Archive of Our Own ^beta

Falling is exactly like flying right up until you stop.

Like, assuming the kind of flying you’re used to involves busted steering and useless panic, Nino guesses.

“GO LIMP!” a voice shouts, and Nino catches a glimpse of black something-like-leather and the twin flashes of a golden bell and silver staff streaking through the air.

“Are you kidding me, dude?!” he shrieks, although he does his best. Chat Noir gets an arm around him and basically clotheslines him to safety, but Nino is not going to complain about that because safety. They hit the nearest roof in a messy tumble instead of the ground six stories down in a messy death, and Nino gets about eight kinds of scraped up even though Chat Noir cushions the fall for him and definitely takes the harder hit. Nino ends up on top of him. Chat Noir--

Chat Noir ends up unconscious.

“Shit!” Nino curses, afraid to shake him--what if his neck’s hurt? What if his neck’s broken?

The akuma--because there is always a damn akuma, these days, is there ever not a damn akuma these days?--floats down and lands lightly on the edge of the roof. Her heels click.

And spark.

Nino shakes Chat Noir. Urgently.

“Nino . . .?” Chat Noir slurs, looking up at him through heavy, half-lidded eyes as his head lolls back. Nino’s lizard-brain reacts extremely inappropriately due to crossed wires and an abrupt awareness of his own mortality, and he tightens his grip on his shoulder.

“How’s that bad luck working out for you, you bratty little stray?” the akuma gloats as she struts forward, her heels kicking up more sparks with every step. Nino didn’t catch her name or her beef, but her powers very definitely involve flame. And explosions. Many, many explosions.

There is gonna be a lot of clean-up today, put it that way.

Chat Noir makes a weird, weak little noise, his eyes no more focused than before. Nino zeroes in on him, leaning down closer to hear--the plan, the warning, the whatever Chat’s got up his not-quite-leather sleeve. He’s a superhero; of course he’s got something.

Chat Noir makes the noise again. Nino can’t understand it, and leans in even closer. Chat Noir repeats himself. Nino--

“Run,” Chat Noir whispers into his ear. It is very, very obviously not just a whisper because he doesn’t want the akuma to hear.

Nino’s fingers tighten on his shoulder. Chat Noir struggles to move, but doesn’t make it two inches off the ground before his arms give out. The akuma drags a flint-sharp heel in a half-circle over the roof with her next step, a shower of sparks flaring towards them.

Nino, irrationally, wants his akuma. This one would be useless in a bubble; there’d be nothing for her to spark against, and even if she tried, she probably wouldn’t have enough air to actually detonate. Definitely not enough space.

Or Ladybug. Ladybug would be great right about now.

“And here I thought you’d at least put up a bit of a fight, kitten,” the akuma scoffs, pressing flint-tipped nails to her smirking lips and tilting her heel back and forth against the roof. It doesn’t spark again--not yet. “Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of hero?”

“Back off!” Nino snaps at her. He really, really misses his akuma. He doesn’t remember much of being the Bubbler, but . . . well. The Bubbler didn’t get scared. He definitely remembers that.

Okay. Okay, what does he have?

Nothing. He has nothing. He has his headphones and a semi-conscious hottie in a supersuit (and some less-straight-than-usual thoughts to examine later, apparently, assuming they make it to later), and that’s it.

This would be a really good time for Ladybug to show. Is this not usually her exact favorite kind of time to show, in fact? Maybe there’s traffic.

Maybe he should actually listen to Chat Noir and fucking run.

“I’ll take that miraculous of yours now, Chat Noir,” the akuma says, grinning wide and wicked down at them.

“Lady, you must be out of your freaking mind,” Nino says. The akuma blinks, like she’d hardly noticed him. Probably she had hardly noticed him, now that the “civilians make great hostages” stage of the fight is over. Probably that was his last damn out he just blew.

Ladybug is coming. She has to be. Ladybug always comes.

Who knows if that miraculous fix of hers works on dead people, though.

“Shoo,” the akuma says, making an impatient hand gesture. So okay. That’d been his second to last out.

“Yeah, no,” Nino says. Chat has a baton. It’s still pretty close to them on the roof, and about as long as a baseball bat right now. Nino doesn’t completely suck at baseball, assuming magic miracle weapons aren’t picky about who handles them. But if it’s magic enough to be picky, it oughta be magic enough to know he’s handling it for direct akuma-busting/superhottie-saving purposes.

Right?

