Chapter Text
CRACK .
Time seemed to stop at that sickening snap of bone across the plaza, one unbearable eternity before Chat screamed. Papillon's violet outline flared into life across the akuma's face, just the corners visible to Ladybug where she'd been dropped too far away to help. Her yo-yo was still a tangled mess where the akuma's portals had tied it up in knots around several lamps, a bicycle, and her own leg; Chat's baton was at the bottom of the Seine. Her partner was trapped under a mountain of glistening akumatized mechanical hand and the thing had just--
Black boiled off the blond struggling under its grip.
-- taken Chat's miraculous.
No .
The akuma's cackling stopped short. The violet outline pulsed once, twice. Then the akuma roared, shoved the blond and the ring into separate portals, and turned its ominously blank face onto her.
"Ladybug." Its voice echoed oddly, the akuma's robotic soprano underpinned by a man's harsh voice. Papillon’s voice. "Bring your miraculous to Sacré-Coeur in twenty minutes, or you will never see Chat Noir again."
The akuma dropped a portal at its feet and vanished.
Papillon was going to regret ever touching her cat, Ladybug swore. Somehow. As soon as she untangled herself.
-0-0-0-
Adrien landed hard on a stone floor, in a dim room speckled with fluttering white akuma.
"Quit biting me, you little rat!" Papillon snapped. Adrien shoved himself up to find the man himself just across the room, a jar in one hand and Plagg gripped firmly in the other. Plagg's fangs glinted against purple leather, a flash of white skin and bright blood dribbling out of the torn material in the kwami's mouth.
"Plagg--" Adrien tried to scramble over to him, only for a bright spear of nauseating pain to shoot up from his broken hand, whiting out his vision for a second as he tried to keep the contents of his stomach down.
"Get in the jar and behave, and I will provide your holder with first aid."
... What.
After a long, considering moment, growling into the man's wound, Plagg actually stopped fighting . Adrien could only watch in stomach-twisting horror as the kwami slumped in Papillon's grip, just letting the man drop him into the jar. He didn't so much as twitch when Papillon screwed its lid on tightly.
Then Papillon turned his attention to Adrien. No suit, no kwami, no powers ... Adrien hissed, kicking away as best he could over the floor, only to run up against cold robot legs and get creepy skittery robot fingers clamped down over his elbows. The akuma hauled him up and stood with arched razorblade-clawed feet over his shoes, leaving Adrien just enough room to squirm to no effect.
The man was somehow scarier in real life than as an image the size of the Eiffel Tower. He seemed to tower over Adrien, perfect posture and lapels that could've been used as knives framing a steely skull-mask.
His gloved hand, when he caught Adrien's forearm, was smooth as glass, not a single pock of the texturing Ladybug and Chat's suits had.
"Stop struggling," Papillon ordered. "I have what I want, there's no need for this display."
Sheer instinct had Adrien go still just long enough for Papillon to stretch his broken hand out (Adrien hissed through the nausea) and neatly splint it with a pen and pocket square. Adrien stared.
What.
Just.
What?
Then Papillon turned away, as if he hadn't just been all... weirdly human , went to the round window looking out over the city, and visibly planted himself there to wait, ignoring Adrien entirely.
"What the hell ?"
"Language, Adrien."
Now that was just wrong . "Don't call me that!"
Papillon sighed. "Language, M. Agreste ."
Thanks Pere, my modeling career has me instantly recognizeable to the supervillain terrorizing Paris, that's exactly what my life needed.
There had to be a way out of this. There had to.
Okay, he had: one Portal-style teleporting akuma with a grip on him that would be breakable if its feet weren't made of knives. One visible exit: the round window, which had Papillon blocking it and would be... difficult to reach, like trying to get past a soccer goalie, but potentially doable if Adrien could get loose.
Plagg, in a jar and pawing at the lid fruitlessly.
"The jar is laced with a microscopic amount of gold," Papillon said after a few minutes. "As is the lid. Your kwami will not be escaping it."
Dammit. He couldn't leave without Plagg.
He'd have to wait for Ladybug, but... how would she ever find him? They could be literally anywhere in Paris. Or maybe not even in Paris. No one knew how the akuma butterflies traveled between Papillon and a victim-- not how fast, not even in which direction they came from. No one had ever seen a butterfly on its way to trigger an attack. They might very well teleport too.
