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mckinlily · 2 years

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Completely out of step with my usual fixation, but I saw fan art with femme!Chat, forgot about it for a while, and then got hit with idea which is basically we all know Chat is 1) a huge flirt and 2) Adrien’s outlet for everything he’s not allowed to be as Adrien Agreste.

And just…au where Adrien-> Adrienne is a girl. A girl with HUGE expectations set for her by Gabriel (f, because I think this works well with a SUPER strict, unavailable mother) and one of those expectations being, of course, to be straight.

So we got Adrienne, the most closeted gay girl to ever gay, making up male celebrity crushes and doing EVERYTHING in her power to prove she definitely, certainly, 100%, no girls included, likes boys.

And on the other hand, there’s Verified Lesbian DisasterTM Chat Noir. Gay Icon of Paris. Can’t go three seconds without spewing Gay all over the place. Is she flirting or just that useless at acting straight?

There’s a viral, gif-ed, meme-ed shaking phone recording of Chat just GOING OFF on all the ways girls are beautiful and perfect and so hot, omg, Ladybug, you don’t understand—

(Marinette thought she was straight, but now she’s fighting to ignore the fluttery feelings she gets when Chat flirts with her and, ugh, she has the worst crush on definitely-straight would-never-like-her-back Adrienne.)

Paris is pretty sure that their superheroes are dating (Have you seen those two? That is not a platonic “gal pals” situation). Ladybug shuts down anyone who suggests they’re dating but, like, if they aren’t together why does she constantly refer to Chat as her “partner” and threatens bodily harm to anyone who dares suggest she’s a sidekick or anything less? What about how they’re always cuddling together? What about all the dates?

(”They’re not DATES!” vents Ladybug.

“They’re not not dates,” says Chat with an adorable stupid wink.)

Even those who take what Ladybug and Chat Noir say at face value assume that they’re just the kind of lesbians who date for three years before figuring out they’re dating. Frankly, they’re not wrong.

But also, we’ve got Marinette/Ladybug who assume like…Chat has to be super comfortable with her sexuality, right? She throws it around everywhere. Whereas Marinette is still trying to work out how she feels about being bi. Like, she knows it’s not bad. Her parents won’t have a problem with it. Alya was delighted when she told her! So why is it still hard? Why does the thought still feel uncomfortable and, sometimes, dirty, when she thinks about it? Why is it still hard?

So of course she look to Chat, her super out and open friend, to figure out how to process it. But Chat actually isn’t okay with her sexuality at all. She pretends when she’s Chat Noir because she can, but when she’s Adrienne, she’s filled with so much shame about it. Why can’t she just be normal? Why does she have to feel this way and feel it so much if it’s so clearly bad? Sure, Chat can be gay, but Chat is a superhero and ultimately a mask. Chat can’t be real.

In this au, it’s not just Ladybug’s denial disinterest that’s holding them back, but Chat won’t actually let herself have this. Sure, she’ll flirt and make gay jokes and wear a pride flag as a cape as Pride, but actually have a relationship with Ladybug? Act on all those feelings and fantasies she has? No, no, absolutely not. She’d rather be eviscerated by an akuma first.

And Adrienne is filled with so much guilt when she’s herself for what she does as Chat. Adrienne shouldn’t do that. Adrienne shouldn’t want that. And she’s desperate not a hint of what she is as Chat Noir come through in Adrienne Agreste. This time, Chat is just as insistent, if not more, that they have to keep their identities secret. She can’t ever have her alter ego revealed. It would ruin everything. Adrienne Agreste can’t be gay.

Over time, Ladybug has to slowly figure out that Chat isn’t nearly as confident and secure in her identity as she appears be. Adrienne has to learn to actually let herself have this. That it’s absolutely okay to be in love with her best friend and partner in saving Paris (or to be crushing on that super cute girl behind her in class). And, somehow, they have to work out the classic Love Square and figure out the exceptionally obvious fact that THE OTHER LIKES YOU BACK.

useless lesbians, both of them

idk, I just think it could be a really interesting story about wlw and young queer women figuring themselves out.

