Chapter Text
"Chat, what are you doing?" She asks, half amusement, half curiosity in her voice. Like she's seen similarly silly things plenty of times before (she has). Like she's interested to see how he explains himself this time (she is).
He's not in his costume. He hasn't needed to be for a long time, for her to call him that. The names she calls him fluctuate between mood and social circumstance. The circumstance he's in right now makes her choice of sobriquet obvious;
He's laying on the floor. On his carpet. Where the mornings blindingly bright rays of light filter through and warm the room the most. She's standing directly behind his head and looking down at him with an expression that matches her earlier tone. Arms crossed. Pajamas. A bag of baked goods in hand, brought back from her short trip to her parents bakery, and then back again. Back to his room, in his house, from which she'd spent the previous night.
From the look on her face, she's wondering how he got from position A to position B. Position A, being the one she left him in- Cute, normal, docile sleeping boyfriend, halfway buried in white bed sheets. Left with a couple kisses and a promise to be right back, which he only half remembers. - versus position B, the one he was in now: sprawled half naked over sun-warmed carpet and clearly basking in it, like a fucking cat. Occasionally rolling around in it, flipping sides, and through a deep and comfortable haze of sleep, feeling like he should probably sleep on the floor more often because it was for some reason, really fucking comfortable. Didn't chiropractors say it was good for your back? Or was that Shaolin Monks?
Marinette looked down at him, expectant for an explanation. Or at least a joke in place of an excuse.
Adrien looked back up at her with absolutely none of that. Just the mild and happy surprise he always wore when he got to see to see his girlfriend at all. A slow smile coming to his face as he took her in.
She doesn't get the explanation she's hoping for and she's not going to get one anytime soon, because of two reasons. One being that she should know damn well (as well as he does) why he acts the way he does by now. And two being that he's gotten to the point where what little shame he's had for his miraculous-imposed behavioral side effects no longer exists.
He's a cat. That's it. That's just all there is to it. He's simply grown to love and accept it by now. And the look he fixes her with from the floor is clearly asking why she can't just do the same?
'Why must you question everything I do?' Adrien doesn't ask, with a pleading look in his eyes he does not give her, and certainly does not prompt laughter with. But he's tempted to.
No. Instead, he grins up at her unabashed and happy to see her, and lets the pun roll off his tongue. "Oh, y'know.," He starts, a wide yawn pausing his sentence, arms stretching out wide before they settle behind his head. "Just.. lying around."
Marinette closes her eyes for a second too long before opening them, fighting to keep her smile moderate and not let it grow in front of him. He doesn't need encouragement. "Terrible."
"You asked for it."
"I did. I walked right into it and I'm ashamed."
Adriens happy chuckles are smothered in plastic and the soft weight of pastries they hold as her bag is dropped over his face, perfectly timed. When a muffled "Hey!" escapes from under the bag, Marinette can't hold back the widening of her smile back if she wanted to.
He's vaguely aware of her moving around him. Small feet padding almost silently around his side, over to his hips. He's too distracted by the pastry she's dropped on him to pay it any mind.
He sniffs up into it audibly. Two quick ones, as if he could examine the whole bag with just his nose alone. Sniff sniff, "Ooh, is there coffee cake in here? and-" sniff, "Doughnuts?"
"Maybe. You'd know if you got up and looked at them."
"I'm good like this thanks. I've got the nose of a bloodhound Marinette. A bloodhound."
He doesn't need the nose of a bloodhound to know she's rolling her eyes, but he's pretty sure if he actually had that he could smell that too. Somehow. Probably.
"Uhuh," she says with amusement as she leans down over him and plucks the bag of pastries up just enough to give him an up close view of what his nose was just pressed to; a strawberry puff.
"Oh." He says.
A beat. And then-
"I was close!"
Marinette audibly snorts. "Sure you were. "
"It was still a pastry!"
"They're all pastries, Chat."
"So you admit that I'm right." Adrien brings a finger up to tap at his face and fixes Marinette with haughty eyes and a cocky smirk. "Like a bloodhound." He half mouths, half whispers, tapping his nose. Marinette almost drops the bag on him again.
Adrien continues, giving her a look that would better befit a crack theorist than him as he mouths, "NOSE OF STEEEEEEEL."
This time Marinette does drop the bag on him again, and Adrien elicits yet another amused eye roll from her when he perks up and goes, "Ooh! I can smell the strawberry! See? Told you. My nose is pure honed titanium alloy enhanced biomechanical weapon of mass destructAH!" He- get this- fucking squeaks in the middle of his sentence, as Marinette plants a foot on top of his chest. His chest that's been warmed so much by his sun bathing that she can feel warmth still radiating from his skin, Marinette notes despite herself.