Papillon spoke Parisian French and had never bothered to attack outside the city. That was the only reason anyone thought he lived in Paris. But for all they knew, Papillon wasn't even in France .
What was Papillon waiting for, anyway?
"Ah." Papillon turned to the akuma and made a little beckoning gesture. The akuma shoved Adrien into Papillon's grip, the shock not giving Adrien enough time to react before Papillon had a firm grip in his hair and over his mouth. "Mlle. Ladybug is downstairs," Papillon informed the akuma. "Please open a portal for her, and then you may go."
No, Ladybug, don't come, it's a trap and he's letting the akuma go rampage again--!
One portal bloomed open off to the side, just barely in Adrien's line of sight. It showed a cobblestoned plaza lined with trees, and a fading sunset low on a horizon that had to put them atop one of Paris' few remaining hills. Ladybug stepped in, the akuma stepped out, and Papillon instantly released Adrien's hair and yanked sharply at the air between them.
Adrien caught a glimpse of the akumatized butterfly leaving the victim before the portal fell shut.
"Papillon," Ladybug growled. Then, shocked an octave higher, " Adrien?! "
She didn't want to know. Dammit, Papillon, she didn't want to know and you forced it --
Adrien couldn't look. He couldn't bear to see the horror and disappointment that had to be in her eyes.
"Well, then, Ladybug." Adrien could feel the shift as Papillon... smiled? Ugh . "Let us discuss the terms of surrender."
She won't give in to you! She can't ! Ladybug don't-- But she wasn't protesting, why wasn't she protesting?! Not over me... please, we've fought to protect Paris too long... you can't give it up over me...
"I'm listening."
No!
"I propose that you use your miraculous to do as I wish," Papillon said smugly. Adrien bit the hand over his mouth, but he didn't have Plagg's fangs or a good angle: he barely managed to scrape his blunt teeth against the smooth kwami-fabric. "In exchange, I will return your cat and surrender my miraculous."
What.
What .
"... What," Ladybug choked out.
"I have no interest in the miraculouses past the one thing I wish to use them for." Papillon scoffed shortly in the back of his throat. "Though I would prefer if Master Fu did not have the selection of the next holder of mine."
Ladybug blinked, but the odd comment was enough for her to draw herself up out of her shock, crossing her arms and tipping her chin up firmly. Adrien's heart sank. "What do you want?"
"I want my wife back."
"Okay, care to try that again with a bit more 'why it has to be magic' and a lot less creep?"
Papillon's grip tightened ever-so-slightly in obvious restrained fury. "I," he began, voice overcontrolled, "am aware you cannot trust what I would say in such a matter." The silence stretched as he considered his next words. "... Had she left of her own free will," he said slowly, reluctantly, "she would have taken our son with her."
That... hit way too close to home.
"Mundane means failed to find her. Thus," and Papillon spread his free hand to take in the whole situation.
Ladybug's shoulders sagged. "You could've just asked."
" I did ," Papillon snarled. "Fu threw me out, and clearly didn't take the matter to the kwami at all. He is far too certain my wife is dead ," he spat. Ladybug's eyes narrowed, and Papillon locked the venom back under his previous icy calm, settling once more. "I was under the impression that you held the same opinion... but I was also under the impression that both of you were adults. Clearly I have misjudged the situation intolerably."
"Intolerably," Ladybug repeated. Then, darker and more incredulous, " Intolerably . Because you have any sort of problem attacking kids ."
"You would be surprised what I have 'problems' with, Ladybug. But we were negotiating my surrender, not debating ethics."
What ethics , Adrien thought reflexively, before the fact that he was captive ( cat tive! no, this was not a time to pun) and relatively unharmed -- that Papillon was negotiating -- struck that out of his head.
"I'll need to consult the kwami."
"One kwami," Papillon countered. "They are both required for the spell, so either will have sufficient information to judge."
"It's about consent, too, Papillon."
"... Ah." Papillon sounded discomfited, almost as if he was embarrassed not to think of that. Not that he would, since it wasn't like he got consent for his stupid akuma. Jerk.
