#mlss2k25

[aidanchaser]

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to @thequeenofspace! I was your @mlsecretsanta for 2024 and I had a blast working on a little DJWiFi fic for you. I hope you enjoy!

Adrift

Tags: DJWiFi, Scarabella, Nino as Chat, Romance, Fluff, Comfort, Cozy, Identity Reveal Word Count: 1978 Rating: G for General Audiences Beta'd by: @samsimisauser

The living room is dark and empty. Though Alya’s family has gone to bed, Alya is wide awake, as usual. She sits on the small patio balcony, computer perched on her lap and keyboard clicking softly beneath her fingers.

Summer has finally crept in, and Alya has decided she likes Paris summers, when the air is warm and clings to her skin like a sopping towel. It reminds her of home. She’s a bit cool in her thin camisole and pajama shorts, but if she was dressed in anything more, it would break the illusion. 

She rests her laptop on the patio table and pauses her writing to reach for a candle labeled driftwood & sea salt. The wick is still white and slick with wax, unlit because Alya is afraid to burn through the candle, to lose this scent and this memory.

While Alya has some notes on how the candle’s sage oils aren’t quite the aroma of ocean water that she craves, this is the closest she has come to smelling the salty ocean air in the last year. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, wishing that sage were more like driftwood, wishing that Paris’s summers were thicker, wishing that home could always feel like home, wherever she is.

When she opens her eyes, a pair of feet dangle above her, clad in black leather and tipped with thin silver bands, curved like a pair of cat’s claws. She only just manages to shove aside the candle as the rest of the black cat superhero drops onto her balcony. To his credit, he looks as startled to see her as she is to see him.

Chat d’Ombre’s hood is low over his face, the goggles over his eyes are tinted green, and despite the loose shape of the hood over his head, the rest of his outfit is tight and trim, with thin green stripes that follow his figure from shoulder to toe.

“Sorry—” he says, and instantly backs away until he hits the railing that walls in the small patio. “I was just out patrolling—Didn’t realize you were out here—I was only—Just on my way—”

“You don’t have to go,” Alya says before she can quite stop herself. She tugs on the gold studs in her ears and, on an impulse she knows she shouldn’t follow, asks, “Where’s your partner?”

“I’m on my own tonight,” he says. “I—the power for the fan in my place went out, so I thought I’d get some fresh air.”

Alya laughs. “This weather is too much for you?”

“It’s <i>hot</i>,” he complains.

“Maybe I’ll update my blog tonight: ‘Paris’s beloved cat superhero’s greatest weakness—humidity.’”

He sticks his tongue out at her, and she sticks hers right back out at him, but the surprise and discomfort have vanished. He perches on the railing of her balcony like its the most comfortable place in the world.

“You don’t normally write about Scarabella and me,” he says, and tips his head to one side, like a cat examining a fish in a bowl.

Alya’s cheeks grow hot, and she wonders if maybe summer is too warm after all. “Well—plenty of other people do. And I sometimes will—you know—report on what they report on. It’s… <i>interesting</i> how they report on us—I mean—our heroes.” She coughs and hopes he doesn’t catch her near slip. “I didn’t know you read my blog.”

Her blog started as a way to chronicle her family’s move from one side of the world to the other. Then it became a way for her to adjust to Paris and invest in it. When she’s not reframing personal anecdotes into insightful narratives, she’s calling for action on Mylène’s latest project or critiquing Mayor Bourgeois’s latest mandates. Nino had once suggested she write about Paris’s heroes, had even suggested the name “The Bella Blog,” but she tries not to write about Scarabella and Chat d’Ombre—she’s too worried she might give herself away.

Chat d’Ombre shrugs. “I really like the way you write about home. And Paris. And the way it, you know, is and isn’t home.”

“Is Paris home for you?” she asks, though she immediately bites her tongue. “Sorry—I suppose you’re not supposed to share identity details with civilians, right?” But that lie tastes even worse that the dread from her question. She’s the one who has insisted on secrecy between them, for the sake of Paris. Personal details about her partner’s home aren’t allowed.

Chat d’Ombre shrugs and slides down from her railing. He stretches his arms over his head, and his back arches like a cat kneading its claws into the carpet. He even flexes his fingers like he’s attempting to make biscuits out of the humid night air. 

“Paris wasn’t always home,” he says, which is gratefully vague enough that she has no new clues to who he is. “I mean, I’ve always lived here,” he says, “but it didn’t always feel like home. It does now, though.” He reaches for one of the iron patio chairs and pulls it closer. He slumps into it, legs straddling the back with his chin resting on the metal curls with their flaking white paint. The light glints off of the green glass guarding his eyes, and Alya wonders, not for the first time, what it would be like to lift those goggles from his eyes, to truly see the boy who would be waiting behind them.

“Do you think that has to do with being a superhero?”

He frowns, as if he hadn’t considered this yet. “Maybe. I think it has more to do with the friends I’ve made.”

Heat pricks on the back of Alya’s neck. “Friends like Scarabella?”

