18. Chapter 18

Disclaimer: I do not own Miraculous Ladybug or any other copyrighted material.

Lucky Us

By: Princess Kitty1

Chapter 18

Marinette woke up the next morning with her left arm slung above her head, completely numb. She groaned, used her right arm to drag it down, and let it flop to her side, useless. A quick glance at her skylight told her the day would be gray, but not rainy. She felt around with her good hand until she found her cell phone. She turned it on. Her left arm began to tingle as she waited for her lock screen to appear.

Part of her wanted to believe that she'd dreamed her fight with Chat Noir, and that when she opened her inbox she'd find his usual chipper greeting and none of the unpleasantness of yesterday. But judging by the amount of dread currently braiding her stomach into a professional grade knot, she doubted that would be the case. She unlocked the phone and tapped on the email icon.

Nope. The fight had definitely happened.

Marinette whined. It wasn't her first time fighting with Chat Noir, but the misery that came in the wake of it left her feeling like a hundred-pound sack of crap. She sighed. Considered apologizing.

But I might have a thing for her.

She sat up. Her sleeping arm thwacked against her side as she pushed herself off the bed and came down from the loft. Whatever. She had doll clothes to ship. Business emails to answer. A whole day ahead of her to spend however she wanted.

And Chat Noir's crush had nothing to do with her.

x.x.x

Adrien lay on his back, his cell phone held above his head. Three new texts. A couple of voicemails. A hundred new messages in his business inbox. No new messages for Chat Noir.

He sighed. So much for hoping his argument with Ladybug had been nothing more than a bad dream.

He turned his head and found Plagg curled up on the pillow beside him. Adrien got up slowly, not wanting to disturb him, and made his way to the bathroom. It wasn't the first time he'd fought with Ladybug, and it probably wouldn't be the last, but as he grabbed his toothbrush he couldn't help thinking that something was different about this argument. That Ladybug's anger had nothing to do with him playing the victim.

If you're going to like someone else, then like her. And don't bother me about it.

Adrien stared desolately at his toothbrush. Ladybug wasn't the kind of person who kicked others when they were down, but she was the kind of person who turned petulant when her feelings were hurt.

He'd hurt her feelings. She would never admit it to him, but the truth was as plain as day. Adrien smeared toothpaste on his brush and stuck it in his mouth, wishing he could be happy about the implications of Ladybug's irritation. He couldn't. He wanted nothing more than to apologize, to make her feel better, to take back everything he'd said and profess her his one and only love.

But he couldn't do that, either. Like it or not, his feelings for Marinette were there to stay, and he'd have to deal with it. But at least he didn't have to deal with it alone.

Adrien showered, dressed, and tried not to check his phone every five minutes to see if Ladybug had emailed him. He refilled Plagg's food bowl on his way out. The Gorilla waited for him out front with the car running. Since the Dupain-Chengs were closed for the month, Adrien had a back-up bakery that Chloe swore was almost as good, though they both agreed that nothing could top the service and quality of Tom and Sabine's.

When they arrived at Le Grand Paris, Chloe stood outside in a striped top, a pair of white jeans held up by a studded belt, her favorite yellow jacket, and Adrien's sunglasses perched on top of her head. The look she gave him when she slid into the car beside him could best be summarized as unamused.

"I'm not sorry," Adrien said. He leaned in to kiss her cheek, then pulled the sunglasses off her head and tucked them into his shirt collar. "You and Nino are my best friends, so you're just going to have to suck it up."

"I wasn't going to complain," Chloe said, her tone defensive.

"You were complaining with your eyes," Adrien told her. She grunted and stuck her phone out for a selfie. He held up two fingers behind her head. She shoved him away. "I have to say I'm proud of you, Chlo. You haven't partied since before I left."

Chloe took another selfie, then lowered her arm. "I'm saving it up for a special occasion," she said. "What's up with you this morning? You look enlightened."

Adrien blinked. "Do I?"

"Well, decidedly less stupid than usual." She tucked her phone into her purse. "Did you finally wise up to the fact that Marinette likes you?"

"Marinette doesn't like me," Adrien said, to which Chloe snorted. "And no amount of snorting will change my opinion." It would be nice if Marinette liked him, he thought, but he wasn't about to get his hopes up. She wanted to end their fake dating, not prolong it. And now that she'd stopped being nervous around him, it was easy to see that Chloe had misinterpreted her shyness. Marinette was his friend. She enjoyed being his friend—he supposed, given that she wanted him to keep coming around.