#miraculous ladybug #marinette dupen chang #adrien agrest #gender bend #love square #but make it gay #ml #just had to get this out of my head #i haven't been in this fandom for years #don't @ me i know nothing past season 1

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thearchvillain · 3 years

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tell me your thoughts. part I

part II

kaz brekker x reader

summary: Desperate for someone who can calculate a precise poison dosage for him, Kaz has to turn to Y/N, a merchant’s daughter Wylan had connected him with, in order to figure it out. It’s a terribly risky plan, best not mentioned to the rest of the Crows because they’ll put an end to it at once, but he believes even if she’s not trustworthy, Y/N is also the mostly likely not to care and help him with it. At least that’s what he’s convinced himself of, because it’s an easier narrative to stick to than the alternative - that he’s becoming a bit too invested and that she’s not what he would prefer her to be simply because it’d make it easier for him to push his stray thoughts down.

Perhaps, that more than anything was what had disturbed him ever since he’d met her - she felt unknowable. She made herself unknowable, and yet she would almost always ask him this same question, repeated over and over again in the strangest of moments, like a prayer - Tell me your thoughts, Kaz.

tropes: is ‘I hate you but it’s probably bc I can’t deal with my own thoughts about you’ a trope? there’s some heavy stuff in here, with a bit of flirting sprinkled on top bc i’m a lost cause when it comes to covert tension and angst

word count: 3.5k (bc i’m a disasterTM, and so is kaz)

warnings: mentions of poison and death, physical contact, a threat (? sort of neither of them are buying it) but they do get into a fight so if you’re upset by that please stay safe <3

A/N: um I honestly CAN’T with Kaz, i wanted him to struggle with the contradiction that is a merchant’s daughter and everything that goes along with it against the way she’s slipping into his life, favoured by the rest of the Crows, tough to figure out because her motives are unclear and she can’t be paid off and BOY he struggles, simping without realising for like 2 paragraphs then going off at himself because god forbid he has thoughtsTM about a girl, the audacity!

It was still early evening when Kaz made his way towards the Geldstraat, early enough for the finer crowds to still be out on the streets, pouring out of fine hotels after early business lunches that stretched into late afternoons, their polished wives walking arm in arm and their gilded children in tow, red-cheeked and rowdy despite their finer breeding.

Usually, he wouldn't be found here this early, not unless there was some unusually good pocket of time when the house was abandoned and secrets ripe for taking. There would be no stealing today though, the answers he wanted would have to be asked for, and Kaz was not exactly in the habit of asking for things. So he gripped his cane and embraced his pain as a distraction as he rounded the corner towards one of those great merchant mansions, as discretely opulent as the rest of them, the facade built from false restraint.

It was easy enough getting into it through the garden and up the window when one knew the person waiting for him inside, but Kaz still somehow preferred the illicit entries done at night and with far more ominous intentions. Easy enough to get in, but he still loathed the fact he was forced to do it, left without options other than this strange girl with her fine merchant blood and a misplaced interest in the less savoury things Ketterdam had to offer.

She can do it, Wylan had told him when he'd failed to calculate the precise dosage of the poison, though he didn't have to - Kaz knew from the beginning it'd come down to Y/N eventually. Not that he liked it - she was already too close to the Crows as it was, a stranger addition to them than even Wylan had been, but who else was there? He needed her for this, and he'd need her again probably. Besides, none of the rest could know what he was intending to attempt - it was just a bit too far along a knife's edge, even for him. A poison, meant to incapacitate him but kill the other, with only a very fine line between the two, too fine to be agreed upon by anyone but Kaz and someone who wasn't emotionally invested in the proceedings.

So he arranged a meeting with her through Inej, who came back smelling of cookies and lavender for some reason, late and with no explanation given as to what they were up to, just a grin on her face. Now he found Y/N sitting on top of her plush bed, leafing through some giant book with a pen between her teeth and absolutely no reaction at his sudden entry through the window other than a muffled hello through her teeth. He'd hoped for a better entrance, but he guessed Inej had immunized her to that by now.

