Chapter Text
“I’m sorry, but I can’t hang around this afternoon. I have something important to do. Yeah.” Marinette cringe-smiled and made finger guns with her hands. “Next time, okay?”
Everyone in the class looked deflated. “Yeah, right,” Nathaniel said, tearing off a page from his notebook. He balled it up and looked at the ball he was dumping in the bin with a sigh while Marinette stormed out of the classroom.
“Don’t worry, it’s okay,” Adrien said. He put a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder and attempted a small smile. “Next time.”
❤❤❤❤
“At this rate, there will never be a next time,” Adrien muttered, looking at Plagg zipping around his room to reach his cheese cabinet.
Plagg snorted, his mouth full of cheese, so he had to chew and gulp his meal before attempting to talk. “I appreciate the efforts the guys are making for you, but shouldn’t it be a private matter?”
“It should be, yeah. But whether I try to organise something myself or the guys come up with ideas, Marinette always manages to find an excuse. This time she didn’t even attempt to explain what was wrong; she just…left. Do you think it would be very awkward for Chat Noir to take a longer way to patrol and pop in on her balcony this evening?”
“Awkward?” Plagg snapped. “A disaster, that’s what it would be. Remember what happened the last time you tried to flirt with her in a superhero suit? She got nearly akumatised. You can’t play with her feelings like this, Adrien. When you’re Chat Noir, you take on too much of my charm. You’ll break the poor girl’s heart all over again!”
Adrien rolled his eyes at the remark, but inflated ego or not, Plagg had a point. Adrien knew he was speaking words of reason. But as he transformed and jumped out of the window of his bathroom in a leather-like black catsuit, he only needed to glance towards the Tom & Sabine Patisserie to feel lovesick and unable to think of anything else. He had to see her. Now.
So there he went, jumping silently on the rooftops with the aid of his baton. When he reached her neighbour’s balcony, he stopped, folded his baton behind his back, and pinned his elbows to the railings, pretending to look out while, in reality, he was shooting curious glances at Marinette’s balcony.
Marinette seemed to be in her bedroom. He could see her shadow moving around and wondered what was happening because she looked agitated. An akuma, maybe? She did have a record of akumas visiting her, being mad at her for one reason or another.
He grabbed his baton from behind his back and extended it again, propelling himself forward to land on her balcony.
It took no time for the girl to pop her head through the skylight door. “Hello, Chat Noir; what are you doing on my balcony? Is there an akuma? I’ve got no notification about it.”
He shook his head. “Nope, no akuma. I was just passing by, and…wanted to see you. How are you?”
“Stressed out,” Marinette said, a cringing smile stretching her lips. “But nothing akuma related, just…I’m babysitting Delphin, Mlle Bustier’s baby, and things aren’t going very well.”
As she said that, the wailing sound of a baby’s cry echoed in her room. Marinette sighed. “I need to go; nice talking to you. The poor baby is sick! I can’t take him out of my sight for a second.”
Chat Noir blinked. So that was why Marinette couldn’t come to the picnic? Was she babysitting? She looked stressed out. “Are you babysitting alone?”
“Uh-huh,” she said with a nod. “Maman and Papa are out of town visiting my aunt in London, and Alya’s busy with her sisters. So it’s only me.” The baby wailed louder. “Alright, alright, I’m coming, baby. Sorry, Chat Noir, I really need to go.” She slumped her shoulders and pouted. “Sick babies are the worst. Not their fault, but they’re hard work. I wish someone could help me.”
The last bit came out muffled because she had closed the skylight. The faint crying of a baby reached Chat Noir’s sensitive hearing, and Marinette tried to coo and calm him down.
Chat Noir sighed and made to grab his baton, but as he was extending it, he heard Marinette cry from inside her room, “Please calm down, baby. I need to use the toilet…” He felt horrible about leaving her like that.
A few moments later, Marinette heard a scraping sound from her skylight. She looked up and saw Chat Noir waving at her from the other side of the glass. She frowned, wondering what exactly he wanted now, but when he scraped the glass again, she signalled for him to open the window.