The car pulled up to Nino's apartment building. Chloe climbed over Adrien's lap and pushed him into the middle seat, then crossed her arms and looked determinedly out the window. Adrien rolled his eyes as Nino dropped into the seat beside him.

"Nice to see you too, Chloe," Nino said.

"Please don't start," Adrien warned him. He'd forgotten how exhausting it was to deal with the both of them at the same time. "Trust me when I say I wouldn't have put any of us through this if it could be avoided. As it stands, I needed my best friends."

Chloe turned her head and stared at him.

Nino's jaw dropped. "Dude. Are you sick?"

"You're hilarious," Adrien deadpanned.

"Sorry, it's just that usually by the time you ask us for help, you're in deep shit. You'll have to forgive me if I'm a little suspicious."

"Can we wait until we've eaten before we have this conversation?" he said. Nino shrugged and focused his attention on his phone. Chloe stared at Adrien a bit longer, then turned her gaze back to the window. Adrien checked his email. Nothing new. He put his phone away.

When they arrived at the bakery, they found it crowded. Nino secured them a seat while Adrien and Chloe ordered, and once they'd had a few bites of their pastries—which were not as good as Marinette's, and that fact settled between them like a fourth guest at the table—Adrien took a deep breath and leaned forward to get their attention.

"There's something I haven't told you two," he said. Chloe sighed. Adrien looked at her. "What?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking that if you were coming out of the closet, you wouldn't have chosen this location." She waved her hand at him. "Go on."

Adrien's eyes narrowed. "Anyway…" He tapped on the side of his dessert plate with his thumb. "I'm going to ask that you please reserve judgment and questions until I'm finished speaking."

"Can't make any promises, bro," Nino said.

Adrien shifted his glare to him. "Last year," he began, "a message arrived at my private email address. The one that I use to run my Twitter account and don't give out to anyone. You can imagine my surprise—and panic. But it turned out to be a mistake. Whoever it was that sent the email had been trying to get in touch with someone else, and got me instead." He drummed on the dessert plate faster. "Her screen name was Ladybug, and for whatever reason, I ended up talking to her all day… and all day the next day… and all day the day after that." He smiled a bit at the memory of that first week, the excitement of talking to someone new. "We've been emailing each other ever since. It was never anything too personal, just random anecdotes about our day, or neutral topics. Ladybug established early on that we shouldn't share our identities or meet in person, so I have no idea who she is, and she has no idea who I am.

"But because I am an idiot, as Chloe is so fond of telling me, I kind of fell in love with her despite knowing nothing about her besides her favorite color, the fact that she's a designer, and that she used to be a yo-yo champion when she was a kid." Adrien paused to let that sink in, then plowed on. "I don't make a secret of it, either. I've been flirting with her for months, and she shoots me down every single time. Can't really blame her for it; there are all kinds of whackos on the internet these days. So nothing's changed between us. We remain best friends and that's that.

"Now here's where it gets messy." Adrien didn't dare look at Chloe and Nino. He kept his eyes on his half-eaten Danish and hoped they would go easy on him. "A couple weeks ago, Ladybug told me to do something to shake myself out of the funk I was in. I happened to be hungry at the time, so I decided to go to Tom and Sabine's bakery. After hours." He let out a nervous laugh. "Marinette not only put up with me that first day, but encouraged me to keep coming back if I needed to get away from my life for a while. Which I do. Frequently. As you both know. So that became my Tuesday and Thursday afternoon routine. Then Nino, you developed a crush on Alya, and I'm going to ask you to forgive me here because I convinced Marinette that the best way to get the two of you together was to pretend we were dating and invite you out with us. Funny thing is, I now have a very real crush on Marinette, she isn't remotely interested in me, and when I told Ladybug that I have feelings for someone else, she got mad." Adrien finally lifted his eyes. "And… that's the situation, as of yesterday."

Chloe stared at him. Nino stared at him. Silence occupied the table.

Then Nino burst out laughing.

Adrien buried his face in his hands. When he looked up again, Chloe's expression had changed to one that mirrored Adrien's whenever he expected something from his father and got let down—a combination of "why do I bother?" and "I can't believe I got my hopes up for this."

