off instantly, as if Chat had cut through his power cord simply by stepping into the room.

“Sorry,” Chat said, his voice slow from exhaustion. He glanced back over his shoulder at the skyline. “It’s late, you’ve had a hard week. I can come back tomorrow or something-”

“It’s fine,” Nino felt himself saying on instinct.

He couldn’t really bring himself to say anything else. 

Chat seemed to get the feeling as well, because as soon as he slipped through the window he slumped down onto Nino’s desk chair. “Right.”

Both of their silences were heavy with different burdens.

“Thank you,” Chat said finally, letting it all rush out like Sisyphus letting his boulder slip downhill. “I have no idea how you got there tonight or even why you were there but thanks to you I have Ladybug back, which is more than I ever thought I’d have again, if I’m being honest.”

Nino sent him a wry grin with no mirth behind it, but Chat didn’t seem to notice. His leg bounced excitedly off the edge of the chair as he leaned forward. “And you’ll never guess who I stumbled across tonight! Remember your friend- I think her name was Marinette or something?”

The last grains of Nino’s doubt slipped through his fingers like sand through an hourglass. Chat didn’t seem to notice, a far too victorious grin on his face as he rambled on.

“I wasn’t even trying to find her, to be honest, but when I was dropping Ladybug off to get better healthcare- I can’t tell you where for identity reasons- we somehow managed to stumble across her! She’s fine. I mean, she’ll probably need crutches for a few days, but I think that with the help of a little therapy she’ll be okay!”

Nino hadn’t even noticed that he had one of his pencils in a deathgrip until it split into two splintered pieces. Chat’s head snapped ups, staring at the shards of wood digging into his fingertips.

“What did you do to her,” Nino gritted out one word at a time.

Chat drew back. “What are you- Nino, I didn’t do anything to her.”

“Don’t lie.” Nino was so incredibly sick of his wide innocent eyes.

“I’m not,” Chat said, in a voice that suddenly sounded far too small for just his bedroom. He sucked in a stabilizing breath. “You know me. I would never do something like that.”

“Do I?” Nino pressed. “Because the Chat Noir I thought I knew wouldn’t put innocent kids in the emergency room-”

“That was an accident!” Chat protested.

“Was it?” 

His silence was all the answer Nino needed.

“Who really hurt Marinette?” Chat shuddered with each and every syllable. “I know you know. And don’t try to dump this on Hawkmoth again. We both know that he had no part in this.”

“After everything you’ve seen,” Chat finally grit out. “You would still stand by him ? You saw what he did to Ladybug.”

“Hawkmoth was attempting to neutralize a threat,” Nino shot back. “He wasn’t attacking innocent civilians for no reason.”

“Hawkmoth doesn’t exactly give us a choice,” Chat admitted. “It’s a little hard to think about civilians when you’re currently running for your life.”

“There’s always a choice,” Nino snarled. “And maybe you wouldn’t be running for your life if you weren’t endangering the aforementioned civilians.”

Chat recoiled as if he’d just thrust a handful of salt into a bleeding wound. The terror of a wounded animal slid away, replaced with a mask of indifference and fury.

“If you really think so little of me,” Chat said, slowly so that Nino could hear each and every quiver in his tone. “Then why don’t you just call me a villain here and now.”

He sat back in his chair as if that was a victory, as if he’d trapped Nino with that declaration.

“Fine.” The words scraped as sharp as saltwater. Chat finally met his eyes, a thousand emotions ducking behind the dark eyelashes that had kept Nino up late. “You’re right. I never should have trusted a villain.”

Chat froze, his breath hitching with a strangled sob.

“ What?”

He sounded so tiny and helpless and broken that for a second Nino regretted it. Then he thought of Marinette, clutching some unseen wound to be held as some sort of hostage in one of Chat’s sick schemes and he couldn’t bring himself to care.

"You heard me," Nino said coldly. "You and your stupid partner hurt my friend. You should leave before I call the police."

Chat swallowed. "Nino, please-"

His cat ears flattened themselves against the back of his head, quivering slightly. But his emerald eyes were dry.

Nino was so incredibly stupid.

"Get out."

Chat stared back at him, looking like he'd forgotten to breathe. He didn't move. 

Nino repeated his words through clenched teeth. "Get. Out."

He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to believe that Ladybug's sobs could be tricks designed to mess with his mind. He didn't want the memory of soft lips brushing against his own to be tinged with the fact that it was just a lie. 

Maybe it wasn't. Maybe the hopeful look in Chat's eyes hadn't been a trick. But it didn't matter, because every single ploy for favor was just another weaving in Chat's lies. A spider's web of affection and false promises that he was only now realizing was woven all around him, pinning him in place.

He expected Chat to protest. Maybe for one more desperate attempt to regain his trust. 

But Chat just desperately sucked in air between sobs, not even looking back at him as he pulled Nino's window shut behind him.

Everything in him felt a little numb as the clouds finally broke and the rain started to fall.

Nino locked the window behind him (although it probably wouldn't do anything against a literal supervillain) and crawled into bed. He wrapped his blankets around himself, reaching with one arm out to flick off his lamp and desperately tried to convince himself that he wasn't crying.

Chapter Text

Getting grounded on a weekend probably wasn’t his best idea. With nothing better to do, Nino slept in until ten, finally crawling out of bed to spend the afternoon writing essays and studying for his upcoming tests. 

Alya sounded just as bored when they called around four. It was just the two of them, since Adrien was “busy” and Marinette was apparently loopy on pain meds. They spent a while ranting about both of their essays, then both of their parent’s restrictions during their punishment.

Nino’s mother was significantly more lenient. Alya’s parents had given her permission to edit and upload the footage, before restricting her Ladyblog access time. 

Although Alya hadn’t been the only reporter on the scene, she had been the first. Tucked amongst the rubble, the Ladyblog was the only source of footage of Ladybug and Chat Noir leaping from the second floor window of one of Gabriel Agreste’s warehouses and fleeing over the rooftops. It was currently unknown how exactly they had managed to access the building, not to mention how they had somehow known that the security cameras had all been disabled that week for a much needed update.

The internet had exploded with the footage- theories erupting from the abyss of forums and news sites. No one quite understood why the pair of villains appeared so ragged, with a leading theory being that the duo had nearly been defeated by their confrontation with Hawkmoth and were essentially limping away to lick their wounds.

That one was a little too close to the truth for Nino to be comfortable with it.

The news of her blog once again holding the internet captive thrilled Alya a lot less than he’d expected. 

The weekend limped along until Nino’s eyes were blurry from refreshing the Ladyblog updates page late into the night.

He’d read somewhere that the human body was about 60% water but by the time Monday rolled around, Nino was pretty sure that his was all caffeine.

The classroom was quiet with anticipation as he slipped inside, sliding into the seat beside Adrien.

Someone- Adrien, probably- had gotten an update from the Dupain-Chengs that Marientte was home and planning to return to school on Monday. Thanks to the group chat they’d created following that horrendous video report last year, the entire class knew within a few hours. 

Beside him, Adrien’s shoulders were slumped as he stared down his textbook, flipping through the pages blankly.

Nino nudged his shoulders gently. “Hey, dude. Are you alright?”

For a second as Adrien glanced toward him, Adrien’s eyes blew open in full on panic, looking as if Nino was a ticking time bomb he just couldn’t defuse.

Then, he slammed a timid grin to his lips so quickly Nino wasn’t sure he could trust his eyes.

“I’m fine,” he murmured, “Just… tired. That’s all.”

“I have free caffeine if you’re interested,” Nino offered, already peeling open his bag to expose the energy drinks tucked into the bottom.

The corners of Adrien’s eyes didn’t wrinkle as he smiled. “Thanks, but I’m good.”

Nino twisted in his chair, glancing toward Alya for her insight on Adrien’s odd behavior. She was buried in her phone, her hair slipping from its ponytail and cascading around her shoulders. 

Abruptly she got to her feet and without a word strode out the door. 

Adrien tore the edges off his notebook paper and tried to make an origami squid, staring so intently at the page that it looked as though it might burst into flames.

Nino wasn’t sure what to do with his hands anymore. It felt like he had too many of them, so he twined his fingers together and stared out the window.

Kim burst down the door, gasping for breath after sprinting down the hall. 

“She’s here,” he announced, barely managing to get the words out.

He didn’t need to explain any further. The entire class got to their feet, murmuring theories to their tablemates.

The door swung open and Alya stepped in first, darting to the side and holding it open. 

The mechanical groaning of crutches froze them all in place. The classroom fell into an unnatural silence as Marinette slowly swung herself through the open door.

None of them spoke up as she made her way to the first desk. Nino slid out of his seat before anyone could ask him to and offered her his chair.

Marinette offered him a small smile as she carefully lowered herself into the seat.

Nino couldn’t quite bring himself to return it. His brain was locked on the mental image of Marinette’s leg, her right thigh wrapped in long strips of cloth and the realization that this was all his fault.

Nino rubbed circles into Alya’s shoulder as the class awkwardly fumbled through their worksheets for the day. Her fingers were trembling so badly her pencil marks looked like a seismometer in an earthquake. 

“Don’t try to tell me that this isn’t my fault,” she whispered, while Marinette was distracted receiving a pack of lollipops Rose had bought for the occasion. “Right now it doesn’t matter if you’re right. I just don’t want to hear it.”

Nino swallowed, his mouth suddenly far-too dry as he nodded. 

By the time lunch trudged around, both of them were a trembling mess, their knuckles pale where their fingers were twined together. 

For the second time all day, Marinette turned to look at him. Her bright blue eyes held him in place like an accusation, even though her grin was kind.

“Would you be up for eating in the cafeteria today?” she asked, nodding towards her crutches. “It’s a little hard for me to get up to the apartment like this.”

Alya and Adrien’s heads shot up, their grins a little too strained to be real.

“We could go to that cafe Juleka showed us,” Alya said quickly.

“I can get my bodyguard to drive us!” Adrien agreed. He pulled out his phone, tapping away at his keyboard. He hesitated mid-text, glancing down at Marinette for permission. “If you’re up for it, of course.”

Marinette nodded carefully. Her eyebrows were raised so high that they hid among her bangs.

It probably ate up a third of their lunch break to follow Mari to the car, help her inside with a lot of awkward fumbling that was not helped by the fact that Alya refused to look her in the face.

The other three of them loaded into the backseat, sitting face to face in the weird way rich-person cars were built. Alya tucked her knees to her chest -not worried for a second about smudging the black leather with her combat boots- and stared out the window. 

Nino had somehow ended up directly across from Adrien, who’d claimed the seat beside Marinette before any of them could protest.

Their eyes met and Adrien seemed to forget to breathe, his head ducking back into his jacket like a turtle retreating inside its shell. His gaze darted to the floor, then to his bodyguard, then to the window.

