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Marinette finds the apartment listing in the newspaper a week before she starts at Parsons Paris.
ROOMMATE NEEDED: Room to rent in 2-bed, 2-bath flat along Rue Thérèse. Offers view of Jardin de Palais Royal and 2 minutes from subway/bus stop. Affordable pricing, male roommate currently. High risk for akuma attacks and visits from resident supervillains. Interested parties, call +33-X-XX-XX-XX-XX for more information .
It’s been a few months since she graduated from Lycée Saint-Cecilia, and while most of her friends have left for university already, Marinette still wonders whether she’ll actually make it to design school. Akuma activity has picked up significantly over the summer, and Hawkmoth has triangulated a section of the city where he thinks Ladybug lives… and he’s not exactly far off.
The brimming fear of him discovering where she resides is suffocating and overwhelming. She’s putting her parents’ lives and business on the line each time she comes home after a battle, and she’s not sure how long she can keep it up. Marinette has known for some time that it’s probably best to relocate. This advertisement is simply the tipping point.
Besides—a roommate already used to akuma activity seems like the perfect solution. No one would question if Ladybug was in the area. What are the chances that this situation could go horribly, horribly wrong?
(Marinette really, really underestimates her bad luck sometimes.)
*
Chat Noir owns the apartment.
“Call it my base of operations,” he tells her when she comes over to tour the apartment, running a hand through his tousled hair with a quiet laugh. “I needed a place to lay low sometimes, and it turns out I saved the landlord once, and he gave me the place at a great rate.”
“So why do you need a roommate?” Marinette asks as she looks around: scanning the ivory white walls and popcorn ceiling, the cream carpeting and small adjourning balcony that will work great for her gardening.
“I don’t actually use the place that much.” Chat Noir leads her down the small hallway towards the second bedroom, which is a quaint and moderate size. It even has enough room for her sprawl of designs and equipment that a collection might require. “It’s just getting hard to take care of and figured someone might get more use out of it than me.”
She furrows her brows in confusion as she turns back to him, very pleased with what she’s seen of the place so far. “Isn’t your name on the lease like a neon bullseye for Hawkmoth to aim at?”
“There’s a reason I put a warning on the advertisement,” he says.
“Why not just invite Ladybug to move in?”
That makes Chat Noir laugh. “My lady likes her privacy, and so do I.”
She can only nod numbly as she circles through the apartment a few more times before taking her leave. It takes Marinette two whole days to come to terms with the realization that Chat Noir owns an apartment and another three before she actually proceeds with the idea of moving in with him. Of all the people she thought that “male roommate” could be, her charismatic partner never even cracked the top 100 on the list.
Somehow, she finds it the best solution to her ever present problem. If people know Chat Noir lives around here, then Ladybug’s presence won’t be as surprising.
(It’s still a bad idea. Like a super bad idea. Like a brilliant, ultimately stupid idea.)
Marinette signs the lease anyway.
*
Marinette moves in the day before her classes start at Parsons, dragging totes and boxes up the three flights of stairs with Adrien, Nino, and Alya behind her.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Alya asks again, echoing the same sentiments as her parents and half of Paris.
Marinette simply shrugs because it’s been four years since she took up the mantle of Ladybug, and this is probably the lowest risk category she’s been in since collége. What better place to hide than right where Hawkmoth might expect Ladybug to be—at her partner’s side?
“There’s going to be so many akumas,” Nino tells her as he starts to unpack her kitchenware and place it into cabinets. “Either holding you hostage, trying to kill you, or trying to be you.”
Dropping a tote bag onto the table, Marinette flips it upside down and dumps out the contents. Multi-colored canisters clang and roll around the wooden surface, a crescendo of chaos that seems to fit the absurdity of the situation. “I have a lot of wasp spray,” she says in response.
Adrien knocks his knuckles against the kitchen counter, green eyes bubbling with barely hidden mirth. “I like the granite.
“I know . Isn’t it nice?!”
*
The first akuma comes the next morning, the purple and black butterfly fluttering harmlessly through the sunlit air.