Nino, meanwhile, had tears streaming down his cheeks. "Dude," he cried, "Adrien, oh my God." And then he collapsed into hysterics again.

Adrien gave Chloe an exasperated look. "Can you please stop staring at me like that?"

"I honestly wish I could," she replied.

Adrien pushed his chair back from the table. "That's it, I'm leaving."

"Wait!" Nino grabbed him by the wrist and took several deep breaths. "Aww man, I have a cramp. Hold on." He wiped the tears from his eyes. "Bro, I love you but how stupid can you get?"

"Thank you for putting that into words," Chloe said.

"You're welcome," Nino replied. "You think Marinette isn't remotely interested in you? Adrien. Marinette has a huge crush on you. Like, bigger-than-the-Eiffel-Tower huge."

Chloe reached for her coffee mug. "I tried to tell him that, but he didn't believe me…"

"Trust us. This is straight from her best friend's mouth. You coming to Tom and Sabine's was the highlight of Marinette's day. She was just too shy to talk to you." Nino laughed out loud again. "Man, I would have paid money to see the look on her face when you showed up at the bakery that first time!"

Chloe added nothing. She merely shook her head and took a refined sip of her coffee.

Adrien stared at them, waiting for the punchline of the joke, the "gotcha!" moment. But when Nino continued to snicker and Chloe kept looking at him like she'd finally given up all hope of living, their words began to sink in. Truly sink in.

Marinette had a crush on him. A bigger-than-the-Eiffel-Tower crush. That was why she'd readily agreed to fake date him, why she kept feeding him when she didn't have to. He thought back on the past year, of all the times he'd seen Marinette at the bakery, hiding behind her parents or ducking into the kitchen the moment he walked in. How she'd screamed when he surprised her, and stammered and blushed through their brief conversations.

Because she had a crush on him.

Adrien blinked. "I…" His face felt warm. She had a crush on him. He picked up the rest of the pastry and crammed it into his mouth, just to have something to do.

"Now he believes it," Nino said to Chloe.

Adrien swallowed the pastry. "Okay," he said, "okay. Let's pretend for a moment that what you're saying is true."

"What we're saying is true," Chloe verified.

"What do I do about it?"

Nino leaned as close to Chloe as he was willing to get. "Is he serious?"

Chloe, whose good humor tended to last longer when she dealt with Adrien, exploded. "For crying out loud, do we have to do everything for you? Go to Tom and Sabine's, knock on the door, and when Marinette answers, ask her out on a date!" She pounded her fist against the table. "Dear God in heaven, why did I have to get stuck with the stupidest boy in Paris for a best friend? Was it a charity case?" She looked at the ceiling. "Did You feel bad for giving him only half a brain before You sent him to Earth?"

Nino nodded in her direction. "As much as I hate to say it, Chloe's right. You need to ask Marinette out. Today if you can manage it."

Adrien panicked. Ask Marinette on a date? Today? It was too soon! "But what about Ladybug?" he asked.

"Ladybug is probably some three hundred pound, middle aged farmer living in the countryside!" Chloe snarled. "You said you didn't give this person any of your personal information, right?"

"I don't think—"

"You sure as hell don't!"

"—that Ladybug's a man, Chlo."

Nino drained the last of his coffee and held up a hand for silence. "If I understand correctly," he said, "you've been throwing yourself at this Ladybug girl for months, yeah?" Adrien nodded. "And she hasn't returned your feelings?" Adrien nodded again, slower this time. Nino shrugged. "There's your answer. If you keep holding out for a girl who doesn't want to meet you in person, well… Marinette doesn't strike me as the kind of woman who'll wait for you forever."

Adrien leaned back and stared out the bakery window. Ladybug wasn't going to change her mind. He knew that. As much as he wanted to believe that her buying him lunch, leaving physical evidence of her existence, meant that she'd opened up a little more to the idea of their meeting in person… he couldn't keep up that line of thinking. He'd dangle on that thread of hope for years.

And meanwhile, there was Marinette, holding his hand in a movie theater, sending him memes, sitting across the table from him with her hopeful smile.

"You're right," he said.

Chloe threw her arms in the air. "Finally!"

Nino clapped Adrien's shoulder. "She'll say yes for sure. And then we can go on a real double date," he said. "And if the demon in Chloe ever gets exorcised, she can find a guy who tolerates her and join us."

