you won't make yourself a name if you follow the rules

from nine lives, snake's eyes, and this is probably one of the earliest scenes in the story in reading order as well as chronological order, and Nino's playlist is noirshitsuji's fault:

It's in the eyes, I can tell, you will always be—

Adrien's ride is pulling up; Nino stops caring about the lyrics. "Dude!" he calls as soon as Adrien's door opens. He pauses the track, drops his headphones around his neck, and grins back at Adrien's wavering smile.

—Wait.

Nino rechecks his texts, just to be sure:

Adrien: my future cat daughter 😸

Adrien: Audio on!

from more like spears than hearts chapter 2 "ciabatta and currant jam":

Scrolling through the account books doesn't change the numbers: the bakery revenue has dropped compared to last month. Again. Marinette ought (Sabine thinks) to be able to survive secondary education without stressing herself to death over things she has as little control over as Hawkmoth's impact on the income of businesses in his strike zone; Marinette ought to save her design earnings for her future except for that part she spends on making herself and her friends happy; it bothers Sabine enough that the new PvP game Marinette is cheerfully pummeling Tom on is something Marinette bought Tom 'because you're the best', read, because she realized there was a reason Tom was putting off buying it for himself, even if Marinette doesn't know what the reason—

Knock-knock-knock-knock.

Sabine thumbs off her tablet screen and goes to open the door. It's Adrien, tie knot loosened and without the jacket to match his slacks, trembling and fidgeting with the ring he always wears. "May I hug you?" he blurts out—then blinks, dropping his gaze to Sabine's eyes from somewhere a little above her head.

I am not admitting which story this is from:

"Hey, LB, may I ask an invasive question?"

"Chaton, the only secrets I'm keeping from you anymore are things you don't want to know anyway." Hey, he resents that. Marinette's tone shifts from tired to tiredly amused: "Like what's in that brightly wrapped package in my trunk with your name on it."

"Oh." Which name? —Never mind.

from where the firelight fades, and I am declining to specify which upcoming chapter:

"Trixx, let's pounce," Alya murmurs in the shelter of two pairs of legs and Carapace's shield, and Rena Rouge stands up for Pegasé to take their place, so no one will see more of him recharging than a flare of blue light. Not that anyone's really looking, Rena's pretty sure: the people whose chairs face either cluster of heroes are pointedly intent on their phones ("twelfth time's the charm?" mutters one, raising his phone to his ear), or their neighbors ("—just like the purple devil, wouldn't it, to frame somebody?" says one; another begins "do you think Ladybug's really—" and stops dead), or the news ticker (een Bee: seeking them out "an utterly awful way to thank) over TVi replaying aerial footage of the fog-shrouded Shellter dome. A few more are watching the emergency department's waiting room exit: a teenage boy Rena half-recognizes comes out and is immediately engulfed by a sobbing woman chanting "al-Ḥamdu lillāh, al-Ḥamdu lillāh," who might be his mother.

Which means no one is willing to notice the tear tracks forming down Rena's cheeks.

(in a stunning display of irony, if I had been more willing to be patient enough to update where the firelight fades once a week, stalling the last few chapters until I have them all at least entirely drafted and looking like a story would not have resulted in a two-month break between chapters)

from nine lives, snake's eyes, chapter who the fuck knows, and it might not look anything like this by the time I get there:

Adrien snorts. "If Ladybug thinks her victory depends on Chat Noir doing something that'll take him out of action, she'll sacrifice him in a heartbeat. She always has, and he's always gone along with it."

"Sometimes when she doesn't think, too," Marinette mutters.

"Yeah, sometimes he jumps the gun—or the shark—and she hates it whether it was her idea or not. That's not my point."

from "Cheat Sweet":

"Busy Bee?" suggested Adrien helpfully. "Bumble? No, forget that, sorry—not 'Buzzword', not 'Buzzkill'—I know: Honeybun!"

She snatched a twig off the mossy ground to swat at him with. "You're as bad as Chat Noir!"

"That stings."

untitled and I forgot what I was doing with it but I want to share something:

Émilie's first sight of the so-called Heroes of Paris is when the girl with ragged black pigtails rises, leaning on the cracked glass of Gabriel's work table, and tries to climb to the main level of the atelier. The girl trips, sprawling, and swears in a language Émilie does not know, and she on her hands and knees crawls over smashed statuary and broken tile to the man on his, where he stares at the floor by the ostentatious portrait of Émilie, the gold-edged purple fabric of his suit shaking as he tries to breathe. With sharp motions she strips the rings from his fingers—Émilie does not have voice to question or strength to protest—and dons one and hands the black kwami thus summoned a crushed green macaron from the pocket of her torn pink jeans; Émilie doesn't hear her words, but they must be the kwami's name and the transformation command.

The Cat girl takes the earrings from the man's ears and the brooch from his neck, pinning the brooch to her own collar, and says something to Nooroo—whisper or shout, Émilie is unable to know—that sends the kwami rushing off. A silver baton swings from the Cat girl's hip: she takes it, splits it, and with a staff in each hand she rises: supporting her weight on one, she knocks Gabriel to the floor with the other, rolls him over, cracks him across the face hard enough to break bone.

The only other person in the room, Émilie sees when she collects the strength to lift her head, is a blond boy the Cat girl's age or a bit older, bruised and bleeding and chained down by a sentimonster shaped of interlocked rings; the Cat girl frowns at the ring she holds and the sentimonster moves away.

from "catastrophic":

"—Hey, maybe that's why Dream Chat Noir got akumatized: he found out Ladybug's secretly a selfish person[," Adrien tells the ceiling, rather than look at Marinette. "]Not someone like you."

"Bullshit," says Alya. "I hope Ladybug spends the rest of her time being a lot more selfish than Marinette ever is. Her sleep schedule's gotta be enough of a wreck without, I don't know, storytime at the children's hospital."

Marinette winces.

from a long-stemmed rose (the dice are loaded) ch… 3 probably? "(rolls with) their fingers crossed":

#got-spotted

JustStabCésaire:
first rule of #got-spotted: do not talk about #got-spotted

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Ready player MinMaxed

Rossignolade has arrived. Party's over.

Kimbeau just joined. Hide your bananas.

Welcome, LahiffingMyAssOff. We hope you brought pizza.

from the one I don't wanna spoil the title joke by revealing the title too soon (even though people in the fandom who will get it without explanation are approximately me and my middle sister), hereinafter referred to (for reasons that will make sense to…approximately the referenced blameworthy individuals and their various and sundry honorary niblings) as "Codename: Aunt Teddy Bear and Uncle Marshmallow":

Her head was ringing horribly.

Hair tickling her nose: Ladybug sneezed, and opened her eyes to Chat Noir's ear twitching away from the sound. He would be the heavy thing on her, then. That was—good, maybe? That whatever just happened, she knew exactly where he was?

And that he was alive.

from "couldn't hide from the thunder", though I have the sneaking suspicion formatting its title like a one-shot instead of a chaptered fic is a misnomer:

Chat Noir beamed at [Ladybug], already vaulting to her side, and plastered the expression in place in hopes En Passant's minions wouldn't notice he wasn't whispering another punchline in her ear. "I need to talk to you right after this. It's urgent, it's important, and you won't like it. I'm sorry."

She nodded, biting her lip. "Are there just white pieces or are half the minions hiding?"