#i don't even know waht i'm doing anymore fam

[chassecroise]

the space between us (chapter 15)

chapter title: these wings were made to fly    words: 4.2k story summary: What’s a ladybug to do when her kitten becomes a cat? chapter summary: In which there are some unexpected conversations with unexpected people.

previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

a/n: Surprise! :^)

Honest to god, I have a plan for this story, but lord knows where my motivation and inspiration are hiding. That said, I'm hoping to get this one wrapped up soon! There are chapters I've had planned since last summer that I haven't gotten to...so hopefully this summer you'll finally get to experience them. :'D

AO3 | FF

Ladybug slowly removes her hands from her ears once it appears that Chloe is finally done screaming. For a moment, she wonders if perhaps this wasn't the best idea, but it's too late now. It's clear that Chloe is 100% on board for whatever they're going to ask her to do, even though she has no idea what they want.

Chloe is practically leaping in ecstasy as she rushes to get her laptop and phone, at the ready and prepared to help Ladybug and Chat Noir in any way that they need. It's been far too long since she's had a chance to prove her value to her favorite superhero.

This request is also particularly important as it has only been a week since she accidentally caused another akuma (really, it wasn't her fault the ridiculous hairdresser her father hired for her was incompetent at her job and that she actually thought a perm would be a good look for the likes of Mademoiselle Bourgeois), she is eager to prove that she can indeed help the heroes of Paris. In a way that they will be sure to appreciate.

“I am so excited you finally decided to come to me for help! I’ll be the best hero ever. I can get a proper suit made, we can get special bluetooth communicators— it’s going to be oh so perfect! Speaking of which, don't think I didn't notice all of the changes you made to your suit, Ladybug. I love it. I've always wondered why you didn't have wings. It only makes sense. You're a Ladybug, for crying out loud." She gestures at Chat Noir. "After all, a ladybug without wings would be like a cat without ears.”

She continues to dance around the room for several minutes, gathering items from her cosplay closet and from her makeup boxes until she realizes that neither Ladybug nor Chat Noir are saying anything. She whirls around.

“Wait, I didn’t even ask you. What do you need my help with? Is it for a mission? Do you need money? Power? Influence? An invitation to the most exclusive parties in Paris? I have access to everything you could ever want or need."

She knows she's babbling, but something about the intense way the two of them are staring at her is starting to make her a little nervous. Though she would never admit it. Chloe Bourgeois does not get intimidated by anyone, even her favorite superheroes.

Well, superhero. Chat Noir isn't that great. A true hero would actually help a damsel in distress and rescue her from doing ghastly physics homework. Like darling Adrien would. Even though he's been ignoring her calls more often lately, the rude boy.

"What? What is it? Is there something wrong? Do I need Daddy to help too?"

Ladybug bites her lips and slowly exhales. This, for some reason, makes Chloe even more nervous than before.

“Well, Chloe— it has to do with Adrien,” she says, her voice low and careful. “And what the press thinks is going on between us.”

Chloe feels her heart sinking into her stomach. It’s a curious feeling. Though she is still excited that they want her help, this is not what she expected.

“Oh. I see,” she says, taking care to sound calm and detached, above any emotional connections. Haughty.

“And what exactly do you expect me to do about it? Adrien hasn’t spoken to me at all about this. Does he know you’re here?”

Ladybug and Chat Noir exchange secretive glances that clearly mean something — Chloe has no idea what — and Ladybug slowly nods.

“Yes. He does.”

Chloe raises an eyebrow and crosses her arms. “Okay...and?”

Chat Noir steps forward. “He agreed it would be a good idea to ask you for advice. He said you would know how to help us — I mean, Ladybug and him — deal with the press and deflect their attention.”

Chloe turns back to Ladybug. “Look, if I’m going to help you, I need to know what the deal is. Are you really dating each other? Or did the tabloids just see the pictures from the photoshoot and start building rumors out of thin air? As I’m sure you know, he and I are very close. But I haven’t asked him anything about you, out of respect for his privacy.”