Nino really does wanna do his best to survive this and examine all these not-exactly-straight thoughts, because these are pretty new thoughts. Like, he isn’t blind or anything, he can recognize when a dude’s rocking it, but it’s not something he usually notices quite so . . . personally, he guesses is the word he’s looking for.

Well, like. Adrien. But in his defense, literal model. And Chat Noir, well, he’s a literal superhero.

. . . maybe Nino’s just gay for unattainability or something.

The akuma scowls and snaps her fingers, flint-tipped nails striking up a bright spark. Chat Noir’s head rolls back on his neck, eyelashes fluttering weakly.

Nino grabs the baton and swings a grand slam straight for her face.

What else is he supposed to do?

The baton connects. The akuma’s face cracks down the middle.

She screams.

Nino grabs Chat Noir around the neck and rolls them both down the roof. The akuma keeps screaming, holding her face together with both hands. Flames lick out past the cracks and between her fingers. Nino looks past the gutter and over the edge of the roof. It’s a full story drop down to the next one. There’s nothing to cushion the impact for them, aside from Chat Noir’s suit, and he’s still mostly unconscious.

The akuma screams again.

And again.

Nino wraps his arms tight around Chat Noir and drags him over the edge with him.

Go limp, he tells himself in Chat Noir’s voice.

Are you fucking KIDDING ME?! he screams back at himself, because it doesn’t sound any better this time either.

They hit the roof with a crack that Nino feels in his teeth. Chat Noir lets out a grunt. The baton whacks Nino in the head and his head whacks the roof. The impact knocks all the air out of his lungs, stunning him, and he bites his tongue hard enough to bleed.

Should’ve let superhottie take the hit, Nino thinks woozily. He kind of hadn’t planned that far ahead, though, and they’d both hit the roof on their sides. His shoulder is not happy about the situation.

Something lights up overhead. Nino looks up dazedly. His ears are ringing, but something loud just happened, he thinks, and something is blooming in the sky.

Then adrenaline kicks in, and he recognizes that it’s an explosion blooming in the sky.

“AHHHH!” he screams very helpfully, and Chat Noir throws himself over him just before the rest of the upper roof blows. They go tumbling again, and damn if Nino knows how but Chat Noir’s gotten ahold of his baton again and is already swinging it out like a pole vaulter just in time to get them across the street before the roof collapses underneath them.

There is way too much fire. The akuma is still screaming.

So are a lot of people down in the streets.

“Crap,” Nino says feelingly. Chat Noir laughs. Nervously, Nino can’t help but notice. “Hit her in the face,” he suggests. “Don’t think she likes that too much.”

The roof blows up. Again. The akuma appears in the flames, shimmering and vicious and shining with rage. Her face is messily soldered back together, God knows how. Nino is very glad he did not have to watch, either way.

“Um,” Chat Noir says.

“YOU!” the akuma screams, pointing at Nino with smoking nails.

“Um,” Nino says, and the next thing he knows he’s in Chat Noir’s arms and getting carried bridal-style across the rooftops of Paris while fleeing a manic pyrokinetic supervillain. His wires are not getting any less crossed, he notes as he glances at Chat Noir’s face. Chat looks about two seconds out from full-blown panic and he’s still hot.

Probably helps that even half-panicked he’s still absolutely smoking the akuma. Not to step on any paws here, obviously--puns are not really Nino’s forte anyway--but he’s pretty sure he can just blame proximity to Chat Noir and mortal terror for that.

Seriously, though, the crossed wires thing is gonna have to stop. Adrenaline is already dangerously close to giving him a problem in his pants as it is.

. . . at least he’s not the one running.

“We are totally going to die,” he says. It comes out very calmly, considering how certain he is it’s about to happen.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, citizen,” Chat Noir manages to huff sullenly mid-leap. Is he pouting? God, he is. Nino has no taste in dudes at all, does he.

“Yeah, nice try, dude,” he snorts, glancing back warily at the akuma. She’s still not catching up, but she’s also not showing any signs of slowing down. And Chat Noir’s carrying him while half-concussed and already spent the past fifteen minutes getting thrown up and down the block. “I know you know my name, you called me it earlier.”

“Ngh,” Chat says, that half-panicked expression going full-blown after all.

. . . huh, Nino thinks, head tilting.

“I mean, I did bubble you and Ladybug that one time,” he reminds him slowly, as a merciful human being, but mostly as someone who doesn’t wanna die because the superhottie in the catsuit probably goes to his school. It’s not like it’s a surprise, all things considered. “I understand, I’d want to forget getting my ass beat by a clown too.”