Then he shifted, and before Adrien could take advantage of the opening, Papillon dropped a hand to the small of his back and shoved him hard into Ladybug's arms. She yelped, catching him, and that moment where they were both tangled up in each other gave Papillon enough time to send something glass smashing.
Ladybug turned Adrien around only for him to see Papillon had grabbed a fancy snooty cane, and smashed Plagg's jar with one dramatic sidelong sweep.
"Plagg!" The little kwami darted into Adrien's unbroken hand, clutching at his collar when Adrien drew him close. He stank of cheese and his whisker-antennae tickled at Adrien's throat, and he probably had glass shards caught in his fur and waiting to stab Adrien's palm, but he was free. "You're okay." Adrien blinked back hot tears.
"I am keeping the ring," Papillon said. "But you may consult with both kwami."
He'd just let Adrien and Plagg go. Mostly. Plagg couldn't get too far from the ring, and Adrien couldn't just leave Plagg, but... he'd let them go .
"A goodwill gesture," Papillion explained, reading their obvious shock.
Ladybug dragged Adrien away before he could think of a good Chat-like comeback.
-0-0-0
No time to panic.
(Adrien was Chat, Adrien was her minou the entire time, Adrien was-- Adrien was captured by Papillon and if Papillon had been even one whit more villainous than he was turning out to be Adrien would be... would be--
Ladybug was never going to get the image of Adrien struggling against the man's gloved hand out of her head. She was going to have nightmares forever.)
No. Time. To. Panic.
She slammed the door to a small antechamber behind them and let Adrien go. He stumbled to a confused halt a few steps further into the room (she was between him and the door, good, she had to be the first line of defense now) and spun to face her. His cat kwami was little more than a blob of shadow cupped in Adrien's good hand, protectively high over Adrien's heart.
He looked... she had no idea how he looked. Panicked. Scared. Like he'd lost so much more than the kwami he was so wet-eyed over.
(It was Adrien how was she going to talk to him--?)
Ladybug could talk to Adrien. Confidence! Business! Negotiations! Leave it to me, good citizen!
... She needed Tikki out to be able to consult.
There was a curse word for this situation and Ladybug had no idea what it was. She couldn't even keep up her show of confidence, because there was really no choice. "... Might as well get it over with," she muttered. Then, "Just please don't say the thing about bags, m-minou." And she squeezed her eyes shut. " Tikki spots off ."
Silence.
Siiiiilence.
Okay that wasn't some sort of 'how could it possibly be you', so maybe... maybe he was just... no, wait, Adrien was too kind to say something like that, he had to be completely at a loss for some way to put it nicely.
She peeked.
Adrien looked like Christmas had come early. She could all but see the sparkles some magazines would put around him in post-production. Once they'd corrected the gray-green pallor of his face, anyway. Not that he'd usually broken a finger right before a shoot.
"Um." Slowly Marinette's shoulders started to drop. When had she curled into herself? "You're not yelling. And looking a lot happier than I was expecting with the whole 'got your miraculous' and 'it's me' things and wow can I please shut up now." She caught a breath. Stop panicking, this is Chat . "Are you okay?"
"My Lady is my Purrincess," he breathed.
Marinette's cheeks went painfully hot. She had no idea if it was from Adrien's gorgeous starry-eyed joy or Chat's infuriating pun.
"Kids," the little black kwami in Adrien's hand muttered, with an emerald-eyed overdramatic eye roll. One tiny paw patted at Adrien's thumb. "Hello? Supervillain? Crazy deal?"
"Plagg!" Tikki hissed from Marinette's shoulder. "They were getting there on their own!"
The cat was unfazed. "The sooner they decide what to do, the sooner they can get my miraculous back and go get me cheese!"
"No, he's right. Mostly." Business now, Chat's terrible flirting later oh god she'd been refusing Adrien for months . "We really do have to deal with that and, um. So. Tabling it." She took a deep breath and gently plucked Tikki from her shoulder, so she could face her kwami. " Can we try to get his wife? I mean, is it even possible?"
Tikki bit her lip, a flash of almost microscopic white teeth against the vibrant red of her skin. "... Kind of?" she said dubiously. "It depends on whether she's really alive or not."