"If I were to give this--", he put the mushroom down on top of her pages to get her attention, "to a hypothetical person, would there be a way to calculate the precise dosage that would be on the verge of death, but not far enough?"

She looked up at him, eyebrow raised, then back at the mushroom, "Yes, probably. If I had enough precise information about the person."

"Take me as a model."

"I said precise."

"Precise enough. Can you do it?"

She put the mushroom to the side then and closed the book with a heavy thud before slipping off the bed to head towards the window, "See, this is why mushrooms just don't agree with me. Be a darling, get me that red book on the third shelf down, to the left."

It was something with a complicated title and far too many pages, not unlike the one he'd laboured through last night to find the right kind, but when he gave it to her she propped herself up on the windowsill and started browsing through it as if it were a work of fiction. "This will take a while.", she looked up to him then, "But please, feel free to figure me out by snooping around, or whatever it is that you do."

"You mean by going through the diamonds and gold-plated everything?"

"Oh please, some of it is solid gold.", she gave a one-shouldered shrug, an over the top mockery of haughtiness, "Just leave the jewellery alone, I'm rather fond of it, like one of those sea urchins with their little rocks."

Kaz was convinced that by the end of the year his mind would be too full of random trivia about the strangest things to work properly, but he still let out a snort at her words and added, quite convincingly, "I wouldn't dream of taking anything."

"Then where's that jade figurine I had on the shelf next to the skull?", she cocked an eyebrow at him, "Keep it, it was ugly anyway."

"I heard ugly goes for a lot of money these days."

"It always does, as long as there are fools who'll pay for it.", she was looking down at her notebook now, and he could hear in her voice that she was steadily getting lost in thought, "I find that painting ugly too, just for future reference. It’s very pricy."

He let her work in peace from then on, settling himself on the velvet settee with his bad leg out and his cane across the knees, trying to keep his thoughts occupied even if some of them managed to slip by, pulling his eyes towards her as she worked. He might have mocked the uptight propriety of merchants and the wealthy, but watching her sit on the edge of a windowsill, the pen pressed against the soft expanse of her lower lip, he swore it looked like another thing entirely on her. She bore her cold poise with stoic grace like something plucked out of an old poem, a snapshot of an ancient moment suspended in time, the curve of her neck an eternal thing. She was not a falsehood nor a pretender in a city filled to the brim with those, pretending at excellence and merit and sophistication, and sometimes she made Kaz believe she could only exist in a library of some ancient university, certainly not in the same reality as the Slat, as him.

Except at some point, the silk of her pale robe had slipped down her shoulder, revealing the thin strap of her gown as it fell languidly across the faint curve of her collarbone and suddenly she was this wild thing, offensive to the prude tastes of a society that confined her, too profane and secular for their god of industry. It occurred to Kaz then, as he watched the tip of her tongue press against the point of her pen, that maybe both could be true, or neither. As she’d told him once, with her frigid fierceness, not to ever assume things about her again. He’d said, with his usual cold efficiency, that he was not a man who simply assumed things, but his sharp gaze had not reached her. Instead, she’d turned her head away to look at the harbour, hair whipping in the wind, and laughed as if he’d said the silliest thing, “Do not presume to know me, Brekker, simply because you know a few of my secrets. I’m not one of your hungry merchants or their tidy little daughters.” She’d turned her gaze upon him then, all humour drained from her features even as she smiled, all teeth and false sweetness, “Mark my words, Dirtyhands, the only barrier to truth is the very presumption that you already have it.” This was months ago, when he was still foolish enough to dare think he’d had her figured out.

She’d shifted in her spot, sometime during his reverie, and was now looking at him beneath her lashes, pen still in her mouth, smiling around it, “Tell me your thoughts, Kaz.”