“So…” Marinette said slowly, glancing between the three of them curiously. “How have you all been?”

“Amazing,” Alya’s voice was strangled as she forced out the words. “Not because you were gone, just, in general. Obviously.”

“Just peachy,” Adrien announced at the exact second. He didn’t bother to pause his staring contest with a billboard of his own face halfway down the block.

Nino shrugged, his fingers twisting together in an anxious knot. “I’ve been better.”

The silence hung there, waiting for someone to acknowledge it. None of them did.

“Okay?” Marinette drew out the word to fill the quiet. 

He wasn’t exactly sure why both Adrien and Alya were so desperate to ignore the elephant in the room. They weren’t exactly doing the best job of it. In fact, they were doing the equivalent of expecting your already-deceased cactus to block it from view.

The line for the cafe streamed out the door as they pulled up to the curb, the cars behind them honking in protest.

Alya and Adrien stuck around just long enough to help Marinette out of the backseat, immediately volunteering to go wait in line for their orders. 

Marinette watched them go, grimacing as Alya almost smacked her face on the doorframe. “Something is definitely up with them.”

Nino hummed in agreement. They slid into a booth behind a group of older women playing cards. “I’m pretty sure Alya feels guilty about the whole kidnapping thing, but I have no idea what’s up with Adrien.”

“You haven’t been getting into any lover quarrels lately?” Marinette teased. “He seems to be avoiding you specifically. Did you threaten to throw him off a roof or something?”

“No,” Nino spluttered, “That’s- that’s a you thing. Besides, I’ve been successfully moving on from my crush, thank you very much.”

“ Sure ,” Marientte drew the word out slowly, raising her eyebrows in disbelief. “That’s why your ears are bright red right now.”

“They’re not that bad,” Nino hissed, unconsciously reaching up to cover them with little wisps of his black hair.

“I assure you they are as bright as a sunny day.”

Marinette hesitated for a moment, turning to look with him. Her next words seemed to hesitate in her throat, before she finally asked, “Do you think Adrien found out about… your feelings?”

Nino froze and instantly hated himself for it.

“I don’t know how he would,” he said slowly, wringing his hands beneath the tablecloth. “We haven’t exactly talked since before… all this happened and Alya wouldn’t have said a word.”

Marinette drummed her fingers on the table, chuckling quietly as Adrien barely managed to avoid dumping his entire tray of soup on the floor. From across the room, he glanced towards them and sent them a sheepish thumbs up.

“They need us to be a steadying presence,” she decided finally. “They’ll come to us when they’re ready.”

Nino wasn’t exactly sure how to be a steadying presence when he felt about as steady as a sand castle staring down high tide, but he would try. For Alya. And Adrien. And Marinette most of all.

“I’m with you every step of the way.”

They bumped their fists together as their friends finally rejoined them at the table, exchanging knowing smiles over the harmless discussion of Nino’s upcoming EP.

Considering what Nino had expected of a potentially malicious ex-kidnapper and ex-boyfriend(?), Chat Noir was surprisingly absent from Nino’s life. There were no flashes of him on rooftops, no major updates on the Ladyblog. For the next month, it seemed that the few blurry photos of the vigilantes were the last glimpse Paris would have of any miraculous users.

Nino’s life slid right back into where it had been before, with Marinette making a miraculously speedy recovery and immediately using the excuse to rope Adrien into attempting to scale the walls of the Agreste mansion. Adrien somehow managed to dislocate his shoulder in the process, but by the time they arrived at the hospital, to the awe and confusion of the doctors, he had somehow managed to regain full use of it. 

Alya buried herself in her investigations, pinning charts and red string to the bulletin board Alix had bought her as a joke. The one time Nino had tried to surprise her by dropping by, he accidentally knocked over a carefully constructed map of Paris, with dots signaling the location of every known Ladybug and Chat Noir attack and had quickly decided to evacuate for his own safety. They hung out in the living room after that. 

His EP dropped sometime around the three week mark, quickly amassing a few hundred listeners. His collab with Kitty Section quickly shot that up to a few thousand. Adrien's unsubtle name drop of both him and Luka in an interview hadn’t hurt either, although Nino had promptly died of embarrassment when he read the paragraph-long praise that somehow managed to make it into the final draft.

(“I’m allowed to be proud of my friends!” “Adrien, you're helping me cheat my way into the music industry.” “So? That’s pretty much how every major musician starts their career!” “Personally, if I get to read Adrien Agreste call my music ‘brilliant, absolutely brillaint’ then I’m fine with it.” “Shut up, Luka.”)

Although the numbers were ticking down slowly as the novelty of new music faded, Nino somehow ended the month with five thousand listeners. It wasn’t exactly impressive when compared to Luka’s sixty thousand, but it was far more than he’d ever expected, especially for an EP just four songs long. 

It was only when he was sitting alone on his windowsill, the tips of his socks brushing the fire escape and cool evening air, that he allowed his thoughts to dart to Chat. Had he listened to the EP, like he’d promised? Or had he scoured through his browser history, scraping out any reminder of Nino and his music?

He always had to slam a door on those thoughts before they could fester. 

“Hey, Nino,” Marinette hissed, unsubtly, cornering him in the locker room. Her eyes darted around anxiously, just to make sure the room was clear. “Does Alya have a date for the Harvest Ball yet?”

His hand froze halfway through punching in his locker code, and he slowly turned back toward her. Marinette’s cheeks flushed cotton candy pink as he raised his eyebrows smugly.

“Why do you want to know, Marinette?” he said slowly, taking great pleasure in drawing out the syllables so she squirmed in embarrassment. 

Marinette shoved him playfully. “Shut up. You know why.”

“Do I?” Nino teased. “Hmmm… let me think.”

She bounced on her toes in anticipation as he pretended to consider it. In reality, Alya had teased him about inviting Adrien the night before, although he’d quickly shut down the suggestion before it could veer into her nefarious scheming. 

“Well,” she had dramatically sighed, flopping back over the arm of the couch. “I guess we’ll both get to go single this year. You’re taking things at your own pace and I’m married to my work.”

“So even if someone did ask you, you wouldn’t take them up on it?” Nino had asked lightly. 

Alya had shrugged, popping a kernel of popcorn into her mouth. “Depends if they’re cute or not. And also, if they are willing to color coordinate, because Marinette and I went thrifting the other day and we found this adorable set of matching jumpsuits that we’re totally going to wear.”

“Fair enough.”

Nino chose his next words carefully, because he honestly wasn’t sure how a genuine invitation from Mari would go over. “She doesn't have a date , as far as I know.” Marinette met his gaze, seeming to read between the lines. “Do with that what you will.”

She thanked him for his help, clearly weighing her options and the possible outcomes in her mind.

In all honesty, Nino had been ignoring the upcoming attempt from the school coordinators to have some sort of equivalent to an American homecoming dance. This time last year, he probably would have been agonizing over whether or not to ask Adrien out. That’s what he’d been expecting to do this year as well, but despite the few fun interactions they’d had over the past few weeks, Adrien seemed determined to see him as little as possible. Nino had gotten the hint, and, apart from inviting him to the EP release party, he’d given him as wide a berth as Adrien wanted. 

An invitation to a school dance probably wasn’t the best way to break that silence. They would be going with their friends anyway, so it wasn’t like Nino wouldn’t see him.

Still, Adrien was the one to grab his hand and drag him from their lunch table under the pretense of “having to tell him something important” during lunch. Nino glanced back at the confused expression on Alya’s face as Marinette took a steadying breath.

“Sorry about that,” Adrien whispered, tugging him behind a bookcase and out the door. “I just wanted to give Mari some space.”

“She’s going for it?” 

Adrien nodded once, still not looking at him. 

Nino fought to keep his breathing as steady as possible, despite the way his pulse was hammering. Adrien still hadn’t let go of his hand, instead clutching it like he was scared Nino was going to make a run for it. Every nerve in Nino’s body had honed in on the brush of Adrien’s fingertips against his knuckles. 

They stopped at the railing a little ways down the corridor. They rested their elbows on the edge and stared over the courtyard. 

Nino cracked his knuckles. Adrien didn’t say anything. He was never good with awkward silences. 

“Has Mari been okay?” he asked finally. 

Adrien’s head jerked up. “What?”

Nino didn’t let himself look at him. “With the whole thing. It can’t have been easy to come home from a “spontaneous biking trip with her Nonna” and find that everyone assumed she was kidnapped. Does she have someone to talk to about it?”

“Other than me?” Adrien turned back to watching Aurore challenge Kim to an arm wrestle. “I don’t think she’s trying to think about it.”

“She could always talk to a therapist about it,” Nino suggested. 

“I’ve suggested it,” Adrien sighed. 

Nino hummed. “What about you?”

Adrien tensed. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Nino watched as Adrien ran his fingers around the edge of the railing, twisting them in a way that looked almost painful. “Your best friend just went AWOL . It’s okay if it messed you up a little. Alya and I aren’t taking it well and we aren’t anywhere near as close with Mari.”

Adrien’s fingers paused. “I guess-” His voice trailed off.

The problem was, Nino really hadn’t been around since Mari had gotten back. Maybe if he had been around more he’d know what to do when Adrien held his shoulders tense so they wouldn’t shake. 

His voice came out sounding strangled and so painfully small. “I- I don’t know.”

“That’s fine,” Nino said awkwardly, feeling a bit like he had just torn the boy open and then immediately fumbled. He offered Adrien his hand.

Adrien opened his mouth, and closed it as Marinette shouldered open the door. She met their gaze and her expression crumpled like paper. 

Adrien held his arms open and she rushed towards him, burying into his hug.

“Are you alright, Little Bug?” he murmured, right above her ear.

Marinette snorted, digging her face into his shoulder. “I’ve been better.”

“I bet,” Adrien chuckled. They waited as she sniffled. “Do you want to talk about it, or just stay where you are?”

“I want to find a time machine,” Marinette grumbled. “And tell myself to stop crushing on my best friends.”

Adrien chuckled. “You do have a bit of a bad track record.”

“Not helping.”

“Sorry.”

The minutes ticked on until Marinette finally pulled away, brushed a few spare tears from her cheeks and set her jaw. “Alright. I’m better now.”

“We should probably head back,” Adrien said. “Alya’s been waiting for at least five minutes.”

“She’s going to start thinking that we were making out in a storage closet, or something,” Nino teased. 

Adrien’s laughter snagged for a second, before starting again. “ Right .”

“I don’t know if I can go back in there,” Marinette admitted. “I’m not ready to face her quite yet.”

“I can’t leave her,” Nino insisted, resisting the urge to go sprinting through the library doors and right back to Alya’s side. He wasn’t sure why, but something told him he needed to be there and soon.

“Why don’t you go and check on Alya while I stay here with Mari,” Adrien suggested. “I’ll meet up with you guys before class, if I can.”

“Perfect.” He pulled the door open and was about to slip through when Adrien interrupted him.

