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It's Christmas morning. Marinette and Plagg are in the kitchen, peering under a dish cloth covering the bowl.
"Perfect," Marinette breathes, and with careful, firm hands begins to manoeuvre the dough to its next stage.
Plagg hovers, watching with flared nostrils. "I could slice the salmon already?" he suggests.
"Well I dunno, what happened last time I let you slice the salmon?"
"I ate it all," Plagg agrees.
As they turn back to the dough a sudden, heart-rending yowl sounds from the living room. They both jump, releasing a white flurry of flour.
In an instant, Marinette has abandoned the dough to its fate on the cold kitchen counter. She careens around the corner and freezes, Plagg thumping into her back in another poof of flour.
Her boyfriend is squatting on the sofa, clutching his iPhone like it might escape. Tikki is sat on his shoulder, patting his ear with her minuscule hand.
"My pictures," Adrien says, voice strangled.
"I thought you were dying," Marinette hisses at him.
"Please. He's not even bleeding," Plagg says.
"No need to sound so disappointed," Adrien narrows his eyes at his kwami.
"He's very upset," Tikki informs the kitchen team primly, but she's making a little braid in the blond hair behind Adrien's ear as she says it.
Sometimes Marinette feels like she's on an episode of the Muppet Show except everyone is Kermit, and they're all non-stop flailing their floppy muppet arms.
"You have ten seconds to tell me where the fire is before I go back to the blini dough," she leans against the doorframe, crossing her arms.
Her boyfriend sniffs. "You always pick baked goods over me."
"Oh, that was the one time, and that éclair saved all of Paris. Now spill."
"I finally ran those updates on my iPhone," Adrien's expression is noble and long-suffering. "And I had to re-install my apps."
A fresh bolt of adrenaline pierces Marinette's heart. Maybe this is a real crisis, after all.
"Mandatory updates: the true face of evil," Plagg tells the room at large.
"And it deleted all of my cat pictures." Adrien wails. "All the pics of Chouchou! I lost eight months' worth! From when Nino and Alya first got Chouchou as a little baby, up to when we visited last week and she purred and slept in my lap for an hour!"
Marinette definitely doesn't make eye contact with Plagg. "I could send you any pictures I might still have on my phone... ?" she offers, suppressing a smirk.
"No," he whispers, "you don't have the same ones. Mari, those cat pics were the closest thing I have to a real cat! They were my most precious treasure!"
"Yeah, you were hoarding them like a dragon." She slides her eyes over to meet Plagg's without turning her face.
"And you only made us look at them like seventy-five times," Plagg says, remorseless, side-eying her back.
Adrien's mouth flattens as he eyes them. "Why don't you feel my pain?"
"Seventy-five times a day," Plagg says.
"It's just so hard to take you seriously when you're blatantly channeling Chat Noir." She leans in and gives him a kiss on his cheek. "Let me finish up in the kitchen, and then Plagg and I are gonna pop out to get the last of the groceries. How about you and Tikki sit here and watch a nice movie? And take out the blinis when the oven dings."
"This Christmas is even worse than that year the Loch Ness monster surfaced right through the middle of the Pont Neuf and started spitting acid at strolling pedestrians," Adrien sighs and sinks into the couch.
"You never know," Tikki hums as she waves a shifty-looking Mari and Plagg off, "things might look up."
❆
Marinette is on this. She's got this. She's gonna make her stupidly attractive melodramatic boyfriend eat his weepy words before the end of Christmas. She adjusts her rearview mirror with conviction.
"How I relish the look on your face," Plagg says, hovering over the passenger seat instead of sitting under the seatbelt.
She's already cracked the window so he doesn't get carsick, but rental cars always have that chemical smell.
"We can't switch miraculouses at this point," she teases.
Plagg sighs, wistful. "We'd be too powerful together, anyway."
"Point in case: how awesome Adrien's impending Christmas gift is," she says, and starts the engine.
❆
EARLIER THAT WEEK
"What?" Plagg whispers in disbelief. "Go with you to the shelter to pick out a cat for Adrien? I don't even like regular cats. They smell weird. Maybe I'm even allergic."
"Hmm," Marinette says, not looking up from the seam on one of the final samples for the FW19 collection. "So you don't care if I go alone? Pick one out all by myself?"
"Fine, I'll go," he rolls his eyes. "But only to scowl at them and be derisive about all your decision making."
LITERALLY AN HOUR LATER
Plagg flits into Mari's face, effectively bringing her to a halt. His big weird green eyes are brimming with tears.
"What is it?" She asks. "Oh no. Are you really allergic to cats? I just assumed you were lying like usual."
"Mari! They are my progeny! How can we choose only one?" He gestures to the many cages of cats around them. "Can't we bring home all of them?"
Marinette's eyes well with tears too. "Aw, Plagg! But no... not until we own a farm."
The little cat god mulls it over. "Could we send them anonymous donations of cheese?"
She purses her lips. "... they might die." At his horrified expression, she amends: "we can send anonymous donations of cat food instead! They'll be fine!"