“Are you alright, Chat Noir? Didn’t I tell you that I can’t talk right now?” The baby was crying quite loudly in her arms, and she was rocking him back and forth, trying to calm him down.
“Um, I heard you say you needed help to go to the toilet. So,” he said with a cheeky smile, “I wouldn’t be a gentle cat if I were to leave a damsel in distress alone.”
Marinette’s eyes grew huge as she jolted her head to look at him. “You want to help me?”
He grinned. “Why not? Looking after a baby can’t be tougher than fighting an akuma, right?” He looked up. “And besides, I did a quick patrol, and the city was very quiet, so I’m free for a while,” he lied.
Marinette was again paying attention to Delphin and changing the position of the bundle in her arms. “Have you ever looked after a baby, Chat Noir?”
“No,” he admitted. “Unless you count a dream I had with Ladybug.” He sighed at the memory, a lump in his throat making it hard to talk, or to breathe, for that matter. When he crossed his gaze with Marinette’s, her eyes looked glassy, and she curled her lips down in a pout. He cleared his throat and continued, “But I’m willing to try, and if you need to go, you need to go.”
Marinette’s sad expression changed into a cringe at his words. “Oh yes, I forgot you heard me. This is so embarrassing!” She covered her face with one of her hands and groaned.
Chat Noir jumped inside her room and ended up sitting on her bed with his legs crossed. Then, he extended his baton and landed on the floor beside her. “Don’t be. It’s perfectly normal, Marinette. Do you want to give me Delphin so you can, uh, go...?”
Even though he had said it was okay, Marinette thought she could see some pink dusting his cheeks underneath the black mask as he replaced the baton behind his back, and the detail didn’t make it any less embarrassing. More, in fact.
However, he was right about one thing – she really, really needed to go. So she frowned, looked at him decisively, and pursed her lips. She leaned forward and placed the baby carefully in Chat Noir’s arms. Delphin calmed down instantly as soon as he went into the superhero’s arms and started cooing and blowing raspberries; the boy gave the little bundle such a soft look that Marinette’s legs nearly gave up on her. But as she tried to get her bottom half to work again, she sensed a strange smell in the room.
“Shoot! Delphin had a poo; I need to change his nappy!” she muttered, her legs shifting her weight nervously from one leg to the other.
“Marinette, you need to go.” Chat Noir wrinkled his nose at the smell but put a smile on his face. “I can change the baby, don’t worry!”
Marinette raised an eyebrow. “You said you’ve never looked after a baby except in a dream, Chat.”
His smile was stiff, but he gulped and cleared his throat. “How hard can it be?”
Marinette’s eyebrow started twitching. She pursed her lips and gave him a look. “Well, if you really want to do it,” she said, pointing at a mat on her desk, “This is the changing station.” She grabbed a nappy from a pile and put it on top of the mat. “This is a nappy. The sink is there to wash Delphin’s privates,” she pointed at her sink, “and this is a towel. If you have any issues, don’t panic, I can fix it.”
“Right.” He attempted another smile. “Go, Marinette!”
She frowned. “Are you sure you will be alright?”
He sighed. “I will, but you won’t be if you stay here. GO!”
“Thank you, and good luck…” she whispered, giving him one last look before running out of the room.
❤❤❤❤
When he saw Marinette disappear and the trapdoor close, Chat Noir moved towards Marinette’s desk and looked decisively at the padded mat resting on top. He didn’t have any clue what to do to change that baby, but the smell was really starting to bother him. And besides, Delphin seemed to start being affected, too, based on how he wriggled in his hold. Wait a second… was that wetness he was feeling on his arm? He moved the baby gently and saw a massive brown stain spreading from the middle of the baby’s back nearly reaching up to his neck.