“I don’t remember it happening quite that way,” Chat Noir says, a quick smirk quirking the side of his mouth. The expression is annoyingly cute on him. Nino is going to have to have so many conversations with his sexuality after this. He would’ve at least liked some warning before getting this whole . . . thing dropped in his lap, okay?

Something explodes behind them.

Something very large explodes behind them.

Turns out that when there’s large explosions, there’s also way more in the way of shockwaves than the movies would imply. Maybe Chat Noir would’ve known to run faster, otherwise, but really Chat Noir probably knows more about explosions than Nino either way. He’s got his baton behind them in the second before the aftershock hits, but everything is already noise and fire.

Chat’s grip slips. Nino drops. They both go flying.

Falling, Nino corrects himself in mid-air, just barely catching a flash of gold and silver too far away to do him any good. The two still don’t have much in common.

Nino slams into a wall, because busted steering and useless panic. He hits the roof below on his ass, ears ringing and shingles scraping everything in the process. Unsurprisingly, everything hurts. All the air’s gone out of his lungs again, and he thinks he heard some really, really worrying cracking sounds coming from inside himself.

Chat Noir lands in his lap.

. . . the universe has a sense of humor, apparently, and it is worse than Chat Noir’s. Jesus.

“Nino!” Chat’s shouting even as he scrambles to get his weight off him. Nino wheezes, head dropping back against the wall again. He should move. He’s kind of terrified to move. “Nino, Nino, look at me, oh God--”

Is he not looking at him?

Oh. Yeah, no.

He’s looking at the way more concerning thing.

“Behind!” Nino manages to gasp out, and Chat Noir freezes for less than a heartbeat before spinning around just in time to collide with the akuma. Their hands lock. Her nails strike sparks against his suit.

Her hands burn.

Chat Noir starts screaming, flames licking up the length of his wrists and forearms, sizzling wickedly against the suit, and Nino chokes again and tries to--tries to--

The akuma grins maniacally wide and leans forward, forcing Chat Noir to his knees as he struggles to hold her back; bringing her flames closer to his unprotected face. Chat Noir makes a small, pained noise.

Then he throws them both off the roof.

Nino yells.

So does somebody else.

“LUCKY CHARM!”

Oh thank hell, Nino thinks. He goes limp against the wall and just . . . doesn’t move. Forget moving. No more moving. It’s just gonna hurt anyway, and there’s nothing he can do that Ladybug can’t . . . do . . . better.

He opens his eyes and looks down at the shining silver baton laid across his lap. Another series of explosions goes off in the street below. People are screaming.

Fuuuuuuck.

Fuck.

“Oh god,” Nino groans, then grabs the damn thing and tries to stumble to his feet. His head swims, and his knee gives out before he even gets into a proper crouch. Something else explodes, and he sees smoke and debris go flying past the edge of the roof.

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.

Nino grits his teeth and starts dragging himself across the roof. He wishes Alya were here. Actually he doesn’t, because saving both of them would’ve been a fucking nightmare for Chat Noir, no doubt, but he still wishes it. She’s got a way of making the ridiculous, messed-up super-stuff all seem like business as usual. Or as much of a way as anybody who blogs about it on the daily can, he guesses.

Maybe it’s just that he feels steadier with someone else around to stay steady for. He wasn’t freaking out when Chat Noir had him in his arms, and he doesn’t think he’d be breathing this hard if Alya was crouched next to him trying to get a clear shot.

For the record? The edge of this roof is so much freaking farther than it looked when Chat Noir was driving the akuma off it.

He hears Ladybug yell. He hears Chat Noir yell for her. The akuma laughs, loud and carrying, and a child’s voice sobs, high and thin.

He drags himself up against the edge of the roof. A dozen different scrapes and bruises protest and his knee throbs in dull agony; he does his damnedest to ignore both and get a handle on what’s going on. The akuma’s standing above a flaming wreck of cars and debris and seems to be revisiting her earlier “civilians make great hostages” stance, judging by the way said wreck has penned in half a dozen terrified pedestrians against a wall.

Ladybug’s on the ground, panting, and there’s no sign of either her Lucky Charm or her yo-yo. There’s blood on the side of her face. Chat Noir’s struggling his way out from under a pile of burning rubble, smoke and ash already staining his face and suit.

Great. Yeah, this is just great.

Nino doesn’t completely suck at baseball, but he is definitely not a javelin thrower. He’s got a bad habit of misjudging relay-race handoffs, too. Although he guesses if he was close enough for that, it wouldn’t be a problem anyway.