"Alive," Plagg added with a certain morbid cheer, "yup. But dead? We'd be ripping the universe apart." Tikki winced, but Plagg brought out one tiny paw and began counting off on his toes. "Unravelling cause and effect, collapsing dimensions, flipping the properties of fundamental forces, suddenly gravity's super-strong and only works at quantum levels and the strong nuclear force is weak and works across the universe." He ran out of toes, and spread both paws wide. "Instant collapse and bounce into a new Big Bang." He settled back into Adrien's hand and crossed his forelegs with false nonchalance. "Probably get an antimatter universe and, in fourteen billion years or so, new antihumans."
"And in that universe, you'd probably eat sweets and I would eat cheese!" Tikki snapped in exasperation, making Plagg gasp and recoil from her, as she darted around him like a very tiny warplane taking verbal potshots. "Brie! Hermelin! Coulommiers! Neufchatel! Vacherin! Camembert !" Plagg made a keening sound of dismay. "Now stop scaring the children !"
"Tikki you monster ," Plagg moaned.
Tikki hmmphed and turned back to Marinette, hovering with a sheepish, apologetic smile. "Anyway, that's why Ancient Egypt's Ladybug had to fight that Pharaoh. His wife was definitely dead."
Marinette swallowed. Okay, by that view, M. Fu kicking Papillon out with the Butterfly Miraculous to send akuma over Paris and not even mentioning it to the kwami was... a very strong contender for best option. "Okay... can we find out if she's alive without hurting anything?"
Tikki beamed. "We can certainly find out which side of the veil she's on!" But then her smile faltered. "We'll take a few days to reform afterwards, though, whether she's alive or not... and if she's not..."
"We'll be fighting Papillon without you," Adrien finished thickly.
Possibly for days. Marinette's fists clenched. "... It still might be our best chance," she said. "If we can just word the deal right... and if you tell us before we have to tell him..."
"Of course we'd tell you first!" Tikki rubbed the side of her head sheepishly. "We can't really not do that. We won't be physical for a few days-- we'll only be awake in your miraculouses long enough to tell you whether she's alive or not."
Adrien started, "But he'll have mi--"
"No he won't." Plagg rolled a lazy glance up at him. "He'll have to give the ring back to you if I'm going to do this. Which I might not, Tikki . You threatened the cheese."
" Plagg ," Tikki and Adrien snapped.
The little cat stared Tikki down, whiskers perked forward and quivering, for a long moment. "I'm just saying," he purred. "This could be my last meal." He blinked slowly, not even trying for a poor-hungry-kitten expression. "You wouldn't deny a poor prisoner his last supper?"
" Never ," Tikki replied virtuously (very clearly meaning that Plagg didn't count yet, though), even as Adrien said, "You're just trying to cadge cheese!"
"I am a wise and sensible god," Plagg agreed. "My cheese?"
"Not now, Plagg!" Adrien said. "There isn't any!"
"But--"
"How did we get to negotiating about cheese instead of Papillon?!" Marinette asked.
"I'm sorry, he's always like this." Adrien sighed. "So we'll know for a few days whether we can get her back or not. That's a few days we can keep it to ourselves and plan. He doesn't know how long the... ritual?... takes, right?"
"... Wayzz and Nooroo don't," Tikki said slowly, "so no, he wouldn't."
"How long do you think we can tell him we'll need?"
Tikki eyed Plagg. "A week?"
A week. Okay. They could work with that, and if she was alive then... then... uhoh. "And then what?" Marinette asked. "We meet up with Papillon again empty-handed. Oh, so sorry, we meant we needed a week to check she was alive first! No no we totally believed you, we just need a few more days! And then Papillon goes 'oh okay that makes sense, no superhero would ever try to trick m--'"
Adrien caught her flailing hands. Adrien was holding her hands . "Breathe, Marinette," he told her kindly. "We can make it two weeks. Or however long they'll need to do the second spell to bring her back if she can be." He quirked a lopsided, worried little smile at her. "We won't need the kwami awake if we have her back by the deadline, right?"
"But--"
"We don't have to tell him we're doing two rituals. Just that we need two weeks."