"Piss off," Chloe snarled.

"See? She likes the idea."

Adrien laughed at that. But even as the conversation turned from hooking Adrien up with Marinette to demanding to know why he'd kept a whole other human being secret from them, he couldn't shake the heaviness that settled over him. In his mind, he understood that asking Marinette out was the next logical step.

His heart, however, drove him to kept glancing at his silent cell phone.

x.x.x

Marinette stepped out of the post office and cringed as the humidity struck her with the force of a brick wall. These are truly the dog days of summer. She'd have to find out when the dog days ended so she could stay indoors for the rest of them.

It was a little past noon, and Marinette had already accomplished a small list of chores: paying bills, shipping doll clothes, fixing the bakery door's squeaking hinges, and getting in some exercise. She'd resolved to dedicate a few hours to her yo-yo; the repetitive motion would bring some peace to her troubled mind.

She knew she ought to apologize to Chat Noir. No amount of annoyance justified the way she'd treated him the day before. He'd only tried to do the right thing. How was he supposed to know that acting like a gentleman would only worsen the blow of his declaration?

But I might have a thing for her.

Marinette tightened her grip on her purse strap. What had she expected? She'd been turning Chat Noir down for months, too focused on Adrien and too scared of another Nathanael incident to take his feelings seriously. It made perfect sense for him to move on, to give his heart to someone he might actually have a chance with.

She walked the familiar path back to the bakery and wondered what Chat Noir's cute acquaintance might be like. Was she a tall, buxom beauty? Or a short, mousy little thing who brought him coffee at his desk and made him laugh when work dragged on? His flair for the dramatic aside, Chat Noir had a good head on his shoulders. If another woman had managed to catch his eye, she must have been something special. Intelligent. Pretty. A great sense of humor.

Whoever she was, Marinette thought, she got to see Chat Noir face-to-face. She got to talk to him, laugh with him, inhabit the same space as him. She got to feel his body heat.

Well, she definitely doesn't have a crush on me.

And she was blind to it all. To her, Chat Noir was just another person. Everything that Marinette thought special about him meant nothing to his cute acquaintance, and the knowledge of that infuriated her. Why should Ladybug, who Chat Noir claimed to love, have to share a space in his heart with a woman who didn't want to be there?

Marinette reached the bakery and fished her key out of her pocket. Stuck it in the doorknob. Leaned in until her forehead touched the warm surface of the door, and stared at her own two feet, her chipping red nail polish.

Then she dug into her purse for her phone.

x.x.x

LadybugRE: SummerJust now

Hey.

I'm sorry for being such an ass yesterday.

You didn't deserve that.

x.x.x

Chat NoirRE: Summer4 minutes ago

All is forgiven, buginette. You know I'm incapable of staying mad at you.

x.x.x

LadybugRE: SummerJust now

Ugh, I wish you would stay mad at me.

It'd teach me a lesson.

x.x.x

Chat NoirRE: SummerJust now

Fine, then. I'm mad at you. Don't talk to me. Who do you think you are, stomping all over my little feline heart, then acting like you're entitled to a do-over? I only have six of my nine lives left. I can't afford to let myself be treated like crap.

x.x.x

LadybugRE: SummerJust now

I thought you had five lives left?

x.x.x

Chat NoirRE: SummerJust now

You might be right about that.

Say, can we limit any and all future fights to once a year? I've noticed that it takes a lot out of me, which negatively affects my work performance, and I'm under way too much scrutiny to let that slip.

x.x.x

LadybugRE: SummerJust now

Fair enough.

We'll stockpile our grievances until next August and let them all out in a hideous screaming match.

I really am sorry, chaton.

You were just trying to be nice.

x.x.x

Chat NoirRE: SummerJust now

Don't sweat it, Ladybug. Did you have a nice morning?

x.x.x

LadybugRE: SummerJust now

No.

But the rest of my day is looking up. :-)

x.x.x

Chat NoirRE: SummerJust now

Heh. Mine too.

To Be Continued

A/N: I finished this chapter in one day. One day. One. Day. Because next time on Lucky Us, the stuff will hit the fan in a big way.

I'm still on hiatus, btw. Some chapters just flow like water when you're eager to get to the one after them. As usual, direct your screaming to the review box below!