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Chapter Text

Felix lifted the trap door and climbed the last few steps into Marinette’s bedroom. He had been here several times to work on group projects for school and, as before, the room wrapped him in the sweet scented muffling of pastry laden air, stacks of half finished sewing projects, and an abundance of pink. Despite her shyness, clumsiness, and occasional awkward behavior, he generally found Marinette to be organized as a class representative and incredibly competent in everything she put her mind to, so to be confronted by such clutter was always a bit confusing.

“How am I supposed to find her sketchbook in this mess?” he asked himself, carefully lifting a stack of cut-out fabric pieces to check under it.

“Beats me,” Plagg grumbled from inside his shirt collar. “But you know you can’t say no to Bakery Girl when she bats her eyes at you, lover boy!”

Felix rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Please.”

“You think her babbling is cute,” the kwami said, smugly. “And she might stammer her way through a conversation with you, but you like it. You’re a sucker for her. Admit it, kid.”

Felix twitched his shoulders uncomfortably as he sorted through a stack of notebooks. “Her social anxiety is not pertinent to this conversation and there is nothing to admit. Mr Dubois paired us for this assignment. Her home is conveniently closer to the library, making studying here more practical. It is also practical as there is a presentation display required for the project and Ms Dupain-Cheng already has a lot of crafting supplies. She happens to be busy with outlining the display board right now and it is expedient to divide our resources. Since I am not creative-“

“Heh, understatement of the year,” Plagg interjected with a rude noise. “Besides, I know you can see those pictures from your last photoshoot on her board there. That doesn’t ring any bells at all?”

Felix brushed that aside. “Irrelevant. Ms Dupain-Cheng wants to be a fashion designer, so it makes sense she would have some of Father’s work on her inspiration board. It also makes perfect sense for me to assist in our project by retrieving her sketch book,” he finished, nearly in a growl at his kwami’s teasing. “She said it was pink, but which pink? Every other thing in here seems to be pink!”

With a frustrated sigh, Plagg emerged from Felix’s collar and phased through the piles of items on Marinette’s desk.

“Not here,” he said, crossing his paws. 

Felix frowned. “Alright, you check the chaise and I’ll look by her bed.”

Plagg shrugged and did as he asked for once without complaint or begging for a cheese bribe.

Setting that particular oddity aside to examine later, Felix climbed the metal stairs that led up to Marinette’s loft bed. Above the head of the bed were two narrow shelves which held books, a vase of paper flowers, a conch shell, a little lamp with a purple glass shade, and a charger for her phone, but no notebook. There was another cork board here that also held pictures of her friends, her parents, a postcard bearing the picture of an Indian Bazaar, and several of himself.

Both of him. 

There was a picture of him giving a speech at school, gesturing to his right towards a slide that was just out of frame. There was one from the latest photo shoot with him in a chocolate suede duster coat and a charcoal scarf on a snowy day. Then there were several shots that had clearly been printed off the Ladyblog.

Shots of him as Chat Noir.

Huh, he thought, slightly confused as to why Marinette, a reasonably logical girl by most standards, would have pictures of Chat Noir on her bulletin board. Well, they are next to the fashion pictures, so… maybe she is inspired by the design of my suit?

That seemed unlikely and he would have undoubtedly been able to ignore the strangeness of her having pictures of both his personas next to her bed if it hadn’t been for the plushie.

Carefully placed in the center of her pillow, stubby little arms spread wide as if awaiting an embrace, was a Chat Noir plushie. This was no generic, mass produced fan merch. This was a soft, cuddly-looking figure with an oversized head, a wild mane made from scraps of yellow fleece, and embroidered green eyes in the same exact shade that Felix had often seen from behind the mask. 

Before he realized it, the thing was in his hands. The detail was incredible for something only one-eighth his size. The smug smile, the silver embroidery on his baton tucked away at the small of its back, even the soles of its little feet had tiny paw prints. Not the hands. Just the feet.

And the bell? It was made of the same fleece as the mop of hair with white embroidery to mimic shine. The material was incredibly soft to the touch - even with the pilling that often occurred when fabric was consistently rubbed.

Rubbed. Like it had been held… stroked… cuddled.

For several seconds all Felix was aware of was the squishy form in his hands and a blur of white noise. 

Marinette had made herself a Chat Noir doll. Not bought, not been given, but had chosen to make it. More than that, she had done it with such elaborate care to every little detail, proving she had studied Chat - studied him. Not many people knew about the paw pads on his boots. He hadn’t even been aware of them for the first year he and Ladybug were fighting Hawkmoth. In fact, it hadn’t been until he got knocked head first into a mound of gelatinous resin by an akuma that Ladybug had noticed them and teased him that he had found out at all.

But Marinette, with her artist’s eye and her designer’s touch, had crafted his hero persona in such loving detail and… slept with it in her bed? Did that mean she… liked Chat Noir? 

She does have pictures of him… me… on her bulletin board, Felix thought, frantically trying to cram pieces of a puzzle together in his head without having all of them or even the box lid to guide him. And Chat is attractive enough - my popularity as a model is evidence of that. But for Marinette to…cuddle it?

Felix had never had cause to resort to what others crudely, and inaccurately, described as a mental reboot, but he did now.

“Whoa! Found yourself a little friend, did you, kid?” Plagg sniggered, jarring Felix from his mental spiral with all the elegance of being born. “Pigtails did you proud. The stitching, the attention to detail-“

“Plagg,” Felix hissed, his throat strangely tight as if a fist was lodged there. “What does this mean? Why would Marinette have a plush figure of Chat Noir?!”

He noted, with some small, undistracted corner of his mind, that he sounded panicked. While he hated to admit it, that was not an unreasonable assumption.

Plagg smirked and rolled his eyes. “How should I know? I’m just a kwami. You, on the other hand, are a human and know all about your strange, pre-mating rituals.”

“Mating rituals?!” Felix’s voice cracked for the first time since puberty. The fact that he did this in what amounted to a whisper-shriek merely added fuel to his already burning cheeks.

He stared at the doll of himself, his mind’s eye suddenly, and unhelpfully, superimposing over reality a scene of Marinette cuddling it, whispering secrets, and kissing it goodnight. And all while wearing something of pink silk, edged in lace, and entirely not something he should be visualizing.

Could Marinette… be in love with him? With Chat Noir?

“Better pull your tongue back in, Casanova,” Plagg said smugly tucking himself back inside Felix’s collar. “Pigtails is coming up the stairs.”

Heart pounding in sudden panic, Felix stuffed the doll under the pink pillow, threw himself over the railing of her loft, and just managed to stick a  loud and partially dignified landing just before the trap door opened.

The bluest eyes in the world looked at him in surprise and confusion.

“F-Felix,” Marinette stammered, her cheeks tinged with pink. “Are you okay?”

The image of Marinette wearing a silky nightgown and cuddling the Chat Noir doll dropped before his mind’s eye again most inconveniently.

Felix cleared his throat with what he hoped sounded like a dry cough instead of his choking on his own tongue.

“Yes,” he replied, rather hurriedly. “Why do you ask?”

Her eyes flicked between him and the desk behind him. “Th-The thump? I mean, there was a thump as I was coming up the stairs and…”

“Ah, yes. I…” He scrambled for a reasonable excuse. “I knocked my knee against the desk.”

Felix looked at her. She looked at him. An awkward silence settled on them like a certain plushie wrapped in a weighted blanket. The slight jiggling of Plagg smothering laughter inside his shirt collar adding to his crumpled dignity.

“I couldn’t find your sketchbook,” he blurted out, afraid that if he didn’t find something innocuous to say to fill the silence, then questions about the doll would pour from his lips in streams of humiliation.

Marinette just looked at him in confusion, her lips slightly parted and her head becomingly tilted to one side.

Oh no. She’s adorable, he thought, brain backfiring on all cylinders. When did I start thinking of her as adorable? I have to get out of here!

Thrusting his hand into his pocket, Felix pulled out his cell phone, pretended to mash the button, and held it to his ear.