"It is a difficult spell," Tikki agreed. "Both of them. But if she is alive, and not in this reality, she really needs to come home."
"And if she's not... then we're at least armed again. Okay." Marinette nodded to herself. "Okay. We're doing this, then? Plagg?"
"I want ten kilos of Camembert."
"That's a 'yes'," Adrien translated.
Plagg made a face at him. "We done yet? I'm hungry."
Marinette sighed. "I guess we are. Tikki, spots on."
(... She didn't realized until she'd finished that she'd added a little extra flourish to the transformation, and stifled her blush mostly by dint of turning away before Adrien could see it. From the way the tips of her ears burned, it probably didn't work.) "Ready to face him, minou?"
"With you at my side? Always," Adrien replied, and Ladybug now felt the blush creep blazing-hot down the back of her neck. She hurried back out to Papillon's lofty lair.
The man looked as though he hadn't so much as shifted his weight while waiting. "Your decision?" Papillon prompted.
Ladybug really wanted to smack that knowing smirk off the man's face. "We aren't happy with how you went about this, but we agree that your wife has to be found. The kwamis need two weeks to do it."
Papillon raised one silver-clad eyebrow, but apparently Tikki was right that he wouldn't have any idea how long it'd really take. "Very well." He took Adrien's ring out of an inner pocket, the inactive metal bright against his gloves. "I shall meet you at the Bataclan theater at 9 pm on the twenty-second. Should you not appear by midnight, or should I see you running about in uniform prior to 8 pm that day, this deal is off and I shall return to my efforts to obtain your miraculouses the hard way. I do know of several people who would easily akumatize should they learn of Chat Noir's identity."
Shock flashed cold through Ladybug's body, but a glance at Adrien showed no signs of surprise there. Had he been expecting that? "Agreed," she replied coldly. (The thought of Gabriel Agreste as an akuma... or, worse, Nathalie Sancoeur, who was terrifying without superpowers and far more accessible... brrr.) "The ring?"
"Naturally," Papillon said, inclining his head... and tossing the ring out the window. "Pardon, I cannot trust you will not attack or follow me." He strode coolly from the room, even as Plagg sailed out the window in pursuit of his miraculous. Ladybug scooped up Adrien, growling under her breath, looped her yo-yo around the window's curved struts, and swung them outside to follow.
She'd thought the window overlooked the cobblestone plaza far below, where the ring could bounce, ricochet, and roll right into a storm drain, or be found by a tourist. But Papillon's lair had been in a side tower, not the grand dome of the church, and they landed in a small garden surrounded by high iron fencing.
"Plagg!" Adrien hissed, still clinging to her like a (very warm and tall) princess. "Plagg! Where are you?"
"Down here!"
Adrien let his hands slide from Ladybug's shoulders, taking a careful step out into the grass. "Where?" There was enough streetlight reflecting off the pale stone and occasional night-blooming white flower to see by, but everything was in grayscale and deep shadows under the bushes and trees. And Plagg's voice echoed off the odd angles of the garden walls.
"Here!"
When Plagg didn't come floating out from wherever he was with the ring, Adrien paused. "... Plagg, are you stuck ?"
"Kwami of bad luck, what do you think?" Adrien clapped a hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking. "Come on, I'm getting pollened on here!" A tiny, squeaky sneeze punctuated his complaint, and Adrien lost it.
('Doubled over and howling with laughter' Adrien was the prettiest Adrien Ladybug had ever seen.)
She left him knelt on the ground giggling, patting around under bushes with his good hand for the kwami. Hopping the fence and detransforming -- because Marinette couldn't be seen with Adrien, not when Papillon could be anyone in the early evening crowds -- she quickly headed down the hill to buy cheese.
One new messenger bag and a wheel of Camembert later, Marinette jogged up to Adrien just before he entered the hospital doors. "You forgot your bag in the park!" she panted.
"Oh. Thanks, Marinette." Adrien smiled. "And thanks for the splint, too. I'll see you in the morning?"
"Morning. Yes." She smiled, and it felt as awkward and fangirlish as ever. Perfect cover if Papillon was watching oh god how was she going to explain lying about the bag, wait obviously Ladybug told her to. Right. Right. And Papillon wasn't going to come after anybody for two weeks anyway. Right. "Come by the bakery anytime!"