He’d forgotten the ivy color of Adrien’s eyes, but as they met his, Nino wasn’t sure he could ever look away again.

Adrien’s voice was low and hesitant. “I’ll talk to you about… the whole thing later. I promise.”

Nino nodded. Just once. Then he pushed the door open and strode across the library.

Nino didn’t see the swish of a gold cape vanish around the edge of the windows as he stepped into the library.

The last remnants of their lunch sat abandoned at their usual table, the scraps of an orange peel folded in the corner.

“Alya?” he called quietly. “Are you in here?”

No response.

“I get it if you don’t want to talk,” Nino added, tracing a slow circle around their table as he waited for her to materialize. “I’m just making sure that you’re alright.”

“Don’t bother.” Nino leapt almost three feet into the air as a dry voice husked from behind him. He whirled around, spotting a pair of kids he recognized from one of the younger classes. “She’s long gone by now.”

The one wearing a bright orange turtleneck that seemed to swallow his entire body tried to shrug. It was a little hard to tell if he succeeded without being able to see his shoulders. “From the powers that Hawkmoth gave her you won’t catch her by the time Ladybug and Chat Noir get there.”

Shit. He’d been hoping he could get here before anything like this happened.

“Did she mention anything about where she went?”

The pair glanced at each other. 

“I don’t think so?” one of them offered hesitantly. “But you can probably find her on the Champion Tracker app.”

Nino shouted his thank you over his shoulder as he sprinted out of the library. His phone pinged with an alert of a new champion sighting as he ducked into the locker room. Thankfully, the room was abandoned as students were called back to their classes. 

He burrowed his arm up to the elbow in his bag, scraping along the bottom until his fingers finally wrapped around a small hexagonal box. 

“Off to save your friend?” Wayzz asked the second he appeared.

“ Please ,” Nino wished he didn’t sound quite as desperate, but he really had no choice. “I have to help her.”

Wayzz let out a long breath. “Let’s do this.”

Fortunately, the small window near the ceiling was propped open today to let in some air flow. 

It took him an embarrassingly long amount of time to remember to check his phone for the directions, and even longer to actually open the thing. His fingers were shaking with so much adrenaline he almost dropped it three stories.

His phone wouldn’t let him continue before reading his top notification. 

WARNING: LADYBUG AND CHAT NOIR SPOTTED, PRESUMABLY EN ROUTE TO CONFRONT THE CHAMPION PROTECTING THE PANTHÉON

Please exercise caution when traveling through the 5th arrondissemen t

Stacked below it, in a set of three, were Alya’s final messages:

Alya Cesaire

im so sorry

tell mari im sorry

ily

And then nothing.

With fumbling fingers, Nino turned off his phone and wordlessly tucked it away. Scanning the rooftops to make sure he couldn’t spot Chat or Ladybug, he leapt his way across rooftops, bounding over chimneys. He wound a trail to the Panthéon, only pausing to listen for the sounds of police sirens in the streets below. 

He ignored the civilians below as he raced across a bridge, leaving the Seine far behind him. 

Nino barely managed to skid to a halt as Ladybug and Chat Noir practically materialized into view, tucked into the roof of Place Sainte-Geneviève. He dropped down onto one of the upper sections of the roof, giving him a perfect view from above without alerting them to his presence. 

It was honestly a bit of a miracle that no one had managed to spot them yet. The roof was steep, giving the people on the street below a fairly clear view. 

“I’m here, Little Bug,” Chat murmured, barely audible over the screech of the car horns below. His arms were wrapped around his partner as she trembled in his arms.

“I can’t do this,” she whispered, her voice so cracked and broken for someone who had literally helped kidnap and torture one of his best friends.

Chat didn’t try to fight her on it, just gently untangling his arms from around her. “You shouldn’t have to. I can handle this one alone.”

“ No! ” she insisted, grabbing his wrist before he could leave. “That’s how I got caught before.”

“I’ll be fine,” Chat insisted. “It’s just Alya.”

Ladybug raised her eyebrows skeptically. “ Just Alya? That girl is terrifying. I can’t let you do that.”

Nino felt a weird stab of pride for his best friend, leaning over farther over the edge to get a better grip.

“Well, I won’t let you fight her either. Not after everything.”

Ladybug swallowed. “I have to. This is all my fault.”

“It really isn’t,” Chat murmured, smiling sadly down at her. “Remember who the real villain is.”

“Keep fucking telling yourself that,” Nino growled under his breath. These two did not get to keep pretending to be all innocent when Marinette had been on crutches for ages and was too scared to say another other than the claim she had been spending time with her Nonna.

“Nino?”

All his veins froze to ice as he spotted Chat Noir’s bright green eyes staring up at him.

Shit.

Nino’s gaze turned hard, immediately setting his glare on Chat Noir. Something deep and feral and protective inside of him burst with satisfaction at the way the boy instantly flinched. 

He didn’t get to hurt the people Nino cared about and get away with it. Not in a thousand years.

Swinging his legs over the edge of the roof, Nino dropped over the edge until he was standing beside the two villains. They were still technically standing between him and the open air, effectively blocking any escape he could try to make, but from the way Ladybug curled her arms around herself and Chat refused to meet his eyes, he wasn’t currently feeling all that threatened.

They looked oddly like kicked puppies. 

“You don’t get to act like any of this isn’t your fault,” Nino snarled, his knuckles clenched around the handle of his shield. 

“Nino,” Chat’s voice cracked a little as he spoke, “Now really isn’t a good time.”

“Oh, I’m sorry ,” Nino snapped. “I didn’t know that this was all about you.”

Raising her eyebrows as the two of them stared daggers at each other, Ladybug cleared her throat. “What’s this all about?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know,” Nino snapped. 

“He thinks that we kidnapped one of his friends,” Chat hissed. “Specifically Marinette Dupain-Cheng. ”

Nino seethed as the pair exchanged a glance.

“I think,” Ladybug said slowly, “there’s been a misunderstanding. I believe that your friend is safe and with her family, correct?”

“ Maybe you don’t know this ,” Nino said, his voice low and dangerous. “But you missed quite a lot when you were stuck in that box.”

“And you’re upset at my partner for presumably, what, kidnapping your friend ?” Ladybug looked oddly flattered. 

“Don’t patronize me,” Nino bit out. 

“I’m not,” Ladybug protested. “I would never let it slide if my partner kidnapped an innocent civilian.”

Yeah right.

“Forgive me if I’m not exactly inclined to believe you.”

“I mean, I couldn’t have helped kidnap your friend,” Ladybug pointed out. “If the timeline matches up with your claims, it would be literally impossible. That should earn me some credibility.”

“You’re literally standing on the side of the person who hurt her,” Nino’s free hand curled into a fist. “I don’t care what Alya did to you, Chat doesn’t get to hurt my friends.”

Chat choked, echoing his words like he hadn’t expected them to figure it out. “What Alya did-”

Ladybug turned to Chat. Her voice dipped into a whisper just loud enough for Nino’s ears to pick up the edges. “How do you want to handle this?”

Nino scanned the rooftops, looking for a good place to run. 

He was so incredibly stupid. Putting himself in danger like this just to live out some sort of fantasy of finally getting to tell Chat straight to his face exactly what he thought of him.

Chat gnawed at his lower lip for a long moment, letting out a deep breath and steeling his gaze.

Then he took a hesitant step forward, offering Nino his hands. Nino flinched.

Yanking them back immediately, Chat Noir stared at him, waiting for his next move.

“I would never,” Chat whispered, “in a million years, hurt anyone on purpose. Least of all, anyone you care about.”

“I don’t believe you,” Nino hissed, although he could feel his abscess of anger draining, leaving him hollow.

“I know,” Chat laughed bitterly. “No one does these days.”

Nino scrambled for something to say, some way to snap himself back into that oh so familiar rage. The fire inside him that had once been willing to scorch Chat down to the bone flickered just for a moment.

“Then prove it,” Nino whispered finally. “If you didn’t hurt her, who did? A person doesn’t get that look in their eyes from ‘falling off their grandmother’s motorcycle.’”

“I- I can’t,” Chat admitted, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

Nino took another step back, wrapping his arms around himself. “Then I have nothing left to say to you.”

He tugged at the bracelet around his wrist, dropping his transformation in a wave of green light. He tossed it at the villains’ feet. Wayzz zipped out of the bracelet, staring up at him.

“I’ll find my own way down,” Nino declared. “Just… try not to hurt Alya too badly. She already blames herself for what happened to Mari.”

Maybe they’d had something to do with what happened to Mari. Maybe they hadn’t. What has he supposed to do against both of them? 

He couldn’t fight them. That much was clear. And after what he’d seen in the box, Nino couldn’t in good conscience hand them over to Hawkmoth.

He was numb.

“Wait!” Ladybug grabbed his shoulder. 

“What?” Nino didn’t even turn to look back at her. He was far too tired.

“I can prove we didn’t kidnap Marinette,” Ladybug said quickly, like she was scared that the words would bite her if she didn’t get them out fast enough.

“Little Bug, you don’t have to-” Chat protested.

Chuckling bitterly, Nino shrugged, apathy weighing his feet to the roof as he shuffled to turn around. “Alright. Go for it.”

Ladybug reached out and squeezed Chat’s hand. 

“I want him to know,” she murmured. “Trust me.”

“Always,” Chat sent her a small smile. 

Ladybug let out a shaky breath, her eerily familiar bluebell eyes meeting his. 

“We couldn’t have kidnapped her,” she repeated, nervously smiling at him. “Because I am Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

Nino stumbled and Chat grabbed his wrist, pulling him away from the edge. 

“ What ?” he choked out, gaping at her as she anxiously figetted.

She was lying. She had to be. Why would Marinette ever fight against the literal hero of Paris? Why would she lie to all of them about it?

His brain felt like it was stumbling over itself as Nino tried to wrap his mind around this. 

“I told you this would happen,” Chat commented as Nino’s brain buffered for a moment, staggering through at least fifteen stages of grief.

He wanted to accuse her of lying, but no one else bounced on their toes like she did, as if their body couldn’t contain all their anxious energy.

Over a year's worth of memories collapsed in on themselves like a dying star.

Marinette slipped away again and again, “accidentally” having forgotten another errand.

Her gaze hardened, just a little, as Alya’s Ladyblog was once again the topic of conversation.

Ladybug’s fondness for eerily familiar pigtails that Marinette refused to get rid of, claiming that it wasn’t her fault the villainess had copied her style.

She always had a limp, or a bruise, or a bandage, always from a “bakery accident” or a tumble down the stairs. 

The way her face paled as Hawkmoth gripped his cane dripping with her blood.

Her arm around his shoulders as they stumbled to safety.

“Does Adrien-?” his words strangled in his throat before he could get the question out.

Ladybug’s head turned only slightly towards Chat Noir, raising her eyebrows.