He felt the leather creak as he pressed his palm into the head of his cane, it was a comforting feeling, even if he wasn’t entirely sure what it was about her that made him so uneasy. Perhaps, that more than anything was what had disturbed him ever since he’d met her - she felt unknowable. She made herself unknowable, and yet she would almost always ask him this same question, repeated over and over again in the strangest of moments, like a prayer - Tell me your thoughts, Kaz. Oddly, it was the only time she’d use his name, and it made him wonder why, even if he knew that was precisely the point, precisely the feeling she wanted to elicit. She wanted to be wondered about, and Kaz had given it up like a foolish man at gunpoint. He wanted to hate her for it. She refused to be hated, too - with her careful words and slow smiles and the scent of hyacinths.

“Don’t you ever get tired of asking that question?”

She tilted her head to the side, a strand of hair falling across her cheek, rosy from the warmth of her room, “Don’t you ever get tired of being alone in your thoughts?”

He ignored her, even if that might have edged dangerously close to admission, and stood up, “Do you ever really expect me to answer?”

“No.”

“Then why ask?”, he did not intend to sound irritable, but he hadn’t slept in what felt like days, and his leg had been acting up, and now she was sitting here, infuriating in her dreamy languor, her voice dripping honey and questionable intentions, and some part of him wanted badly to believe her. It’d be easier that way, to just let himself believe the quaint picture she’d painted of herself, a ravenous young thing, dissatisfied with the hand she’d been dealt - a pretty, bored girl, instead of a dangerous player.

“Why not?”, she put her pen down into her notebook, closed the pages around it, “Has it ever occurred to you that I might be simply wondering?”

No, it actually hadn’t. He’d considered that it might be one of those things meant to offer her a glimpse into his psyche based on his reaction, a provocation, a desire to unsettle. There had to always be an angle to things, that was the principal axiom. “I thought you didn’t do simple.”

“No, you presume I don’t do simple. Tell me, do you always think zebra when you hear hoofbeats?”, he’d wanted to interject with a dry ‘What?’ because this sounded like Inej’s usual spiel, but she continued, unperturbed by his irritation, “Sometimes, I think you overestimate me. It’s quite flattering, really.”

“Something tells me the last man who underestimated you is probably food for a murder of crows somewhere.”

“I’m really not that sinister.”

She might not have looked like it to an inexperienced onlooker, curled up on the windowsill on top of her furs, notebook in hand, something youthful and innocent about her features. Coddled and cared for her entire life, there was nothing but greed and comfort to rot her soul. But Kaz could see her sharp edges, glistening like Inej’s blades, all hiding in the curve of her mouth, the slight tilt to her head, the way she made him feel watched. She was as hungry as he was, as any of them were, he just couldn’t figure out why. Yet, anyway. “Spare me the false pretences at innocence Y/N, especially while you’re in the middle of calculating a poison dosage.”

She stretched out from her spot and offered him her notebook, but when Kaz reached out his gloved hand to take it she calmly said, “Can’t be done.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re excused. Still can’t be done though.”

He snatched the notebook from her hand, letting it fall open to where her pen was placed, it fell to the floor now with a lovely clink of metal against the marble. It was all he could hear echo through his mind as his eyes searched erratically for an answer in the mess of algebraic equations she’d written out, absently aware that even her damn handwriting was all pretty and polished. She would not let him forget she was made of finer things, for finer men than he was.

When he looked up, she was gone from the windowsill, but he could just see the flash of her figure in her dresser’s mirror, somewhere behind him, the robe trailing after her as she made her way across the room barefoot and deliberately inattentive. There was something wrong about this picture, the way she’d given up only after an hour when they both knew damn well she was nothing but obsessive in what she did, cool and competent and hungry to prove herself, not this fragile creature she would have most people believe. He turned in his place, leaning forward on his cane, his voice a tenuous exercise in self-restraint, “Something tells me you’re lying, Y/N.”

She stopped then, mid-stride, and turned around to look at him, a strange stillness to her gaze, “Believe whatever you like, Brekker. Doesn’t change the fact I have no number to offer.”

“Wylan said you could do it. He was sure of it.”

