Work Text:
I feel like there are probably a bunch of ways he could turn a breakup with ladybug into prime akumatization opportunities, but it requires real careful planning
if anything, his goal would be to try to akumatize ladybug
like
that was my first thought
but he can’t even outright antagonize her into getting mad because if she leaves the house visibly angry and then tells anyone, he’s going to look like the bad guy (which he is) and it’ll be terrible publicity
meanwhile he’s stewing while his son and his girlfriend are unsubtly necking in the garden
god. at least one clickbait site/tabloid/etc starts referring to adrien as ladybug’s trophy boyfriend
adrien is thrilled about it
he asks his publicity team if he can have a screenshot of one such article be his like twitter banner
they say yes
that or it’s his twitter name. or both. it’s definitely his discord nickname for the longest time
god okay wait i’m thinking about ladybug’s trophy boyfriend adrien agreste again and i think we overlooked a key element: Chat Noir’s Opinion
which. there are so many ways that could go. but i think my vote is “well he seems kind of useless and she could definitely do better (i.e. me) but if she likes him that’s the important thing, i just want her to be happy”
he has lots of fun mildly insulting himself at every turn while simultaneously defending ladybug against accusations of being shallow etc and avoiding anything that could legitimately be taken as drama/real jealousy/hints of a conflict between them
oh man I’m so interested in exactly what he thinks and whether or not he is jealous of himself
esp if it’s pre kuro neko
I will always love the notion of like, in a reverse situation, marinette being pretty stoked about adrien being into ladybug, but adrien’s whole identity issue thing I can def see going the opposite way
oh i meant chat noir’s opinion as stated publicly to people asking questions, not like what he actually privately thinks/feels about the situation, just very specifically what he decides Chat Noir’s Opinion should be officially lmao
but yeah no i’m with you, i think marinette would be psyched and adrien would be at least conflicted unless ladybug explained why (minus identifying details etc obvs)
ohhh yeah I def can see him going with that publicly
this is so cliche but I feel like the least angsty way for this situation to exist is if ladrien were fake dating (and of course the easiest instigating reason for this is adrien wants to get away from lila and this is the easiest extremely splashy public way to do it)
not to direct the conversation away from actual ladrien being a thing, which, man, so intriguing to me, and something I wish I saw more of in fic but it feels like people like to write them as having like, one night stands or something, ladybug being like okay I’ll give myself ONE NIGHT and get it out of my system and I’m like no
she is just like him and wants romance
and then when the author doesn’t want to split them up it’s like cue identity reveal and the end and I’m like he’s still living at home? the world ends in an hour
i do think a lot about like, ladybug telling chat noir about her crush on adrien and somewhere in the description being like “tbh when you’re not being loud and Deliberately Over-The-Top Performing Being A Superhero you remind me of him, or he reminds me of you when you’re like that, i think if you two got to know each other you’d get along”
oh my god. oh my god wait okay
marinette would be over the moon to find out adrien has a crush on ladybug + [Established Lila Problems™️] + ladrien
post initial “alya and nino find out about lila” but before they do anything about her, adrien complains (quietly) about lila making overtures towards a relationship and how it’s depressingly likely his father would already have ordered him to start dating her if he’d thought about it and what he wouldn’t give to have a way out that lila can’t spin and that won’t get him pulled out of school, etc, and alya is like ……………well if you were already in a relationship your dad couldn’t make you date lila
and she’s absolutely setting things up for marinette, but adrien is like “yeah but…” and nino’s like “bro is this about your crush on ladybug again”
alya and marinette: your what now
and the entire thing doesn’t actually appear to get anywhere productive by the time lunch ends, but that night someone knocks on adrien’s window
and he opens it up to find ladybug saying a little mouse told her he’s been having trouble with that girl who pretended to have the fox miraculous again
and the next day, adrien and ladybug are seen very clearly, very publicly, on a date
(when marinette gets home alya is already in her room, losing her entire mind. adrien, meanwhile, gets home from their date and begins flinging himself around the room a la ephemeral because he cannot physically contain the excitement because holy shit he’s fake-dating ladybug and the Established Romantic Relationship may not be real but the dates basically are??)
