Chapter Text
Chloé wakes up to a cat trying to sneak into her bed – literally. She lifts her head and squints, only half-awake, to see Chat Noir freezing in the middle of lifting the covers up. The gust of chilly air is what woke her up, Chloé realizes fuzzily. She doesn’t know what time it is, but the windows beyond Chat are dark. So it’s late. Or early. Either way, she scowls at him.
“Sorry,” Chat says awkwardly, but doesn’t let go of the covers. There’s just enough light for her to see the way he stares down at her hopefully, and predictably Chloé cracks after about two seconds. She’s just too tired to do anything else.
“Detransform and get in,” she says grumpily. “But take your shoes off.”
Chat brightens. One green flash of light later, two orange high-top sneakers collide with Chloé’s wall and Adrien is scrambling under the covers with her. Chloé hisses when his cold toes brush against her calf and Adrien mutters an apology, squirming around until he’s comfortable. When he’s finally settled down, Chloé closes her eyes again and tries to go back to sleep.
There’s silence for a few seconds and then Adrien sighs and says, “I couldn’t sleep because I was worried about you. I didn’t get to go to school today to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine,” Chloé says, rolling over to look at him. She doesn’t think that Adrien knows it, but his eyes glow a bit in the dark now and it’s a little creepy. Just another lovely side effect from the Black Cat miraculous, no doubt. She wonders if Juleka’s eyes will glow like that too someday.
Adrien looks at her like he’s not convinced. “Would you tell me or Marinette if you weren’t?” he asks.
Chloé takes a few seconds to contemplate the question, and is surprised by the fact that she wants to say yes – and that doing so would be an honest response. There’s no question that talking to Adrien and Marinette about how she feels was awkward as hell, but it was also really nice to hear them say how much they care about her and to receive hugs from both of them. That’s more love in one day than Chloé’s gotten in years.
She nods finally. “Yes, I think I would.”
“Good,” Adrien says, relaxing. “Because I don’t ever want you to bottle things up to the point where you risk getting akumatized. I know Marinette and I get a little too wrapped up in each other sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you’re any less important to me.”
“Even with Nino around?” Chloé says before she can stop herself, and Adrien grimaces.
“Yeah, even then. I know I already said it, but I really am sorry for blowing you off. Meeting new people at school was exciting for me, but I still shouldn’t have done that,” Adrien says, so earnest that Chloé finds it hard to look at him.
“It’s okay. I kind of deserved it. I was a real bully,” she says, the word sour on her tongue. Now that she’s seen first-hand what kind of impact bullying can have thanks to Lila, Chloé has a lot of regrets. More seem to pop up every day. She made a start by apologizing to Marinette, but she knows there are other people who deserve apologies from her as well. Like Nathaniel and Juleka.
“We both messed up, and we’ve both grown up,” says Adrien. “No one deserves all the blame here.” He pauses, then adds, “Except Hawkmoth. He’s a dick.”
That startles a laugh out of Chloé, and she laughs harder when she notices how proud of himself that Adrien looks. He really is a dork, but Chloé realizes in that moment that she’s so glad she still has Adrien in her life. She’s made a lot of stupid decisions in the past, but she can’t regret any of them right now because she got Adrien and Marinette and Pollen, and even Nathaniel and Juleka out of it. That’s worth a lot.
“I concur. He is a dick,” Chloé says. “But really, Adrikins. I’m fine. I feel a lot better now. I didn’t realize how much I was keeping to myself.”
Adrien nods. “I get that. Sometimes it’s easy for little things to pile up until all of a sudden they’re all big things and it’s just too much. And it’s been a lot lately, what with Lila and your parents. They’re also dicks, just for the record.”
“No argument here,” Chloé says wryly, more amused than she wants to let on, and Adrien grins at her before his expression softens in a way that makes Chloé’s stomach flip.
“It makes me happy to see you and Marinette being friends,” he admits. “You’re both important to me.”
Chloé smiles a little, remembering Marinette’s horrified expression when she said that Chloé was her best friend, but her smile fades just as quickly when she remembers why she is supposedly Marinette’s best friend now. The quiet sorrow on Marinette’s face when Alya is mentioned always makes Chloé’s chest hurt. It’s nothing like the discordance after Lila’s death, of course, but it’s still there.
“Do you think…” Chloé trails off.
Adrien shifts a bit closer, resting his head on her pillow too. “Do I think what?”
“Do you think Marinette misses Alya?” Chloé asks.
“Yes,” Adrien says immediately, no hesitation, seemingly unsurprised by the out-of-the-blue question. “But Alya is the one who screwed up. I don’t think Marinette is ready to approach her yet.”
“That’s what I thought,” Chloé mutters. She wonders why Alya hasn’t tried to talk to Marinette since Lila’s death. Then she wonders if maybe she should consider herself lucky that Alya hasn’t. If Alya is back in the picture, even if she never gets another miraculous, that means Chloé won’t be Marinette’s best friend anymore, right?
That would suck. Really suck. It’s kind of tempting to just ignore the whole matter and let things keep going the way they have been. But at the same time, Chloé doesn’t think she can do that. It’ll be one of those things that nags at her until she gets fed up and does something about it. And in the process, she’ll ruin one of the only good things she’s got going for herself. Figures.
