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“I should probably figure out whoever Cat Walker was and give him a miraculous,” Marinette jokes.
Her hands are covered in flour because she’s kneading dough, and she’s kneading dough because she found out last week that Adrien buys his bread at the grocery store. Her boyfriend is rich, and he could buy nice bread, but he doesn’t. Instead, Marinette bakes bread from scratch and knows that Adrien is always touched by gifts that aren’t paid for.
“You never found out?” Adrien grins as he leans across the counter. She had expected jealousy, because as sweet as her kitty is he does get a bit pouty over the idea of other boys taking an interest in her. Instead, he only looks amused at the idea that she would track down the boy from her past, the one whose only flaw was being too perfect.
“How would I? Plagg picked him.” She works the bread slowly on the kitchen island, feeling for the right stretchiness of gluten.
“It’s probably a bad idea,” he says lightly. “How are you going to fight when you’re busy making heart eyes at knock-off Black Butler?”
“Okay, so I got a little flustered!” she squeaks. “He was handsome! But I was a kid, and it’s not like it took me ages to figure out he wasn’t a good match for me, and it’s not like I didn’t save the day by the end, and I-”
Marinette freezes, her knuckles deep in dough, as a realization suddenly falls into place. “Adrien, how do you know what happened with Cat Walker?”
He looks innocent. “You didn’t tell me?”
“I told you he was too perfect and that’s it,” she says, meeting his gaze challengingly. Once upon a time, when she used the confidence she had behind the mask, he’d buckle straight away. Now he has too much Plagg in him as he continues to look like he’s done nothing suspicious, and she half expects him to call her Sweetie.
He props his chin up on his fist, too much Plagg in his expression. “So I guess I must have been there.”
She wails in agony, her hands coming to her lips as her devil of a boyfriend bursts into laughter. Again. Again she’d fallen for him, just like he had fallen for her a dozen times, with costumes and magic scrambling everything but their persistent longing. It was so obvious now, like it always was when the veil was lifted. It was Adrien’s seriousness and politeness. It was his kindness and support she had fallen for, because the sincerity of it was too much for her to brush off as a game.
“You weren’t him!” she pleads. “Adrien!”
“I was Adrien,” he giggles. “I think that was the whole problem.”
The sounds coming out of her are probably words. Thing like “oh my god” and “I can’t believe it” and other rambling nonsense that wouldn’t make any sense if she tried to write it down, because when she’s embarrassed the first thing to go is her ability to speak. Adrien hops up on the island in front of her, graceful and poised, but the grin he flashes her way is all mischief. “I put on my good boy face for five minutes and you-”
“No!” she protests, waving her hands wildly. “No! It wasn’t the good boy face! It was the speech in the moonlight!”
“The what?”
“No, listen, please,” she begs, her voice cracking with humiliated giggles. “It was a really hard time, and I felt really alone, and everyone was bad at the superhero thing. I had to answer all these questions about who was feeding what kwamis and how to do pick up and drop off and the only person who knew anything was Aly-stop! Stop smiling like that!”
He’s all Chat, all amused as she desperately tries to find a justification for falling for him again, for falling for him in every shape but Chat Noir. She takes a deep breath and says, “You said that it was your turn to take care of me. I needed that.”
There is a pause, a flicker in his smile. He probably wants to apologize, which will make her apologize, because they had spent far too long together not understanding what the other had wanted and needed. But they have had that conversations too many times for now, so instead he taunts, “You couldn’t figure out your lucky charm.”
“When I finish this bread, I’m going to destroy you in every fighting game you have,” she mutters.
Adrien stretches across his counter, not caring about the flour that’s getting on his shirt and jeans as he poses in front of her. He’s trying to fluster her again with a low voice and soft eyes. “Are you going to be able to focus with Cat Walker in the room?”
He yelps as she shoves him off the island, grunting as he hits the floor. She’s not a kid anymore. Her brain won’t fry just because her boyfriend knows how to pose, and years together has ensured that they both come with a kind of sturdiness that makes roughhousing and clumsiness a nonissue.
Still, she doesn’t go back to her bread as he cackles on the ground. Warmth fills her chest as she leans over to look at him, distracted from her work by his breathless laughter, the outright unattractive, wicked cackle that lets loose whenever he’s played a particularly good joke.
Cat Walker would never laugh like that - not unless she ordered him to. Adrien can, of course, because Adrien has never been the perfect boy she thought he was. Watery green eyes look up at her - brilliant and sweet and silly in equal measure - and she wouldn’t have him any other way.