It’s your call , her eyes seemed to say. 

Chat swallowed and shuffled forward.

He held out his hand, as if waiting for him to shake it. Somehow, the etiquette that Nino’s mother had furiously drilled into him raised his hand and slotted it into Chat’s.

“Hi Nino,” Chat murmured, his voice a little shaky as he clasped Nino’s hand and shook it once, twice , firmly. “I’m Adrien Agreste.”

Adrien Agreste had been so incredibly excited to be a hero.

He’d always wanted to help save the world and finally escape the suffocating shelter of his father’s wings. 

The novelty of it wore off after about five minutes. 

With a stadium in shambles, Chat Noir and Ladybug exchanged a defeated fist bump and crawled home to lick their wounds. 

Adrien had left the television to play in the background, granting him a front seat as Hawkmoth stepped into a press conference for the first time, spinning a tale of thievery and danger, of stubborn teenagers, just children really. Selfish children attempting to steal that which was not theirs by right.

He then offered his apologies for the mess and vowed to do better than some of those American heroes who only wanted the glory and none of the mess. He transformed an enthusiastic sound tech into a champion to aid with repairs.

Any chance of salvaging their reputation was lost the second they let a pair of teenagers fall from the Eiffel Tower.

Nino didn’t really understand most of the story beyond that. Wayzz tried to pop in with some additions of his own, but Nino’s focus couldn’t keep him on track.

They had tucked themselves in a higher up crevice of the chapel’s roof, safe from the wind and passersby. The words gushed out of them, eager to finally be heard by someone beside themselves.

He wished he could hear them better.

Instead, all he could focus on was the way that Marinette’s shoulders were constantly locked up and back, like a soldier who had stood at the ready for so long that they got stuck.

Chat scanned the nearby rooftops constantly. He didn’t even seem conscious of it. He just looked… hunted.

Now that he had started to look, he found every inch of Marinettte’s skin a scripture to another battle. A trio of pockmark scars on her collarbone from the worm lady, the strange tiltedness of a once-broken nose, a scab still healing on the underside of her jaw from a hit too close for comfort. 

The pair of them healed faster when transformed, Marinette explained. This made it crucial to get broken bones set in time.

Adrien gave a wry smile at that. How many more scars did he hide beneath his makeup?

“You aren’t going to tell anyone, are you?” Marinette asked, trying desperately to come off as teasing rather than panicked. 

“Not even Alya,” Nino vowed, “and if I even so much as look at Hawkmoth, he’s a dead man. Second on my list only to Gabriel Agreste.”

Adrien groaned. “Can you please stop trying to kill my dad?”

“I think he knows his days are numbered whenever he sees me,” Nino smirked. “He always ducks into his office the second I strut through the front door. He’s clearly intimidated by the sheer force of the awesomeness radiating off of me.”

“I’m sure,” Marinette teased. “Maybe he’s just offended by your fashion sense.”

“I am not appreciating the confidence boost that this past half an hour has given you,” Nino protested, unable to stop the grin trying to spread across his face. “I was having such a great time, but I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now.”

Marinette rolled her eyes, clearly not appreciating his top tier humor, but the tension drained just a bit from her shoulders and he counted it as a victory.

“I know you’re out there, cowards!” Alya’s voice boomed off the rooftops, sending a flock of crows scattering.

Ladybug pulled herself to her feet and groaned, holding out a hand for her partner. “We should probably get out there.”

“ No !” Nino blurted before he could fully process why.

Chat Noir blinked. “What?”

“Trust me, you two are literally the last people she wants to see right now,” Nino let out a deep breath. “Let me take care of this.”

Their protests were weak. Neither of them particularly wanted to go and face one of their best friends with vengeance alight in her snarl. Not again.

Dropping down into some nearby bushes, Nino called off his transformation as soon as the coast was clear. His sneakers snagged on the pavement as he jogged across the street and around the corner of the Panthéon. The pediment framed statues of French heroes. Gold letters stretched along the roof.

  Aux grands hommes, la patrie reconnaissante.  

To the great men, the grateful homeland.

On the peak of the roof, with a hand clutching the pole of the flag, Alya waited.

Nino stood at the far end of the cobblestone square, shielding his eyes from the sun beaming behind her. A tour guide had directed his group to the far side of the street, explaining in excited English that this was one of the champions that they’d heard about. At least six of them held their phones up, unsubtly pointing them in Alya’s direction.

Alya was dressed in purple, with a white cape weighing on her shoulders. Gold criss-crossed across her outfit. Her jaw was set, righteous fury and rage furrowing her brow. 

Nino’s fingers dug into his palms. How dare he.

How dare Hawkmoth steal one of their best friends and then hide behind another teenager instead of fighting his own battles.

He couldn’t know, obviously, but the irony sunk its teeth deep into his flesh, tearing him apart.

It was about then that he realized that he didn’t exactly have a plan.

No one had ever tried to talk a champion out of their rampage before. They had been chosen by Hawkmoth to be a hero- who would ever want to get in their way.

The entire courtyard was empty, the city holding its breath as it waited for the villains to take their cue. 

Alya was too busy scanning the rooftops to notice him. Or whatever her alias was at this point. Nino didn’t particularly care.

He prayed for safety, stepped forward and cupped his hands around his mouth.

“Alya! It’s time to come home!”

She froze, finally spotting him. Alya gaped down at him as Nino waited. From behind him the tourists hissed for translations from their guide. 

A glowing purple ring framed Alya’s eyes, but she shook Hawkmoth off. She dropped off the building, falling at least thirty feet and landing in the sort of iconic hero landing pose you only saw in comic books. He had a suspicion that this was due to personal preference rather than necessity.

“Nino,” she hissed, jogging across the courtyard. “This is about to be very dangerous. You need to head home.”

He wrapped his fingers around her hand, tugging her back. “Not without you.”

Alya sighed. “You can’t-”

“I absolutely can,” he interrupted. “Alya, please . This isn’t our fight. Just come home.”

The worst part was the hesitation he could see in her eyes as Hawkmoth’s mark appeared again, but it extinguished like a candle in a strong breeze.

She untangled their fingers, pulling her hand back. “Ladybug and Chat Noir are going to be here very soon. You can’t be here when they are.”

“And you can ?” 

His insides were boiling. His fingers were blistering with the urge to yank that butterfly from his best friend’s brain. Why was she always like this? Why couldn’t she just listen?

Alya set her jaw, nodding down at her suit. At the insignia of the butterfly etched over her collar. 

“This is my job, Nino,” she murmured.

“Like hell it is,” he snapped. “We’re kids , Alya. Leave Hawkmoth to fight his own teenagers.”

“Please, Nino,” Alya begged. “If it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t have hurt Mari-”

“Marinette got in a bike accident while traveling with her grandmother in Italy,” Nino declared. It was technically just the official cover story, but right now was not a time for those kinds of secrets to be revealed. “I fail to see how that’s your fault.”

Doubt flickered in her gaze, but it was snuffed out before it really had time to kindle.

Stepping back, Alya left a gap between them.

“Please tell me you don’t really believe that,” Alya murmured. “What about that kid? Jeremy ? The one they put in a hospital? Are we just supposed to let them get away with that?”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Nino asked, trying desperately to keep the daggers from his tone. His eyes stung as he swallowed, forcing himself to keep his composure. “That last person Ladybug and Chat Noir faced ended up in the hospital, so you’re just, what? Heroically marching up to the front lines, begging to be next?”

“I have to do this!” Alya exclaimed. 

“ Why? ”

The oxygen heaved from his lungs in a sob, leaving him gaping and desperate for air. Angry tears stung his cheeks, getting caught in his lashes. He ignored them.

“One of these days, the danger you’re chasing is going to turn around and finally hurt you. I don’t know why you keep this up- maybe some sort of heroism or masochism or unresolved guilt, but one of these days you’re going to take it too far. Please Alya, don’t make me watch as it kills you.”

Alya’s mouth snapped shut. The butterfly mask around her eyes hummed to life again.

“What about Ladybug and Chat Noir?” she managed, the words like the scrapping of branches against paneling in the night.

“If they were coming, they would be here by now,” Nino told her. 

Through the butterfly encircling her eyes, whispering lies in her ears. Through the doubt and guilt Alya might never forgive herself for. Through the desperation that clouded her every thought to protect the people she cared about, echoing Nino’s own, Nino met her beautiful eyes and begged her just to let go .

Alya was his best friend, the person who knew him better than anyone. She was smart and hilarious and amazing and knew this needed to stop just as much as he did. 

He ignored the strobing purple as Hawkmoth tried to get through to his champion and took a small step forward, offering his hand.

He nearly wept with relief as he felt her warm fingers wrap around his own. 

Alya didn’t comment on the long walk back to school on how exactly he’d managed to travel at least seven kilometers on foot in just over half an hour. He was pretty sure she didn’t notice. 

The whole way back they talked. Alya told him about Marinette’s confession, of her absolute certainty that she ruined everything she touched.

Nino held his hand up to the light and examined it.

“Well, it looks like I’m still one of the coolest people on the planet,” he commented innocently. “I guess that settles it. You aren’t ruining my life.”

Alya laughed at that, but they both knew it wasn’t enough. A single joke couldn’t make her brain like itself again, but sometimes the reminder was enough for the moment.

“Would you have said no if you didn’t believe that?” Nino asked. 

Alya dragged her sneakers on the sidewalk. “I’m not sure. I hadn’t really considered the possibility of it before.”

Nino nodded in understanding. They kept on walking. 

“Thank you,” Alya whispered as the stairs to College Francois Dupont finally came into view. School had gotten out at least twenty minutes ago, but Marinette and Adrien were still waiting for them on the front steps. 

“Anytime.”

Marinette nearly cried when she saw Alya again. Adrien actually did, but quiet and in the background so Mari could stammer out some hybrid apology-lecture, hiccuping all the while.

“I’m so sorry– hic –you can’t just do that– hic –I never meant to–hic-”

Her words cut off as Alya strode towards her, tucking her head under her chin and wrapping her arms around her. Marinette’s cheeks burned bright pink, but none of them mentioned it.

A small, tear-stained hiccup erupted from the embrace.

Adrien tried desperately not to streak tears on her flannel as Alya pulled him in for one of his own.

When Alya finally pulled back, she and Marinette exchanged a look Nino couldn’t read. Alya reached out and offered Mari her arm. “Shall we?”

Marinette accepted. 

This left Nino and Adrien “Chat Noir” Agreste.

“Hi?” Adrien began.

“Hi,” Nino echoed, matching his stumbling tone as they both failed to pretend they had any clue how to respond to this situation.

“Thank you,” Adrien burst.

“Please don’t,” Nino sighed. “I really don’t deserve it.”

Adrien faltered. He wrung his hands, and then immediately looked like he wished he hadn’t. “No one has ever tried to talk down a champion before.”