She let out a chuckle, a dry sort of sound, devoid of any mirth, “But Wylan doesn’t know what it’s for, does he now?”, her eyes narrowed on him then, her voice low and urgent, “You must think me a fool, Brekker, a fool or utterly devoid of any morals, otherwise you wouldn't be here. And I’m not sure which one is worse.”

Kaz had sensed what she was getting at, had hoped to avoid it. Expecting her to remain clueless had been a stretch in the first place, but he thought he could at least count on her not giving a damn about a street rat like him. This complicated things. “Do your job Y/N, and spare me your concern. It’s none of your business anyway. I just want the number, and you’ll be compensated more than well for it.”

He could see her go very still from across the room, could see the righteous anger flash across her features, settle itself into the rigid set of her shoulders - she was spear-like and sharp in her rage. If he hadn’t been desperate for the information, he might have taken a moment to relish in the sight, the cool efficiency of her voice, “You know where to shove that money, Kaz, I will not have your blood on my hands.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, the fine-tuned cogs of his mind whirring wildly at the sound of his name, the rawness of her voice. He did his best to sound nonchalant when he said, “Do your magic Y/N, and you won’t have to.”

Wrong approach. He felt like he was standing on the very edge of her patience when her eyes bore into him. She closed the distance between them in a whirl of silk until she was standing in front of him, defiance clear in the tilt of her chin, the way she looked up to him, the quiver of her voice, “Find another way.”

Why does she always smell of hyacinths, he thought dumbly. Then anger seeped into his voice, driven partly by her defiance, but mostly by the lack of control he had over the foolish thoughts that snaked into his mind when she was this close. “Do not tell me what to do.”

“Why of course not, no one can tell the great, immortal Kaz Brekker what to do.”, her voice rose, then she cast an irritated glance towards the door before bringing it down to an angry whisper, “Not even tell him not to die. What a silly girl I am, right?.”

“Right.”, he growled back at her, leaning forward in irritation, his voice low, “This is not your call.”

“Damn straight it’s my call. Who else is there to do this for you? You must have choked on that damn pride before you came here. There is no one else.”

Maybe it was the truthful ring to her words, or the fact that she had taken the reins so unapologetically and left him reeling, but his hand shot out to take her forearm before he could restrain himself, the silk as slippery as water beneath the leather of his gloves, “Careful there, I asked nicely once, but I could still make you do it.”

She laughed in his face, and it crossed through the fog of his mind, vaguely, that she might actually drive him insane. Today, tomorrow, next year, but she'll get the job done, “Go on then, give me your worst. Make me not give a shit about your life - that’s your grand plan B, isn’t it?”

He was still reeling, trying to find words in the sluggish mess that were his red-hot thoughts when there was a knock at her door, and he felt her tense beneath his fingers. She didn’t look at the door straight away, instead, her eyes went to his briefly, the anger in them dampened as if someone had dropped a bucket of cold water on hot iron. She ripped her arm from his hand and turned her back to him so that if he wanted to he could simply reach up and touch the soft waves of her hair that scattered across her shoulders. Idiot. Control your thoughts. He forced his eyes up to look at the door over her.

“Yes?”, she’d trained her voice into sounding vaguely disinterested, but Kaz doubted she could do much more than a ‘yes’ without sounding distressed. At least they bore the weight of their rage against each other together.

“Everything alright in there? Has something upset you miss?”

She ignored Kaz when he snorted quietly behind her, but he still wasn’t spared the stray elbow in his side, “Just a rat on my windowsill Willa, it’s all right.”, she looked over her shoulder and up at him, still technically speaking to the maid, “I can handle it.”

“A rat miss? If they are in the house--”

Kaz leaned down to speak near her ear, his anger now boiled down to petty provocations, “Oh, she has no idea just what you’ve dragged back into daddy’s house.”

“To be fair, they drag themselves into my room these days.”, she whispered at him, then loudly for the maid, “It tried to come in through the window. It’s gone now.”

“Liar.”, this earned him another elbow, this time more precisely pointed.

“What? Miss, open the door, what if there’s more? I shall call for your father at once.”

