Work Text:
Tikki wakes in the middle of the night as the skritch skritch skritch of pencil over paper reaches their ears. The spirit scrubs the last shreds of sleep from an eye and sits up, gaze panning around the room.
Marinette sits at her desk, chin propped up on a hand, her loose hair falling around her face and shadowing her eyes from the desk lamp as she scribbles in her sketchbook. She pauses for a moment, focusing blearily on the paper, and sighs before she flips the page and starts sketching again.
“Marinette?” Tikki says as the spirit floats up and hums over to the girl. Tikki glances at the kliking, klaking clock at Marinette’s left hand. “Marinette, it’s three in the morning.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Marinette replies, tilting her head slightly as she strokes the pencil across the page, squinting as she shades in a section with exaggerated care.
“You should at least try,” Tikki says. The kwami glances down at the page. “What are you designing anyways?”
Marinette finishes skritching out a sleeve and tosses her pencil down.
“I thought I’d lost you,” she says after a minute, staring at the half-finished design. “I thought I’d lost you forever, and that I’d pulled another trademark Marinette screwup and that you were going to die of pneumonia or something and that I’d be responsible for ending thousands of years of Ladybugs.”
She gestures half-heartedly towards her sketchbook. “I’m sorry I didn’t think about it before,” she says. “I’ll try to get it done day after tomorrow, there’s some tricky stitching.”
Tikki glances at Marinette, her eyes half-lidded and drooping with exhaustion, then takes a closer look at the sketches.
On the page are the rough lines of a cat-eared hoodie, but Tikki can see that the proportions are off and clearly inhuman, the sleeves too thin and noodley in relation to the enormous hood for even a baby, the chest too small in relation to the sleeves. Kwami-shaped, in other words.
“Is this for me?” Tikki breathes in wonder as they look up at Marinette.
The girl manages a small smile down at the kwami. “Yeah,” she says.
“Why the cat ears?” Tikki says.
Marinette’s smile turns a little drunken as her head starts slipping towards the desk. “Remember that time that mom and her kid caught us?” she says, vowels slurring with tiredness. “Thought the meowing would be more convincin’ if you actually looked like a cat. And it keeps y’ warm, too. Two birds, one stone.”
Marinette’s head plummets halfway to the desk before she catches herself and arrests the motion.
“That’s a good idea,” Tikki says. She looks on as Marinette’s head droops towards the desk for a second, then third time.
“Uh,” Tikki says, flying up to Marinette’s free hand and tugging gently. “Maybe you should finish it tomorrow.”
“Good idea,” Marinette mumbles, and manages to climb halfway into her bed before she slumps across its width and goes to sleep.