He didn’t say what they were both thinking: that no one had ever tried to make a serious attempt to stand between the partners and their adversary before.

The corner of Adrien’s lips twitched in anticipation of a smile. 

“Maybe they should try it more often.”

“Nino, I just need to tell you-”

“I’m so-”

They both laughed. Nino waved for Adrien to speak. Adrien took a moment to reset himself, steeling his features into something he was absent from.

It was eerily similar to the billboards of Adrien’s beaming smile hanging from every avaliable surface. Despite the crinkling around his eyes, there was a resevation keeping Adrien two steps back from the viewer.

Nino couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Adrien slam himself back behind shutters like this. But then again, two of his best friends had been ostracized by their community– an action Nino was fully complicit in. Clearly Adrien had been hiding a lot more than he had thought.

Nino had called him a villain.

Oh shit.

Nino had kissed this brave, beautiful boy and the second Adrien had been genuinely seeking help he had looked him in the eyes and he had meant it.

No wonder Adrien had shuttered himself away. The last time that Nino had been witness to a glimpse of his vulnerability, Nino had basically chased him out of his life with pitchforks and torches.

“I think it’s pretty obvious.” Adrien gestured far too casually between the pair of them. “This can’t work.”

It reached in like a spoon to the eye, brutally carving away at his nerves and leaving him hollow and empty. Adrien wasn’t wrong. 

Nino wasn’t sure how Adrien could stand to look at him.

“It was fun while it lasted,” Nino offered, trying to apologize with the hint of a sheepish smile. Adrien winced at his use of the past tense.

“I think,” Adrien said tightly. “It might be best if I gave you some space.”

Nino was sure his tentative smile looked like someone was trying to pull all his teeth at once. If space was what Adrien wanted, then it was space that Nino would give him. 

He cleared his throat. “Of course.”

They both stood there, like they were waiting for the other person to keep talking. Adrien wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Of course he can’t look at you . It felt like a punch to the gut. He is fully aware of just how badly you failed him.

He hoisted his bag over his shoulder and turned to go. He only took three steps before he realized he still had one more thing to ask.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

Adrien didn’t respond for a long moment. All Nino could hear was the shuffle of shoes against the pavement.

“I couldn’t lose you.”

Mom

You are so incredibly grounded, young man. Sweet of you to help out your friend, but you’re grounded regardless.

Nino shot off an apology text he would need to elaborate on at the dinner table that night and set upon emailing his teachers for the assignments he missed. Chris was supposed to get home around six, so he made excellent use of his free time by calling Alya for the details.

“How was it?” he asked, trying to work his way through the math review that was apparently due at midnight.

Alya’s phone plopped down at the perfect angle to catch a shot of her faceplanting directly into her bed. “ Fine .”

Nino hummed sympathetically, flipping to the back of the book to catch the index for quadratic equations.

“I mean, Marinette is cute and all,” Alya pointed out. “Even you have to admit that.”

Nino sent her a wry smile. “I think you might be barking up the wrong tree with that one.”

Alya charged on as if she hadn’t heard him, although not hesitating to flick a piece of paper at the camera to let him know she had.

“ However , I’m not exactly in the market for a significant other right now,” she sighed. “My parents have barely accepted Quinn and she’s been dating my brother for months.”

“So it’s your parent’s fault?” Nino asked, scribbling something down before immediately erasing it again.

Alya groaned. “No– I mean, ugh -” She ran her hands through her hair and planted her face smack dab between her pillows. The clock on Nino’s wall hit five and she finally pulled her head up, still half-burrowed. 

“I have so much of my own shit to work though. I owe it to literally everyone, including myself, to get that sorted out before I try and date or anything like that. Especially , one of my best friends.”

Nino pretended to gasp. “ Emotional maturity? Where is this coming from?”

Alya batted at the camera. “Shut up. We are still going to the Harvest Ball together. Obviously”

Nino snorted. “Okay but seriously, I’m proud of you for realizing that about yourself.”

Alya grinned back at him. “Did I mention that I’m finally getting my own therapist?”

The pair tried and failed to high-five through the camera.

“I’m sorry for always dragging you into danger,” Alya murmured. “Even though I didn’t actually get Marinette kidnapped by a supervillain, I’ve still been putting myself and you, by proxy, in danger. I’m going to work on that.”

Nino sent her a soft smile. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“I meant it when I said I won’t be running towards danger anymore. Although I can’t make any promises if any supervillains or heroes come knocking on my door.”

Technically, two of them came over for snacks and Just Dance once a week. Maybe now wasn’t the time to bring that up.

“You’d be surprised by what you can find just looking back at your old videos,” Nino murmured, thinking back to Adrien and Marinette’s story earlier that day. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you could completely turn the world upside down just looking at them.”

Alya dramatically flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I am pretty good, that’s true.”

Eventually, the pair had to admit that talking was not conducive to completing their math worksheet and agreed to text each other instead. 

Alya sent Nino a screenshot of a tweet. It had a picture of Nino reaching out for Alya, the beams of sunlight and the architecture behind them appearing as some sort of renaissance painting of biblical salvation. The caption read “me when my mom comes and picks me up from school early.” 

A solid third of the way into his three problem assignment, Nino decided to call it quits and surprise his mother and grandmother with dinner. His phone was abandoned by the dinner table

It was mostly by instinct when his phone buzzed again and Nino scooped it off the counter.

Rahim

Glad you’re safe

He didn’t respond. He hadn’t seen his older brother in so long he wasn’t sure he could. He didn’t know what to say. 

In hindsight, it was almost laughable how obvious Hawkmoth’s manipulation was. At least, that’s what he tried to tell himself. Pulling up Alya’s archive of Ladyblog posts, Nino scrolled down to the very first, back when she didn’t even have an editor or any sort of comment moderation to speak of, beside her own ten fingers and the block button.

The wasn’t even a description for her first post, just the link to a Youtube video titled: Stoneheart protects Paris from Ladybug and Chat Noir! Exclusive footage!

The last update to the post was over a year ago, when Alya turned off new comments while she tried to gather a mod team.

The top comments streamed down from the video, with Alya’s pinned message reading,

Hey Ladybloggers!

Some of you may have noticed how explicitly supportive of Ladybug and Chat Noir the content shown in this video is. Please note that this content was created prior to any formal clarification of the situation by Hawkmoth and therefore I was merely operating off of my (false!) perception of the situation at the time. Please note that although this footage does not represent my current perspective regarding both Hawkmoth and the villains, I have elected to keep this video up to preserve the history that this video represents, both in this blog and in the relationship of Paris with its Champions. 

Thank you and stay safe!

This footage is posted with the consent of the champion featured in the video. This video will be taken down in the event that he or his family express discontentment with the video remaining up. For more information regarding Ivan Bruel’s experience as Stoneheart, please regard his interviews with Nadja Chamack here .

Immediately below, LadybloggerAnon_647 asked, 

Is it just me, or is Chat noir kinda hot?

UrMom-Shishkabob replied,

Dude hes evil and like 12

12, 416 people liked that comment.

Rewatching the video again, Nino wanted to bang his head into a wall with how obviously it was just Adrien and Marinette dressed up and handed superpowers. 

Chat Noir loudly declared his desire to help Paris, a comment either conveniently ignored or accused of manipulating the general public by news sources. 

Ladybug was uncertain and terrified, nothing like the cunning villain she was made out to be. 

They were just scared kids. Scared kids that somehow managed to pull themselves together enough to release the papillon, fistbump victoriously and head out arm in arm.

The same was true of the footage of the second Stoneheart confrontation. Just watching Ladybug steel her nerves as the pair accidentally dumped Mylène and Ivan from the Eiffel Tower, it was clear that it was just the mistakes of a clumsy pair of fourteen year olds handed power they didn’t know how to control yet.

The second the Parisian police threatened to open fire, Ladybug and Chat Noir fled the scene, leaving another of Hawkmother’s champions to clean up the mess.

Now that he knew what to look for, it was hilariously easy to find. 

The champions that enslaved the free will of the people of Paris in an attempt to “reclaim” the teenager’s miraculous? One public apology and a hastily built homeless shelter later and all was forgiven.

It wasn’t that his good deeds were bad, per say, it was just slightly more difficult to find a way to convince strangers online that he’d tortured a teenage girl when Hawkmoth had hosted a fundraiser to raise funds for a no-kill dog shelter two months ago.

What was one girl tortured and a bus of schoolchildren sent to the hospital or an apartment complex collapsed as long as he sent someone though with a magical mop and broom to make it all better again.

It made Nino want to throw something.

[deleted_user]

has anyone actually considered that maybe Hawkmoth isn’t the hero? Beating up a pair of teenagers regularly on such a public scale that at least a thousand people have received life-threatening injuries or even died, with several thousand more reporting having witnessed a life-threatening event due to Hawkmoth and his champions in the past year doesn’t seem heroic to me. Going through and magically solving all of his problems doesn’t make him a hero, it makes him an asshole willing to risk all of Paris for his stupid fucking agenda

Mothballs

This was ghostwritten by Ladybug

miRACULOUSSIMPLYTHEBEST

I mean, compared to other professional heroes, Hawkmoth has about 80% less casualties

Swiftie0009

This has to be a troll, right? THere’s no way anyone actually believes this

[75 more hidden replies]

Nino nearly jumped three feet in the air at the sound of the knock, frantically closing all of his open tabs before his mom could see his mildly treasonous internet browsing.

Sure, it wasn’t against the law to be opposed to Hawkmoth. Several celebrities were, and publicly as well, but they tended to fall into the flat earth/conspiracy crowd. On Twitter, Elon Musk had released an extremely unpopular tweet that expressed his distrust of Hawkmoth in general, which shockingly did not help Nino feel better.

The concept of supporting “the villains” was obviously just more frowned upon. After all, pretty much every Parisian at least knew of someone who had defended Paris as a champion. Who would ever want to speak out against their classmates or neighbors?

“You can come in!” he called over his shoulder, quickly opening the tab with his still unfinished algebra homework. 

Soraya Lahiffe was a short and plump woman in her mid-forties. She wore a sage green hijab, round glasses and a perpetual smirk that warned of incoming mischief. She always said Nino got her amber-brown eyes (he, reportedly, got his height from his father.)

His mother pressed a kiss to his hair and squeezed his shoulder as she stepped up. 

“Try not to stay up too late, alright?” she murmured. “I know you probably have a lot on your mind, but your grandmother would have my head if she knew I was letting you stay up this late on  a school night. Try and get some rest.”

Nino tried to murmur his agreement, switching tabs yet again to google “what is the quadratic equation” for the third time that night.

“It was very sweet of you to try to keep your friend safe like that,” she commented, heading towards the door. 

“That’s not what Twitter thinks,” Nino grumbled. 

His mother paused.