“Yes? I see,” he said, hoping she didn’t realize he was faking it. “Yes, I will meet you there. Goodbye.” He looked at Marinette and gave her what probably amounted to a pained grimace. “I have to go. Last minute photoshoot. I will complete the research on my end and send it to you as soon as it is done. Alright?”

Felix realized he had said that much too fast to be either polite or dignified, but it was the first excuse he could think of. And why did she look disappointed? Was it about the project, his curt breaking off of their time, or… 

“Oh,” Marinette said, her eyes finding the floor and giving his composure a slight reprieve. “Yeah, sure.”

“My apologies,” he said, awkwardly. “I…”

“It’s o-okay. I understand, F-Felix.” she said with a one-sided shrug. “You b-better g-go. You d-don’t want to be late, though I’m s-s-sure the shoot will g-g-go well. You d-do good work.”

Now he felt guilty about more than just seeing the doll.

“Yes, well, I will see you tomorrow,” he mumbled and beat a hasty retreat to the trap door.

Felix kept silent on the ride home, but that didn’t stop his mind from betraying him with vivid imaginings of Marinette cooing, cuddling, and whispering secrets to his plush counterpart. Felix cleared his throat several times and if his driver noticed how red his face had grown, the man wisely said nothing.

 He could feel Plagg twitching with suppressed laughter in his shirt collar all the way home, knowing the little menace was just waiting until they were alone to break loose with a snarky commentary.

Sure enough, as soon as his bedroom door closed behind him, the kwami flew out into the open with a burst of laughter so hearty one could almost presume it had propelled him out of hiding.

“Hohoho! Boy, kid! You are a mess!” Plagg exclaimed, clutching his stomach with his tiny paws and his eyes squinted shut with laughter. “I mean, it was fun watching you dance around Bakery Girl like an explosion waiting to happen. But today? You are a delightful, chaotic, nervous blush-fest and it’s all because of a doll!”

Felix groaned. As much as he wanted to lash out at his kwami’s outrageous teasing, Plagg’s assessment was unfortunately too accurate to dismiss.

***

The next day, Felix found himself staring at Marinette. Watching… as if he was waiting for something of which he wasn’t consciously aware. From the moment she skidded into class with two seconds to spare to the way she smiled nervously at him when they were dismissed for lunch, he was focussed on her. It was if that blasted doll had coded his eyes and mind to Marinette and her alone. Everything else smeared by him in a grey blur, but she was there is all her vivid, high definition, technicolor glory.

And Felix was wrecked inside.

“Hey, F-F-Felix,” she stammered, her cheeks pink and her thumb rubbing anxiously against her bag strap in an adorable nervous tick. “How d-did the photoshoot go yesterday?”

“Photoshoot? What photoshoot?” Felix blinked, trying desperately to banish the memory of the little plush Chat Noir lounging idly on Marinette’s pillow.

She frowned. Uh oh. He had missed something, hadn’t he?

“That’s what you said yesterday,” she murmured, confused and maybe a trifle hurt?

Blast! Felix thought, mind scrambling to catch up. The photoshoot! I lied about it to get out of there before she saw me panicking over a plush toy!

“Oh, yes. The photoshoot,” he said, faster and louder than was his norm. “You know how these things go. Boring, chaotic, utterly forgettable.” 

Not to mention completely fake!

The fact that particular line of inner dialog sounded like something Plagg would say did nothing to help his state of mind.

The frown cleared from her brow and a slight smile returned to her lips. Felix fought off the image of those lips kissing a certain fleece mop of yellow hair.

“Well, I can’t wait to see the pictures,” Marinette said. “You make them look good.” 

She paused for a second then her mouth fell open as if she had been thumped on the back of the head with a particularly dense textbook.

“N-N-Not that you d-d-don’t always look good,” she blurted out in a rush. “You do. I mean, you could make a paper bag look like high fashion - not that you would ever do that. Wear a paper bag. You wear normal things like shirts. That shirt - wow! You wear it nice. It’s very textile. No, wait! That isn’t what I meant! I meant it’s very fashion. Fashionable. You’re wearing it and I noticed!”

Felix stared at her in abject confusion as her face passed through half the color spectrum and may have been on its way into the ultraviolet. Her dainty hands crept up to cover her mouth. Either that or strangle herself. What with how she was trembling, it was hard to tell.

“I… suppose that is true of shirts,” he said, his heart pounding harder in his chest than was warranted by Marinette’s awkward compliment.

She nodded and from behind her hands came words in the tiniest of squeaks. “You shirt well.”

Then all semblance of coherence vanished and she sprinted away from him like a fawn escaping a hunter’s arrow.

Felix watched her escape with a bewildered sigh. Marinette found no comfort in his presence, only confusion, embarrassment, and awkwardness.

No wonder she preferred the plush Chat Noir.

He could feel Plagg smothering his laughter against his collarbone.

“Kid, you may not get the girl,” the kwami whispered so only Felix could hear him. “But this is comedy gold!”

Chapter Text

It started with a dream. A stupid, annoying, mind-twisting dream that Felix had not sanctioned.

He had gone over to Marinette’s to work on their project. He had brought her flowers, even though they had nothing to do with their science report. It was just because he thought she would like them. And he found himself standing frozen in the middle of her pink rose of a bedroom completely ignored while Marinette lay casually on her chaise holding the Chat Noir plushie over her head.

“Today was such a long day, minou,” she said, smiling up at the doll in such a way that Felix wanted to violently shred the roses he had brought for her. “I’m glad I have you to come home to.”

She brought the little plush figure to her face and rubbed her nose where its own nose would have been if it had one. Marinette stroked the soft fabric of its hair and cuddled it to her chest, its head tucked smugly under her chin. With every pass of her hands, the doll became larger and more real, until a full-grown, life-sized Chat Noir lay sprawled across the length of her. Chat Noir was purring like a car engine as she ran her fingers through his hair and his tail flicked idly from side to side before wrapping itself possessively around Marinette’s ankle.

The imposter glanced at Felix out of one half closed eye and his lips twitched in a smug smile. With slow, deliberate movements, Chat Noir turned Marinette’s head and pressed his lips to hers as if daring Felix to challenge him.

Worse yet? Marinette kissed him back.

Felix swallowed hard. He wanted to shout. He wanted to growl. He wanted to jerk the stupid, synthetic doppelgänger off of her and curl up in his place. Her hands should be in his hair. He should get the nose brushes, the soft confidence, the kisses. He should be the one she clung to after a long day, not some poly-fil plaything!

“NO!” 

Felix jerked awake, sheathed in cold sweat and his sheets tangled around him like strangling vines.

“No,” he muttered between panting breaths. “This is unacceptable.”

“What?” Plagg groaned from the other pillow, rubbing one eye with a paw. “The fact that we don’t have twenty-four hour room service or that you can’t bring yourself to tell Bakery Girl you like her?”

“Will you stop thinking with your stomach for once in your existence. This is important.” Felix ran one hand through his sweaty hair. “I’m being haunted and it must stop. I have to know.”

Plagg snorted. “Know what?”

“I need to know if she—actually—cuddles with it.”

“This is still about the doll?” Plagg asked, suddenly wide awake and grinning like the miniature chaos gremlin Felix called him. “If it would help I can sneak over there and cataclysm the stupid thing. Then you’re done with it and it can’t ‘haunt’ you any more.” He made tiny air quotes with his paws which was somehow far more sarcastic than just his grating voice alone.

“No. I need to see for myself. Plagg—“

“Oh no you don’t. I refuse to go galavanting off in the—“

“—claws out!”

The wind in his face woke him up a bit, but it wasn’t enough to blow the thoughts from his mind.

I just need to peek in her window, Chat thought, launching himself from rooftop to rooftop. See if she really sleeps with it in her bed… if she cuddles with it. I’ll pop by for a moment, peer into her skylight, and that will answer it. After all, she is seventeen years old. We are far too old for toys or dolls. It is probably just a relic from an earlier time. Ladybug and I have been protecting Paris for four years now. Thirteen isn’t too young for a girl to want a comfort object. That’s it. It’s just a leftover.