He folds his arms under his chin and sinks his head into the crook of his elbow like a cat settling in for a nap. “She’s a good friend, yeah.”

She rests her elbow on the table and leans into her hand, tipping her head to meet the angle of his eyes. “Just your friend.”

“Oh, sure. We keep it profesh. Besides, I’ve had my eyes on another girl for a while.”

Alya’s heart twitches and she has to swallow down the sudden ache. “‘A while’? You haven’t told her?”

“I don’t think she notices me.”

“You’re literally a superhero. How could she not notice you?”

He smiles wryly. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? I can’t tell her who I am. And how am I supposed to get her to notice who I really am if all she sees is… this.”

“What do you want her to see?”

“I hope she thinks I’m funny. I hope she thinks I’m loyal. Trustworthy, dependable. Caring, cool, confident… even if I don’t feel confident.”

As he says it, she is suddenly aware of the way the clawed tips of his gloves tap anxiously against the back of the chair. He’s nervous—she makes him nervous.

“Do you want me to post a personal ad for you on my blog? ‘Caring, cool, confident guy who can’t reveal his name, seeking…?’”

He laughs, a single silly snort in a burst of humor. But then it settles into something soft. She’s familiar with the teasing arch of his eyebrow and she braces herself for a stupid pun, but instead he says something surprisingly genuine:

“Seeking someone thoughtful, insightful. Someone who sees the world as it is and presents it honestly, but is still optimistic about what it could become.”

Alya responds by blowing a fat raspberry into her palm. “That could be anyone.”

“No, it’s not anyone.”

The chair tips forward under his weight. Alya’s heart pounds in her chest, but she leans forward, too. 

“The thing is, though,” he says, voice low, “if I tell her how I feel right now, I can’t tell her as me.”

“Then don’t tell her anything,” Alya murmurs, and closes the distance between them.

As his lips press against hers, all she can think is that this is what home is supposed to feel like. It’s steady, supportive, and genuine. It’s about trust and commitment. This is her partner, and she wants him to be her partner in everything. 

And if she trusts him with her life every time she dons a magical disguise, why shouldn’t she trust him with her identity beneath that disguise?

He presses back against her, but as he presses too far, the chair slips out from under him and goes crashing to the floor. He goes with it, and so does she, laughing as she falls on top of him.

He winces and rubs his shoulder where he hit the ground. Alya sits up, enough to allow him room to sit beside her. His hood slides off of his head, revealing closely shorn curls and Alya reaches out to brush her fingers against them.

“Does it break the romantic alluring mystery?” he asks with a wry smile.

“I like it.”

“You know this means this is all we get, right? No dates, no holding hands along the riverbank, just… late night balcony visits.”

Alya purses her lips. “It doesn’t have to be.”

“I can’t tell you who I am. Scarabella would murder me and then fire me.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize she was your boss.”

“I mean, she’s not, but she is sort of the one in charge.”

“What if Scarabella told you her identity first? Then you could tell me yours, right?”

“I don’t know if that’s how that works.”

“Ask her.”

“Ask Scarabella if she can tell me her secret identity, just so that I can share my secret identity with the girl I like?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think she’ll say yes.”

“She already did.”

But Chat’s brow furrows and so, with a wide grin, Alya says, “Tikki, spots on.”

There’s a flash of pink, and when her vision clears, she expects to see Chat d’Ombre staring with perhaps shock or wonder, something romantic at least. Instead, he bursts out into laughter and even falls over.

Scarabella grips him by the shoulders to hold him still, but his laughter persists.

“It’s not that funny! I can be a superhero!”

“It’s not that,” he laughs. “I’ve just—I’ve liked you this whole time and you—I never would have guessed—” In between laughs and hiccups, he manages to spit out, “Plagg, claws in.”

Green light bursts from his ring and washes over him. The fine black leather catsuit disappears, leaving behind a plain t-shirt and a plain boy, no hood or goggles, staring up at her with the familiar silly grin of her best friend.

Alya doesn’t feel like laughing. She only gapes at him. “Nino?”

“The one and only.”

“But—but—” 

But of course he is. His sense of humor, his need for freedom, his casual, gentle, and compassionate approach to everything—if she had not been so distracted by the intrigue and mystery of a boy in a dark hood, perhaps she would have seen it sooner.

His laughter is suddenly lost in worry as her shock fails to clear.

“Is it—is it okay that it’s me?” he asks.

She sinks down on top of him, pinning him to the ground with her whole weight. “More than okay,” she says, and kisses him again.

Home, for Alya, was always the place she felt loved. Safety was not part of it, couldn’t be with storms raging and her father’s wild animals always in the periphery, but love was always part of it, from her parents to her sisters. As Nino slides his hand through Scarabella’s thick, magically finished curls, she merely adds this love to her definition of home. The place isn’t important, neither is the weather.

As Nino said, it’s the friends he made that made it home. And this friendship—because at its core it still is a friendship and a partnership—is the thing that makes Paris home.