“Well,” she said slowly. “Clearly they haven’t met our Alya. I sometimes think that girl is the only person to need a pep talk not to go running into danger.”

Nino snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”

“She has a good heart, but that girl can be so incredibly stubborn,” she flicked his shoulder affectionately. “I know you’re not interested, but if that ever changes, she would make a fantastic daughter-in-law.”

“ Mom, ” Nino groaned. “You know I don’t-”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved him off. “I heard you the first time. At this rate, Chris is my last hope for a daughter-in-law and with that boy’s table manners he’ll be lucky to get a girl to make eye contact.”

He finally spun around to face her, fighting the smile creeping up his lips. “You’re just trying to distract me, aren’t you?”

“Imagine the chaotic potential,” she said wistfully, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Alya and I chasing down monsters and supervillains while you, I don’t know, make dinner or something.”

“I know what you’re doing,” Nino announced. 

“Ladybug and Chat Noir would live in terror,” she smirked, not bothering to stop to acknowledge his accusation. “We’d have their miraculous in two weeks, max.”

“Reminding me how much cooler you found my best friend than me isn’t actually helping me feel better,” Nino protestested (although it was a little bit).

She kicked a pair of sweatpants to the side, wrinkling her nose and settled down on the floor. “Alright, if that wasn’t working, then how can I help?”

“Maybe by letting me finish my homework?” Nino suggested halfheartedly. 

She hummed. “Fine, if you insist.”

Squeezing his shoulder and pressing a final kiss to the top of his head, she slipped out of the room. The night dragged onward, but Nino couldn’t quite bring himself to surrender to sleep. Adrien hadn’t been coming by for weeks. Logically, he knew that there was no way he would stop by-

A quick rap on the window pane startled Nino from his thoughts. His head jerked up, stomach twisting in nervous anticipation.

Please.

The city was impenetrable, the color of descending fog and the creeping decay of light polluted skies.

Cursing his ruffled hair, Nino shoved on his red cap, striding to the window and sliding it open.

“Adrien?”

The word was as faint as the brush of butterfly wings. There was no one in sight.

From somewhere above, the screech as metal bit into metal. A dark figure flipped off from the platform of the fire escape from a floor up, elegant and dark juxtaposed against the night sky. Swooping in an arc, caught on the razor wire of her yo-yo, Ladybug landed on the platform before him.

Jerking his head back, Nino knocked it on his half-open window.

She giggled, her yo-yo wire still wrapped around her wrist, ready to propel her upwards like Mary Poppins if the situation demanded it. “Your face!”

In that moment, it wasn’t her teasing that made it the hardest to conflate Marinette and Ladybug, but rather her confident grace. Once he had seen behind the mask once, it was impossible to not see his chaotic friend beneath all the spots. Still, his brain tripped with every assured step she took into his room.

Nino graciously lent her the use of his desk chair as he settled on the bed.

“ So ,” Marinette began slyly, glancing around the room as if she was seeing it in a new light. “This is where Adrien was sneaking off to during the few weeks I was MIA.”

Nino attempted to subtly nudge a pair of jeans under his bed with his foot, pointedly not looking her in the eyes. “He told you about that?” 

“It’s practically all he talks about,” she declared, with an appropriate amount of shame. “I think I know more about your love life than I was ever interested in knowing.”

“Fantastic,” Nino groaned, contemplating how long it would take for him to bury himself in the catacombs. Peeking out from his fingers, he asked miserably, “does that mean you know about-”

He didn’t need her sheepish nod to know the answer. The pair of them let the revelation sit for a little too long.

“He doesn’t blame you,” Marinette announced abruptly. Nino wasn’t really sure he belived her. She fidgeted awkwardly, sitting on her hands. “I think he was weirdly enamored, even with the whole false accusation thing. That was definitely the sweetest accusation we’ve ever endured.”

Nino was strongly considering hiding in his shirt like a turtle.

“I’m honestly kind of flattered-”

Waving his hand to dispel the whole concept from the air, Nino winced. “Please just leave it. I’m going to talk to him about it.”

Entirely serious, Marinette stopped her fidgeting. There was an edge of danger to her tone that Nino had never heard from Marinette’s mouth. “You better.”

He was struck by the profound reminder that it was Ladybug sitting before him, not just his goofy classmate. Despite the reality of her genuine attempts at heroism, this was a girl who had been sculpted into the perfect villain in the minds of millions.

This was a girl whose words were laced with arsenic rather than agony, because no one would hurt her and her partner again.

Eyes flashing dangerously, she hissed, “did you know that we’re actually supposed to be the heroes? My kwami says that she’s able to repair all of Hawkmoth’s damage– not that it’s ever actually worked.”

Nino reached out a hand, but she didn’t notice.

“We’re supposed to help people,” she sniffled. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Not any of this ‘domestic terrorist’ bullshit. I just want to be able to show up to pull civilians out of a burning building without getting chased off with fire hoses. Why is that too much to ask?”

Heart sinking, Nino recalled that fateful day a few months ago. Everyone had speculated that Ladybug had really been the one to set the fire. He had witnessed as Principle Damocles lectured Kim and Alix about their shenanigans in front of the class, claiming that their entitled teenage attitudes were the exact things that led Ladybug and Chat Noir to do whatever they wanted. With a bad taste in his mouth, he wondered: Had anyone ever actually been on their side? 

“I want to help,” Nino blurted.

Marinette’s head jerked up, genuine confusion furrowing her brow. “ What ?”

Her authentic bewilderment dug in the guilt like a knife in his chest. It was all too reminiscent of a late night not too long ago, where a beautiful boy had reacted the exact same way.

No, Nino realized sadly, they hadn’t.

But unlike that night, he meant it. He wanted to help, in whatever way possible. 

“Whether I’m diverting Alya from any dangerous revelations, standing up for you in front of the class or defending Paris as a superhero ” –he put extra emphasis on the word and pretended not to notice the way it made Marinette sit up a little straighter– “let me help.”

Marinette blinked. She blinked again. It took him a little too long to realize that she was crying.

She frantically kicked at the edge of his bed to spin his desk chair so it wasn’t facing him, swearing as she accidentally nailed her toes into the bed frame. The chair slowly turned in a circle, eventually returning to face him, but by then Marinette had smeared the tears from her cheeks. She couldn’t wipe away the bittersweet smile as she beamed back at him.
Letting out a deep breath, she held out a hand.

“I will definitely need to check in with Chat Noir on this, but, consider this your official welcome to the team, Carapace.”

Alya’s date was running late to the Harvest Ball.

The school courtyard was decorated with garlands of lights entwined with the ivy, sweeping up towards the fabric masquerading as a tent. Nino waited with his best friend on the front steps as Ivan reassured Mylène that her eyeliner looked flawless.

“She’s not texting me back,” Alya hissed. A pair of gold straps held up her jumpsuit as they looped around her neck. The maroon fabric leaked glitter all over the floor, accented with her gold hoops.

Nino stood beside her in a navy suit. The party itself was hot enough that Nino had opted to ditch his suit jacket, handing it over to Alya and her bare shoulders instead.

He was pretty sure he knew why Marinette and Adrien were running late. They had gotten the alert for a Ladybug and Chat Noir attack only a few hours prior. 

In the week since he had offered Ladybug his help, Nino had been largely relegated to keeping Alya out of trouble. It wasn’t a great idea to bring him into the field while he was still out of step with Chat Noir.

“I’m sure she’ll be here soon,” Nino said placatingly, trying to jump up for a seat on the stair’s railings, much to Mendeliev’s disapproval.

Alya brandished her phone at his face. “It’s 8:45 . Adrien said he would get her here in time.”

“I’m sure he’s doing his best,” Nino murmured, waving over Rose and Juleka as the pair stepped out for a moment. 

As the group exchanged compliments over dresses, and pretended to swoon over Nino in his suit, a familiar duo finally made their way to the bottom of the stairs.

“Mari!” Alya’s head popped out from the mass of swirling dresses and requests for photos, racing down the stairs in her heels. On the second-to-last step, her shoe slipped a moment too soon, sending her toppling into Marinette’s arms. 

Catching her with ease, Marinette grinned down at her. “Don’t fall for me too easily.”

Alya’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second as a smirk tugged at the edge of Mari’s dangerously red lipstick. Her gaze darted down to Marinette’s impressive biceps, her cheeks reddening, before quickly darting back to look up to her eyes.

Marinette seemed to realize what she had done a moment too late, her cheeks flushing pink. She had handled Alya’s rejection with little fanfare. The pair opted to remain as friends, but with a tentative promise to revisit the concept if they thought it was necessary.

“I think,” Alya winced as Marinette set her back on her feet, “I may have sprained my ankle.”

Warmth blossomed in Nino’s chest as he watched Marinette rush off her date, the pair of them glimmering in their identical maroon jumpsuits.

“Nino?” 

Adrien stared at him like he was the quicksand slowly pulling him into oblivion. Such wonder towards such a dangerous misstep. He stared unashamed at the dress shirt his mother had helped him tailor, gaping at Nino’s golden studs and the rings on his fingers.

Adrien was dressed like Gabriel Agreste had a vendetta against Nino’s personal supply of oxygen. He was certain that if he had been nursing one of the red solo cups of fruit punch, he would have choked on it. 

Every fold was perfectly creased, tailored to emphasize Adrien’s broad chest and narrow waist. Gabriel Agreste had clearly taken offense to the idea that anyone could be more elegantly dressed than his son.

Marinette had clearly taken some initiative as well, if the swoop of Adrien’s cat-eye had anything to say about it. She had dusted gold flecks into his eye shadow, emphasizing every glint in Adrien’s bright ivy irises.

Nino couldn’t look away.

Some distant part of himself recognized that he was staring, but that distant part of himself was smothered beneath the glimpse of the jagged edges of Adrien’s biceps beneath his dress shirt.

“You’re beautiful,” Adrien whispered, only processing that he had spoken aloud a moment too late.

“ Et tu brute ,” Nino replied.

They both flushed, taking the immediate opportunity to follow Alya and Marientte into the building.

Nino avoided Adrien’s gaze like the plague as they joined their classmates' terrible attempt to do the Macarena to some modern pop hit.

“What’s up with you and Adrien?” Kim asked, a little too loudly by the snacks. 

Nino cringed as Adrien’s head popped up from the other side of the room at the mention of his name. 

“I’m not sure,” he admitted miserably.

For all their attempts for subtlety, their classmates were a bit too perceptive for Nino’s liking. When Juleka pulled him aside to chat about another possible collaboration with Kitty Section, he overhead as Rose elbowed Adrien in the ribs a bit too hard and asked, “doesn’t Nino look divine this evening?”

The party officially ended at eleven, but their class instead elected to unofficially migrate to the upper deck of the Liberty.
He really should have known better than to join in the giant game of truth or dare. Especially when he saw Max’s sly grin when Adrien chose “Truth.”