She doesn’t voice those thoughts to Adrien, not wanting to hear him tell her whatever platitudes that he might come up with. Instead she rolls over and manages to fall back asleep, and, when her alarm wakes her up what feels like mere minutes alter, Adrien is gone. Her balcony door is open a crack, letting the early morning air seep in, and Chloé shivers as she sits up.
“He could’ve at least closed the door,” she says, cranky.
“He was in a rush. He was late. I’m shocked you slept through him leaving. It was not quiet,” says Pollen, looking as tired as Chloé feels.
Chloé sighs and rubs a hand across her face. “I guess he had to go. His dad would wonder why he wasn’t there,” she mumbles. Well, Gabriel might not wonder. But Nathalie might. That was almost as bad.
She throws the covers off and grumpily gets out of bed, closing the balcony door on the way to the shower. Halfway through the shower, Pollen finally wanders in to join her. Chloé spends a couple extra minutes rubbing her honey-scented shampoo into Pollen’s fur and then rinsing Pollen off underneath the hot water. Pollen’s happy buzzing fills the bathroom, making it sound like a hive of bees have infiltrated the room. It’s adorable and goes a long way towards diminishing Chloé’s grumpy mood.
Once she and Pollen are both clean, they get out. Chloé blow dries her hair and Pollen’s fur and then gets dressed. It’s cooler out today, so she pulls on yellow tights, a black skirt, a white shirt, and a yellow vest patterned with small black hearts. Just as she’s about to pull her hair into a ponytail, she pauses. She stares into the mirror and remembers what Marinette said about her hair, how much she liked it down, and how having it down makes her look more like Adrien.
“What do you think, Pollen?” Chloé says, replicating how Marinette did it – pulling some of it back, but leaving the rest down along with a few strands to frame her face. It doesn’t look quite as good as when Marinette did it, but it’s pretty close.
“You look beautiful!” Pollen chirps, just as Chloé expects her to. Having a kwami around is really good for your confidence.
“Thanks,” Chloé says with a small smile. She clips the Bee miraculous to the clasp holding some of her hair back and grabs a mirror to check it out. Thankfully, the Bee miraculous still just looks like a hair accessory. She fusses with it for a few seconds.
“I’m hungry!” Pollen announces finally, and Chloé laughs.
“Okay, okay. Come on. We’ll pick up breakfast on the way to school. Let me just grab my bag,” she says.
There’s a knock at her door just as Chloé and Pollen emerge from the bathroom. Chloé looks at the door and wonders how likely it is that it’s her father. She knows she can’t put off facing her mother and father forever, but putting it off for just a little bit longer sounds pretty good right now. She’s weighing the merits of jumping off the balcony when a voice calls out, and it’s not the voice that she’s dreading.
“Mademoiselle, it’s me. You have someone waiting for you downstairs.”
“Someone?” Chloé echoes suspiciously, walking over to the door. She pulls it open slightly, prepared to slam it shut, but Butler Jéan is alone.
“A classmate of yours, I believe,” he tells her.
A classmate? Chloé’s mind goes immediately to Marinette, though she finds it hard to believe Marinette got up early enough to stop anywhere on the way to school.
“Is my father around?” Chloé asks.
“No. He went to the office early this morning. Your mother isn’t around either,” he adds with a small smile. Chloé deflates at that, relieved.
“Okay. Tell her I’ll be right down,” Chloé says, retreating into her room. She pulls on a pair of black boots, grabs her bag, and ushers Pollen into it. Then she leaves the room and takes the elevator down to the lobby. Her eyes automatically sweep the room, looking for Marinette’s signature pigtails, but there’s no sign of them.
“Hey,” a voice says, right over Chloé’s shoulder, and Chloé jumps.
“Juleka?” she says in astonishment, spinning around.
“Good morning,” Juleka says calmly, like there’s nothing out of the ordinary about her showing up at the hotel first thing in the morning. Even though Chloé knows for a fact that Juleka usually walks to school with Rose.
“What are you doing here?” Chloé says, baffled. “Wait – is there an akuma?” But even as she asks, she knows that can’t be – Chloé always has her cell phone on and cranked up to the highest volume now. She would’ve heard it ring even in the shower.
“Nope,” Juleka says with a shake of her hair. “I just thought we could walk to school together.”
“You just randomly, out of the blue thought we could walk to school together?” Chloé says skeptically, and then the penny drops. “Oh my god, did Marinette call you and ask you to do this?”
“She might have texted me and said that instead of walking to school by myself, I could walk with you instead,” Juleka says, shrugging. “Sounded fine to me.”
“But you – she – wait.” Chloé puts up a hand, feeling a headache starting to form around her temples. She’s not even sure what she wants to address first here, but she does know that she hasn’t had nearly enough sleep for this.
“I thought we could get breakfast on the way,” Juleka says tentatively, like a peace offering. “Maybe Roaar could join us?” She looks hopeful.
“I… you know what, sure. Why not?” Chloé beckons to Juleka, and they walk into the lobby bathroom. After making sure the room is otherwise empty, Chloé digs the familiar box out of her purse and passes it to Juleka. Juleka has it open and the Panther miraculous on her hand in seconds, a smile crossing her face as Roaar appears in a flash of magenta light.
“Cub!” Roaar cries, and flings himself at Juleka, his purr as loud as Pollen’s buzz was earlier.
“Hi Roaar!” Juleka says happily, giving the kwami a hug. As sweet as it is, Chloé ends up motioning for them to hurry up.
“Come on, you two,” she says wearily. “I need caffeine, and lots of it.”