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“What’s Wrong Princess?” Chat asked her his voice soft in a way he only used when she was Marinette. When she was Ladybug she got a different voice, less gentle, less protective but still caring.
“I wanted to go Christmas caroling with the class but Lila’s lies about me have spread to the whole class and I was uninvited,” Marinette said as she leaned her head on the balcony and tried not to cry.
Adrien’s high road of waiting until Lila got caught in her own lies hadn’t worked yet and Lila’s threats were coming true. The class representative was this close to not only giving up on friends all together but also giving up on her school all together. Her parents were okay with her transferring but part of her still had hope that things would get better soon.
Chat put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently. This part of Chat, the part he showed so rarely, hiding behind flirting, puns, and showing off was the part of him that Marinette could fall in love with.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He sounded so guilty. Marinette wondered what he had to feel guilty for. He wasn’t in her class. He hadn’t cast aside years of friendship for a new girl’s lies… before she remembered that he too knew that Lila was lying.
“It’s fine,” Marinette tried to comfort him. It wasn’t his fault and she knew without looking that his cat ears were drooping down low on his head.
“But it is,” he mumbled so low that she could barely hear it and low enough that she wasn’t a hundred percent certain that’s what she heard.
Her phone let her know she had a text so she turned away from the balcony and grabbed her phone.
It was a picture of the whole class but her (and Adrien but he was always so busy that no one expected him to be able to make it and he wasn’t uninvited) wearing santa hats and clearly having a good time.
It hurt. Worst of all it was from Alya with the text message “If you weren’t such a bitch you’d be there.”
She let out a cry as Chat grabbed her phone and let out a curse. He held her close to him as tightly as possible and Marinette heard the worst sound, the fluttering of wings. Chat cooed at her, whispering words of comfort, of promises of warmth...
She refused to let Hawkmoth turn her into an akuma to be used against the only friend she had left. Lila wouldn’t win and neither would Hawkmoth. She was strong, she was confident. She was Marinette Dupain Cheng and she wouldn’t allow some purple butterfly to turn her into a monster.
She focused on Chat’s voice, on his heartbeat, on the warmth of him, on the smell of leather and boy…
The butterfly fluttered away and she couldn’t help the laugh that escaped as she began to process his words again.
“I’m sorry, your friends are assholes, Princess. You deserve so much better than that,” his clawed hands stroked gently through her hair.
“I would take you caroling but… if I took you caroling showing that you were pawsome enough to go caroling with this caterwauling feline it’d put you in danger as Hawkmoth would target you to get to me…” he babbled clearly nervous as Marinette took comfort in the fact that he would go caroling with her if he could and in his desire to keep her safe from Hawkmoth.
She couldn’t tell him that as Ladybug, she was always in danger at his side, against Hawkmoth and the world but she appreciated his desire to keep her away from danger all the same.
“Thanks, Kitty,” she said with a giggle, “You’re my best friend in the world.”
It didn’t hurt to say that since she was speaking as both Marinette and Ladybug. Chat had been by her side in both identities and she adored him.
“Would you like to come inside, make a blanket fort and watch cheesy Christmas movies?” she asked.
Several hours later they were asleep in a nest of warm flannel sheets and knitted blankets protected from the world. Chat had detransformed during the night so Adrien was the one holding onto Marinette protectively like he could save her from the world that had been hurting her lately.
Plagg and Tikki watched over their sleeping chosen as the Grinch stole Christmas on the tv.
“One day, he’s going to admit she’s more than just a friend,” he muttered to Tikki.
“One day, she’ll realize she loves Chat Noir just as much as she loves Adrien,” Tikki muttered back.
“Are you sure we can’t do something about the Lila girl ourselves?” Plagg asked. He wanted to destroy the entire class when he thought of Marinette being akumatized or hurt. As both Marinette and Ladybug, the girl was an absolute sweetheart, who was so good for Adrien.
“I’m not so sure anymore,” Tikki said. She might be the “good” one of the cat and ladybug miraculouses but even she had her limits and Marinette kept being hurt.
“I’ll cataclysm all Lila’s belongings,” Plagg started to say when Tikki suddenly hid from view.
“No need,” Adrien whispered sleepily as he woke up, “I’ll take care of her myself.”
His eyes were fierce and angry as he loosened his hold on his sleeping friend, much like the way he’d looked as he glared at all the butterflies when he’d flung himself bodily over Marinette to keep her safe when the butterflies were akumatizing everyone they could get their wings on.
Best friend in the world, she’d called Chat last night and he returned the sentiment. It was why he kept appearing on her balcony as Chat when being Adrien got to be too much and he needed a friend. Even if his friend didn’t know that they were friends outside of his suit.
However, it saddened him that his masked self that appeared occasionally for chats on her balcony was the person she considered her best friend in the world.
It should be Alya, any of his classmates, or his civilian self that had that honor. Instead it was his superhero form that received that honor because everyone had turned against Marinette at Lila’s flimsy lies.
He was lucky to be considered her best friend in the world. Lucky to know her in both identities that he maintained and considered her friend in both. She was amazing and brilliant and her friends were assholes. Himself, included.
“I’m done with the high road,” Adrien said as he remembered not just Marinette’s face in class the past two weeks as Lila weaved her lies and the class went along with them but also her tears and near akumatization last night.
Plagg smirked as Adrien whispered the words, and he was sucked back into his ring. Lila was going down. No one harmed what a Chat Noir claimed and whether Adrien admitted it or not Marinette was his.