Chapter Text
It’s hard to tell which darkness is up and which darkness is down. Amidst the silent, black foliage of the rest of the Jardin, the street lamps almost look like stars; amidst the low, ashy clouds, the curve of the earth almost looks like a gazebo.
Also she's really drunk.
She keeps glancing down at Chat Noir and laughing, the kind of laughing that makes you feel stupid because there's nothing really that funny, which just makes you laugh even more. He’s being boring and responsible and walking towards the music pavillion instead of taking his baton, and she’d almost think he was sober if it wasn't for the wavering stumble in his step, clutching his cute little bottle of rosé for dear life.
Wait, where's her Hennessy?
Oh. Right. In her hand.
Ladybug laughs again.
She skitters to a halt just outside the gazebo, her sudden landing making Chat Noir crash right into her back. They both wobble for a moment, staggering comically towards then away from the edge of the pavillion, before he wraps his arms around her and holds the two of them steady.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Ready,” she says.
He lets go. She immediately trips over the gazebo.
Their laughter joins together loud enough to rival any akuma attack.
Once under the gazebo she helps him up, and they hold hands for extra security as they find their seating on the benches. Ladybug takes a burning sip of Hennessy, shivering at the rawness in her throat.
Next to her, Chat Noir plays with the jagged foil peeling back on his rosé.
“Something on your mind, chaton?” she asks. The syllables jump around in her mouth, like cognac-filled grasshoppers.
He lifts his head a little, enough for a white diamond of moonlight to stamp itself across his cheek. “I want to tell you who I am.”
A hard weight drops in her belly, like the alcohol had suddenly solidified on its way down. “You… what?”
The sudden silence makes her ears ring. She’s not even sure if she feels drunk anymore, the way the sharpness turns all the way up on her senses making her feel woozy from the force of it.
“I know we haven’t talked about it since we were kids,” he says. “But I’ve thought about it. Every single day. Every time I thought that the battle we were fighting might’ve been the last. And, well, now it finally was, we’re finally done …” He trails off, like the last part of his sentence drifted away before he could hold onto it. “Sorry. Maybe I’m still on that victory high. I just… really, really don’t want us to drift away.”
She bites her bottom lip, tasting the drink in her own breath. She knew this was coming since the final battle last week, since Hawk Moth had renounced his own Miraculous to them, since he disappeared into anonymity with the promise that they’d never hear from him again. Wasn’t that what they’d been waiting for for five years now? Wasn’t that what everyone in the Miracle Team had been waiting for? Maybe bringing peace back to Paris was their superhero priority, but surely that wasn’t the only thing keeping them going. It’s only natural that their victory would lead to their reveal, and, well, Chat Noir knows her better than anyone. It was just a matter of time before he picked up on her evasiveness.
“Chat… listen.” She presses her fingers into the neck of the bottle, watching the moonlight play in the foil. “I want to tell you who I am, too — I do . It’s just… I mean, it’s just such a big change, and…”
“Oh. No, I understand.”
“Chat, come on.”
“I’m not mad.” He smiles at her, and it looks genuine, so genuine, his smiles always look genuine when he smiles at her. “Really. You need time, and that’s okay.”
Her stomach prickles. This can’t be the end of the conversation. Not when she knows how much he wants this — God, not when she knows how much she wants this, too — when they’ve already spent almost half their lives with that tight coil of indefiniteness, of never knowing whether they’ll ever know each other, buried inside their friendship.
“What if we do it tomorrow?” she says.
“Tomorrow?” he asks.
A thrill goes through her. “Y-Yeah.” Could this actually be happening? “Yeah. Tomorrow. We can go somewhere nice, put our best clothes on under our costumes, make a whole event out of it. We… we deserve to make it something special, don’t we?”
Not even the haze of alcohol could hide the softness in his eyes. “We do,” he says. “Yeah. We’ll make it really special.”
The prospect of revealing still impales her with anxiety, but this helps, somehow, knowing that they’ll have time to prepare. She hadn’t realised what a relief it could be not to worry about mid-battle reveals anymore. Not just because of the danger it posed to their duties, but also because, well, she didn’t want something like that to be there and gone like it was nothing. She wants the moment they reveal their identities to be one that stays imprinted in her mind forever, that feels like a justification for every close call, every misunderstanding, every argument that they’ve ever had, and the trust that got them through all of it, a moment that feels like the real victory, more than taking a silly little jewel from some guy.