The bag falls lopsidedly off his face then, as Adrien looks up to see her- A few waves of his hair unfurling, rearranging messily against the side of his face with the movement. A couple curls still sticking out in too many directions from his bedhead. Marinette didn't think it was possible for Chat's hair to get wilder and messier than it already was, and if she did, she wouldn't have thought it would look as attractive on him as it did right now.
She's leaning down over him, entertained by his early morning antics, the warmth radiating from his skin now matching the warmth radiating from his personality. He's half asleep and still he can spout lines like this, make conversation like this, Marinette see's and is reminded of yet again. And it shows, but not now. His expression has changed, and where seconds ago there was lazy banter and puns there is now stymied, mystified silence. The way he's looking up at her now is a combination of sleep hazed disbelief and awe so reverent and transfixed it reminds her of a child looking up at a Christmas tree. And her, like she's the glowing star at the tippy top. Her foot gently held in his hands like a precious gift on his chest. He probably doesn't even realize he's holding it.
His breathing shallows out, abdomen flattening out worryingly beneath her foot, and Marinette wonders if shes pushing the breath out of him- Looks down for a moment to check, but no- She's not putting any pressure into it at all. All her weight is still residing on her other leg, planted on the floor next to Adrien's hip.
He's gone breathless in this moment all on his own. Breathless and gaping and dazed and are his cheeks going pink?
Marinette suppresses a coo.
Adorable
Starstruck Adrien not being an uncommon occurrence, Marinette relaxes and smiles down at him. Half smirk, half love. Widening ever more when she feels his heart rate kick up under her foot as she leans closer down.
The insane 360 barrel roll his stomach attempts at the sight is somewhat thrown off it's groove by the ever so slight presence of her foot beneath his ribs, and Adrien, dazed and dumb, trails his eyes up her leg to her face and swallows down dry.
He's never seen her from this angle before. He's never BEEN at this angle before, and combined with the wonderful haze from just waking and the sun twinkling behind her through the window, Adrien is seriously reconsidering that whole 'sleeping on the floor more often' thing.
She's devastating. And Adrien is, without a doubt, devastated in her wake.
He's not sure he could handle seeing her like this all the time. Maybe the floor was a bad idea. She's pretty, she's so so pretty. She's beautifully, overwhelmingly pretty. And Adrien isn't sure his heart could take this every day (He's still amazed it survived the event that was becoming Ladybug's boyfriend in the first place,). Even though this really does feel amazing for his back, his Chiropractor can eat shit, he can-
"Stop that." She says abruptly. Despite how softly and endearingly she says it, it still startles him a bit.
"Stop what?" Adrien almost stutters out. The sincerity with which he asks this makes it all the cuter to her. The genuine concern in his eyes is unfair, and Marinette holds back the urge to do something affectionate about it.
"Stop being cute, doofus." She says, and leans down to poke him on the nose. Watching his eyes go crossed to follow it before she giggles and lets her foot off of him. Bringing it back to the floor to his left and walking off to retrieve her bag of pastries from the side of his head.
'Cute'? Adrien thinks, repeating the word in his head like it's a foreign concept- Definition momentarily forgotten in the moment.
Adrien, still completely fucking wrektd from his spiritual enlightenment, can only follow her from the floor, head turned upside down to watch her make her way to do the door. He can't help but mourn the loss of her foot, wishing she'd kept it there on his chest for a reason he can't articulate, and isn't sure he could if he tried.
She stops just short of the door and turns to him expectingly. "Well, are you going to come have breakfast with me, or are you gonna lie there all day?"
It takes him a second to scramble up from the floor and meet her there, a belated reply of "Ye-Yes! Yeah, those look delicious," greeting her when he gets there.
They make their way down to the kitchen and get plates, cups, coffee and juice, and have a nice breakfast together. But the unexpected moment he'd experienced that day leaves Adrien reeling and wondrous. It's not strange to find Marinette attractive, it's not, but something about it tells Adrien in a way he can only articulate as purely instinctive, that that wasn't all there is to it. This time, there was something more.
A week later, after much inner turmoil and frustrated debate over the experience, and no new answers or explanations to show for it, Adrien chalks it up to another fucking cat tendency (the one where cats hold onto something while they kick their little feets up at it? That one?), adds it to the list of cat behaviors he's accumulated over the years and leaves it at that. For now.