Plagg nods solemnly. "Now you ask me to do the near impossible. Choose just one amongst hundreds of worthy souls?" He spins to turn the cages. "Which of you would join our fight?"
Someone mewls in reply, thin and reedy, and they turn. A very small white cat is perched at the front of a cage, staring straight at them. Its fur looks very soft.
"Chat Blanc," Marinette whispers. "Now that's an addition I can get behind."
They approach the white kitten reverently. It purrs and eye-smiles at them like it has already decided they're going to take it home. "She likes us," Plagg says. "This is wonderful."
"Hold on-" starts Marinette as the darkness at the back of the cage moves. The little white cat trots over and licks it.
"Another cat! There's two of them!"
The black kitten ignores them and pulls his buddy into a scuffle.
"A duo," Marinette says, charmed. She and Plagg look at each other. "They come as a pair, don't they?"
"We don't have a choice," he agrees, grinning.
"A two hundred percent increase of cat," she decides. "Chaton won't know what hit him."
❆
CHRISTMAS DAY AGAIN
The back seat of the rental car is weighed down with important materials. Three bags of cat litter, two litter boxes, two cat beds, five bags of food, and a travel case containing: two small cats.
"We should wrap all of this and then give it to Adrien in this order. He'll scream," Plagg says, eyeing the travel case. It emits some cat noises.
"Oh, god, the blinis," Marinette mutters. She hands-free dials her beau, who answers with a plaintive "Mari, I wish Christmas were over."
"Good, you're not dead," she says. "Did you rescue my blinis?"
"Baked goods: two points. Boyfriend: zero," he sighs over the phone. "I'll go check on them."
"What?! They should have come out of the oven half an hour ago." This is just life, she tells herself. Life with Kermit.
"Oh no, is that why it's all smoky in here?" asks Adrien. "Oops."
She envisions Miss Piggy shaking and slinging Kermit away like a frisbee.
"You're gonna long for the day that Loch Ness was your worst Christmas memory, mister," she threatens as she slows down for a traffic light. One of the kittens lets out a long, nervous miaow.
"What... what was that," asks Adrien. "Is Plagg okay?"
"He's just carsick," Mari says without missing a beat. Plagg scowls at her.
"What? it's true!" She mouths at him. The kittens miaow again, both of them now.
"Plagg, you sound terrible. What do you say we fire Mari and do New Year's in Vegas?"
"Bye Adrien, your ass is grass!!" she disconnects quickly. She meets Plagg's eyes and they dissolve in laughter.
"Almost home, children," she promises the kittens in the rearview mirror. "It's a mess. You'll love it."
❆
AT HOME
"Eyes closed," she orders Adrien when she and Plagg come in, the kittens' carrying case hidden just behind her.
"Why, so I won't see your fist coming?" he asks from the living room doorway, but obediently closes his eyes.
She huffs and hurries into the kitchen. "Where's all the smoke?" She asks, putting down the kittens. "I thought..." on the counter is a plate of perfect, perfect blinis.
"Oh ye of little faith," Adrien calls from around the corner. "I even made coffee."
She goes back to him and lifts his glasses off his face, presses a kiss to each of his closed eyes, his cheeks, his mouth. "You're such a convincing liar," and puts his glasses back on his nose.
He smirks. "I live for your kind compliments, my lady."
"Come on, come in here." She takes his hand and guides him into the kitchen. The kittens are becoming restless.
"Is that Plagg? Can I open my eyes?"
"Uh... could you... just get down on your knees here," she pushes on his shoulders. His blond eyebrows shoot all the way up his head but he kneels right down in the middle of the kitchen floor. It's really hot that he's that obedient, but she'll have to think about that later. She moves the travel case to face him, opens the door and coaxes the kittens, who are peering wide-eyed out at sudden freedom. Then Marinette hops up on the kitchen counter, and says, "okay – open your eyes."
He does. And gasps. "OhhhHHH my gooosh??" The cats are sniffing and looking around, coming back to each other for reassurance and then moving closer to him. Adrien lets them scent his hands and then starts petting them carefully. His eyes are suspiciously shiny and he sniffles.
"Oh no, are you allergic...?" she widens her eyes at Plagg, who widens his eyes back.
"Mari," he looks up at her, shifting his glasses so he can wipe his eyes. "Can we keep them...?"
She nods, feeling a little tremulous herself all of a sudden. Plagg is sparkling beside her. "This is better than your pictures of Chouchou right? These are like cat pics except interactive! Fluffy!"
"I'm in love," Adrien whispers. "I've never ever felt this way before."
"Okay," Mari narrows her eyes, but can't resist the way there are two kittens scaling her boyfriend's Christmas sweater. Plagg and Tikki are perched on his shoulders and booping the kittens on their noses.
"They'll need names," she tells Adrien, feeling shy suddenly. "You can name them."
He glances up, looking ready to short-circuit. "What? There are so many puns that I could... too many options–"
She hops down from her perch and grabs a bite out of a blini. It's perfect. She plants a full-mouthed kiss on Adrien's cheek. "Merry Christmas, chaton. Now, there are 7 kilos of cat supplies in the car. I sure could use a superhero to help me carry them up."
❆ FIN ❆