It slips through her bedroom window before her alarm rings, and Marinette reaches over to her bedside table and pulls out a can of wasp spray. She aims and fires with her eyes still closed, hair tousled from a restless night in a new place.
Muffled squeals reverberate through her bedroom. Marinette tosses the can back on her nightstand and blinks blearily down at the twitching insect on her carpet.
“Before breakfast is a sacred time,” she whispers lowly, knowing that Hawkmoth can hear her fine wherever he’s hiding. “Don’t even think about trying that again.”
*
The next day, the akuma comes at 7:01 AM.
Marinette squishes the akuma with the back of her hairbrush, standing in front of her bathroom with a nasty case of bedhead and toothbrush hanging limply from her mouth.
“I take it that you don’t need any help?” Chat Noir asks from the doorway, not even trying to hide his Cheshire grin.
She simply glares at him through the mirror.
(Akumas maintain a strict AfterNoon™ policy after that.)
*
“So how’s the roommate situation going?” Ladybug asks Chat Noir after patrol one night, sitting on the lip of a rooftop and staring out over the slumbering city. “Anyone try to maim or seriously injure her yet?”
Chat Noir simply smiles over the rim of his cold brew. “You don’t trust me to protect my friends, bugaboo?”
“ No ,” she insists. “I just don’t trust Hawkmoth.”
“Fair enough.” He kicks his legs through the air, letting his metallic boots click against the bricklay siding of the building they’re camped out on. “I think it’s going well. Mariette’s really great, and it helps that I know she won’t try to murder me in my sleep.”
It helps that I already trust her , is what he actually means, and despite the fact that trust has been the groundwork of their relationship since its conception, the prospect still takes her by surprise. Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Chat Noir were never supposed to meet—let alone develop their own friendship—but she was crazy enough to reach out, and he was crazy enough to accept, and now here they are.
“She sounds cool,” is the only thing she can say in response.
“She’s amazing ,” Chat Noir clarifies with a laugh. “She’s crazy, strong, and brilliant. I couldn’t ask for a better roommate. If we don’t step up our game, m’lady, I think she could defeat Hawkmoth all on her own.”
Ladybug chokes as she swallows a sip of her hot cocoa. “I’d love to see that happen.” Because wouldn’t that be fucking something.
He presses his lips into a thin line, his smile fading ever so slightly. “I still worry about her though.”
Cocking her head to the side, she levels him with a curious stare. “Then why ask her to move in with you? Why ask anyone ?”
Here, he shrugs and his response breaks her heart. “I guess I just got lonely.”
Silence lingers, long and heavy until it’s nearly a tangible tension that hangs between them. After a few more moments, she murmurs, “I still think you’re both stupid,” and downs the rest of her drink in a few gulps.
Her mouth burns something fierce, but it does just enough to cover the burning on her cheeks.
*
Hawkmoth tries to kidnap her seven times before Marinette invests in pepper spray as well.
Everyone learns their lesson pretty quickly after that.
*
“It’s official,” Chat Noir says, dropping a pile of DVDs on the coffee table in front of Marinette one night a few weeks into her first semester. “We’re making Friday night an annual movie night.”
“You know annual means ‘once a year’, right?” she asks, tilting her head to the side to level him with a curious gaze.
“We’re making Friday our weekly movie night.”
“Better,” Marinette teases him and closes her book with a small smile. She leans forward and looks over the collection of movies he’s amassed and pouts. “None of these are even good.”
“You haven’t seen any of them!” Chat Noir protests and also drops the bag of Chinese takeout that he’d gotten from the small restaurant across the street next to the movies. “That’s the point of this tradition we’re starting: so you can make your way through the classics that are Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars.”
She starts to pull cartons from the bag as he rambles on, trying to fight the blossoming smile that threatens to break across her face, and hands him his Lo Mein and steamed vegetables before settling down with her own batch of sesame chicken. It’s still weird to her to see Chat Noir outside of their hero lives and in her personal living quarters— their home —eating takeout and wearing green fuzzy socks.
(She’s not sure if she’ll ever get used to this.)