The bakery appeared over the rooftops, the scent of bread that usually surrounded it had faded in the cool night air before dawn.

Chat Noir landed lightly on the balcony above, hoping to sneak a peek and be off before anyone—especially Marinette— knew he had even been there.

Crouching to all fours, he scurried silently over to the skylight and peered inside. Thanks to his night vision, his eyes pierced the protective darkness with ease revealing the sleeping form of Marinette below. She was curled on one side like a sleepy kitten, her hair released from its normal, tight pigtails to spill around her like ink on snow. The pink coverlet only covered her to her waist, exposing an adorable pajama top in the ‘boyfriend’ style, covered in what might have been cartoon croissants. 

That wasn’t all. Wrapped tightly in her arms, its head tucked under her chin in far too familiar a manner, was the Chat Noir plushie. The fluff-filled traitor to the mask!

Marinette sighed in her sleep, her lips just barely forming a word that his enhanced hearing caught with painful clarity through the glass.

“…Kitty.”

Chat found himself suppressing a growl deep in his chest, a growl that throbbed angrily behind his eyes and pulled his lips back into a sneer.

That eighth-scale, felt imposter. That moth-eaten bean bag of betrayal. It just lay there, tucked under Marinette’s innocently sleeping chin staring up at him with embroidered eyes and a smug little smile. 

Chat Noir doesn’t smile like that, Chat grumbled to himself. Not even close. I smile as if I know things, not as if I’m waiting to rub someone’s nose in their own mistakes! Stupid, little poser. Don’t look at me like you understand me. You’re not even licensed merchandise!

Torn between tearing the skylight open to steal the dratted little effigy and running off in a proper sulk, he forced himself to choose the latter. After all, destroying private property and stealing a doll right over the peacefully sleeping form of an innocent young woman would not make a good impression on anyone and explaining his current obsession with a stuffed toy would not make that go any better for him.

What could I say? Chat thought angrily as he pounded his way across the rooftops, trying in vain to outrun the uncomfortable simmering in his chest. That I’m angry Marinette is cuddling a doll of me while I spy on her from her windowsill like some glorified gargoyle? Sure. That would be swell. I’d be lucky to not end up arrested.

The whole of Paris passed beneath his feet and he had run himself to near exhaustion before he returned to his room.

“Happy now?” Plagg demanded grumpily as Felix flipped him a wedge of cheese. “Now you know she cuddles the thing and much good did it do you!”

Felix groaned as he collapsed face first onto his bed.

Plagg sniggered, no doubt spraying cheese crumbles all over the floor in the process.

“You see it now, don’t you?” he asked. “She made a doll of your alter ego. She snuggles with it at night. She even called it Kitty. That would be downright adorable if it wasn’t so nauseatingly cute. You win, kid. She likes you.”

Felix rolled over and glared at the kwami. “It’s not me, though. It’s… that doll!”

Plagg scoffed. “Nothing but polyester, fluff, and thread. And she made it to look like you. You are Chat Noir, remember? You imagined the suit, the hair, the bell. You decided on the attitude, the swagger, the smirk. That’s all you, kid. So what’s the problem?”

Felix ran a hand down his face before slapping it impotently against the coverlet. “She likes it more than me!”

“That’s because she doesn’t know it is you, dingus!”

Felix shook his head. “She cuddles it,” he whispered, knowing he was acting completely deranged and not caring just then. “She hugs it and trusts it. She called it ‘Kitty’! That could be me. It should be me!”

That was when his tired mind finally caught up with his raving mouth. A stunned silence reined. 

“Oh, no,” Felix whispered, horrorstruck.

“Oh, yes,” Plagg laughed. “The cheese has finally slid off the cracker. You’re in love, kid, and you’re a mess!”

Chapter Text

Something had to be done. There was a grave, fleece-suited injustice being perpetrated nightly and Felix, as Chat Noir—Hero of Paris—had to act.

He was going to insert himself seamlessly into Marinette’s life with such confidence, charm, and suavity that she couldn’t help but be won over.

At least, that is what he told himself.

Felix got up early and headed to the bakery, hoping to catch her before school. What he had failed to take into account was that bakeries keep absolutely absurd hours and Mr Dupain caught him standing outside the shop door like some sort of stalker at 6:30 in the morning. Felix wasn’t sure whether it was fortunate or disastrous that the man recognized him as one of Marinette’s friends and immediately sat him down behind the counter with the force of a friendly bear. Within seconds, Felix was practically assaulted with two croissants still fresh from the oven, stuffed with melted cheddar and crisp bacon, and a large mug of sweet smelling coffee stenciled with the slogan “I’m on a roll!” above a cartoon croissant.

Another thing he had failed to consider was Marinette herself. No matter how competent, friendly, and adorable she was, she had been the class’ resident tardy slip since the eighth grade and was still known to either skid into class at the last second or be ten minutes late.

Felix waited and waited, hoping to see her or even find an excuse to walk her to school. It would show attention, thoughtfulness, and consideration. He could ask her about her classes that they didn’t share, if she needed any help with the homework, and reschedule their work date for their science project. He was going to win her over from that little plushie traitor if charm and attention to detail could do it - even if it killed him.

But, even though Felix had realized several things about himself and his feelings in the last two weeks, Marinette was still Marinette. She came stumbling down the stairs five minutes before the bell was due to ring, a shoe in one hand and her backpack in the other. With a grace that belied her usual clumsiness - and surprised Felix no end - she popped the shoe on her foot, twirled to the sink to wash her hands, dried them on a towel before grabbing a croissant and popping it into her mouth before swinging her bag onto her back.

“Bye, Papa,” she said, her mouth half full as she finished her little domestic dance with a lift on her toes to kiss her father on the cheek. “See you after school.”

“Wait, Cupcake, your friend is here to walk you to school,” the baker said, grinning so wide his smile was completely obscured in his mustache.

“Friend?” she mumbled around another bite, turning back to look. Her eyes met Felix’s and her pupils narrowed into pinpricks. She spluttered and coughed, clearly so shocked by his unexpected appearance in the bakery that she started to choke.

Mr Dupain hurriedly stepped forward and pounded her on the back with such loud thumps Felix worried it would leave large bruises. But the man acted as if this was perfectly normal.

“Yes,” he said, as if his daughter had not just been on the verge of needing the Heimlich Maneuver. “He’s been waiting here quite a while too.”

Marinette turned a brilliant shade of magenta and tried to hide her face in her father’s shoulder. Mr Dupain seemed to have none of that for he gently pushed her out from behind him and towards Felix with just enough force to catapult her into his arms.

Felix caught her, of course. After four years of being Chat Noir, his reaction times were excellent even without the suit. But no akuma battle had ever left him with such a sweet, blushing armful as this and he felt his face grow hot with the contact. This is what he had wanted, had been dreaming of and obsessing over since he had seen the dratted little beanbag with the mask set lovingly against her pillow, and he felt both elated and completely unprepared.

Marinette stared up at him, a delicate, blushing mess with half a croissant in her hand and pastry flakes clinging to her upper lip. The wild desire to kiss them off and see if she made them even sweeter jumped around inside Felix like a caffeine-addled kangaroo. He even found himself leaning in slightly and fought off the impulse.

Barely.

“You kids had better get off to school,” Mr Dupain said with a sly tone. “You’re running late.”

Marinette’s eyes widened. She stumbled backwards out of Felix’s embrace, scarlet faced and trembling.

“We… you… trouble. Late. Can’t let your father know!” she babbled. Dropping the remains of her croissant, she grabbed his wrist and tugged him bodily out the door as if an akuma were after them. Felix, heart pounding, allowed himself to be hauled along in her wake, though he had the disappointing reflection that everything in his scheme for that morning and gone wildly eschew.

And the near silent sniggering from inside his shirt collar confirmed it.

***

So, meeting Marinette at the bakery and walking her to school had partially succeeded - if Felix were to count nearly kissing crumbs off her lip in front of her father and then being dragged to school five minutes late behind her like a stray laundry line in the wake of a windstorm. Needless to say, he did not. Clearly, it was not his best effort. He could do better.

