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"Mari..." Chat calls for her attention carefully, and she looks up from her tablet to meet his gaze. He looks at her with curious peridot eyes, twinkling with a gleam that's started to grow on her just a bit.
She tilts her head. "Yes?" She absentmindedly spins the stylus in her hand, knowing that she'd be unable to draw making eye contact with her current guest. He leans a bit closer to her.
"Why do you have so many hobbies?" he asks her casually, and she blinks, not expecting the question.
"I don't have that many hobbies," she drawls, and he raises an unimpressed eyebrow as he pulls his hand up, raising a finger to count every hobby he lists.
He takes a deep breath before reciting them, and she resists the urge to roll her eyes at his melodrama. "You sew, design, draw, bake, dabble in writing, do poetry, write songs, you sing, you—" He's cut off by her pointing an accusatory finger at his face.
"A lot of those things could be put under the same category! Like you can't really design without drawing, or you know, how sewing and designing kinda come hand in hand for me?" she says defensively, and he puts his hands up in a 'Woah, woah, slow your roll' kind of way.
"I was not trying to get you defensive." His innocent kitten eyes blink owlishly. "I was just genuinely curious. Why do you have so many hobbies — considering you have more than what I just listed?" He raises an intrigued eyebrow under the mask.
She sighs. "It's just nice," she mumbles, and he leans a little closer — not that he didn't hear what she said, he has superhero hearing, after all, but it was a way to give Marinette an incentive to keep going.
Shrugging, she continues, "Being able to say I do this and that is just nice." She leaves it there, like it's the most obvious thing in the world, but he tilts his head confusedly.
"So you don't like doing all that?"
She blinks at him. "Well..."
Pausing, she puts her hand up to her chin to ponder, dropping her stylus in the process. She thinks about it for a long moment and shrugs again. "I'm passionate about design, but nothing else really sticks out to me. I just do stuff since it's nice to say I'm able to do said stuff, I guess?" she says with a strange lilt in her voice.
"If you don't enjoy some of the stuff you do, why do you do it at all?" he asks. His father had assigned him many an obligation, but he never really had a choice. What he was confused about was why Marinette did all this to herself. Chose this fate for herself.
"I just—" she picks her stylus back up, redirecting her attention to the tablet, "—have to. It's ingrained into me or something. I dunno."
He frowns. "But it's eating at you — you don't do anything else. Even when I'm over, you're doing something."
She visibly falters, dropping her stylus yet again. "I'm sorry, I'm such a bad host." Her bluebell eyes widen a bit at the revelation, but he instantly puts one of his claws on her shoulder reassuringly.
"Hey, no, that's not what I'm saying." He closes his eyes for a moment, considering his words. "I'm just—" he takes a breath, a heartbeat passes, "I'm worried about you, Marinette. You don't seem like yourself lately."
She blinks owlishly at him, clearly not having anticipated that at all.
He sighs. "It feels like you've been..." he gestures poorly, "out of it. Like you've been on autopilot or something."
She grimaces. "I'm sorry," she apologized dolefully.
Shaking his head, he sighs again as his grip around her shoulder tightens a bit — and only a bit! He has super strength, and he needs to be careful with it. "Don't apologize. I should apologize for not having noticed sooner."
"You haven't visited me in a while. You couldn't have noticed a change you weren't here for," she says bluntly, and he freezes up in a bit of guilt for not having visited in a bit, and also because he was there for the change. He just couldn't see it for a while. He couldn't put his finger (paw?) on it.
"Princess, if there's something wrong, you know you can tell me, right?"
The words cause her eyes to tear up a bit, crystalline droplets garnering at the corners of her eyes. She shivers a bit. He frowns at the sight, pulling her close to him into a hug. She shakes her head. "I... I should be able to take care of myself."
He instantly shakes his head. "No, hey. Hey." He pulls back a bit from the embrace, to make eye contact with her. She sees his face, incredibly gentle and tender, yet surprisingly serious.
"You're amazing. Taking care of yourself is a great thing. It's just not the only thing, Mari. It's okay to need other people, you know that right?" He carefully tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, reveling in the sight of her with her hair down. The words shake her heart a bit.
She sighs. "It's not that. It's not anything, really. And that frustrates me, for some reason." She starts gesticulating, which feels awkward in their position. "My life is great right now. I have good friends who care about me, loving parents, I have you, I have great grades, I have so many hobbies and talents, and—" She pauses to take a shaky breath.
"Everything is amazing. It should feel amazing. But I don't feel anything. All I feel is the weight of everything that's happened to me. I still feel the fear from..." She looks up at him with her big blue eyes. He nods at her imploringly, a little concerned crease forming in his mask. "I still feel bad about everything with Lila," she said simply, knowing that was the only thing she could really reveal that made sense, but wasn't too concerning, "and I know everyone believes me now and people apologized, and it could have been worse, and, and people have it worse than me, but I'm still... affected. And that sucks, doesn't it? I'm overreacting, and that's annoying and irrational, and—"
He cuts her off, putting a finger to her lips. She looks at him, a little surprised. "It doesn't matter that other people might have it worse than you. You have it worse than some people. It'll always be like that in this world. Marinette, don't let yourself undermine anything you went through, okay? Because you were hurting and you are hurting, and that's okay." He pauses, looking at her tenderly. "That makes you human, princess."
So many of his words came from past experiences, from him trying to calm down on his own, or with Plagg. Before, with his mother.
"It's not irrational at all. In fact, I'd say it's a completely understandable response." He breathes her scent in, and she gives him a watery smile as he continues. "You don't have to be okay. You don't have to pick all the pieces of yourself back up yet. You can take your time. You can and will get better, and that kind of thing takes time, you know?"
He just holds her after he finishes, and her soft sobs and warm tears only make him tighten his hold more. She smiles. "I really needed that," she says eventually, and he rests his head properly on her shoulder. "I know."
He always would.