This isn’t entirely true. Chloe has mostly refrained from asking Adrien about what his status with Ladybug is out of a very strange feeling of jealousy that has consumed her ever since she saw the first tabloid headline about them together. She’s not sure who she’s more jealous of— Ladybug, Adrien, both of them, perhaps—  it’s all very confusing, and both Sabrina and the internet have been of absolutely no use at all.

Ladybug pauses. “It’s a little hard to explain.”

“What’s so hard about it?” presses Chloe, raising an eyebrow. “Either you’re together, or you’re not.”

“Yes, we’re together...but it’s not...how do I put it—”

Chloe is starting to get annoyed, though she still wants to be respectful. “But what? What is it?”

“We’re—we’re in an open relationship!” Ladybug blurts out. “Yes! That’s it. An open relationship. No strings attached.”

“An...open relationship?” repeats Chloe.  “What exactly do you mean?”

“Um, essentially...we’re not exclusive?”

“Oh. I see. That is...very interesting.”

All the pieces start coming together as she considers this very unexpected piece of information. If they’re not exclusive, that means there is a third person or possibly even a fourth person in the equation.

Chloe runs through everyone in her social circle. Perhaps it’s a stranger. Perhaps it’s not.

And then it occurs to her that the answer might be standing right in front of her.

She turns an appraising eye to Chat Noir. Who she has also noticed has suddenly gotten much taller than before. Personally, she’s not a fan. He practically looks like a giant now. Have his hands gotten even bigger? It’s ridiculous. He’s supposed to be a cat, not a mountain lion.

But then again, perhaps Ladybug is interested in that sort of thing.

She inclines her head towards him.

“Is he ….part of your... arrangement ?”

Ladybug’s eyes grow wide. “Chat Noir? I, um—well, I would rather not discuss details...”

“Then I can’t help you,” answers Chloe, crossing her arms. “Either you tell me all your dirty laundry or I can't help you avoid the nosy press at all. I can't develop a strategy without ”

“I knew this would be a bad idea,” Ladybug mutters under her breath, turning away.

“It’s a delicate matter, Mademoiselle Bourgeois,” cuts in Chat Noir, stepping forward and looking back and forth between the two girls. “But if My Lady doesn’t want to share details, I do ask that you respect her wishes.”

Chloe scowls.  It’s clear that playing hardball won’t help her get any details that will help her figure out what’s going on. She bites her lip as she wonders what strategy she can possibly use next to get some sort of information. Ladybug and Chat Noir are naive to think they’re being subtle about the fact that there’s something going on between the two of them as well, but the subtle tension between them is hardly something Chloe can leverage as proof.

A not so quiet part of her mind urges her to indicate her own interest in Ladybug, but she pushes it away. Now is not the time to proposition her hero, as much as she’s secretly fantasized about it. No, she needs to wait for the right moment...ideally when Chat Noir isn’t standing in between them.

She gulps as she realizes Ladybug is staring at her with narrowed eyes. Merde , she’s been quiet too long.

“Chloe, if you’re thinking about how to blackmail us—if I have any reason to believe you’re going to make trouble for us—”

“I would never!” she gasps, raising her arms and stepping back. “Adrien is one of my oldest friends. I would never betray his trust like that.”

Ladybug nods, though her expression is still uncertain. “Okay. I will choose to trust you. For now.”

“Well, you’re the one who burst in here,” Chloe replies, a little more testily than intended. “I should be the one wondering whether to trust you.”

Ladybug opens her mouth, presumably to deliver a pointed retort, but to Chloe’s surprise, she just as quickly shuts it and steps back, turning around to face the window.

Chloe can see her reflection in the glass panels. She looks somber.

“Look. Adrien has a special connection with me, but there's someone else in his life too, someone who can't be seen in public with him thanks to his association with me. The last thing he wants is for her to be hounded by the press or for her privacy to be invaded.”

Chloe nods. “I understand.”

“Actually, what we really want is for the press to stop pressing him about his personal life at any given moment, but I realize that’s never going to happen.”