Now Felix had a new plan. It involved precise timing, casual proximity, professional-level attention to detail, and a carefully curated assortment of not-quite-flirtatious conversation starters that should—ideally—plant the seeds of intrigue in Marinette’s mind without revealing his intentions too early. It was the perfect blend of aloof and attentive and should—in theory— draw in the object of his longing like a moth to flame. It was all about respectful observation, repeated closeness, and was definitely not stalking. Not in the legal sense at any rate.

It was perfect. 

And yet…

It began simply enough. Felix tried ‘accidentally’ running into Marinette at the bakery again—on a Saturday, this time so there were no time constraints to worry about—but it turns out she made deliveries for her parents on weekends. 

He had been casually meandering back and forth in front of the bakery with a to-go cup of coffee he had been nursing for over an hour. She could be seen darting back and forth inside the bakery like a purified butterfly, helping customers, refilling the shelves, laughing with a little old gentleman in a red shirt. Felix tried to squelch the pang of jealousy that interaction had caused. After all, the man was old enough to be her grandfather and hardly qualified as a rival. No, Marinette was just being polite and helpful. Providing good customer service for her family’s business. Nothing to grind his teeth over.

She disappeared for several minutes after that and Felix began to wonder if he had lost his opportunity.

Then, he saw her take up a stack of bakery boxes so tall it obscured her line of sight and make for the door.

This is it, Felix thought, rushing to grab the handle of the door to open it for her like a gentleman should. This is my chance!

Except she couldn’t see him behind the boxes and missed his gallant gesture completely. She burst through the door like an adorable rhinoceros charging the glass, leaving the metal frame to crash violently into his nose. 

Clutching his face, Felix grunted in pain and dropped his to-go cup which burst open on the sidewalk, splattering the remains of lukewarm coffee all over their legs. He felt a trickle from his nose and the pain made it clear that not only was his nose bleeding, it was most likely broken as well.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Marinette exclaimed frantically. “Are you okay?”

She leaned around her stack of boxes and their eyes met. It could not have been a pretty sight. Face crimson, her eyes widened so far Felix thought they might be in danger of falling from their sockets.

“Felix!” Marinette squeaked in alarm and panic, trembling so hard she nearly upset her delivery boxes. He couldn’t blame her for her panic, he would feel the same in her shoes, but he wished she wouldn’t squeak so. His head hurt abominably. 

She must have sensed it, the sweet angel, because her next words were in a nervous whisper.

“I…I’m…” she began shakily, but she couldn’t seem to get anything else out. “Can you…”

The boxes shook, shifting in her grasp.  One hand still covering his nose, he reached out to steady them for her. The movement drew him closer and he had a clear view of her face fading from rosy red to as white as chalk in less than a second.

“I’m fine,” he said thickly, trying to comfort her. Even talking hurt. “No harm done.”

She peered up at him helplessly through her dark lashes. “But you’re bleeding.”

If it had been anyone else he would have snapped at them, obliterating their confidence by tearing apart their statement of the obvious. But this was Marinette, his adorable hurricane in sensible shoes, who still slept with comfort objects at seventeen and worried about him getting in trouble with Gabriel for being late to school.

Felix shrugged and tried to smile, though that hurt even worse. “No lasting harm, then.”

He watched her look from him to the bakery where, beyond the glass door, her parents were busy serving customers, several of whom had turned to watch the tableaux outside. It was clear she wanted to help, but was torn as to how to do so.

“Do you… would you…” she tried, her nerves obviously getting the best of her once more. “Want to go inside? We can nix your fose? I mean fix your nose. Clean it?”

Despite the pain blooming in said nose, the headache that accompanied it like an overzealous escort, and the blood now pooling in his hand, Felix felt warm inside. True, his nose was probably broken and he would have a world of explaining to do when he got home, but he was basking in Marinette’s full attention like a cat in a sunbeam. All that could make it better was some painkillers and cuddles, though he would be loathed to suggest the latter.

But, if she offered… purely as a sympathy move or maybe a comfort…

But no. Marinette had deliveries to make and he was in her way, making her anxious and stressed.

Felix sighed. With blood running down his face and coffee staining his khaki trousers, his plan was thoroughly scuppered. So much for replacing the little stuffed facsimile that day.

“I shall be fine, Marinette,” he said through the pain. “You should run along. I wouldn’t want to make you late for your deliveries.”

With a last long, pained look, she gave a tiny nod and scuttled off, leaving him clutching the handle of the bakery door as if it were his lifeline.

“Ow,” Felix said under his breath.

“You certainly have a nose for chaos, Fe,” Plagg murmured naughtily from inside his collar. “And it’s still bleeding, by the way.”

“Shut up,” Felix growled, wincing in pain and wondering how he could explain away a broken nose to Gabriel and Nathalie. “Just shut up.”

Chapter Text

Things only got worse from there.

Felix tried everything. He tried to compliment Marinette. Not with the prepackaged platitudes of the fashion and society world, but something meaningful, true, and heartfelt. But, apparently, all he felt was heartburn when the most meaningful things he managed to convey were intense, boring, or pedantic to the point it bordered on insult.

“You always seem so poised under community pressure,” was what he meant to say on Monday. What he actually said was “You look… passably composed today.” Marinette’s cheeks turned pink and she didn’t look at him the rest of the period.

“You’re surprisingly formidable for someone with such a whimsical aesthetic,” came out during a volleyball game during gym on Tuesday, leaving Marinette to trip over her own feet while trying to examine her clothes. The rather spectacular recovery she made afterwards, hitting the ball with her head in the process to score a point, stunned him into adding “You also have an unnerving sense of balance.” Marinette’s cheeks darkened and she edged away from him, while Ms. Cesaire nearly choked trying to stifle a cackle.

The worst was lunch on Wednesday where Felix chose a seat near to her, Ms. Cesaire, and Mr Lahiffe. Nino was pointing at Alya and nodding in agreement as his girlfriend made large gestures clearly meant to demonstrate a recent fight with an akuma. Marinette laughed with such delight and humor that it was like a punch to Felix’s sternum. He caught her arm on the way back in to class, wanting to tell her how her laugh lifted his spirits.

“You laugh with your whole heart. It is true and beautiful!” is was he wanted to say, but what came out was a stern “Your laugh is unexpectedly loud.” She hunched in on herself, apologized in a tiny voice, and scurried away.

Felix abandoned compliments.

Gestures. Every great romantic classic had them and Felix was not about to be outdone by a flopsie, mopsie, and cottontail version of his alter ego. 

The thing doesn’t even have a spine, he had thought as he planned everything out on his Marinette board. Grand gestures are beyond the stuffed menace.

However, either Plagg’s bad luck of Felix’s own brand of hopelessness were still working against him.

He had overheard Marinette speaking enthusiastically about the paninis from a certain local bistro and arranged for one to be delivered to the school for lunch.  He strode casually over to where she and Alya were sitting on a bench in the park across from the school and cleared his throat ostentatiously. 

He meant to say something kind, intriguing, and mildly flirtatious. What came out was “Here. I ordered too much. This is for you,” as he shoved the to-go bag into her hands. Marinette looked from his face to the bag and back to his face, which had taken on the stiff, frozen sensation of a glacier of panic.

Wait. That hadn’t come out right at all.

Felix blinked stupidly. He should say something, explain himself, clarify his meaning in thrusting half a cheddar, steak, and mushroom panini at her like she was a bomb tech and it was about to explode. But for some unearthly reason, the only thing that came into his throat was a nervous whimper.

“Th-Thanks,” Marinette mumbled, ducking her head down with a tiny shrug.

Torn between fleeing like a coward and denying the existence of both himself and the sandwich, Felix compromised by giving her a sharp nod. Pulling himself ramrod straight, he jerked his vest down, turned on his heel and made as dignified a retreat as was possible under the circumstances.

He could hear Alya cackling behind him.