-0-0-0-
When Marinette got home, she buried her face in her pillow and screamed out all her swirling, confused feelings. Then she put on a playlist Nino had helpfully titled WTF, and let the bass pound all thoughts out of her head until, sometime around midnight, her phone lit up.
aataku: Does your mom look in your closet?
aataku: Actually, do you even have one? I don't remember seeing it.
Ugh, thinking now. She dragged the phone over and thumbed in a reply, hitting the right letters more by luck and habit than attention.
designmari: no I dont
designmari: storage bench for current season, next season pieces go in basement when theyre done
designmari: y?
aataku: I can't think of anywhere else we could put the kwami that someone won't see, even if it's a homeless person or maintenance worker.
aataku: Definitely not at my house. Even the attic gets daily maid service. Pere hates dust.
aataku: That sounded really snobby, didn't it. But anyway the only reason Plagg gets away with staying here is that he can change hiding spots and he's always with me. And he eats his cheese too fast for any stashes to get found.
aataku: If you don't have a box your parents won't get curious about, what do you think of a new flowerpot?
aataku: I can get the Gorilla to help carry one in. Put it on your balcony, put a bit of tape over the hole to hide the light?
designmari: ... help carry one in?
designmari: how big a pot are we talking about??
aataku: ... I'm mostly sure it'd fit through your skylight?
designmari: brb talking to tikki
designmari: DONT BUY ANYTHING YET
-0-0-0
Marinette opened the door the next morning to a brightly, sheepishly grinning Adrien haloed in sunlight. "So I might've tried to buy something..." he started, alarming Marinette into glancing past him for lurking Gorilla bodyguards bearing flowerpots like knockoff Donkey Kongs.
"Is that Adrien?" her mother called from behind the counter. "You tell him his money's no good at the house door either!"
Adrien's grin twitched in a very clear 'gotcha'.
"You think you're sooooo funny," Marinette managed to say, stepping aside to give him clear passage. "Get in here, my parents have rules about feeding strays."
"Copiously and often?" Adrien asked hopefully.
"It's like you're psychic."
Sabine popped her head out of the bakery side of the ground floor as they headed upstairs. "Have you had breakfast yet, Adrien?" she asked. "Of course you have. Second breakfast is in the warming oven, Marinette, be sure to serve it before it dries out." The bell at the counter dinged impatiently. "Coming!" Sabine called back cheerfully, and disappeared.
"... My parents usually aren't such nerds," Marinette lied.
"I'm sure." His grin broadened. "I'll have to make a hobbit of coming over to make certain, though."
Wait, he did not just-- he did . He nerd punned at her. Worse than Chat ever had! "Elful punsters don't get treats," she replied, sticking her nose up in the air and stalking into the kitchen. The oven turned out to hold two plates of mouillettes and soft-boiled eggs, and the counter next to it had a pitcher of orange juice waiting.
When she turned back, just-this-side-of-too-hot plates in hand, Adrien was giving her the most pathetic kitten eyes she'd seen since Shrek. She very nearly dropped the plates. " That ," she said, smacking them onto the table with a clatter, "is not fair . It should be impossible to be cuter than you already are! A black hole singularity thing of reality-bending Star Trek levels of impossible!" Oh god she'd just said that to his face.
Adrien stared at her for a long, gaping moment. Then, he raised one finger. "Um. Cat?" Like that was a reason, all Jack Sparrow going 'hello, pirate?' in glorious dreamboat Adrien-ness with Chat's stupid cute flirty smirk arrgh .
New subject! Business! Right! "So. Flowerpots."
"Flowerpots," Adrien agreed, kindly letting the teasing drop and starting in on breakfast.
"Right. I talked to Tikki," Marinette said. "She circled out the space requirements for me-- did Plagg do that too?-- and it's pretty two-dimensional. I'm thinking we could just get a kiddie pool instead."
Adrien blinked. "... You can buy those? They aren’t just props?”
Props? "We'll need to take the Metro,” Marinette replied slowly, wondering why he would think a kiddie pool wasn’t actually a thing, “but yes."
Adrien lit up. "We're taking the Metro? And going to a store? Like a regular store?"