The movie night was a simple suggestion thrown together one morning when Marinette revealed to the cat-hero that she hadn’t seen a single scene of the “most famous franchises to grace their generation”. Even though he doesn’t inhabit the halls of their shared space frequently, Chat Noir still tries to make himself known a few times a week, which includes interrupting her breakfast with requests of coffee and an omelet on most days.
“We’re going to have to fix that,” he told her the day before, and here they sit now on a Friday night with weeks’ worth of entertainment literally at her feet.
The first movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy plays out on the widescreen television, and about halfway through, a warm, heavy weight settles against Marinette’s shoulder. She stops chewing on the edge of her chopsticks and stares down at the superhero curled up beside her. Her heart aches in her chest, like Chat Noir has punched through her ribcage like flimsy tree branches and planted a seedling of somethingmore there.
This isn’t something she prepared herself for. It’s bad enough that everyone knows their roommates, and she can’t risk an akuma peering through the window and seeing them cuddled together like they’re something else .
Marinette should wake him up.
(By the time the movie is over, Marinette is curled up against Chat Noir, her ear pressed to the hollow of his throat and falling asleep to the sound of his heartbeat.
The next morning, they don’t talk about it.)
*
On a Thursday afternoon, Marinette comes home to find Hawkmoth sitting on her kitchen table with a cup of tea and plate of snickerdoodle cookies. He slides the dish towards her when she staggers forward a few steps and drops her backpack on their hardwood floors with a loud thud.
“What le fuck?” she whispers under her breath, already reaching for the baseball bat she keeps in the coat closet near the entrance of their apartment. “What do you think you’re doing here ?”
“I’m here to make you an offer, Ms. Dupain-Cheng,” comes his deep, syrupy voice that makes her think of thick honey and glaze. It’s disgusting considering she hates honey. “What are your interests in joining me in the fight against Ladybug and Chat Noir?”
Before she can open her mouth to respond, he continues with, “The position comes with benefits and 15% off Sois Sport products.” At her bewildered expression, Hawkmoth simply shrugs. “I have a sponsorship with them.”
Instead of trying to kidnap/kill her like she originally thought her archnemesis might do when he heard a civilian moved in with his sworn enemy, he offers her a job? Marinette’s voice catches in her throat, her words disappearing on the tip of her tongue, and she has to hold onto the edge of the kitchen counter so she won’t pass out.
Her brain is still trying to catch up with the sight before her, so all she can blurt out is, “Can we like not do this today? I’ve got an essay for my textiles class due tomorrow.”
Hawkmoth simply nods and finishes his cup of tea. “Here’s my card, Call me so we can schedule an appointment when you’re free.” He hands her a small cardstock with bold lettering and purple borders and takes his leave through the living room window.
( Hawkmoth Inc., a subsidiary of Agreste Fashions
It’s good to talk hawk.
+33-X-XX-XX-XX-XX )
*
Her first semester at Parsons Paris slips by in a haze of all-nighters, exams, akuma battles, and falling in love with Chat Noir. He’ll greet her in the morning most days with omelets and breakfast burritos while she waits up for him on late patrol nights when he stumbles into the kitchen with tired eyes to find her sitting on the kitchen counter with two mugs of tea beside her.
During midterms, he makes flashcards of important concepts and terms from her detailed notes and quizzes her through the mosaic-tiled shower door before class as steam wafts through the room and fogs up the bathroom mirror. Marinette buys him a whiteboard and sets it up in the corner of the living room for his akuma notes and Hawkmoth theories, which is soon consumed by thick tangles of red string and sticky notes.
(And if Hawkmoth leaves a few choice words across Chat Noir’s theory of Marc Jacobs as the butterfly villain, well… That’s not something they ever discuss.)
It’s weeks and months of time and care, learning how each other functions and finding what they can do to make their apartment feel like a home. Movie and game nights, dinners and potlucks with friends and family, secrets and confessions whispered at the dead of night as Marinette tiptoes around the one that actually matters. Casual touches that evolve into lingering stares and knowing smiles.
(Frankly, Chat Noir was once in love with Ladybug. How did Marinette not see this coming?
…But could she have planned for her own fall?)