“Alya!” Marinette groaned. “What—“

“Nothing girl,” he heard Alya reply, clearly loud enough for him to hear. “I’m just taking notes for my new segment, ‘The Lives of the Rich and Ridiculous.’”

***

Compliments had failed him. Romantic gestures were a disaster. All Felix had left was trying to prove to Marinette that they were compatible on her own ground. 

True, Marinette was an aspiring fashion designer of no small merit and Felix was the prime model for her favorite designer, but, knowing her as he had come to, he knew she would never accept his help in achieving her dream. She wanted to earn it fair and square, so that left Felix wallowing in the unfamiliar arena of creativity and facing the gladiator of his own ineptitude.

Sewing, crafting, and artistry in general were enough outside his wheelhouse as to be on another continent, but his father had insisted he take drawing lessons for several years—in the failed hopes of inspiring his heir in design—so a simple sketch should not have been that hard.

He was wrong.

Felix went through half a sketch pad in attempt after attempt to capture Marinette’s likeness. After all, he had known her for years, they had become reasonably friendly companions in the last two, and he had become obsessed with her over the last month. Drawing her from memory should not be that difficult.

But it was. Her hands never looked right for, in real life, they were always busy with pencils or fabric or waving in inarticulate gestures. That liveliness could not be captured in graphite lines. Her shoulders always seemed too hunched, too nervous, instead of the confidence he craved to give her. Her eyes were always wide with worry or anxiety, never with surprise or laughter or affection. No matter how hard Felix tried, he couldn’t recreate her crooked smile, her carefree laugh, the intelligence that shone out of her eyes, or the brilliance that lay coiled just beneath her creamy skin. 

And if that wasn’t bad enough, whenever his mind drifted a tiny sketch of a limp, lifeless Chat Noir doll would appear unbidden in the corner of the page he was working on. 

I am going to win Marinette over so thoroughly that she will donate that little Pinocchio wanna-be to charity,” he thought, determination forcing the pencil even deeper into the paper until it tore a hole.

Finally, after two days of artistic suffering, he finally had something he halfway considered sending to her.

A foul waft of dairy slid under his nose, announcing Plagg’s presence with all the pomp and circumstance of a city dump truck.

“What’s that, kid?” he asked with a moderate burp—moderate for Plagg, that is.

“It is Marinette,” Felix said proudly. “I thought if I can show her I see her and am trying to meet her on her own ground then that will convince her to let me woo her properly.”

Plagg hovered over the paper, turning his head this way and that in a way that made Felix slightly seasick.

“So… did you draw her in cosplay or do you see her as a Victorian gothic ghost?”

With an exasperated sigh, Felix threw up his hands in defeat. He leaped to his feet and threw all his attempts into the fireplace. The fact that it was only mid October and no fire burned there was another thorn in the side of his romantic spirit. He hunted high and low for matches and, when he finally lit the pile of papers, it filled the room with bitter smoke.

“I’m doomed,” he said wearily.

“Most likely,” Plagg replied with unconscionable cheer. “but I have to say, watching you try has been the best entertainment I’ve had since the chariot races in ancient Rome. Of course, there was more blood and less angst, but I still give you eight out of ten!”

Felix glowered at his kwami wondering—not for the first time— if it was possible to strangle something quasi-dimensional.

Chapter Text

The night air was crisp, cool, and clear. The waning moon shone down on Chat Noir perched on the edge of a girder at the top of the Eiffel Tower, hunched and stiff instead of his usual lounging. Ladybug sat nearby, legs swinging out into space while she watched the lights of the city below.

There had been silence for several minutes, but for Chat it felt like a loaded gun about to fire. He could feel her keep looking over at him as if waiting for something—for him to unburden himself, perhaps— but he still didn’t speak.

Finally, she sighed gustily and forced him to look at her.

“Okay. What’s up, Chat?” she demanded, her voice half frustrated, half concerned. “You’ve done nothing but answer in grunts since before patrol. What’s got your tail tied in a knot?”

His shoulders inched up to his ears at her sudden intrusion into his thoughts. But she was his partner and if anyone knew what it was like to be confronted by an alter ego in the light of cold reality, it would be her.

“Hypothetically,” he began, cautiously, as if testing the conversation before him for hidden landmines. “How would you feel if you discovered someone had a plush doll of you? Like, sleeping with it in their bed?”

Ladybug blinked, blushed a little, then leveled a sheepish grin at him that reminded him forcefully of Marinette. Then the moment of association was gone and she smirked at him.

“Is this a hypothetical someone or someone I would know in my civilian life?” she asked with devastating accuracy for someone not in the middle of his particular mental barrage.

“Let’s say… an acquaintance,” he posed. “How would that make you feel?”

She leaned back to look at the sky, clearly thinking it over. That was something he had always liked about Ladybug. As long as she had the time, she took him seriously without pandering or pushing for favors.

After a while, she shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess we are public figures now and that kind of means our masked personas are fair game. It’s just something we have to get used to, but still be careful with. I mean, I nearly passed out when I found out my best friend had a bra and panty set based around me. That led to an extremely uncomfortable forced Google search and I spent the entire weekend freaking out over Ladybug lingerie.”

Chat snapped his head to look around at her, his cheeks burning. “How on earth is one forced to do a Google search?”

Ladybug rolled her eyes. “You don’t know my best friend. She can be relentless when she gets on a roll.”

Chat’s imagination, already working in overdrive for the last several weeks, ambushed him by changing the mental picture of Marinette cuddling the plushie before bed to include her in a black silky nightgown edged in dark green and silver lace. He shook his head vigorously, desperate to clear the scene before it caused more embarrassment than he could cope with.

Ladybug just looked at him, half amused with a blush still spilling out from under her mask. “You were wondering about Chat Noir lingerie, weren’t you?”

He grunted in response and she chuckled. However, it was clear she was laughing with him, at the absurd paths their separate lives had taken that had landed them together in this thankless, difficult job in the first place. Another thing he cherished about their friendship. They were in this together.

“Trust me,” she said. “Do yourself a favor and don’t go looking. Avoid the fan fiction too. That was just weird.” She shivered then and Chat was pretty sure it was from memory, not the night air.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said after a while.

She sighed, pulling the end of one pigtail over her shoulder to twiddle the end. “I mean, yeah, it is weird, but I think it would depend on who it was and why they had it. Not if it was something cruel or gross. But if it brings security and comfort because it looks like me? Then… yeah. I guess I’m okay with it.”

She paused, then looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “But what I think doesn’t matter. The real question is how do you feel about it, Tiger?”

Chat’s mouth twitched in a grin. The nickname that had started as a way to get back at him for his outrageous flirting back when they first started out now was said softly, teasingly. It was special and intimate in a way that he had only ever experienced with her and one of the reasons why he had been heart broken over her continued rejections. But they had grown beyond that now and she was a dear friend who meant the world to him.

As such, she deserved an honest answer.

“It is strange,” he said, gripping the girder under him as an anchor against awkward feelings. “Ma— My acquaintance cuddles with it at night and calls it Kitty. I suppose I should be flattered, but it feels like I am competing against myself for her attention… and losing.”

She giggled. “And here I thought you were Mr. Flirty, all confidence and the life of the party.”

He shook his head sadly. “Part of the lie of the mask, Spots. Without it, I’m prickly, awkward, and not very likable. If I am being honest with myself, the truth is that I’m a coward as a civilian. So much so I can’t even find a way to one-up a plush version of the fakest part of myself.”

“I think you aren’t seeing yourself clearly,” Ladybug replied, nudging him in the arm with her shoulder. “You are the bravest person I know and that doesn’t change because you put on a mask.”

She paused then, biting her lip and spinning the end of her pigtail between her fingers so intently that she would soon be able to weave with it.

“You really like this girl?” she asked, her eyes focused on some point in the sea of city lights below their feet.

Chat’s breath hitched. He hadn’t meant to say that, not to Ladybug who he had once claimed to be madly in love with every day. He hadn’t meant to bring up his feelings about anything save the doll. But she always seemed to see the truth of the matter. Plagg had been nagging and teasing him about being in love with Marinette for ages and now Ladybug saw it too, without even knowing the full story?