"... Yeeees?" Much to her surprise, Adrien promptly pulled out his wallet, emptied it of credit cards, and put the short stack into her hands. "What the--"
"Nino's Third Rule of Shopping. I'm not allowed to carry more than five Euros on any excursion, and credit cards are right out."
Marinette blinked, even as she put the cards onto the table. "Why?"
"Er. Well. Nino really tells this story better..." Adrien began with a rueful grin, before launching into the story of his first time in a normal retail store. It turned out he'd never actually shopped someplace where you could just take things off the shelf and go up to a cashier, not until Nino wanted to grab snacks on their way back to his house one afternoon. TV was really not the best place to learn how to shop for groceries, so he had Marinette in stitches in just minutes. "And then I found the shopping carts--"
She could all too easily picture her Chat hopping right up on the crossbar ready to sail down the aisle like too many commercials, and that was exactly what he'd done. Except he didn't know how to balance it properly and had gone head-over-teakettle into the basket.
"And you have to remember, this was after I had Plagg, so Nino still doesn't know what happened to that cheese aisle--"
"Oh no, stop, my sides--"
"And the very next morning, Nino showed up with his Rules of Shopping list."
Through her giggles, Marinette managed to catch a breath, then, “Okay, this I need to see. Hear.” She flapped a hand at Adrien, and the boy drew himself up pompously, sticking his perfectly cute nose in the air and sticking his hand in front of his stomach Napoleon-style.
“Nino Lahiffe’s First Rule of Shopping!” Adrien’s chin and voice dropped simultaneously, his bright eyes pinning Marinette in place. “Do not talk about the cheese aisle. Do not look at the cheese aisle. There is no cheese aisle.”
“Do I even want to know what Plagg did ?”
“ There is no cheese aisle ,” Adrien repeated, even more deeply, before returning to nose-in-the-air declaiming. “Nino Lahiffe’s Second Rule of Shopping! There is no bakery but Dupain-Cheng!”
“That cannot seriously--”
“No, really, that’s a rule. You can ask Nino.”
“Nino Lahiffe’s Third Rule of Shopping! Adrien is not allowed more than five euros per trip! Nino Lahiffe’s Fourth Rule of Shopping! Carts are only toys after 9 pm!”
“... Do you even get out after nine?”
“Not as myself yet, no. But if you google for Chat Noir vids…” He wiggled his eyebrows, distracting her from the first part of his comment, then beamed and finished, “Nino’s Fifth Rule of Shopping! There are four rules!”
“... No. No, I absolutely refuse to-- no . Nino is not that much of a nerd.” Marinette’s parents were, which was why she got the Star Trek reference, but Nino was definitely not. “Also your nose is twitching, kitty.” Adrien clapped his hand over it, which completely failed to hide the amusement in his eyes. “What’s the real fifth rule?” she asked, and Adrien mumbled something into his hand. “Adrieeeeeeeeen…”
Go her, she said that without blushing too much! Or at least blushing lightly enough that it could be blamed on her bout of laughing.
“I am not allowed to be this cute,” he muttered, cheeks going pink. It took her a moment to realize that was the fifth rule “I think he forgot I make a living out of it.”
As it turned out, Nino had not forgotten any such thing. Adrien, however, had no idea of the difference between ‘being nice to the poor workers’ and ‘being percieved as flirting with the poor workers’. Marinette hauled him out of the store with the pool bouncing awkwardly in her other hand at an angle over her head and shoulder, grumbling under her breath that he was not allowed to be that cute at them.
“ Et tu , Marinette?!”
“I,” she said, “have different reasons than Nino does. But yes, et moi , Adrien.”
The kiddie pool, which they had to smuggle in through the side door while Marinette’s parents were distracted by the lunch rush, just barely fit through the trapdoor into her room. Even that was only because, with some careful effort, the cheap plastic would fold into a bit of a taco shape.
“Right,” Marinette said, looking at where the pool almost covered her entire area rug. “I don’t think we’re going to get it out onto the roof.”
Adrien, resting his arms on her floor and still only half in her room at all, eyed the skylight over her bed. “Definitely not.”