Max never pulled any punches.  “If you could kiss anyone on this ship right now, who would it be?”
Adrien’s eyes darted to Nino, as discreet as a plane crash. Nino was a bit envious of any opportunity to hit the earth at hundreds of miles, as the rest of the circle followed his gaze.

Adrien winced as he realized his mistake. “I would need some time to think about it.”

As the rest of the circle burst into chattered whispers and clambors for an actual answer, Max magnanimously waved them off. “Feel free to consider your response until the end of the next round.”

Nino tried not to let his relief show on his face. How had Adrien and Marinette ever managed to keep their identities concealed when Adrien was this bad at keeping secrets.

Alya had been braiding Marinette’s hair for the last ten minutes as they discussed their zodiac signs. They had been predictably obnoxious when they realized that Pisces and Cancer were deemed highly compatible. 

This was highly fortunate for the long-term fate of the universe. The two girls seemed so intensely caught in the other’s orbit that they would have happily pulled the constellations across the sky to make their stars align.

Alya leaned down to murmur in Marinette’s ear, looking a little too pleased at Marinette’s wide eyes. The pair came to some sort of agreement and turned to look at him.

“Nino,” Marinette began, voice light with mischief. “Truth or Dare?”

“Truth,” Nino blurted immediately. His confidence lasted about as long as it took for their classmates to smirk. “Wait! Dare.”

Alya’s grin somehow grew even wider. “If you insist.”

He still had time to run and nothing but his pride to lose. 

Alya entwined a strand of Marinette’s hair between her fingers, as hungry as a stalking coyote and as sly as a fox. “I dare you–” she paused to give him plenty of time to squirm and seriously contemplate swimming home “–to buy me some ice cream.”

She had chosen mercy.

“Specifically the really expensive gelato they sell near Notre Dame,” she announced. 

Adrien tossed his gum wrapper at her head, grumbling, “It’s not that expensive.”

Alya waved him off. “It is if you’re unemployed and spending all your Christmas money on Adobe products. Which is why you’re going with him, Sunshine. Make sure he doesn’t get kidnapped and let Gabriel Agreste buy me some gelato, alright?”
Alya turned back to Marinette with a grin, intentionally ignoring the way both Nino and Adrien were glowering at her.

Genuinely peeved, Nino untangled himself from a jungle of limbs, Kim had taken the excuse to lay across the laps of practically everyone with a seat on the couch like a lapdog, and trying to extract himself involved hoisting himself backwards to climb up the back of the couch, slowly pulling his legs from underneath Kim’s torso and stepping over his body on the way down.

“Get me some pistachio!” Alya shouted after them as Nino trudged out the door.

Morale was low, but it officially hit rock bottom when Nino realized that the store closed in twenty minutes.

“We’re going to need to be quick,” he murmured, vaguely in Adrien’s direction. 

Ankara Couffaine shouted a quick warning about the incoming storm and saluted them as they stepped off the gangplank and onto the cobbled paths of Paris.

Nino waited until they were out of sight of the ship, before turning to Adrien with a reluctant sigh.

“I’m sorry about Alya. She has good intentions, but I think she disagrees with my plan to give you some space.”

Adrien blinked at him. “Don’t you mean, my plan to give you some space?”

“No?” Nino said incredulously, taking the stairs two at a time to keep up with him. 

Adrien stopped at the top of the stairs to stare at him. “You were the one who wanted space in the first place.”

“No, I-” Nino faltered. He couldn’t remember which of them had brought up distance originally. “ I never wanted the space. That was for you.”

Adrien laughed incredulously, running his hands through his perfectly tailored hair. “Why would I want space?”

“ Because I messed up! ”

The look Adrien gave him was not angry. It was just pure confusion and disbelief. It was eerily reminiscent of another night not too long ago when Nino had called him a villain right to his face.

Paris was lonely this late in the evening, The usual influx of tourists and employees had all retreated to their apartments and hotel rooms. As they turned onto a bridge over the Seine, the last few patrons at an outdoor bar sent him strange looks. 

Adrien wrapped his fingers around his wrist, tugging him away from prying eyes. 

He leaned in, hissing, “What do you mean you messed up ? If you did something to Marinette, I swear-”

Nino held his hands up in surrender. “Nothing like that, I mean, it was sort of like that-” the first hints of a scowl was forming on Adrien’s face, so Nino backed off immediately. “-but it was definitely more of a mess up in your direction, rather than her’s.”

Adrien gave him space, so Nino admitted, “Mari and I talked about it, but obviously you wanted space after the thing with Alya. You know about this.”

“I was giving you space because I was keeping secrets!” Adrien exclaimed, running his hand through his hair in frustration. He paced across the bridge, and once again Nino fell behind. Overhead, the dark clouds loomed, painted putrid yellow by the city lights.  “You were supposed to be the one who was mad at me. ”

“I called you a villain!” Nino retorted, perfectly happy to let him leave. He let out a laugh, but it punched from his lungs like a guilty plea. “I said it to your face and I meant it. In what universe are you the problem?”

Adrien whirled back around. “In yours. ”

Nino’s next words wilted in his throat as he gawked at Adrien.

Adrien turned towards Nino, pressing his back against the railing of the bridge. He had left the jacket of his suit back on the Liberty, but was definitely regretting it now as he folded his arms across his chest. He ran his hands back and forth across them, but he wasn’t generating enough friction to stop his goosebumps.

Digging his fingernails into his forearms, Adrien braced himself like he was preparing for a blow. “You don’t understand the danger I’ve put you in.”

Stepping gingerly alongside him, Nino waited for permission to join Adrien against the railing. A tiny drop of rain landed on the back of his neck.

“You saw what he did to Mari,” Adrien whispered. He swallowed, exhaling with all the exhaustion of a modern-day Atlas. “ Fuck . Nino–he can find your family.”

Nino was taken so off guard by the fractured swear that it took him a moment for the full weight of it to register. 

His mother. His grandmother. Chris. Alya. Even Rahim. 

Ignorant civilians or not, he had dragged them into this.

The fear dug itself in, entwining itself into Nino’s veins, even as he tried to shake it off. 

“What’s he going to do?” Nino snorted, with a bit more levity than he actually felt. “Target my family just because I told Alya to take a day off? I’ve been living in Paris for my entire life and not a single supervillain has killed me yet.”

Adrien let out a bitter laugh. “You don’t know what he’s capable of. Do not assume that the wolf will extend the same leniency as your guard dogs.”

There were concrete walls in his head, ricocheting the sound of Marinette’s guttural as Hawkmoth twisted his cane through her thigh. There were no misunderstandings here. Hawkmoth knew that Ladybug and Chat Noir were just kids trying to do the right thing. 

Nino wasn’t sure what concrete walls echoed in Adrien’s head.

“He won’t retaliate for this,” Nino promised, with a little less confidence than he would have preferred. “I’m too close to Alya for him to get away with it. Stop trying to force me to blame you for this.”

Adrien bristled. “I showed up to your window. I don’t know how you could not blame me for this.”

Nino was about ready to strangle him with his bare hands. “I haven’t been blaming you for any of it!”

“Bullshit,” Adrien burst out with a bitter laugh. “Apparently, you can’t even regret calling me a villain.”

Nino felt his hackles rising even further. “ Regret it? Of course I regret it.”

Adrien pushed off of the railing, jerking his head for Nino to follow. He kept trying to steal glances, only looking more agitated when he caught Nino watching him every time. The wind shifted, carrying with it the anticipation of a downpour. They reached the other side of the bridge before Adrien finally gave in.

“You said you meant it.” The sentence was spat out, wounded in a way that made Nino want to crawl in between the cracks in the sidewalk and whither away. 

“Only because I thought you hurt Mari.”

Adrien shook his head dismissively. “No, just now, you said it again.”

Nino laughed, weaving around a puddle on the path. “Only because I needed to remind you why you’re mad at me. Or, at least, why I thought you were.”

On the edge of the reach of the streetlights, Adrien finally looked up at him. There’s something confused that’s snagging his eyelashes on the tears in his eyes. Something that might be hope.

“You’re not the kind of person who hurts the people you care about.”

Adrien shuddered. “Yes, I am.”

Nino stepped closer. Adrien watched, enraptured, as he reached out and interlaced their fingers. He reached up with his free hand, tenderly lifting Adrien’s chin until he was no longer able to commiserate with the pavement.

Adrien’s eyes shone like the sunlight through stinging nettles, and he looked at Nino like he couldn’t imagine looking away again.

“You’re a hero , Adrien. I’m sorry it took me so long to see it.”

Adrien’s next inhale caught, and he crumpled right in Nino’s hands. The pair of them sunk into the ground, holding each other as the rain began to fall.

Reaching out, Adrien clutched both his hands on either side of Nino’s, holding on tight as they trembled. It took him a moment to realize that he was crying. 

They could stay there until they died, live wires quivering with energy and fear for the future.

“I really like you,” Adrien choked out, ignoring the increasing tempo of the storm. Distant lightning lit up the night like a camera shutter. “I know you weren’t expecting Chat Noir to be your lame and awkward classmate, but I can’t stop thinking of you.”

Nino wiped off snot with the back of his hands, and then immediately felt profoundly uncool for it. “I’ve had a crush on you, Adrien -you, for ages, so please don’t insult my taste.”

Adrien laughed, a bright sound that made Nino’s insides twist. He leaned in, a distracting distance from Nino’s face. “ Purr haps, I’m the luckiest human alive.”

Nino swatted at him as the rain picked up. A proper downpour dumped sheets on them. Still clasping hands, they raced towards the nearest shelter- the small protection provided by the doorframe of a locked apartment building.

Nino pressed his back against one side of the door frame, watching with amusement as Adrien tried to warp his body around the door handle. They have to tilt their heads towards the door, since the doorframe clearly was not built with two moonstruck boys in mind. The rain poured off the polished stone, drenching the part of their shoulders that didn't quite fit. 

Adrien was still giddy with the novelty of it. He hadn’t let go of Nino’s hand, completely oblivious to his hesitation.

“You’re so lovely,” he sang, beaming with a brilliance that let Nino’s guilt curdle in his stomach.

Fighting the urge to pull his hand back, Nino grit out, “can we talk for a second?”

Sheepishly fascinated, Adrien’s gaze followed Nino’s lips through the sentence. Nino tried not to grin at his adorable unconscious pout once he realized that a Real Conversation was happening.

A small flood of water along the gutter sent loose leaves and a receipt into the gutter while Nino gathered his thoughts.

Best to bite the bullet.

“I don’t think you should forgive me for what I said.”

Adrien’s brow furrowed at that, and Nino fought the impulse to reach over and smooth it back down. It was hard to resist tracing every edge of the irresistible creature that was Adrien Agreste now that the boy had said he wouldn't mind. Nino’s guilt hit the breaks on that line of thought.