Ladybug turns back around to face Chloe.

“I wanted us to handle this on our own. But it would be unwise not to talk to someone who's handled press like this before. And you're the first person I thought of. So tell me, Chloe. What would you do in a situation like this? What...does your father do?”

Chloe thinks about the endless parade of women that have come through her father’s mansion ever since her parents separated. Women that the press has never heard of, because whenever there was a chance of being found out, her father would do two things: a) create a public distraction; and b) disappear from the public eye on a short holiday in a place where the French tabloids couldn’t find him, long enough for them to find some celebrity story more interesting than his. It is a strategy that has worked for the past thirteen years, and is likely to work as long as the tabloids continue to have a short memory.

So this is the advice that she imparts.

Ladybug stares dubiously at Chloe.

“You think we should create a ‘public distraction’? Akumas are public distractions. Holiday parades are public distractions. What you’re suggesting sounds a lot like a public relations stunt. And not a good one.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong about that,” Chloe drawls in her insufferably smug way. “I’m just saying that if you want the press to fixate on something else, you have to give them something to fixate on .”

“And you think that Chat Noir posing for a sexy photoshoot is the right kind of bait?!”

“Come on, Ladybug. Look at your partner. Who wouldn’t want to stare at him? He’s delicious to look at now.”

Ladybug curls her lip in disgust. “Ugh, don’t describe him like that. You make him sound like a piece of meat to be devoured by hungry gold diggers looking for fifteen minutes of fame.”

Chloe scowls. “That’s the point! You want people to be fixated on him. Everyone’s been paying so much attention to you ever since your little photoshoot in the mountains that they haven’t even noticed how Chat Noir has been changing physically along with you.”

“Why does that even matter?! Of course we’re changing. We were never going to stay children forever.”

“Listen. You want to know about distractions? This is the best distraction you’ve got, standing right in front of you, and willing to do whatever he needs to do to make you happy, judging from how he looks at you. He’s become a handsome young bachelor overnight. Or are you afraid to share the spotlight?”

Ladybug shakes her head. “I’m not afraid of anything. What I’m afraid of is taking your suggestions at face value and then regretting the consequences. We’re not doing this.”

Chloe shrugs. “Unless you have any better ideas, Adrien and his secret civilian companion won’t be able to step out together in public without getting noticed. But maybe that’s secretly what you want, anyway. To keep him to yourself. You’re more selfish than I thought, Ladybug.”

“Excuse me, Mademoiselle Bourgeois, for thinking your idea is ridiculous. I didn’t realize the only suggestion you could give us would be this. How can I, in good conscience, ask my own partner to willingly subject himself to the same kind of objectification I’m experiencing myself? I refuse to be a hypocrite like that.”

“Actually, it’s not the same thing at all. And, I might add, the final choice is with Chat Noir, not you. You might be the leader of your duo, but he can make his own choices.”

“I’m sure he agrees with me. Come on, mon chaton , let’s go. This was a bad idea.”

Without another word, Ladybug slips out of the window and disappears into the night.

To Chloe’s surprise, Chat Noir doesn’t immediately follow Ladybug, choosing instead to linger for a few moments before he finally leaves without saying a word.

For some reason, Chloe feels like there's something he wants to ask her, but can’t.

She doesn't quite know what to make of the feeling, and decides ultimately to ignore it.

Close to midnight, Chloe is about to fall asleep, when a dark shadow reappears outside her room.

Common sense tells her to scream, but instinct tells her that it’s someone she knows.

When she parts the curtains, she learns that her instinct was right: it’s Chat Noir, who has presumably returned to talk about whatever it was he couldn’t talk about in front of Ladybug.

She lets him in with a yawn.

“So, you’re back,” she says. “Did you change your mind about helping me with physics homework after all? It’s a little later for that.”

He snorts. “Ever the opportunist.”

“Are you really surprised?”

“Not at all,” he says, laughing in an oddly familiar way, and Chloe gets the strange feeling that she’s had a conversation like this with him before.

“But no. That’s not why I’m here.”

