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Marinette took her foot off the pedal of her sewing machine and listened. The silence of her room and the bakery beneath her should have been a soothing one. Even Tikki was curled up on her pillow nearby, sound asleep. So where had that whimpering sound come from?
After a few minutes listening for a repeat, she shook her head.
“Maybe it’s time to get my sewing machine serviced,” she thought, turning down the speed control and changing her needle.
She was just about to rethread her machine when she heard it again. It was definitely a soft, plaintive whimper ending in a what sounded like a muffled cry and it was coming from her balcony.
Marinette left her desk and scurried lightly up the stairs to her loft bed, easing the skylight open just enough for her to peer out into the shadows. There, curled up in a tight ball on her folding chair, was a dark form topped by a mop of wild blond hair.
“Cat,” she called softly, hoping not to startle him. “Cat, are you okay?”
That pitiful whimper was her only answer.
Pulling herself up onto her balcony, Marinette went over to him. It struck her yet again that Cat was no longer the gangly teenage boy he had been when they started out four years ago. While still slim, her partner had put on muscle and grown so tall that he had started teasing her by leaning his elbow on her head and replacing ‘Bugaboo’ with ‘Little Bug’. As such, he barely fit on her folding chair - even curled in a fetal position; his boots, head, hair, and tail dangling off in what should have been an adorable, kittenish sight.
Except he was whimpering and twitched all over in his sleep.
“Why is he asleep on my balcony?” she thought worriedly, squatting next to him and stroking his hair back from his face. “And… is he having a nightmare?”
Then the whimper turned into a groan that stretched into a soft, keening cry and Marinette could see tears gliding down his mask in the dim, orange city glow.
“Cat,” she murmured, shaking him gently. “Cat, you need to wake up. It’s just a nightmare.”
Still keening, he twitched and began to flail around, his arms forming what looked like battle moves in his sleep.
“Cat? Cat!”
“No!” he growled softly. “Let her go! You can’t have her!”
“Cat!” she called, louder this time. “Wake up!”
“Cataclysm!”
She watched, horror struck, as the black power boiled to life around his hand. Thinking fast, She grabbed the nearest thing she could - the decorative metal teapot from her spool table - and shoved it into Cat’s reaching hands. The power discharged as quickly as it had come, turning her teapot to ash.
Grasping his shoulder, Marinette shook him - hard enough to send him tumbling off the chair and onto the wooden floor of her balcony. Cat awoke with a startled yowl, staring wide-eyed as he tried to take in everything at once.
“Ma-Marinette? What?”
She held out her hand to help him up. “It’s okay now, Cat. You fell asleep and had a nightmare.”
“I… fell asleep? Here?”
She gestured at the folding chair. “Right there. You were whimpering and crying in your sleep.”
Cat looked embarrassed, grinning sheepishly and feeding the end of his tail belt through his fingers repeatedly.
“Uh, sorry about that, Princess. I must have been more tired than I thought. Yeah, um, it won’t happened again. Well, hehe, it’s getting late and I shouldn’t interrupt your beauty sleep. I’ll just -“
He made a move towards the railing, but Marinette grabbed his arm and pulled him back to her side, knocking over the folding chair and sending up a cloud of ash from his suit.
He paused as she coughed and spluttered, waving away the ashes from her face.
“Marinette…” Cat reached out and gently brushed more of the fine powder off her cheek and nose. “What is this?”
“The reason why you aren’t going anywhere until you tell me what’s wrong. You called for your cataclysm in your sleep, Cat. What is going on?”
He looked so startled that his green cat eyes protruded out from behind his mask in shock. “I did? Oh, Marinette! I’m so sorry! I didn’t hurt you, did I?”He grabbed her and spun her back and forth, anxiously checking her for injuries.
She grasped his hands, forcing him to stand still and look at her. “I used my teapot to discharge it. I’m fine, Kitty, but clearly you’re not. Why were you sleeping on my balcony?”
She might not be sure, but she thought she might have seen a blush peeking out from under her mask.
Cat gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “It’s kind of hard to explain, Princess.”
She huffed and rolled her eyes. Nudging the listing beach chair out of the way with her bare foot, Marinette sat them both down on her spool table. “Try me.”
“Sometimes,” he began tentatively, as if he was weaving his way through a minefield instead of a conversation. “Well, sometimes it’s hard to fall asleep at home and when I do…” He sighed, ducking his head down so she couldn’t see his eyes.