Genuinely curious, Adrien leaned closer. “Why not?”

Nino shook the nerves out through his free hand, accidentally sending a spray of water across Adrien’s chest. “I should have known that you were innocent. Alya’s harebrained theories were all the evidence I had. I feel like you’re only letting it go because of your limited options of people who know your identity and I won’t accept it. You don’t get to forgive me simply because no one has been decent enough to treat you with dignity.”

A beat passed, and then another.

Adrien snickered. 

Nino batted at him. “Don’t laugh. It’s a genuine concern.”

“I know it is,” Adrien chuckled. “That’s why it’s so ridiculous.” He leaned back against the door frame, as smug as a devil, letting Nino fully appreciate his time as a vigilante as his wet jacket clung to his broad chest. “I dragged you and your loved ones into a world of danger without your permission, and you have the audacity to claim that I’m a hero. You have made it abundantly clear that your accusations were born from misunderstanding.”

“I just want you to consider it,” Nino protested. 

“I have.” Adrien sent him the softest grin. “I am the tides and you are the moon I am forever drawn to. It pains me that you can’t see how wonderful you are.”

Nino rolled his eyes, even as heat crawled up his neck. “You might have shown me the way down to hell, but I walked in with my head held high. Stop pretending like I was some innocent princess you abducted into your world.”

Adrien laughed, face illuminated with golden light through the small window near the top of the door. “Only when you stop blaming yourself for not knowing any better.” His eyes were soft, wrinkling with tender affection as he leaned in and murmured. “How could I ever choose not to forgive you?”

Nino swallowed, hyperaware of how incredibly close he was. He needed him closer. They were trapped in a staring contest they didn’t know how to lose, and Nino was starving.

Adrien’s tongue peeked out to wet his lips, and Nino couldn’t quite be bothered to pretend it wasn’t driving him crazy. Breathless, he whispered. “Can I-”

“ Please ,” Adrien begged.

It took quite some time for Alya to finally call, and she acted infuriated to learn that Nino had failed to acquire her gelato.

“It’s your own fault for stranding us in the rain,” Nino announced, slightly preoccupied by the bounce of Adrien’s curls. The rain had washed away whatever product was keeping them contained, and now they shot off in surprising directions. Nino decided that he would be running his hands through them at some point soon, preferably where the entirety of Collège Françoise Dupont couldn’t see them.

“Yeah yeah,” Alya waved him off, and they both pretended not to notice their classmates watching Nino and Adrien’s fingers as they intertwined. “We’ll send someone with a car.” She turned back to the crowd, asking Juleka, “can your mom even drive?”

Everyone gave Nino a pass on a make-up dare when they witnessed his bedraggled appearance. Marinette offered to get all the water out of their suits to prevent damage, so Nino found himself wearing Juleka’s Kitty Section hoodie. Adrien had jokingly offered to try on one of Rose’s sundresses, and quickly found himself enraptured by the flow of the fabric as he twirled. Everyone gave Adrien a pass on his truth when he fell asleep in Nino’s lap an hour later. Nino refused to be embarrassed as he ran his fingers through blond curls.

The next morning, Nino couldn’t quite bring himself to regret the awful tug in his neck when Adrien’s long eyelashes fluttered open. He looked angelic in the warm glow of the 5am light. 

Everyone else had trudged home or curled into sleeping bags. Someone had tucked a blanket around Nino’s shoulders and laid it across Adrien’s upper arms to protect him from the evening chill of the open-air patio.

The briefest hints of hazel turned amber in the glow of the sun, and Adrien gazed up at him reverently.

“I have glitter in my eye,” Adrien admitted.

Nino chuckled. The whole world felt like a dream, and he was so cozy and warm. He leaned down and brushed his lips against Adrien’s forehead. “That’s what you get for letting Marinette do your makeup.”

Pink blossomed in Adrien’s cheeks, but it didn’t stop him from pouting. “You’re so unsympathetic.”

“I never claimed to be a saint,” Nino teased.

Alya yawned against his shoulder, blinking blearily up at him before burying her face back in his arm. “Of course you didn’t. We would never believe you.”

Leaning against the couch at Alya’s feet, Marinette batted in his direction, mumbling something that sounded like “five more minutes.”

With his hands in Adrien’s hair, his other best friends on either side and the warm glow of the sun meandering up the Parisian skyline, Nino slipped right back into oblivion.

He spent the next week enduring teasing from his classmates and discovering little flowers left tenderly on his windowsill. Adrien pressed a kiss to his knuckles when he dropped him off at home, and they talked for hours on the roof of Nino’s apartment building. 

When Chat Noir dropped a mixtape of all of Nino’s song suggestions on his way home, Twitter toyed with the idea of cancelling anyone who enjoyed GIMS or Carly Rae Jepsen. Alya spent at least three hours discussing the implications of Chat Noir listening to Call Me Maybe.

Adrien brought him a dirty chai every morning and accidentally told Paris Match that he had a boyfriend before they had actually talked about it.

Nino’s mother was thrilled. Gabriel Agreste frantically attempted to recover from his earlier comments and launched a new pride collection with far too many photos of Adrien against a pink, purple and blue background.

I’m Bi, the posters declared. It exists. 

“I’m going to kill him,” Adrien announced that evening, rather than actually posing the boyfriend question.

Nino was a bit busier trying to figure out how to kill Hawkmoth.

Two more weeks into lips pressed to temples and late night calls as they made dinner by the glow of the microwave, Nino finally asked, “are we together?”

“I sure hope so,” Adrien teased. “I blackmailed my father into getting us tickets to Spain over winter break.”

So Nino laughed and felt a burst of satisfaction in his chest as he called Adrien his boyfriend casually in conversation to his mother.

Marinette and Adrien would mysteriously disappear during classes, and continued to remain eerily in sync. Nino helped patch them up after their latest brush with death.

Carapace remained largely tucked away, too busy spending an ungodly amount of hours steering Alya away from their friend’s true identities. It was awful to lie to your best friend’s face. 

During a week where Alya seemed even more disconnected and absent than normal, Nino finally turned to his boyfriend and asked, “are you ever going to tell her?”

Adrien shrugged as he paused the video. He had been attempting to teach Nino ballroom dancing, and it was going swimmingly. 

“I think Mari wants to tell her at some point.”

Nino raised his eyebrows. “And you don’t?”

Adrien sent him a sheepish smile. “I might be on identity probation after fraternizing with a civilian . I was definitely not supposed to tell you. We got a very stern talking-to from Master- ow! ”

Wayzz zipped out of Nino’s jacket and flicked Adrien on the forehead before he could say anything more. 

Plagg, Adrien’s extremely opinionated deformed cat, snickered at Adrien finally being the one to get in trouble.

Nino reached out and entwined their fingers together. It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it would have to be enough. “But you will tell her at some point?”

Adrien grinned. “Of course.”

Nino tried to remember that when Alya stopped talking about her blog entirely.

Marinette and Adrien seemed mostly relieved. They had sat through more than enough conversations about the inherent cruelty of their alter egos. Nino couldn’t quite find a way to let it go. 

Tugging gently on the back of Alya’s braid, Nino leaned in to whisper in her ear, “You would tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”
Alya proceeded to tense up like an entire legion of spiders had dropped on her head.

With class about to start, Nino had to let it go. He settled into his seat and resolved to talk with her again later. The last thing they needed was another omnipotent Alya-champion running around.

With an arm slung around Adrien’s shoulders, Nino watched as Kim and Alix challenged each other to more and more complex flips off the school bannister.

“I bet you could do a triple,” Nino murmured, probably a little too close to Adrien’s ear.

“Hey!” Alix protested. “I thought we promised no PDA in the gym.”

“This isn’t the gym,” Nino deadpanned.

Alix rolled her eyes. “It's close enough.”

“We weren’t even doing any actual PDA,” Adrien protested as Nino took a swig from his water bottle. A sly expression crept over his face. “Hold on.”

Nino tried not to die as Adrien leaned in, his vanilla perfume overwhelming all of Nino’s other positions. “If this is about flexibility,” Adrien began lightly. “I just need to remind you that I can fit into practically any position you desire.”

 Nino choked on his water.

When he had finally returned to the land of the living, having drenched both himself and his boyfriend, Nino hissed back, “I thought you weren’t into that!”

“I have to keep that air of mystery somehow,” Adrien announced, quite grandiose.

Nino let out a long sigh but grinned right back at his boyfriend.

“Hey,” Adrien nudged his shoulder gently. “Are you free tonight. I’m thinking of watching a movie.”

He waggled his eyebrows up and down like he was trying to imply something more suggestive. Fortunately, Nino knew his boyfriend well enough to see through his tricks.

“We aren’t watching that cartoon again.”

Adrien flopped dramatically onto Nino’s shoulder. “It’s like you don’t even love me anymore.”

Nino batted him off, rolling his eyes. “I’ve let you pick for the past four movie nights. Let me have a turn.”

Adrien glanced up, tracking Alya’s entrance as she made her way down the stairs. Ordinarily, this would not be notable, apart from the way that her eyes were locked in on Nino like she had seen a ghost.

“Fine,” Adrien pouted. “But only because I adore you.”

Nino pressed a kiss to his cheek before letting him go. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Sending Nino one last glance to make sure he was alright, Adrien joined Alix and Kim as they made their way to the lockers.

“What’s up, dudette,” Nino grinned, trying to hide his concern.

Alya’s gaze darted around the courtyard, and she took a deep breath to steady herself. “Can we talk somewhere else?”
Pretending at casual, Nino shrugged. “Of course.”

“Great.” Alya grabbed his hands and immediately began tugging him to follow up the stairs. They breezed past Madame Bustier’s classroom towards the end of the hall.

Pulling him around an abandoned vending machine, Alya checked their surroundings one last time. 

“Are you alright?” Nino hedged. “You seem a little off.”

Alya wrung her hands, expression unreadable but intense. “I’m not alright. Do you remember how you told me to look back through my old videos?”

Nino nodded, even though that conversation felt like a lifetime ago.

Alya leaned in more, intensity growing with something akin to desperation. “Well, I found something. Something big.”

Shit shit shit. She had figured it out, hadn’t she? Somehow, Alya had managed to see through the magical masks and learn Adrien and Marinette’s secrets. 

They were so incredibly fucked. Alya probably had already written her exposé and was warning him before he got caught even more in the crossfire. He needed to go. He needed to warn Adrien. He needed to get to his family.

Nino tried with all the success of a single minnow against a tsunami to keep the panic from his face. His voice was raspy as he asked, “what did you find?”

Alya wrung her hands again and again as she started to pace. “I can’t-” she gestured with her hand, like she couldn’t even begin to conceptualize the idea. The longer she went, the harder Nino had to fight to keep himself from bolting.

Finally, she let out a long huff, sounding genuinely terrified as she admitted, “I think Hawkmoth has been lying to us.”