the next school day he can’t stop thanking marinette and showering her with compliments and saying she’s amazing
100% yes, and (this was part of where i was going with this from the beginning it just took a minute to get here lol) it immediately results in Adrien Connecting The Dots. it’s not the main point of this scenario but he absolutely does hear “a little mouse told me” and go OH SHIT MARINETTE IS FRIENDS WITH LADYBUG and draw the obvious-to-him conclusions from there when he’s not too busy thinking about how ladybug is in his room basically asking him out
god i’m just. ladybug talking about adrien to chat noir and chat noir to adrien though
chat noir the day after the first fake date like “seriously? that guy?” and ladybug’s like okay well first of all it’s sort of fake, he needed a girlfriend so that awful classmate of his—you remember, volpina and chameleon, the one oni-chan was after?—couldn’t pressure him into a relationship, or his father couldn’t make him date her—which he would totally do because his father is awful, you have no idea—but number two, you have no idea what he’s actually like, okay, the public persona is just a front he has to put up but we’ve met and he’s really very kind and smart and sensitive and brave
chat noir: .........i... mean... i remember jackady and gorizilla, and... oh, the bubbler was at his house, but... i didn’t realize you’d had that much time to talk to him?
ladybug: well first of all you weren’t there but like the second time we met he practically yelled at me for being too harsh to that girl for lying about being my best friend, and we’ve met a few other times as well, and he just... he’s just amazing, you know?
ladybug: actually sometimes he reminds me of you
chat noir: Say What Now
also speaking of gorizilla
marinette has absolutely lost sleep over that
OH SHE SURE HAS
tbh she probably gets into that next
she brings that up and chat noir is like hey, you know I trust you with my life all the time
and she’s like BUT HE SHOULDN’T HAVE THAT WAS LIKE THE THIRD TIME WE EVER MET
idk I feel like she spent like two weeks occasionally just turning to tikki like, who DOES that
(tikki there is something deeply wrong with perfume guy)
also she definitely brings up the “you’ve had enough emotions for today / sorry about my son, he takes after his dead mother” comment because holy shit what is wrong with his dad, like no wonder he’s so obedient and careful about his public persona if that’s how he gets treated when he’s worried for his father’s life??
chat noir absolutely unready for all of this
ladybug: so you absolutely can’t and shouldn’t judge him on that, okay, the amazing thing is that he hasn’t gone absolutely insane
adrien, currently sitting on a rooftop dressed in a black leather catsuit:
and then she launches right into desperada and how she gave him the snake miraculous when luka was right there and a much better fit because she knew chat noir would be there any minute and she gave into the temptation of having the chance to have them both there fighting by her side and because of her stupid crush on him he wound up trapped in a five-minute time loop for three months, okay, he’s so dedicated and brave and—
chat noir: he spent three months in a time loop and you just said he hasn’t gone insane?