“It is more than that,” he mumbled, rubbing his face with one clawed hand. “Obsessing might be closer to the truth, but that sounds rather unpleasant and antisocial to admit.”

“Then why don’t you tell her?”

“But I don’t know how,” he said in a tone close to a wail, flinging his arms out as if presenting all the evidence of his failure. “I have tried to visit her, compliment her, show thoughtful attention, but every time I somehow manage to royally make a mess of things.”

Ladybug chuckled. “Sounds like my crush. He’s been acting weird, but he has never seen me like that, so it must be something else in his case.” She turned to look at him with a soft smile. “Look, Tiger. If you like this girl enough that this whole doll thing bothers you, then just tell her how you feel. Be upfront and honest about it. If she likes you even half as much as you deserve, then she will probably fall all over herself with excitement.”

Chat snickered. “Sounds like you’ve met her.”

Ladybug waggled a finger at him. “No names. I can’t risk knowing who you are even through your ‘acquaintances’.” The waggle turned into air quotes. Hers were much cuter than Plagg’s.

Chat nudged her shoulder with a slight grin. “Thanks, Spot. You’re the best.”

“That’s what they say.” She stretched her arms high over her head until her neck and shoulders popped. “It’s getting late. we should head out. Take care. Okay, Chat? And if she breaks your heart I’ll dangle her headfirst over the Seine until she begs for your forgiveness.”

He snorted as he rose, offering her a hand to pull her to her feet. “Thanks, but no thanks. Anything worth gaining is worth gaining fairly. She taught me that.”

She looked at him with a steady, piercing gaze. “You are worth it, though.” she said quietly. “Never forget that.”

Chapter Text

Felix sat at the desk in his bedroom, rubbing a pencil between his fingers and holding a posture that would surely get him grounded. 

Ladybug was right. He had to tell Marinette that he liked her. More than just classmates or friendly companions. That he desired her attention, regard, and more than that. He desired her presence, her touch, the right to put his arm around her or kiss her forehead—he dared not think of lips too closely. Be the one to share her sorrows and comfort her when the cares of the world impinged on her gentle, creative soul.

But the only words that came to mind when he approached the girl of his dreams had all the charm and sincerity of a tax reform bill.

Felix groaned. He always prided himself on his cautious, logical, analytical approach to the world around him. Whether it was dealing with his socially tyrannical father, the loss of his beloved mother, the modeling, the fans, the loneliness, or even becoming a superhero, his steady diet of formal etiquette, rationalism, and his absorption of philosophy and classic literature had always helped him plot a steady course. But when it came to matters of the heart—particularly a certain animated, awkwardly brilliant and lovely classmate—his well-honed mind betrayed him. Felix Agreste was no romantic hero no matter how hard he had tried.

He could almost see such figures rising from the shadows of his mind to stand in judgement.

Maybe his imagination had finally cracked or perhaps all the thwarted confessions had lost his cheese as Plagg had threatened only two hours before. Because suddenly, it was as though the very pages of his favorite novels had leapt from the shelves, dragging with them the finest male specimens of romantic and deductive brilliance to hold a council of ineptitude before his mind’s eye.

Four figures dominated, men he had been low-key imitating in his various attempts to apply logic to a problem of romantic illiteracy. Mr. Darcy and Col. Brandon—Austen’s finest gentlemen—took center stage in their austere Regency finery while Gaskell’s John Thornton loomed large behind, a strong, forceful, but silent presence. And, joining the three like a man out of time, was Sherlock Holmes—not Doyle’s violin playing Victorian detective, but Benedict Cumberbatch’s razor-cheekboned, performative misanthrope, pacing like he was six patches in to a three patch problem and wishing himself anywhere else. Somehow, in Felix’s mind, all four men were arrayed against him in a single tribunal, each a different flavor of guidance, critique, and condescension tailored to ridicule and torment him with his romantic failings.

Darcy, sitting straight and proud at a Regency writing desk, sighed with an air of exasperated hauteur as if Felix’s romantic crisis had summoned him in the midst of the one activity in which he hated to be interrupted most. Col. Branden stared with a quiet glance that spoke eloquently of both moral fibre and the epitome of human patience. Thornton, his very essence stiff with mill-smoke and his face lined deep from impending strikes, scowled at him with an intensity that made Felix clench his jaw. And Sherlock hovered, one eyebrow raised in infuriating judgement and annoyance, already deducing the many ways Felix would fail before he ever opened his mouth.

It was not a hallucination—at least that is what he told himself.

I’m not crazy, Felix thought, pinching the bridge of his nose as if the centralized pain would make the world correct its coarse and let him get off for a while. I’m just… convening a council of the most effective, most experienced minds in romantic literature and detective work to advise me on a single matter. That is all.

Of course, that sounded about as sane as a flying pig, but he was at a loss and, apparently, his subconscious mind knew that. He was hopelessly and irredeemably in love with Marinette Dupain-Cheng and just as hopelessly unable to tell her so.

All four men stared at him with varying degrees of annoyance. If he was honest with himself, Felix couldn’t blame them.

“Enough dithering,” Mr. Darcy declared, setting down his pen with a deliberate finality. “You’re worse than Bingley. You are as stiff as a board and as awkward as a newborn foal. Composure is acceptable, but you are being offensive to her sensibilities by hiding behind that mask of yours. Both of them!”

Felix blinked. He hadn’t expected his literary muses to speak to him. Maybe he really had gone round the twist.

“I—uh—wasn’t trying—“

“That is painfully obvious,” Sherlock quipped, throwing himself down on Felix’s sofa as if he had every right to commandeer the furniture—figment or not. “Sandwiches.”

The word was said with disgust.

Thornton scoffed at the modern detective. “You have all the charm and tact of a smoke stack, Holmes,” he growled. He turned to Darcy. “And you, Darcy, underestimate the dangers of misreading her entirely. You may have a certain cold, aloof charm, yes, but listening is paramount. Assuming affection where it does not exist can be just as disastrous as assuming it does not exist at all. You should have learned that with your own lady.”

Darcy’s jaw stiffened and he jerked his waistcoat down sharply. “You misjudge me. It was never her person I found objectionable. Quite the contrary—Miss Elizabeth’s wit and eyes were… distracting. Her mind and thoughts fascinate me. But affection cannot bloom in barren soil, and her family’s vulgarity and inferior connexions were weeds choking the garden. A man of my position cannot—should not—allow his judgment to be swayed by such entanglements. It was duty, not disdain, that governed me.”

Felix found himself nodding, sympathizing with Darcy deeply. Such he had always been told. Uphold the family name, support the brand, the only people good enough for an Agreste were few and far between, and, for the most part, that hadn’t steered him wrong.

Except with Marinette. She was always the exception to every rule he had ever lived by.

Col. Brandon shook his head. “But duty is not merely to such superficial things as name, house, or heritage. It should be to the more noble elements of human nature: kindness, generosity, and support of those weaker than ourselves.”

“Darcy is just a socially awkward blockhead and we all know it,” Sherlock said, waving derisively from the sofa.”

“But at least this blockhead won his woman,” Darcy said, rising to his feet in indignation. “What do you have at the end of the day, Holmes? Tell me that!”

“Peace, quiet, and the satisfaction of a job well done,” the detective replied bluntly. “Which is more than I can say for any of you.”

Thornton growled, his massive hands clenching so tightly his knuckles resounded like gunshots.

“I say,” Brandon cut in, with a frown. “That’s getting too personal for a gentleman, sir. I suggest you restrain yourself.”

“Oh, like you, Brandon?” Sherlock said with a knowing smirk. “Restraint is keeping something in check. It does not mean watching from the sidelines while the woman you love gets wooed relentlessly by a mercenary popinjay who is intentionally tied to his relative’s apron strings.”

The detective leapt to his feet and began pacing back and forth like a caged tiger. “The chemistry of love is simple, distractive, and extremely useful in my line of work. The fact that it took Felix so long to define his afflictions is frankly embarrassing. Add in the fact that this all started over a doll and it plummets into the absurd. You should never let your heart rule your head, boy. Love is a game you can win, but you have to control the board.”