Still. Not a great omen.

“I told you I’d take that miraculous of yours!” the akuma laughs as she lands next to the pinned Chat Noir. He scrabbles at the street in a knee-jerk panic reaction, claws raking up cobblestones.

“Get away from him!” Ladybug shouts as she leaps towards them. It’s a bad idea, something tells Nino in a lizard-brain flash, and he’s pretty sure Ladybug has the same flash because she throws an arm over her eyes right before the street blows up.

When the dust clears, the akuma is ten stories above Ladybug’s head and has Chat Noir by the tail, dangling him over the ground below with a gloating expression. Chat struggles uselessly, trying to yank himself free from the akuma’s grip without leverage or momentum, and Ladybug visibly grits her teeth before looking around the street, probably in search of either the charm or her yo-yo.

Nino blinks, slowly. This street’s barely wide enough to classify as one, and the akuma is on the other side of it.

Straight across from him.

“Hey,” he says. Chat Noir’s eyes snap directly to him. The akuma’s do too, just a second slower.

It’s not even a hard toss to make.

Chat Noir snatches the baton out of mid-air, snaps it out to staff-length, and goes right for the akuma’s knees. She shrieks. They fall. Ladybug grabs something red-and-black off the ground and leaps into the air with a yell.

There’s a lot more fire and explosions and yelling, then, but when it’s all over and done and the akuma victim is recovering and there’s ladybugs mercifully fixing up Nino’s scrapes and bruises and his aching shoulder and throbbing knee, he’s content to just slump back against the roof and let out a sigh of relief.

Okay. That was a thing. An experience. That is something Alya’s gonna wanna hear about for the Ladyblog, probably twice. That’s cool, he didn’t have lunch plans tomorrow anyway. She’ll probably buy his for this, even.

“Are you alright?” Chat Noir asks from the edge of the roof, staring down at him with electric green eyes, all cleaned up and just as much of a superhottie as he was catching him and that baton out of the air and carrying him across the rooftops and landing in his lap and getting his ass kicked up and down the block.

Maybe Nino’s taste in dudes isn’t so bad.

“I’m cool, dude,” he says, pushing himself up. Chat drops into a crouch to inspect him more closely, expression unexpectedly intent. Nino hears his ring beep--he doesn’t even know when the Cataclysm went down, but he’s gonna go out on a limb here and guess it was during one of the explosions--but Chat himself doesn’t pay it any attention. “Uh . . . dude? Your transformation?”

“You’re not hurt,” Chat Noir says, still too-intent and weirdly focused. Nino’s not gonna lie, his crossed wires aren’t exactly complaining.

“I’m not hurt,” he agrees. He stands up and spreads his arms to make the point; Chat leans in closer, eyes feral-bright and strange. Nino wonders if he gets this way about every civilian who gets stuck in the crossfire. He doesn’t remember the guy doing anything like this after the Bubbler incident, much less any of the others he was around for. Then again, dude’s usually working with a time limit, isn’t he.

Except he’s working with that time limit right now, and he’s acting like this anyway.

“You’re not hurt,” Chat Noir repeats. He sounds--weird. Nino is increasingly certain that he goes to their school. He can’t imagine not noticing a guy like Chat Noir running around, but maybe he’s in a different grade or tries to rock the Clark Kent thing or something. Nino probably would, if he had an obsessive evil butterfly dude on his back.

Also, really, nobody knows shit about just how much transforming goes into these transformations. Hell, for all he knows, it’s Kim or Max or Marinette standing in front of him. Well--not actually, obviously, because Kim and Max have both been akumatized and the whole Evillustrator thing happened, but his point stands. Chat Noir might look a lot different than the flimsy-looking little domino mask implies.

Nino thinks about it for a second, and then realizes, weirdly, that he doesn’t really care.

He feels like he should--the whole rest of Paris seems to, and Alya cares enough she basically got akumatized over it--but he just . . . doesn’t. Whoever’s under that mask or inside that body is still the person who threw themselves into open air after him; who knocked themselves out protecting him; who threw themselves off a roof to get an akuma away from him. And they’ve done all those things for dozens and dozens of other people, too, and aren’t showing any signs of stopping anytime soon.

“Are you hurt?” he asks. Chat Noir blinks rapidly, looking startled, then immediately puts on a cocky grin and leans back on his haunches, preening visibly.