and in the end chat noir survives that whole conversation and goes home and just lies down on his bed fully dressed staring at the ceiling in the dark for like an hour and then the next day ladybug casually mentions “by the way chat noir and i talked last night and he remembers lila rossi and totally understands why we’re doing this so he’ll have our backs if we need it, don’t worry” and somehow like 80% of their conversation winds up being talking about chat noir and how he’s really very kind and thoughtful under the overdramatic playful persona and everyone seems to think she hates the flirting when it’s really just his timing and sometimes that she feels guilty about not liking him back like that even though he’s her best friend and she hates knowing she’s hurting him, and one of these days they’ll really have to find time for adrien to meet chat noir because ladybug just knows they’d get along so well
(relatedly, somewhere in there she apologizes again about desperada)
adrien: haha. yeah. i mean he’s your best friend i’m sure he’s great. and he sure has saved my life. we’ll… definitely have to find time for that. somehow
plagg sitting somewhere out of sight scarfing idk grated parmesan like potato chips, absolutely riveted by this dramedy
god. okay like i’m trying to figure out where this goes and i think the options are, like, a) identity reveal but no hawkmoth reveal → chat blanc 2 b) hawkmoth reveal, somehow?? c) the au goes all the way through the rest of s4 only mildly divergent up until kuro neko
but either ladybug and chat noir talking about adrien (and vice versa) changes the dynamic enough that chat noir doesn’t quit so kuro neko basically doesn’t happen, or it does but adrien at least seriously considers “breaking up” with ladybug
i have no idea how things play out in the latter scenario but if their communication improves to the point that kuro neko doesn’t happen, then things really diverge with risk/strike back because Oh Boy and like once again i have basically no idea how that goes but it sure looks Very Different!!
oh my god ladybug meeting him at the train station
totally different context to everyone watching
not least because the entire trip is potentially orchestrated specifically to separate adrien and ladybug in the first place??
jfksdlafjlkfds imagining THIS is gabriel’s attempt to akumatize ladybug
like. if ladybug and adrien have been publicly dating for A While and then adrien is suddenly told he’s being shipped off around the world—YEAH
LIKE. i feel like in this context it basically has to be???
and probably doesn’t actually hurt in gabriel’s mind that if ladybug is the one akumatized depending on the timing adrien might even be safely out of the potential crossfire and this is him being a good parent actually
but like. does risk happen the same way?? do adrien and felix still switch??
because like. if they do, and felix still gets the dog... i don’t think luka needs to be present for the reveal to happen
they’ll have gotten so much closer! she could tell!
oh my god we have a repeat of felix going in for a kiss, right, like oh lol this time she’ll let me
but they’ve been fake dating! nothing like that’s actually been going on!
oh man that might be even better? i was thinking right when everyone meets up, ladybug hugs “adrien” and chat noir and is just! so excited!!! about how she’s finally got them both here by her side like she’s been wanting for ages, they’re going to make such a good team and get along so well and she’s just! so excited! and chat noir is just like. hey uh ladybug can we step away for a minute because i gotta ask you a question
chat noir like. so uh i get that you don’t want anyone to know who anyone else is aside from all the people who already do but the way you were talking just now, can i just... is that your boyfriend? i thought he was getting shipped off around the world?
ladybug: i......... may............... have gone to find someone who wouldn’t have been affected by Risk? like, say, someone who was on a train that already left paris? 🥰 i know this is a crisis but i really—
chat noir: yeah so that’s not him that’s his cousin
ladybug: excuse me??
chat noir: look you’re just going to have to trust me on this one i can’t explain how i know without revealing my identity but that’s definitely not him. test him if you don’t believe me but if your plan involves assuming that’s your boyfriend and you can trust him, you’re gonna need to reevaluate
ladybug, who continues to be affected by risk (see also: confirming “adrien”’s identity just now): okay fine [goes back and flirts with flairmidable]
...and then he takes the bait and tries to kiss her and idk where you were thinking that goes but i’m picturing her basically getting him in a headlock in about five seconds flat
chat noir may or may not say “i told you so” but he’s definitely thinking it
god and then she probably just like. pulls the miraculous off his neck. ladrien fake dating fixed the end of season 4
like i was trying to think if there’s any reason she wouldn’t but??? i don’t think she would trust felix even over her own knowingly-compromised judgement??
not least given that he very much was pretending to be adrien and accepted the miraculous under false pretenses, but also, you know, in general. his first impression was way worse than adrien’s first impression lmao and not as fixable
so idk if she drops him back on the train or just leaves him on the roof like “i’ll come back to deal with you later but this has wasted enough time already we gotta GO” but either way they ditch felix and go meet up with everyone else and like. they deal with the sentimonsters, felix does not steal the miracle box, and gabriel probably continues to have the peacock miraculous??
this really is just. turning the season finale into any other episode ending
like maybe not, maybe felix still winds up with it, but i’m not sure gabriel would’ve traded for the ring without the incentive of the miracle box??