“I know there was something you wanted to say before you left a few hours ago. What was it?”

“You’re more observant that I realized.”

“Of course I am,” she retorts. “I’m a politician’s daughter. It’s my responsibility to be the most observant girl in the room.”

Chat Noir raises an eyebrow and his lips curl up into a grin that is just a little too smug for Chloe’s liking.

“Is that right? Interesting.”

“If there’s a joke, I’d like to be in on it,” she responds, curt once again. “Otherwise, get to the point. You’re cutting into my precious beauty sleep.”

Chat Noir nods and leans against the window.

“Ok. I have to be honest with you. It was Ladybug’s idea to come here. She genuinely wanted your help—”

“Obviously!”

“Please, let me finish.”

Chloe flushes with embarrassment. She doesn’t usually care about coming across as rude, but for some reason, this feels a little different.

“I’m sorry. Go on.”

“Even though she didn’t understand why you were suggesting what you did, I do. And I’m ready to go through with it.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The sexy photoshoot. I’m ready to do it.”

“Did you come here just to tell me that?” asks Chloe, confused.

Char Noir’s voice is steady. “No. I came here to explain why.”

And then, in a flash of green, Chat Noir is gone. In his place stands someone Chloe thought she knew well, but it’s clear that she doesn’t know at all.

“Adrichou? You’re Chat Noir?!”

Though he often feels the desire to do so, Adrien Agreste has rarely acted on impulse or instinct. Thanks to his overprotective parents, he has always followed the rules.

It’s only after becoming Chat Noir that he’s learned the benefits of taking calculated risks, and while he still doesn’t take too many when he doesn’t have the shield of his all-concealing disguise, he’s learned to listen to that inner instinct that tells him to do things his father would consider ill-advised and unreasonable.

And although he’s sure that even Ladybug would think what he’s doing is crazy, when he looks into Chloe’s eyes as she advises them on how to avoid the tabloids and what to do to keep them from finding out about their private lives, he can’t help but feel like in the process, she’s sharing details about her own life that he has always been vaguely aware of, but which he has never spoken to her about.

Because they’re not the kind of friends she likes to pretend they are, and they haven’t been, for a very long time. The Chloe Bourgeois he knew as a child is not the selfish, self-absorbed girl standing in front of him now. And yet something about the tiny sliver of honesty he can feel in her words is what compels him to share the truth about his identity with her, to help her understand why Ladybug has come to her for help, why they believe that she has the answers that nobody else will have.

Anyone else would tell him he's being irrational; and in truth, it's not like Chloe has done anything to merit his trust over the past few years. And yet instinct is telling him that this is the right thing to do.

He knows he can't reveal himself while Ladybug is still there, so he waits until she's gone. But even then, at first, he fights the instinct. It's not the right time; it's not the right moment.

He comes back at midnight, and before he can second guess himself, he de-transforms.

Ready to face the consequences, not matter what they may be.

If he's honest with himself, Adrien doesn't know what to expect from Chloe. But it's obvious that this is the last thing she was expecting herself, as she stands in front of him, jaw practically on the floor.

“You’re dating Ladybug,” she whispers. A question, not a statement. "And someone else at the same time. I don't understand."

He can only share his truth; not his lady’s. So even as he shares the deepest secret of his life, he lies.

“I would say ‘friends with benefits’ is a better way to describe the relationship between Ladybug and me," he replies. The lie falls off his tongue like silk.

Chloe shakes her head. "Of everyone I know, you're the last person I would ever have expected to have a friends with benefits relationship with anyone. I always thought you were a romantic. I guess I was wrong."

"Neither of us know each other as well as we used to, Chloe," says Adrien. "We haven't been honest with each other for a very long time."

She cuts her eyes away. "Can you blame me? I don't have much of an incentive to be honest with anyone in my life. I don't know who I can trust."

"It's not just that. It's hard to be friends with someone who acts unkind to almost everyone."

"Really? Did you come here to lecture me? Because I don't need to listen to you. I know what I'm doing, and why. Judge me all you want, but at the end of the day, both you and Ladybug came here to ask me for advice. And if you're going to criticize me after all of that, it makes you a hypocrite, not me."