Marinette sighed. “I’ll just have to hope Alya doesn’t come over til,” she gestured weakly rather than finish the sentence, then swallowed. “Tikki? Whenever you’re ready.”
The little red kwami floated up from behind Adrien’s head, and popped the last bite of a cookie into her mouth. She chewed, swallowed, and then wrinkled her nose in tandem with Adrien as Plagg floated too close licking cheese goo off his paw. “Ugh, Plagg, go bathe in the sink,” she told him. “Marinette’s room doesn’t need to smell like an old gym locker!”
“Like heaven , you mean.”
“ Old gym locker. ” And Tikki punted him neatly into the sink, where he landed with an oddly rubbery-sounding thump and skidded in circles until he hit the drain.
“I let you do that,” came woozily from the sink.
“Bath!”
“Cat!”
Adrien met Marinette’s eyes, communicating ‘this is my life’ silently as the kwami squabbled again, until she couldn’t bear his prettiness any more and looked away.
Sinkful of kwami fighting for control of the faucet. Soap. Fabric bins -- she’d aired each one out for a week to get rid of the factory-plastic smell, and kept baking soda in each box to absorb what was left, she wasn’t about to have cheese smell getting in! Windows. Makeup box.
“Oh dear,” Marinette said flatly, eyes on her makeup shelf. “If Plagg won’t bathe, I’ll just have to use up all my perfume on him.” In the sink, everything went very, very still. “I’m almost out of Pink Chiffon, you’ll be fine with Warm Vanilla Sugar, right?”
“... I surrender,” Plagg whimpered. “I’ll take the water.”
When she looked back, Adrien’s eyes had gone wide and helplessly starry. “Marinette,” he breathed. “My Lady. Sensei .” He clasped his hands pleadingly together, and for a moment -- with his hands casting a shadow over his eyes from below -- he was all Chat. “Teach me your ways.”
Marinette bent and booped his nose. “But then you wouldn’t need me, kitty.”
“ Lies ,” Adrien said fervently, dropping his hands and breaking the illusion. “Lies and slander .”
She was not going to blush she was not going to blush she was not going to blush why did her face feel hot dammit.
(Over miserable quiet growling in the sink, Tikki was a blur of red under white frothy suds. “What did you even do , Plagg, roll in it?” and “You quit brushing your teeth before washing yourself again, I see. We should be lucky the suits don’t smell like us.” and “I could probably pull a whole new kwami out of this tuft!”)
Adrien leaned over, glancing pointedly sinkwards, then whispered, “Mom friend.”
He had Tikki pegged.
Considering their size, it didn’t take long for Tikki to pronounce Plagg finished, and for Plagg to ooze himself out of the sink looking more like a soaked rag than a tiny god.
“Medic,” the rag wheezed, dripping onto Marinette’s small vanity. “Camembert.”
He got a dry washcloth dropped on his head, courtesy of Tikki, instead. Eventually, though, eventually he was dry and clean, and hovering at the edge of Marinette’s area rug once more, glowing a soft blacklight-purple to Tikki’s pink.
Tikki bumped their heads together. “Wish me luck.”
“All of yours and none of mine,” Plagg replied, and Tikki turned to face the center. A strange, low, crooning hum began to eminate from somewhere on or in her small body, and a pair of fairy-like -- no, insect-like -- wings formed on her back, visible mostly by the distortion they put in the glow. The pitch rose and fell once, twice in rhythm, then she began to circle the rug.
A second, lower hum rumbled into harmony with hers as she passed the quarter-point, Plagg’s violet glow brightening into a V-shaped marking on his forehead reminiscent of tiger stripes or perhaps devil horns. He entered the circle at the halfway point, directly opposite Tikki, and slowly they cruised around just barely above the carpet, keeping pace with each other and matching their humming into a strangely monotone song.
Marinette watched for about a minute, but nothing seemed to happen besides the kwami’s path starting to slide inwards in a spiral. Well, Tikki had explained that it wouldn’t look like much, so Marinette lifted the pool and set it upside-down over the kwami, hiding them from view. Mostly from view -- a bit of light still seeped from near the bends they’d had to make in the plastic, and the humming wasn’t muffled at all.
"So.” Marinette clasped her shaking hands together. “Now we wait."