“Come on, you think a couple explosions are enough to take out all this?” he boasts, gesturing to himself shamelessly. Nino looks him over automatically. He’s only human, okay? Aside from that one time, he means, and to be honest, if the Bubbler had been a little less concerned with Adrien he miiight’ve done worse than just taken a little look-see at Chat Noir. You know. While he’s already in the neighborhood on the examining his less-than-straight thoughts thing.

Seriously. Who designs these suits?

“I dunno, she did have you by the tail for a while there, man,” he says, quirking an eyebrow at Chat Noir, who blushes, like, hysterically brightly.

“Um. Thanks for that, by the way,” he says awkwardly, glancing away. “And hitting her, too. That was really--it helped. So thanks.”

“No problem,” Nino lies. It had been a problem, obviously, and the baton toss efforts had hurt like hell to boot, but he’d do it all again in a hot second. Hell, he’d do it twice, even if it hurt twice as hard.

“Um--” Chat Noir’s ring beeps again, and this time he winces. He fidgets anxiously in place, but doesn’t leave. Nino wonders what he’s hanging around for.

If it were him he could think of a few ideas, honestly, but again: he’s got a lot of thoughts to be examining later. Chat Noir probably does not have that problem.

“Um,” Chat Noir says again. Nino tilts his head. There’s two pads left on the ring. He’s pretty sure it’s a countdown. He’s pretty sure it’s, like--a concern.

Chat Noir is leaning as far forward as he can without falling over.

Nino steps forward into his space. Chat’s ears prick up and his spine straightens, and Nino automatically takes another step in. He stops. Chat’s tail kind of . . . quivers.

It’s . . . really cute, actually. Nino’s not sure what that means in “cat”, though, much less “supercat”.

“Do you have to leave?” he asks.

“Yes,” Chat says distractedly, just staring straight at him. He blinks, long and slow. Nino doesn’t know if that means anything in “cat” either. Probably not, he figures.

“Can I do one thing before you do?” Nino asks.

“Okay,” Chat says. His voice sounds messed up. Nino feels messed up, so at least it’s going around.

“Tell me if this is too weird,” he says, then takes one more step in and kisses him. Chat makes a noise, shocky and high. He doesn’t kiss back, but Nino doesn’t really give him time to before he pulls away.

“It’s,” Chat says, voice still messed up and breathless too, now. “It’s weird. It’s very weird.”

“Yeah, I thought it might be,” Nino says, trying not to wince.

“I like weird,” Chat breathes, leaning forward again.

His eyes are so damn bright.

Something swoops in Nino’s stomach, wild and reckless and very, very poorly thought-out. It feels nothing like falling.

Maybe it’s what flying feels like, though.

They kiss again. Chat Noir makes these soft little noises into it and Nino brings his hands up to the other’s face, which makes the noises get a little louder. The whole thing’s sort of clumsy, honestly, but he’s not complaining. That swooping feeling is back in his stomach and only getting wilder.

Chat Noir’s ring beeps. He tenses.

One pad left.

“I have to--” he starts.

“Yeah, I get it,” Nino says. Secret identities are secret for a reason and all. He’s pretty sure there’s not a person in Paris it wouldn’t be too risky to let find out, considering the whole “mind control is my speciality” supervillain running around. And that’s not even counting some of the weird-ass powers that keep showing up. One goddamn truth serum akuma and Paris is boned.

“I don’t--” Chat Noir stops himself; looks hesitant. Is looking for something to say, Nino assumes.

“I get it,” he repeats, then presses one last kiss to the corner of the other’s mouth. “See you around, babe.”

Chat Noir stares at him for a moment, a slow-spreading but violently red blush spreading across his face, then grins dopily at him and falls straight backwards off the roof. Nino jerks forward reflexively, but Chat’s already gotten his baton extended to the ground and is shooting up past him. He sends him a cheeky salute like he’s not still blushing, the freaking nerd, and Nino makes a face at him. Chat laughs.

“If you manage to stay out of treble next time, DJ, maybe we could make some sweet music together!” he calls down with a flirty little wink, then blows him a kiss before bounding off.

Nerd. Total, giant, screaming nerd. Also, Nino really hopes no one was recording that, because this is just not a conversation he is ready to explain to either Alya or his parents or the entirety of Paris.

“Then I guess I’ll have to make you purr, kitten!” he shouts after him anyway, because apparently almost dying like five times really messes with his priorities. Also, being in close proximity to Chat Noir.

Kinda worth it to see the guy fall off another roof, honestly.