Adrien shakes his head. "No, Chloe. That's not why I came here tonight. The reason I came here tonight is to talk to you about the other person in my life, because you know who she is."

"I don't understand."

"The other person in my life is Marinette Dupain-Cheng, and without your help, we can’t go anywhere together without the press questioning our every move. Since they think Ladybug and I are dating, if they see me on a date with Marinette, there will be a lot of uncomfortable questions that neither she nor I will be able to answer.”

"Why the hell would I want to help Marinette Dupain-Cheng?! " screeches Chloe. "Does she know about your secret identity too?!"

"No, she doesn't know," Adrien immediately cuts in smoothly. "Ladybug is aware of her, however, and he wants us to be able to be together in public."

“And Marinette doesn’t mind competing against a literal superheroine for your heart?”

“You’d be surprised. She has an open mind.”

Chloe narrows her eyes and considers him again. "I thought I knew you, Adrien Agreste, but it's clear that you're hiding a lot more than anyone knows. And god knows Marinette has far more patience than I would.”

"Listen," he replies. "When you were giving us that advice earlier? I know you were talking about everything that's happened with your father over the years. I know the press hasn't caught on at all, but it's obvious that you're speaking from experience when you talk about distracting the press so they don't know who you're spending time with. And I also know you haven't seen your mother in years."

"You don't know anything," Chloe hisses, eyes flashing angrily. "And don't bring my mother into this. I haven't brought yours into this discussion at all."

"I'm sorry. But the point is, I want to make sure you understand that I understand that finding privacy is incredibly difficult when you're a public figure. I've been living that struggle for years. And you know that. You know what it's like to have to pretend to be one way at school and another way at home, to put on a facade of happiness and being put together, and to keep the people who are important to you close to your chest and away from public view."

"What's your point?"

"My point is, that's how Marinette is for me. She's...she's precious to me. I don't want her to get hurt. I don't want anyone to get hurt. Not my lady, not Marinette, not my family...and I needed you to understand why this matters to me on multiple levels. And if it takes a racy photoshoot as Chat Noir to get the heat off Ladybug and attention off me as Adrien Agreste, then I'm willing to do it."

Chloe presses her lips together and frowns.

"It was different when I thought Chat Noir was someone else. Now that I know that he's you, I don't think it's the best idea, Adrichou. What if someone else finds out? What will your father say if he finds out?"

"Don't worry about that. If he hasn't found out who I am in the past three years, he's not about to discover my secret identity anytime soon. But I have to do this for Marinette and My Lady."

Chloe rolls her eyes. "You can't just pose for a sexy photoshoot to protect your girlfriend from the press. You have to have some sort of reason."

"Come on, I'm a superhero in a skintight black catsuit. I haven't leveraged this at all. I'm sure the public is just waiting to see my wild side, now that I'm a handsome young bachelor, as you put it," replies Adrien with a smirk.

"You know, I've seen video of when I was akumatized as Antibug, and I'm pretty sure I called you lame. I still stand by that statement."

Adrien grins. "Maybe. But I still think you should get me a shoot in the raciest magazine in Paris."

"Excuse me? Do I look like an agent to you? Schedule your own photoshoot!"

"Shame. I was under the impression you were connected to everyone in Paris. But I guess I can ask someone else to book me for a shoot. Maybe Nino can help me. I'm sure he'd love to help one of the coolest superheroes in Paris."

"Nino Lahiffe is a hipster and wouldn't be able to identify a single magazine that actually mattered if he tried."

"I suppose I could ask Alya to feature me on the Ladyblog as well. I'm sure she wouldn't mind."

"Absolutely not. If you want to do this effectively, you can't go through a blog , you have to go through a legitimate publication."

"Wow, Chloe, you know so much."

"Of course I do. This is my bread and butter. How else am I supposed to help my father navigate the nasty world of the press?"

"So you'll help me?"

"Ugh. Fine. Yes."