“But control is what nearly ruined my chances,” Darcy interjected harshly.

“Assumptions should never rule, whether heart, head, or hands,” Thornton added, his tone deep and his nostrils flaring in barely repressed anger. “Only truth matters and following the dictates of your conscience.”

“JUST SHUT UP!” Felix bellowed. The four men fell silent, their faces showing a panoply of shock, confusion, annoyance, and, perhaps, a touch of pride from Brandon.

“You all are just figments of my imagination, correct?” Felix went on, not really expecting them to answer. They all knew the truth of it. “I summoned you out of the cognitive ether to help me win over Marinette and all you can agree on is that I have made a royal mess of matters—which I already knew! What you are failing to recognize is what unites all of you.”

He pointed at Darcy. “You may act freshly starched and ironed in your sense of superior duty, Darcy, but you stepped outside yourself and your pride to help save Elizabeth’s reputation and that of her sisters—even when you thought she still hated you. You paid off Wickham’s debts and made him marry Lydia. You attended the wedding of the man you justly hated most in the world all for the woman you love.”

He turned to Thornton. “Despite being rejected by Margaret, you still listened to her opinions, honored her father, and showed care and concern for her mother. You even attempted to hide what you thought was a scandal for the sake of the love you had for her.”

He turned to Brandon, who gave him a tight smile, as if he could see where this was all going. “You stayed on the sidelines because you were willing to hope you were wrong and the woman you loved could be happy. You stayed by Marianne’s side after the blow fell and rode all night to fetch her mother to her sick bed. You waited and were patient, having nothing but hope.”

At last he turned to Sherlock, angry at the man’s openly callous disregard of feelings as anything but tools in his games. “You claim to be above such things. That love is just science, chemistry in its basest forms. But you neglect the fact that friendship is a form of love and you went out of your way to protect Mrs. Hudson, John, his wife, their unborn child, and their future happiness. You are compromised by your very own standards.

“All of you have this in common. You are all willing to sacrifice your own happiness, desires, and peace of mind for those you care about, whether platonically or romantically. How am I any different in loving Marinette? She was my friend first. Aside from Ladybug, she was probably the first true friend I have ever had—as Felix or as Chat Noir. I want to be with her, yes. I desire her, yes. But more than that I want to safeguard her happiness and if that means she would rather have a plush version of Chat Noir than the flesh and flawed Felix, then I will have to learn to accept that. But, one way or the other, I reserve the right to let her choose for herself!”

Sherlock’s eyes brightened slightly as if a promising student had just declared the correct answer on an exam. “Your logic is irrefutable, but if she relies on your plush counterpart for comfort, then you are halfway there.”

Thornton nodded sharply. “You can be her Chat Noir in her private distresses. That is what matters.”

“Agreed,” Mr. Darcy added. “Support her in whatever way she needs and let her decide the rest.

“Forget the airs,” Col. Brandon said. “Forget the mask. Be present, be open, and, most of all, be patient.”

Felix stared at the four men all of whom, on some level, represented himself in his various, conflicting, prickly layers.

“I… thank you,” he managed awkwardly. “I don’t—”

Just then, the scene shattered on a wave of foul stench and the room reasserted itself with all the grace of a two-ton rhinoceros and the toothy grin of the world’s most odiferous kwami. 

“Thank goodness,” Plagg said, pulling a wedge of camembert back from under Felix’s nose. “You’re back.”

Felix gagged and waved a hand under his nose to dispel the stink. “Wha-ugh! What was that for?”

The little black cat shrugged in midair before popping the cheese into his open mouth.

“You were either spiraling or having a seizure,” he garbled around the mouthful. “Had to snap you out of it somehow.”

“Yes, well, next time could you do so with something less offensive than your foul cheese?”

Plagg snorted. “I nearly wasted perfectly good camembert on you, boy. Did you at least figure out how to win over Bakery Girl?”

Felix sighed. “Let’s just say I was given some pretty sound advice. Now all I need to do is figure out how best to follow it.”

Chapter Text

Felix stood in the arch leading into the school courtyard, absently creasing the folds of a note with his thumbnail. He was waiting for Marinette to arrive back from lunch so he could confront her.

No. This isn’t a confrontation, he thought, swallowing convulsively as his anxiety spiked for the twelfth time that day. This is my declaration of admiration, respect, and affection, not a frontal assault.

However, the thought did not help keep his stomach from turning loops in his middle or his heart from beating out of sync—despite knowing that neither organ had the capacity for such drastic actions.

I am prepared, he told himself firmly, pacing yet another circuit of the courtyard to soothe his jangled nerves. My words are perfect, I rehearsed it to a fare-thee-well, Plagg is sleeping off a cheese coma, and the plushie isn’t allowed in school. Nothing is going to get in my way.

There she was.

Marinette walked up the steps into the courtyard, a pale pink, gauzy peasant blouse adding to her softness while a navy blue pleated skirt swirled around her knees. She was smiling that perfect, small crooked smile of hers—the one that suggested she knew more than she was going to say aloud. She nodded and laughed with Ms. Cesaire, who was gesturing animatedly with one hand while she held her phone out in the other. It was if unseen clouds had parted to spill warm sunshine around Marinette, as if the light, too, wanted to be near her. 

Felix swallowed hard. His mouth felt as dry as a desert. His hands gripped the note, damp and shaking with sudden nerves. Every well-crafted, slaved-over phrase was drowned in an unexpected rush of hormones, longing, and anxiety. He couldn’t express his feelings to her now. It would end up more like a rambling confession of a crime - that is, if anything intelligible came out at all!

As Plagg’s luck would have it, that was when her eyes found him from across the yard. Her cheeks pinked and she gave a tiny wave, accompanied by a cute, one-sided shrug. He could see her lips form the word ‘Hello’ and his traitorous heart decided to perform a gymnastics routine for which Felix’s other internal processes were distinctly unprepared. For a moment, he felt betrayed by his own body as it refused to obey his commands to smile, to wave, to do something—anything!—that would indicate his pleasure in seeing her. Instead, the note was crumpled in his fist and his jaw went slack while everything else in him screwed so tight it could have screamed.

Ms. Cesaire seemed to notice their silent connection for Felix saw her smirk and nudge Marinette towards him with a muttered phrase. His heart stalled as he saw her cheeks darken as she turned away.

No! he couldn’t let his chance slip away!

That is when his feet finally got the message from his brain and he found himself slowly making his way towards her across a suddenly endless stretch of paved courtyard. He might as well have been a demonstration of Zeno’s paradox, forever cutting the distance in half but never quite reaching the object of his quest. Yet he couldn’t seem to move any faster. He could almost hear that chaotic self-council of his.

“Such unmanly delay,” Thornton sneered, with Darcy mumbling disdainful agreement in the background. 

Brandon’s elegant visage twisted in disappointment. “How can you confess to her if you can barely stand, man?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Man? Hah! This is what you fellows get trying to help this poor boy. Really. His idea of a romantic gesture was a sandwich!”

“Shut up!” Felix growled sotto voce at his annoying figments.

Darcy pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do not speak with such disrespect, young man. You summoned this council by indecision alone.”

Brandon nodded sharply. “We are your conscience given flesh—“

Thornton snorted. “Flesh? Hardly. More like a collection of annoyances who will not leave until you act.”

Sherlock steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. “Not if I can help it. Look at her.” Felix’s eyes locked onto Marinette. “What do you see?”

“She is… blushing,” Felix realized. “She waved at me and blushed!”

“Precisely!” Sherlock declared. “There are signs all around, but you have been as thick as a brick wall and twice as dense!”

His mind’s eye cleared as his feet had somehow completed the torturous trek across the yard to Marinette. Ms Cesaire caught something in his expression and turned her best friend around to face him. Bless the girl!

“H-H-Hey, F-Felix,” Marinette stammered sweetly.

Felix was sweating. The note in his hand was a casualty of war, but he still clutched it like a talisman.