She also would like to not be drunk enough to be calling the literal Miraculous of Transmission ‘some jewel’.
They’re going to do this. They’re really going to do this. The thrills don’t stop, like waves of her Miraculous Ladybugs skating through her bloodstream, and she’s suddenly so excited that she takes another swig from her Hennessy. They’re celebrating two things tonight — the end of Hawk Moth, and the start of their new beginning.
“You know the first thing I want us to do after we reveal?” he says.
“What?”
“Go drinking with you. I’m so sure that all your tolerance comes from your costume.”
She barks a laugh, one she knows she finds embarrassing when she’s sober. “Excuse me, I’m a professional at holding my alcohol. I’ve been outdrinking my father since I was eighteen.”
“You drink with your father?”
“He taught me all there is to know.”
“You’re insane.”
“I think I’m extremely sexy actually.”
“...Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
She looks at him. He takes a nonchalant sip of his rosé.
Considering how much of his bottle he’s finished, he’s been surprisingly lucid all night. She assumed that maybe wine just doesn’t do it for him, but she’s beginning to wonder if he’s a little further gone than she thought.
A rule she instated after starting uni was just to not get drunk with other people. She loved her friends, truly, and she would gladly hang out with her first-year flatmates into the early hours of the morning with zero qualms, but, Jesus Christ, did they get annoying when they drank. They were loud and stupid and always insisted on arguing with bouncers, which meant her angry face is on the no-entry list for so many clubs she’s just given up on nightlife.
She’d waived that rule for tonight, because, well, it’s a special occasion, and she figured she could handle Chat Noir being a little sillier than usual after years of him having to hold it back for the sake of battles. But… It seems like the silliness seems to take a backseat when he’s drunk.
She thinks of the way he held her before she fell, the way he only let go once she said she was ready.
In fact, if he’s more of anything, he’s… sweeter.
She, unfortunately, is not.
“ Chattttt .” She leans her head against his shoulder. “I love you so much.”
Bottle still up to his lips, he laughs. He curls up an arm and pats her head. “Love you, too, my Buginette.”
“No, really.” She tilts her head up to look at him. The motion momentarily makes her vision swim. “I really love you so much. One day you’re going to get a girlfriend and I’m going to have to fight her because she needs to know that I’m the only one who’s allowed to love you the most.”
“A girlfriend?” He snorts. “Who said I’m gonna get a girlfriend?”
“...Or a boyfriend?” When he makes a face, she rolls her eyes. “You’re gonna end up with someone . You seriously want me to believe the first thing you wanted to do after kicking Hawk Moth’s ass wasn’t running off and getting married? Popping out a few mini Chat Noirs?”
He pokes out his lip in thought, swirling his pink wine. “I used to want that,” he says. “But… I don't know. After a certain point things like getting married and having a family didn't feel that realistic anymore.”
“What? Why wouldn't it be realistic?” she says.
“Well… the only person I imagined that with was you.” He smiles sheepishly. “Sorry. I don’t mean that it's a big deal. I mean, we were young, you were my closest friend, and I had a huge crush on you. I guess I just heaped a lot of my hopes for the future onto us.”
Her face feels hot in a way that’s separate from the alcohol. It hasn't even been that long since the fusillade of roses and love confessions and sneakily planned cinema dates stopped — two years, three years, max? Obviously she knows he's over her, but remembering the time still makes her heart twist. Of course she gets it. Maybe if it hadn't been for their identities, she could've even been on the same page. Really, what were her feelings for Adrien if not her own attempt at grasping for some certainty? Wouldn't it have been just as easy for those feelings to have been for Chat, given that superheroing didn't ruin it with that big fat question mark?
It's a route she never let herself go down before, the possibilities of what could've been had they been allowed to know who they were. Would he have still fallen in love with her? Would she still have pushed him away in the name of duty? She can't confidently say yes to that, and maybe that's why she stayed steadfastly clear from this territory of thinking, when she’s sober enough to stay steadfastly clear of anything, at least. Not because falling for Chat Noir is scary — she can't imagine there being anyone safer to fall in love with. But because the stitching of their friendship was decided so fast, so early on, that this far down the line of their partnership, how can something so drastic shift between them without having to pick out every single seam?