IT REALLY DOES
“one day, ladybug, I swear, I will throw you into the sun! HNNGRRRRRRNG”
like alya etc still can’t have their miraculouses again but it’s not because they’re gone it’s just because it’s seriously too risky (lmao) and mostly things are basically exactly like All Of Season Four except chat noir and ladybug have actually been communicating more and adrien understands way better where she’s coming from and ladybug feels less stressed because she’s got chat noir and adrien supporting her
god though can you imagine adrien and lila’s photoshoots though going from absolutely dreadful to adrien cannot stop talking about his new girlfriend ladybug
lila wants to throw herself into the sun
the promotional tour is canceled and lila is actually kind of relieved
she complains to gabriel and he’s like “if you can find a way to break them up without it looking bad for the brand, be my guest”
lmao just thinking of her imagining have to suffer lovelorn sighs for months
like ohhh god before she was excited and now it’s gonna be months of moping and being like “I wish ladybug were here”
like the annoyance factor is so high
and he absolutely does it on purpose
like he genuinely is upset about the tour and really really does not want to go but if he’s stuck with lila for months he will make sure neither of them enjoys it
and everyone around except her ships it too so the makeup artist and the photographer and all the assistants are hanging on his every word and being like sorry chat noir this is the couple of the year
he’s so in love! it’s so sweet! they’re going to have the most romantic reunion! oh mlle rossi isn’t it just lovely?
chat noir gets in on being really publicly outspokenly supportive of them when the tour is announced
deliberately stops for an interview so he can be like “listen i’ve been a little catty occasionally, i recognize, paris’s most famous Hot Teen Model is an easy target, but we’ve met—i’ve saved him from more than a few akuma attacks at this point—and he’s genuinely a good guy who cares deeply about ladybug and he makes her happy, and that’s what matters, isn’t it? i don’t get why Gabriel thinks emotionally devastating The Person Keeping Paris Safe is a good promotion and i can’t say i’m gonna be buying whatever they’re selling”
someone is all “well seems like it’s not all that bad a situation for you, wink wink nudge nudge” and he’s like. do you want to retract that insinuation right now or should i make you regret not doing that
interviewer: oh c’mon, we all know—
chat noir: that i respect ladybug as a friend and partner and love her far too much to ever do something as despicable as attempt to get in between her and the person she has actually chosen to date in case she’s sufficiently emotionally vulnerable and lonely that she’d actually consider cheating on her boyfriend with me while he’s gone? or was that not what you were about to say 🙂 🙂 🙂
chat noir: i’m so sorry, i shouldn’t have interrupted, how did you plan to end that sentence
the interviewer, Deeply Regretting Not Retracting That Insinuation: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... pretty... much that?