“Willa, it’s a rat, not a battalion leader mounting an attack. And what would father do, pay it off to leave me alone?"

Kaz had never moved, still leaned over her shoulder, trying to push the buttons, "The rat might agree to that, if the money's good."

She turned her head only by a hair's width, something haughty about the way she smirked, "Not enough money in the world for that, Brekker. The rat's enjoying it too much, so shut up.", then to Willa, far more sweetly and kindly, so as to leave Kaz wondering vaguely if he could ever be spoken to this way, "Could you make us some tea, please? I’ll be down in a minute.”

Willa was silent for a moment, then said begrudgingly, “I’ll make us our usual.”

Her tidy, small steps could be heard receding down the hallway, and Kaz waited just long enough to be sure she was out of earshot, “Tea with the help? How unseemly of you.”

“Just because it’d be easier for you if I were a merchant's brat doesn’t make it true.”, she whirled around to face him, “And she’s my old nanny, not the help.”

Kaz supposed she had a point, even if he would never have admitted that to her, it would have been easier if only she’d made herself more subject to hate. Instead, she made herself present in his life, all dolled up in contradictions and spite, made him obsess over her intentions and left him wandering about her desires. Tell me your thoughts, Kaz. Maybe he’d ask her that question once, if he was feeling reckless enough. His eyes followed her religiously as she slipped away from him, “What’s it to you?”

She was standing by her dresser now, running an ivory comb through her hair, her eyes catching his in the reflection, “I don’t want you dead, Brekker.”, then she looked away, “But if it makes you sleep better at night, let’s say I prefer to have an asset such as you alive and kicking. It's rather more perfunctory, don't you think?”

He did, indeed, prefer that version of the truth, even if he was usually the one having the assets, not being one. Everything else felt dangerously like a loaded gun and was better left unspoken, read between the lines like most unspeakable things were. She'd been graceful enough to offer him a sort of coldly calculated alternative to her intentions, one which he was at once more familiar, and more comfortable with, and he wasn't about to press her on her reasons, “So you refuse to do it?”

She let out a faint sigh as if the anger had drained all the energy from her, “Yes. But I’ll be at the Crow Club tonight. I promise nothing, but I might be able to work something else out.”

He stood there for a moment, watching her slender fingers work the hairpins, then moved carefully across the room to stand by her side and pick at the jewellery in the carved mahogany box, all periwinkle velvet and a charming little dancer that looked an awful lot like her. His voice was lazy and derisive when he spoke, “Don’t proper Ghezen-fearing girls go to bed early?”

“I’m not very proper Brekker, or you wouldn’t be in here.", she'd been looking at his reflection in the mirror, and now that he'd looked up to meet her eyes he could see she had a point. She with her hazy, soft edges obscuring the sharp darkness of him as he stood behind her. He bet she'd have a word to describe it, something out of her heavy leather-bound books - juxtaposition, perhaps. Fair enough. Kaz dangled a diamond bracelet from the tip of his finger, watching it swing and wondering distractedly what her dear fiancé-to-be would have to say about this scene. She seemed to have that fool utterly convinced she could do no wrong. And Kaz - well, Kaz was one of those things that were always very wrong. “Besides,” she continued, “Good girls go to bed by nine so that by eleven they can be out and about.”

Kaz didn’t bother pushing down the smirk on his lips as he dropped the bracelet back into the mahogany box, and turned to head for the window, “How clever. Be on the floor at eleven.”

“Not if you’ll be my dealer. And Kaz?, he stopped to look at her when she spoke, but by now she'd already slipped out of the room and only her voice carried over to him, “Leave the earrings by the window, you can steal them off me tonight or something.” The diamonds sparkled delicately against the blackness of his gloves, and he left them on top of her furs before slipping out into the evening. Another time.

#kaz brekker #kaz brekker imagine #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker x you #kaz brekker fic #kaz brekker fanfic #kaz brekker x y/n #the six of crows #soc #shadow and bone #someone get me away from a keyboard #this is too much #tell me your thoughts

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