“Holy shoot…” He looked at his arm and noticed that his top was covered in it, whatever the brown thing was. To be fair, he had reasonable suspicions of what the brown stuff could be, but he could only hope to be wrong. Did Marinette coat the baby in Nutella by any chance? Wasn’t it even ridiculous to have such a thought? He gulped and carefully put the baby down on the mat. But when he finally released his arm, and the baby started wriggling, Chat Noir realised that he had one more problem—his claws. Just putting his hand on the baby’s clothes, he got a claw tangled in the delicate fabric. What would’ve happened if that had been the baby’s skin?
“Claws in,” he whispered, and when Plagg twirled out of the ring ending up on the baby’s tummy, the crystal clear laughter of the tiny bundle of joy resounded in the room—followed by Plagg’s ‘ewws’.
“What are you thinking, detransforming in Marinette’s room? Are you out of your mind?” the kwami shouted. “And what’s this smell?”
“Marinette went to the toilet; I think she will be a little longer,” Adrien said, a nervous smile stretching his lips. “This is Delphin, Mlle Bustier’s baby. Marinette’s looking after him. He just had a poo. I couldn’t change him with clawed hands.”
Plagg flew in front of his face. “You. You want to…change a baby?” Plagg shot a glance at the creature before raising an eyebrow. “Adrien, you do realise that you’ve never done this before, right?”
Adrien’s stiff smile didn’t leave his lips. “I suppose I’ll have to learn one day, right?”
“One day, yes. Not right now! Not when Marinette is going to open that trapdoor at any moment!”
Adrien glanced at the said trapdoor. “Actually, that’s a good point, Plagg. Could you keep watch and tell me when she’s coming back?”
Plagg folded his paws over his chest. “And I suppose you won’t need my help over here, right?” He gagged. “Because, obviously, I won’t help you. I’ll let you deal with this…crappy situation…literally…by yourself.” That said, Plagg zipped towards the trapdoor and disappeared through the floor after giving him a last warning, “And please, do try not to cover my ring in poop!”
Adrien sighed. He looked at the baby, who seemed quite upset that the black moving plushie had suddenly disappeared and was sniffling with his eyes full of tears.
“No, no, goo—” Adrien started saying, but as he did, Delphin began to scream, and his wail echoed in the empty room like a siren. Adrien panicked. “N-n-n-n-o, calm down…” he began to say, but the baby kept roaring, crying, and moving on the mat, which by now had started to show signs of a brown liquid seeping through.
Shoot. He had to do something about that first! After all, that was the reason why he had detransformed, right?
So he started searching the baby and eventually found three little buttons at his crotch, which seemed to be holding his onesie together. So he undid them, and…ugh, the stench was unbelievable, but that was nothing compared to the sight of the poop (there was no escape, that was definitely poop…) coming out from everywhere. He also tried to take Delphin’s legs out of the legs of the onesie without covering them in poo but failed miserably.
UGH, how could such a tiny creature have made such a big mess? The poop was overflowing out of the elastics of the nappy, which looked really full to start with. He could see that two straps were holding the nappy together, and luckily, the baby didn’t seem to be wearing anything other than the onesie he had just opened.
But the baby wasn’t happy. At all. And the skin of his legs, which Adrien had had to pull up, was very hot to the touch. The poor little boy must’ve been very sick, as Marinette had already tried to explain to him. And Adrien was now distressing the poor little one even more because he didn’t even know how to start calming a baby down.
Why had it been so easy in his dream with Ladybug and so complicated in reality? He managed to get the baby out of the onesie and found himself holding the baby’s legs high with one hand and the other holding the onesie full of poop, unsure what to do next, where to put the onesie. Should he put it in the bin? Nope, Marinette would’ve killed him! So where? And what was he supposed to do with the soiled nappy? She hadn’t given him anything to put it in…
Eventually, his gaze fell on a container full of “nappy bags”, as the label stated, and he took a big breath of relief. To immediately cough and wrinkle his nose because the stench was starting to get him sick. But with the baby still wailing and both hands full, he had no idea how to get a bag out of the container. SHOOT. He needed Plagg. But Plagg needed to stay where he was because if Marinette had come back before he’d finished, she would’ve found Adrien in her room (covered in poop too, which wasn’t really the best way to say hi…)
With a sigh (and trying to breathe from his mouth), Adrien resolved to do the only rational thing he could think of: putting the baby’s legs down and grabbing a bag with the hand he had freed, pushing on the legs of the baby with his chest to prevent the little creature from falling off.