“Thank you,” she tells him one day, pressed against his side as they sit on their balcony, curled under a heavy blanket with beanies and gloves perched upon cold bodies. “For letting me live here with you.”
Chat Noir simply smiles down at her and says, “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Marinette.”
( I love you almost falls from her lips, but at least she manages to hold that back.)
*
During finals week, Marinette is sitting in front of her dress form with scraps of fabric piled around her and gauze-ridden fingers trying to avoid stabbing themselves on her sewing needle again . Chat Noir has wisely chosen to desert the premises after she broke their coffee pot trying to cook ramen in it because she was too tired to realize it wasn’t the microwave, so Marinette’s been alone for at least thirty-seven hours, deprived of both sleep and caffeine, when Hawkmoth comes in through the window.
“Not today,” she says when she sees him, bottom lip quivering as tears well up in her eyes. “I’ve got to finish my design project by 8 AM, and I can’t figure out this hem—” She can’t even manage the rest of her sentence before bursting into barely-restrained sobs.
Hawkmoth stares at her for a moment before crossing the room and sitting down next to her. “You just need a stitch here, here, and here …”
They spend three hours finishing her design project together, just in time for Chat Noir to greet the morning with a box of donuts and fresh cups of coffee from the café across the way. Hawkmoth simply plucks a drink from the frozen hero’s hands and heads for the entrance.
“Keep me updated on your progress,” he tells Marinette over his shoulder as he leaves. “And do consider my offer again. The world can always use good people in the fight against pesky heroes.”
“Only if you’ll consider my therapy recommendations,” she calls back with a wave. “Dr. Carter is really good.”
The supervillain nods and closes the door behind him. Chat Noir stares down at the remaining coffee in his hand and shakes his head.
“I need hard liquor in here.”
*
Weeks and weeks later, Chat Noir sits on the couch with Marinette leaning against his side as she sketches out her latest design. He’s still and quiet in an uncanny way—almost uncomfortable—and the only sound that fills the apartment is the scratch of her granite against paper.
Chat Noir swallows thickly as he stares down at her. “If I told you who I really was,” he says, “Would you go out with me?”
She pauses in her work, heart pounding loud in her chest, before resuming her shading with lead-stained fingertips. “Or we could just go out. I don’t need your real name.”
His voice is softer now, fragile in the wake of a brewing storm. “What if you actually knew me outside the mask?”
Marinette stops again. Her heart beats even louder, even faster. “Then I might have to tell you a secret or two of my own.” She swings her legs off to the side of the couch and sits up to face him.
His green eyes blaze with a spark of something else ( something else she dares call love). With a shaky hand, he reaches out and cups the side of her face, traces the contours of her lips with his thumb. “If that’s the case,” he whispers. “We can always wait till tomorrow."
“Why tomorrow?” she dares to ask.
“Because I want to spend the rest of the night kissing you instead.”
There’s a pause, the span of a single heartbeat, and then Marinette is throwing her arms around Chat Noir’s neck and kissing him breathless.
*
(“So how’d your first semester go?” Maman asks her over the phone as she pulls a sheet of cookies out of the oven.
“Not bad,” Marinette tells her, dishing the snickerdoodle cookies out onto a plate to cool. The smell wafts around the apartment, and she catches sight of Adrien leaving through the living room window. “I’m starting the mentorship program today.”
“I’ll be back when you’re done,” he mouths and jumps off into the bustling city below.
Maman hums on the other end of the line. “Have you met your mentor yet?”
Marinette takes the kettle off the stove with a grimace, forgoing the hot pads. She pulls two mugs from the cupboard as a knock sounds at the apartment door. “Yeah, he helped tutor me a few times last semester. He’s here now actually, so I’ll call you back, alright?”
“That’s good,” Maman says. “Then I’ll let you go, baby. Love you!”
Marinette bids her mother goodbye and flips the oven and stove off, calling over her shoulder. “It’s open!”
Hawkmoth enters the apartment with a few folders and a laptop. “Are you ready to start dress and subculture identification?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” Marinette says around the room of her cup of tea and smiles.)