“Marinette,” he said, his voice coming out soft, raspy, and far harsher than he had intended. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I have something I must… impart to you.”

“Y-Y-You do?”

For some reason her obvious nervousness made his own exponentially worse. “Yes. Words. Words of-of… personal significance.”

“Personal?” she squeaked. Her lovely bluebell eyes widened until he could drown in them.

“Yes,” he said. “Matters that concern esteem, respect, and a level of regard which I find myself inadequately prepared to classify.”

As impossible as it seemed, her eyes opened wider and her rosy lips parted in surprise. Some small, still vaguely logical part of his consciousness noted that there was no rise and fall of her chest, as if she was holding her breath. Felix’s own chest tightened.

He couldn’t stop now.

“I have discovered that I have developed—“

A shrill alarm rang out, the obnoxious BEE-BOOP BEE-BOOP instantly recognizable. Felix groaned inside. An akuma alert? NOW?!

Marinette’s pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks. “Sorry, Felix,” she blurted out, her face going from nervous to panicked in less time than it took for him to blink. “But I have to go! My parents always want me home during akuma attacks so I can dough the salt. I mean salt the dough! Stay safe! BYE!”

And, just like that, she was gone—dashing away like a modern-day Atalanta—torn from his side by familial duty…and salt dough, apparently.

Felix felt his inner council shake its collective heads.

“A most ill-timed interruption,” Darcy said, sighing in exasperation.

Sherlock snorted and rolled his eyes. “Nonsense. His bad luck manufactures them. All interruptions are ill-timed with this boy!”

A sharp, needle-like poke to the collarbone jarred Felix from his embarrassed distractions. 

“This isn’t time to be stuck in your own head, kid,” Plagg whispered from inside his shirt collar. “The Bug is going to be waiting for us.”

Felix groaned again. The redolent menace was correct. His declaration would have to wait until after the battle.

***

“Head in the game, Chat,” Ladybug cried as she spun her yoyo like a shield to protect them both from the flower bombs the latest akuma was lobbing willy-nilly. “We still have to get the locket.”

Casting one last look in the direction of the Dupain-Cheng bakery, Chat shook his head to clear it of the overwhelming scent of flowers and thoughts of Marinette. “Sorry, SApot. I’m just worried, that’s all.”

“Why? I know love akumas are the worst, but we have a solid plan.” She patted the roll of packing tape at her hip. “That is unless you want me to know who your ‘obsession’ girl is.”

Chat felt his face burn, nearly missing his swing at the flower bomb aimed at them. “If it’s all the same to you, Spot, I think I’d rather keep it to myself.”

The akuma was fast, bitter, and, unfortunately, scarily accurate with her flower bombs. Heart’s Ease kept screaming about confessions going wrong and being rejected—which Chat could totally sympathize with at the moment—but this kept distracting him with thoughts of Marinette.

Was she safe? Had she been hit before she could get safely to the bakery? Or was she, even now, clutching the blasted plushie and watching Ms. Cesaire’s live footage of the fight dreaming of her hero—HIM—fighting to keep her safe?

That distraction cost him.

“Chat! Look out!” 

Before he could respond to the warning, Ladybug pushed him out of the way as a flower bomb exploded right where he had been standing. A cloud of petals and glittering pollen erupted around her, settling on her suit, her face, her hair.

“Ladybug!” Chat cried out in alarm. He split his staff, hurling both halves to drive the akuma back with a cry of rage.

Grabbing Ladybug’s wrist, he ducked them behind a chimney and down into an empty alley. His heart was pounding and guilt thrummed through him like a live wire. They knew the akuma’s powers made her victims confess feelings, though that had been civilians and it had been everything from hatred towards a childhood rival to a secret love of garlic and anchovy pizza.

But will it affect Ladybug in the suit? he worried. How will it manifest in her if it does?

Ladybug shivered and tried desperately to dust off the akuma’s pollen. Her hands crept up, pressing hard against her temples as she shook her head again and again.

“No! Not…not now!”

“What’s going on, Spot? Talk to me!” he implored, grabbing her by the shoulders to ground her against whatever was going on in her head. “Please!”

“I…I can’t stop,” she ground out through gritted teeth.

“Stop what?”

“I can’t stop thinking about him,” she gasped. “He’s…so difficult at times. He’s as prickly as a cactus and he is usually so sharp it can hurt to listen to him, but then he does something quietly kind and I can barely breathe!”

Chat’s heart contracted painfully. “Spot, I know the pollen is forcing this, but you are stronger. I need you to focus-“

She shook her head, tears now trickling down her mask. “He pretends he doesn’t care, but he does. I’ve seen it in his eyes…in the little things he does and then brushes them off. He’s hurt, guarded, lonely and very proud, but I have seen him watching people and trying so hard not to need anyone.”

Ladybug pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes to force the tears away. Her breath came in shattered gasps as the words were torn from her unbidden.

“And I can’t tell him any of this because I am a coward without the mask, but I love him so much it hurts, Chat. I love Felix Agreste!”

At that last betrayal, her hands fell away as her bluebell eyes widened painfully. She slapped a hand over her mouth.

Chat felt weak in the knees. The world seemed to tip around them and he couldn’t breathe. Of all the men in Paris, Ladybug loved him? Not the mask but his worthless, paper-faced self? The one person he could never let her know was the man behind the mask?

“You-You’re in love with Felix Agreste? The model?” he gasped

She shook her head violently. “No! Don’t listen! It’s just the pollen!”

Of all the worst timing! Chat had spent the first two years of their partnership wishing, hoping that Ladybug would love him. It had been purely selfish at first—hoping to get the kiss that would remove the curse on Plagg’s ring, but then…things changed. He had grown to love her for herself, not just for what she could do for him or even Paris. But Ladybug had said time and again that she had someone else in her heart, that she wouldn’t betray those feelings even for her partner.

And now, when his own heart had turned towards another, here she was confessing that her special someone was him.

Him without the mask.

Chat could hear the akuma cackling in the distance. He knew they had to return to the fight, but he was still reeling. Her confession had landed like a blow to the chest and he couldn’t tell if it was confusion, guilt, or the cruelest irony he had ever experienced.

He pulled his partner into a firm hug. “It’s going to be alright, little Spot,” he said, trying hard to be soothing and supportive while his thoughts thrashed like a frenzy of sharks.

“I’m so sorry,” she whimpered, burying her face in his chest.

“Not your fault,” he said, gruffly. “And you’re not a coward. It’s never easy to say the deep things in our hearts, is it? There is always the chance of being misunderstood or rejected.” He waved a hand at the alley mouth to indicate the akuma and all the chaos that sprang from it. “You have a double burden to bear. You can’t afford to be akumatized, so you have to hold back from the chances of heartbreak. I get it. I really do. I don’t blame you, Spot.”

Ladybug looked up at him, wiping her eyes on her wrist. “Your plushie girl?”

He nodded and sighed. “I might have a chance, but I’m making a complete hash out of it, I’m afraid.”

That made her lips twitch up in a tiny smile. She flicked his bell softly.

“So when this is done, you go tell her how you feel. Alright? If she rejects you…well, I’ll pay for the ice cream.”

He chuckled a little. “I don’t like ice cream.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes and huffed. She reached up and ruffled his hair. “Then I will buy you a coffee as black as your suit, you picky Tiger.”

“Are you going to be alright out there?” he asked, tipping his head towards the street and the waiting akuma.

She stepped out of his embrace and ran her hands up her arms and across her face. “I think so. The pressure eased as soon as it all came out, but Felix is a distraction for me at the best of times. This is not them.”

Chat couldn’t help the heat that burned in his cheeks, grateful for the mask that hid most of it.

“Then let’s get this done. I’ve got your back.”

She nodded with a faint grin. Whipping out her yoyo, it wrapped a nearby fire escape and she rocketed skywards.

As Chat Noir followed, tension squirmed in his middle. Despite the awkward confession, Ladybug’s advice was sound and he intended to follow it, but would Marinette accept him?

He shook his head to clear it. He had a battle to fight.