“And when you do, you have nightmares?” she asked, giving his hand a squeeze of her own. She knew what that was like. “How often?”
Cat shrugged. “Three, sometimes four times a week.”
Gasping in sympathy, she pulled him into a tight hug. “I’m so sorry, Kitty. I didn’t know!”
“How could you? It’s kind of silly, really.” He looked up, pulling away from her with a bitter grin on his face and his hands spread out like a movie theater marquee. “‘Scaredy Cat Noir Afraid to Fall Asleep!’ Not very good publicity for a hero, huh?”
Marinette huffed. “Who cares?!” She nudged his shoulder, giving him a crooked smile. “You will always be a hero to me. You’re the bravest person I know. Knowing that you are afraid, knowing you have nightmares, that just makes you more human.”
“But I need to be more, you know?” He waved he hand as if to encompass the entire city and all its people. “Everyone relies on us. I have to keep Ladybug safe, even though I know she is more than capable of doing all this without me. I just wouldn’t know what I would do if I wasn’t protecting her. So much of my life now is tied up with being Cat Noir, but…”
He let his hand fall into his lap, slumping his shoulders as he did so. Marinette couldn’t bear to see her partner feeling so down. He couldn’t sleep easily at home for whatever reason - and that was enough to cause the worm of worry to gnaw at her brain - and even when he did get some rest he had nightmares that sent him into fight or flight in his sleep.
She glanced at a dark smear of dust across the back of her hand, all that remained of her teapot.
“You came here to sleep, didn’t you?” she asked softly, taking his hand once more and rubbing her thumb across his knuckles.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand, never once showing any sign that he wanted her to let him go. “I should have asked or something?”
“Maybe, but you don’t have to be so formal with me,” she replied. “We’re friends first, aren’t we? You’ve ben here lots of times. I would never leave you out in the cold. What I would like to know is why? Why my house? Was there a reason or was it just a convenient place to stop on your patrol?”
His hand spasmed in her grasp and she let him go, not wanting to make him feel uncomfortable, but he reached out and took her hand in both of his. He stared at it for a long time, the clawed tips of his gloves tracing the lines of her fingers.
Finally, he spoke, never looking up.
“It wasn’t about the bakery,” he said, “though it is probably the coziest place I know. It wasn’t just a convenient stop on my unintended patrol. It was because you were here.”
He gave her fingers the faintest squeeze. “On the bad nights, the nights where I have to run until I collapse just to sleep deep enough not to dream, I see your light on. Not every night and I don’t hover on your balcony without your permission or anything, but I sit over at Notre Dame and watch your light.”
Marinette chuckled awkwardly. “Like a lighthouse or something?”
“Sort of, I guess, but knowing that there is at least one person in this city who knows me, who cares about me as more than just someone who swoops in to save the day? That means everything to me.”
Marinette’s cheeks grew hot, wondering what she could possibly say or do that wouldn’t send this tentative, spiderweb of a moment floating away in shreds.
“A-And tonight?”
He smiled at her, the first true, honest smile he had given her this evening and she tucked it away like a gift.
“I couldn’t sleep. It felt like I was suffocating in that house. I’ve had nightmares every time I close my eyes and I’ve been jumping at shadows. So, I ran for a while and I came to watch your light.”
He brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek, letting her feel the cool smoothness of his magically made gloves.
“But watching from a distance wasn’t enough, was it?” she asked, her throat dry and her tongue feeling clumsy around her words.
His eyes were not sparkling from behind his mask. “Yeah. It wasn’t enough tonight. I just needed to be near you - the only person who has ever cared about me.”
He pressed a light kiss to her knuckles, making Marinette suck in air passed her teeth in surprise. In all the times Cat Noir had kissed her hand, only once had she ever not worn gloves and she had been to busy being sarcastic and annoyed to pay too much attention to how it felt. His lips were warm and soft, the pressure light, but more than enough to send tingles up her arm.
“I guess that’s why I came,” he said, still holding her hand close to his face. “Just to be near someone who loved me once… maybe that would be enough to chase the nightmares away for just one night.”
Marinette just stared at him for a long moment, processing his words, the kiss, and her own reactions.
“He had been calling out in his sleep,” she thought, her thoughts sluggish trying to juggle so much unexpected input. “He was asking to let someone go. That they couldn’t have her? Was he dreaming about a battle? About having to save Ladybug?”
“Who were you trying to save?” she asked, her heart pounding in her chest. She really didn’t know what she wanted him to say, what his answer would be. She just felt that she had to know, like a great wave was hanging over her ready to crash down on her head and sweep her away.