Okay, it was going to be a little challenging to explain to Nathalie why his black top was covered in poop. However, finally, he got hold of a bag—or rather, about fifty of them—but he managed to shake them out and ended up with one. Or rather, two. Shoot. Why was it so hard to take one bloody bag out? Okay, finally, he wiggled and shook the bags long enough to free only one and open it, allowing him to place the soiled onesie inside the scented plastic.
Looking with disgust at his hand, now light brown, he dropped the bag and grabbed Delphin’s legs again. He eyed with concern the brown stain on his black top (and on his shirt too…how on Earth had his white shirt managed to get soiled?). Still, he gulped and started trying to open the straps that held the nappy together, praying to every saint that he would be able to close them again like that after changing the baby.
“Come on, little one, stop crying…” he muttered as Delphin increased the volume of his wails, expressing all his discomfort at how Adrien was dealing with the situation. The boy eyed the trapdoor worriedly, but Plagg hadn’t come back yet, so it could only mean that Marinette was still out of reach.
Or, at least, so he hoped.
Maybe she and Plagg were peeping through the trapdoor and laughing at his expense. No, scratch that thought; Marinette would never do such a thing. Plagg would, but he’d never give Adrien’s identity away, so nope—Marinette hadn’t come back yet.
With some difficulty, he loosened and finally opened the straps that held the nappy together. When the pad opened up, Adrien could see Delphin’s privates literally covered in the brown liquid.
UGH. He’d never eat Nutella, ever again.
He lifted the baby’s legs again and took the nappy off, but was left baffled and unsure of what to do. Delphin’s bum (and his back; and hair…) was covered in poop so he couldn’t put the legs down. But how would he put the nappy in the bag if he didn’t?
He pursed his lips, eyeing the sink that Marinette had shown him, the bags on his right side and both of his hands full, and started growing respect for all the mothers who went through situations like these every day, more than once per day, and still managed to survive. He wasn’t sure he was going to — especially when Marinette would see the state of the mat!
Well, the mat was already destroyed, right? So, more poop or less, the most rational solution was to put the baby’s legs down (again). And so he did. The baby wiggled a little to show his disappointment, though, and as he was doing that, Adrien saw the flash of some liquid, and the next thing he knew, his face was wet and warm, and so were most of his clothes.
“Ughhhhhh…did you have to pee right now?” Things couldn’t go worse. Now the list of stuff he wouldn’t be able to explain to Nathalie had grown considerably, Adrien thought, passing a hand through his hair. He had poop and pee on his black top and shirt, pee on his face and…ugh, did he just pass his dirty hand in his hair? Oh no! He looked at the baby with a desperate frown. “What am I going to do now?” Pee was everywhere. Marinette would have chat paté for dinner that night. The baby looked back at him with a frown that Adrien interpreted as meaning, ‘What do I know, you’re the grown-up, I’m only a baby, you sort it out!’ before crying again; the boy felt tears pricking at the corner of his eyes.
Or maybe it was pee, but he rather thought it was tears. Yes, definitely tears. For sure. He pursed his lips and resisted the temptation to rub his nape because that would’ve made things worse.
He would deal with cleaning up the changing station later, he decided; the baby was moving, and he couldn’t afford to waste too long thinking and end up with the baby falling on the ground. That would’ve made things even worse if they could even possibly be any worse than this.
With the hand he freed, he grabbed another nappy bag and, with difficulty, opened it to place the soiled nappy into it quickly. Then, he held the baby, ignoring the poop staining his hands, all the front of his top and the sides of his shirt.