chat noir, visibly unimpressed but also kind of smirking: oh good
alya is just translucent with malevolent joy later on like, oh that guy has ALWAYS been a shithead and now there’s a clip of him getting absolutely shredded by chat noir to the point he probably would’ve preferred it be physically instead of figuratively going viral online and he’s never going to live it down ✨
season five is completely unrecognizeable aside from the fact that the tour does still get canceled but in this case it’s because gabriel gives up because it’s getting them way too much bad publicity and also lila will not stop complaining and adrien will not stop looking lovelorn and sighing sadly both in public and also around the house and it’s driving gabriel up the wall
and it’s still funny and not actually very angsty at all
once the tour is canceled marinette and adrien are both doing great. ladybug didn’t lose the miraculouses (and doesn’t even know it was a serious possibility) and found out about felix before that could go wrong, she and adrien are just fine (and actually having a lot of fun because now that they’re not busy being sincerely sad about the tour adrien can tell her all about how he’s been driving lila insane and they can fully enjoy it), she and chat noir are also just fine (he’s been publicly supportive of her relationship and prevented whatever could’ve gone wrong with felix impersonating adrien! she trusted him when he told her someone was impersonating her boyfriend!), being the guardian is still tough and things are definitely harder without a whole team as backup but at the end of the day it’s always been the two of them against the world and they’ll work it out
also i think at some point ladybug and chat noir have a heart-to-heart where she finally tells him about chat blanc, and how that was a lot of why she was pulling away for a while, aside from generally feeling like she’d ruined everything with miracle queen and the result of her ruining everything being suddenly way more responsibility and feeling like she had to handle everything alone, etc etc
i’m even tempted to say she admits that she was pulling away because she realized how easily she could fall in love with chat noir in this timeline too and was terrified of letting that happen, but i’m not sure about that part
💖
and man just I feel like, as a consequence of all of this every side of the love square has some kind of Intensifying of Feeling whether or not it’s platonic or romantic
like ladybug and adrien and ladybug and chat noir are having all these dates and heart-to-hearts and meanwhile marinette is like “adrien you should tell us all about your date with ladybug and how cool it was and how happy you are even though everyone at this table knows it’s technically only fake-dating” and adrien is like “i will absolutely do that and also have i mentioned recently what a great friend you are and how much i appreciate Whoever Happened To Inform Ladybug I Had Feelings For Her Literally The Day I Admitted That To The Three Of You”
and marinette is hanging out with chat noir on her balcony asking if he’s really genuinely sincerely okay with ladybug dating adrien and he’s genuinely not hurt or upset by it and he’s like “i mean i love her but she’s so happy with him fake-dating or not it’s impossible not to be happy for her and also she’s talked a lot about why she actually likes him and... idk, like she cares so deeply but she makes him sound like a real person, you know? the way she talks about him, i think i get it”
(he is not making that part up, every conversation ladybug has with chat noir about adrien genuinely raises his self-esteem significantly)
I’m also imagining him turning the tables on her a little at some point, whether or not he compliments her alter egos or just herself directly
oh that was absolutely what i was imagining happening with adrien telling his friends about his and ladybug’s “dates”
oh my god the amount of Significant Looks alya gives marinette every time
like it starts off just like, so we did this and went here and ate X and saw Y and it was great, but he inevitably starts talking about how amazing ladybug is and why he likes her so much and then that’s just the entire rest of the conversation every time
marinette absolutely asks leading questions the first time and then spends said rest of the conversation desperately trying not to blush or like, hide under the table because help
alya starts at least the next three conversations deliberately for the opportunity to give Significant Looks to marinette. after that even if they try to steer the conversation away before it gets onto the subject of How Wonderful Ladybug Is again there’s no escape. marinette is dying
oh my god like alya and marinette are over there being affected for Reasons, but nino is also there being kind of concerned like at one point he’s like bro. I know you’re happy and having a good time and this is doing nothing to make your ladybug crush go away and it’s great and all, but like.
and then he takes a moment to be like man do I make alya mad at me but marinette is Suffering
bc of course he doesn’t know and of course he’s interpreting marinette as having to sit here listening to her crush talk about another girl, even if it’s ladybug! and alya is like stealth comforting? aggressively? he can’t really interpret those Significant Looks
but they’re perishing and adrien still! doesn’t! know!
idk nino spills the beans and adrien has the Buttercup Realization
and just! marinette! is amazing? she’s done SO MUCH FOR HIM
she everyday ladybugged him into having a friendship with actual ladybug as his own self and she did it because she wanted to help?