Cat shuddered next to her, a faint whimper rose and was just as quickly surpassed. “It’s kind of hard to talk about, Princess.”
“Was it Ladybug?” Why did she ask him that? Surely he would clam up and leave, despite how tenderly he was holding her hand even now. He had said it wouldn’t work with Marinette, that he couldn’t take advantage of her that way since she didn’t know who he was behind the mask.
Neither side of her could know him, and yet she wanted to. She wanted to know him, wanted to be able to tell him all the awkward uncomfortable truths that had been boiling inside her like acid - like a geyser ready to blow at any moment. That she cared about him deeply. That she hated it every time he took a hit for her or got hurt or how him giving up his ring had cut her to her marrow - leaving her just as sleepless and afraid as he was now.
Yet, here she was, voicing the one question she shouldn’t have been asking in some halfhearted hope that he thought of her as more than just a lighthouse in the midst of his storm.
He shook his head, his lips twisting up into a grin and his eyes were so soft they made her swallow hard so as not to start crying.
“No,” he said, his voice low and shy. “It wasn’t Ladybug. What - what did I say?”
The heat crawling up her cheeks and ears didn’t help her nerves. “Y-You… you said ‘Let her go. You can’t have her.’ “
Cat’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open in surprise, then snapped shut almost as quickly.
“You know what?” Marinette said, a little too loudly and pitched in a squeak. “Why don’t we forget about it? Right? I mean, it’s none of my business.”
She tried to pull her hand away, but Cat tightened his hold, refusing to let her retreat.
“It was you,” he blurted out, pupils constricting to mere slits against the verdant green of his eyes. “I was trying to save you.”
She froze, staring at him in stunned amazement. Her? She was the cause of his nightmares? He was fighting for her in the dreams that were robbing him of rest in the only home he knew?
The tears she had been fighting against succeeded in slipping one past her defenses. It had barely settled on her cheekbone before Cat smiled and caught it with his thumb.
“Of course, it was you,” he said, as if he had read her mind and knew what she needed the most just then. “Did you think that I wanted to turn you away that night, Marinette? Do you think that it takes mask for me to find a girl amazing, brilliant, beautiful and kind?”
He pressed her fingers to his lips once more. “Because I can assure you that it doesn’t.”
The ache that had been silently building under her breastbone transformed into fireworks, sending sparklers from her heart to her extremities.
“B-but you s-said-“
“I know what I said and I meant it. It wouldn’t be fair to you. You deserve to be loved by someone who can give you all of themselves - open themselves up for you to see every nook and cranny no matter how dark or dusty it may be because you could always make them better. That is just the kind of person you are, Princess.”
He sighed, letting their joined hands fall onto the wooden table beneath them. “But that doesn’t mean I haven’t spent every day since then regretting being so noble. So I fight akumas and watch your light, because that is all I can do. I have to keep you safe, Marinette, and even the dreams of Cat Noir are dangerous.”
He looked down at the hand that held his miraculous and balled it into a fist.
Marinette sat holding his hand in silence as the night sky turned overhead and the City of Love hummed beneath.
Words had always been her downfall when it came to her feelings. But what could she possibly say to such a confession? Knowing that caring for her - caring and not able to be with her - was part of the source of his nightmares should have just added to her burden, but instead, for some inexplicable reason, Marinette felt lighter than air.
“I’ll get a bigger chair,” she blurted out before she could tell herself to shut up. “And a blanket, too, and one of those outdoor pillows even though they tend to be a bit rough to the touch and I don’t really think they would be good to cuddle with but it is better than nothing and -“
Cat Noir laughed gently, reaching out to cup her cheek in one hand. “Is that Marinette-speak for I can stay?”
Bitting her lip to keep more embarrassing words from pouring out of her like water, she nodded vigorously. His hand feel so good against her face and he was so warm and, more than anything, he had come to her because she loved him.
HIs smile had grown so wide that she felt she could wrap herself in it. Leaning forward, he placed a quick kiss on her cheek.
“Thank you, Princess,” he whispered into her ear. “I’ll make sure I’m the purrfect houseguest.”
Face burning all the way passed her collar, Marinette scrambled to her feet to fetch him a blanket and a small throw pillow to use for the rest of the night.
This could be messy. It could cause lots of problems that she didn’t have solutions for yet, but she knew one thing:
Her Kitty needed her. She was his lighthouse and she would bring him through the storm - no matter the cost.