Those clothes were going in the bin as soon as he got home; maybe that way, Nathalie wouldn’t notice, and he would be getting out of it scot-free. After taking a LONG shower. Yes, perhaps more than one too.
Moving fast, he walked to the sink and started washing the baby under it, trying to ignore the fact that the poop in the baby’s hair was gathering on the drain. Or the fact that the little one was wiggling and screaming even more now that he was under the water, splashing water (and poop!) literally everywhere.
As he was doing that, his gaze darted around, trying to find some soap to wash Delphin with; he found a bottle with a baby picture on it, so he assumed it was for the baby and used it. It took him a few attempts to understand how to position Delphin in the sink, and he ended up with his t-shirt soaked, his hair dripping, and his white shirt…well, it definitely wasn’t white any longer…but eventually, the baby was clean.
The sink was a mess, though.
Never mind that; he’d sort it out after changing Delphin.
Holding the dripping baby to the top part of his chest (not the bottom part; he didn’t want the clean infant to become dirty again!), he reached for the towel Marinette had shown him and wrapped the little bundle of joy inside it, doing his best to dry him while the little creature kept expressing his disappointment. Adrien wondered what the problem was. Delphin’s wails multiplied when Adrien put him under the water. But the water was fine…
Uh! Hadn’t he read somewhere that the water to wash a baby had to be at a specific temperature? He frowned at the sobbing infant—bugger. Did he use water that was too cold? Too hot? Gosh, he didn't have a right clue!
But as he finished drying the little one and made to return to the changing station, he winced. God almighty, wasn’t the mat dirty! He couldn’t put the baby down in that! He wrinkled his nose and looked around, deciding that the chaise longue was an emergency station good enough.
With a sigh, he put the baby down on it and then realised he had no nappy.
Shoot!
He looked around and identified that the nappies were at the changing station, so he stood up.
Delphin wiggled and rolled down on the chaise so suddenly that Adrien thanked God for his cat reflexes. He grabbed the little creature before it fell and took a breath of relief.
He was an idiot; he couldn’t leave a tiny baby without supervision like that! So he picked Delphin up again and walked to the changing station, grabbing a fresh nappy and a fresh vest (which he found because the bundle of vests was close to the nappies). He had a glance around but didn’t see any onesies.
Well, the baby would stay with the vest until Marinette came back.
Where was Marinette, anyway? She was taking an awful amount of time to go to the toilet! Although, thinking about it, Adrien was happy that she hadn’t returned, as he gave a last embarrassed glance at the changing mat. And at the sink. He’d need to clean all that up before Marinette came back. He had to…it wasn’t fair on Marinette!
The task was first to put a nappy on Delphin before he soiled the towel. And finished dirtying Adrien on his whole. And the chaise longue too.
Gah! He had to hurry; how many times per day did babies wee and poop? Especially when they’re sick? It was better not to find out…
He put the baby down and opened the towel again. Delphin had calmed down now that he was clean and dry, so he blessed Adrien with a toothless smile and a gurgling laugh that sent butterflies into Adrien’s belly. That baby was so cute, now that he was clean.
Anyway, he looked at the nappy he’d gotten and opened it up, trying to figure out how to put it on the baby. The word “back” was on one side, which was handy because he hadn’t known what side to put it on. So he started scrutinising the item in his hands, trying to understand how to fit it on Delphin. He put the baby's back and bum resting on the back of the nappy and covered his tiny privates with the front.
Now what? Mh…. he remembered that straps were holding the soiled nappy at the front. Where were they? Oh, he thought when he saw the two yellow straps. Here they are! He tried to put them on as tightly as he could (he didn’t want any leaks!) and grabbed Delphin by his armpits, looking around to find a cot until he finally found it.
It was a small bassinet resting on rocking legs. As soon as he’d placed Delphin into it, Adrien took a sigh of relief. FINALLY! His arms were sore—funny how such a tiny baby that seemed to weigh next to nothing could become heavy after a while.
To Be Continued…