god. nino spills the beans while marinette is right there and she has to explain that no honestly she doesn’t mind she’s just so happy he’s happy and like, how could she be upset, he’s dating ladybug, and he’s simultaneously like. processing the realization that she was the best wingman of all time for her crush, and also like oh my god she really is the best friend ever, no wonder ladybug trusts her so much
so he doesn’t even notice that she’s definitely like, echoing a bunch of what he said to marinette as chat noir about how he’s not really upset bc he’s just so happy that ladybug is happy which is good because if he had noticed he would’ve felt really bad about how he could say all that so easily because he secretly is dating ladybug which ofc marinette doesn’t know but it’s so different when she’s just saying it because she’s Just That Good A Friend, not because she’s secretly dating him
and of course this means the next time he hangs out with ladybug he can’t stop gushing about marinette
(tikki and plagg in the corner giving each OTHER Significant Looks like, can you believe this nonsense)
(eventually The Evil will be Defeated and they can get together for real and get married and yadda yadda yadda and they will not stop giving them shit about this whole situation for the rest of their lives)
(they’re going to make future holders activate the Reunion just to continue to give them shit about this)
also i’ve been thinking about how this actually ends because it absolutely does not involve them fake-breaking up. lila could move back to italy of her own accord because she’s so fed up with the entire situation and they would still be like. well if we break up now she might come back, better continue fake dating forever
so i think the options are a) gabriel is finally like I CANNOT TAKE THIS ANYMORE I KEEP FINDING LADYBUG HANGING OUT IN MY HOUSE, adrien when your girlfriend leaves i need to talk to you about stealing her earrings to resurrect your semi-dead mother or b) ladybug and adrien go looking for gabriel to ask a question only to find a hole in the floor
in the latter case i think it’s extra funny if they go looking for him because there’s an akuma attack right nearby and they want to make sure he’s aware and uh. well. he sure is
also after they deal with that and the fallout (including their eventual identity reveal, which is at that point both of them being like “okay so i really should’ve told you this, like, a while ago, but for obvious reasons i didn’t and—actually i take back the “should” because that would have gone so badly holy shit, anyway hi it’s me”) they face the real biggest challenge of the entire story, which is: how do they handle this whole... relationship... situation, now that it would suddenly be way more convenient logistically for adrien and marinette & ladybug and chat noir to be dating but ladrien continues to be A Very Public Relationship That Everyone Knows Is Great and breaking up in the immediate aftermath of ladybug and chat noir arresting adrien’s dad for being hawkmoth would not be a great look for either of them
and honestly i don’t have an answer for that one. how do they do it
hmm they may be able to swing it by being very obviously amicable about it?
like “we’re still good friends but the hawkmoth thing just made it really weird and we both wanted to avoid actually going out on dates where anyone could see us so we just. took a step back and wound up deciding we’re better as friends at this point” or something
“we like each other a lot but now everything is about hawkmoth everywhere we go and it’s really affecting the relationship, when it’s just the two of us we’re honestly still fine but we can’t even talk about going out in public without both kind of dreading how it’s going to get weird, and we really don’t want that to spill over into also affecting our relationship in private so we’re just... going to privately be friends and not date so it stops Being A Thing”
can definitely see the public being really sad about this but also understanding? like they would have to play it pretty carefully but i do think that could work
aaaaaand then if in the months after that, adrien happens to wind up spending a lot of his new free time at a particular bakery, and ladybug and chat noir are free to enjoy each other’s company with no stakes and also ladybug has moved on from her previous crush.........
but they really do probably keep that as quiet as possible for a While lmao
anyway i love that like. lila is technically the catalyst for the entire thing and also basically irrelevant except as an occasional background joke
on reflection though my favorite part might be that it’s like. barely even fake dating. like they’re literally both like “so i have a crush on you, we should fake date about it”
like. i’m just imagining alya asking marinette to explain for the twenty-seventh time this week, a) you like him b) he likes you c) you’re very publicly going on lots of dates and being very cute together d) you also spend a not-inconsiderable amount of time hanging out at his house, As His Girlfriend, what about this is fake exactly
it’s just as perfectly stupid as they are 💖