Nausea ripples through her. Instinctively, she grabs onto Chat Noir’s arm to steady herself.
“You… you don't need to apologise for that,” she says. She plays it off by sliding her hand through his elbow. “Don’t worry, chaton. If push comes to shove, I’ll put a few cute little babies in you myself.”
He lets out a surprised yet amused snort. “I would really rather you didn't. But thanks.” Taking his elbow away, he wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer on the bench. The gazebo beams splay out like a star above them.
She's not sure why she does it when she does. Maybe it's the way the cognac recedes in her bloodstream, going from a scalding burn to a pulsing, liquid warmth. Maybe it’s how paradoxically safe she feels right now with him, outside in the middle of the night in a gazebo, that same sensation of affection at trusting someone so much that she gets when she and Alya walk home alone together at three o’clock in the morning. Maybe it's the realisation that finally, finally they can be normal friends, that after tonight there will be no more running off before transformations run out, or only knowing each other’s friends by epithets, or having to celebrate outside in a sleeping city, because they didn't know each other’s addresses to spend it at home.
Either way, when she leans up and pecks his lips, it feels like the most natural thing in the world.
He pulls back, blinking, like a cat that just dipped its nose in water. “Why’d you do that?” he asks.
“Dunno. ‘Cus I wanted to.”
He snickers, his lips pinching cutely, revealing a sliver of teeth in his smile. “We don't kiss, though.”
“Okay? We also don't get drunk together in the middle of the night. I don't see your point.”
He laughs, shaking his head. His gaze skitters down to her mouth. “Can I try?”
She shrugs. “Sure.”
He leans in, and brushes his lips over hers. It's so quick she doesn't even close her eyes.
He looks down at her excitedly.
“Happy?” she asks.
He nods.
“You can do it again, if you want.”
“Really?” he beams. “I’ve never kissed one of my friends before.”
“Seriously? That's so lame.”
Instead of replying, he dips his head and kisses her again. He's in no rush, this time. A sweet, spicy melange alchemises between their mouths, his rosé mixing with her Hennessy.
She pulls back first. She rubs her bottom lip of any wetness before he notices.
He snickers. “You should see your face.”
She furrows her brow. “My face is fine.”
“You look like this.” He pulls his eyes open wide, looking down at her like a scandalised maiden from some period drama.
“Shut up!”
“I bet you've never kissed anyone. That's the real reason you wanted to keep our identities a secret. You didn't want me to know you’re twenty and unkissed.”
“I’m so not unkissed! You're unkissed!”
“How? I literally just kissed you.”
Scrunching up her face, she grabs him, yanks him down, and kisses him hard.
She wonders, briefly, what she'll think of this tomorrow, sober and presumably revealed. Sure, she’s shared a few tipsy pecks with Alya and Alix and Kagami, but this is definitely a line she's never crossed. But, still, if it was going to be weird, wouldn't it have felt weird? This doesn't feel weird. Maybe it's different with someone who's saved your life a gazillion times.
Plus she's not just gonna let him call her unkissed . That's such a lame label.
She pulls back, making sure the last kiss is extra hard. Her lips tingle, like the cognac in her blood reached her gums.
The smell of fermented berry comes off his breath. He's oddly silent, looking at her, chewing on his flushed lips and fidgeting with his bottle.
“Oh, no way,” she says. “Don't tell me that turned you on.”
“What! No!” His hands pull the bottle tighter in his lap.
“It did!” She guffaws, maybe a little inappropriately. She grabs onto his arm again, trying not to fall backwards. “Oh my God. No way. Wait, hang on.” She puts her Hennessy down next to her and in an awkward maneuever, clambers over to straddle his hips. “Alright, here. Let me repay my debt.” Leaning in, she tries to kiss him again.
“Wait— Ladybug.” He puts a hand on her shoulder and holds her back. “Is this… I mean, is this a great idea? Won't it be awkward when we want to reveal tomorrow?”
“Trust me.” She grins at him. “Shouldn’t our identities go out with a bang?”
With the way his expression melts, she realises that, yes, Chat is definitely, definitely as drunk as she is.
“Well, if you insist …”
He grabs her thighs and flips her onto her back on the bench. She laughs loudly. The curve of the gazebo almost looks like the earth.