Chapter Text
Marinette held on tight to Cat Noir as he ran across the rooftops of Paris.
She supposed she should be grateful to him for rescuing her, especially since the akumatized man had gotten in a pretty good hit that sent her sliding across the pavement on her left arm — she must have caught his attention by going sideways towards an alley rather than just running away. Cat Noir had scooped her up seconds later. Now he was going to deposit her somewhere safely away from the fight, and then she’d have to make her way back after she transformed. Not that she wasn’t plenty fast, but time was always of the essence when it came to akuma possessions, especially violent ones like this one was. The faster they defeated it, the fewer people got hurt.
Cat Noir leapt to another roof, and Marinette gripped him tighter. Not that she didn’t trust him — she did, completely. He was holding her firmly, and she knew he wouldn’t let her fall. It was just… different being up here without her suit. If Cat’s foot slipped or he missed a jump (he did have bad luck sometimes), she wouldn’t be able to do anything but hold on and let him twist himself to take the brunt of the fall. Which he would, of course. And she couldn’t even call him stupid for it, not even to herself, because she was a civilian as far as he knew, and protecting civilians was his job.
One final leap and he was setting her down. To her surprise, he had taken her home — she was standing on her own roof. How…? Oh, right, Marinette thought. I told him my address during the Puppeteer fiasco. He was here the time Nathaneal was taken, too. Come to think of it, we were here with the zookeeper, too — I remember seeing him look at a photo of Papa and Maman and me. Still, I’m surprised he remembered.
“You’re safe now, mademoiselle,” Cat said with a sweeping bow. “Probably best to shelter inside, though, until Ladybug and I clear this up.”
Marinette forced a fangirlish giggle past her lips. “Thank you, Cat Noir! You’re my hero... again!”
“You’re right! This is, what, the third time I’ve had to rescue you? You need to stay away from akumas!”
Condescending prat, thought Marinette. I saved his butt out of costume on that “date” with the Evillustrator. And when Chloe was Antibug, too. She bit her tongue, though — no time for this! — and tried to dredge up another fawning look.
“Jeez, Marinette,” Cat Noir said, his teasing tone turning serious. “You’re bleeding.”
“What?” Marinette looked at her left arm, which now that she thought about it did kind of sting. Sure enough, it had been skinned pretty badly by her skid across the pavement. It was a warm day and she was wearing a sleeveless shirt, so there had been nothing between her and the ground. The scrape was oozing blood, and a few stones were stuck in the wound. “Oh. Ow.”
“You need a doctor,” Cat said, reaching for her as if to pick her up again.
“Are you kidding me right now?” Marinette snapped, drawing back. “It’s just a scrape. You, sir, are needed elsewhere. Or are you going to leave Ladybug to fight that guy alone?”
Cat stopped. He looked conflicted for a moment, but she could tell that he knew she was right.
“Go. I’ll be fine. I’ll go downstairs and clean it right now, and if it still looks bad I’ll see a doctor.”
“Promise?” Cat said.
“Promise,” Marinette replied, fingers crossed behind her back.
“You’d better,” Cat said. “Be safe, Princess.”
Marinette meant to watch Cat Noir until he was out of sight and she could safely transform. But once he was a few roofs away he turned and looked back, waiting until she descended into her room to continue on his way. She was forced to stand on the ladder and peek out until he was gone and she could transform and follow him.
It had not been a particularly challenging akuma victim, in the end. With her superhero reflexes at full power, he had never come close to touching her. Even Cat didn’t get knocked around much. They did their thing, Ladybug cleansed the akuma and sent the butterfly on its way, and Paris’s superheros took their own paths home as their Miraculouses began to beep. It was such a normal day that Marinette was completely confused when a tap came at the skylight that led to her roof.
Marinette climbed the ladder to the door, knowing that there was only one person it could be, and yet completely clueless as to why he would be here. Sure enough, when she pushed the skylight up, the first thing she saw was the glowing green eyes of her unknowing partner-in-crimefighting.
“Cat Noir? What are you doing here? Is there another akuma attack?” Even as the words left her mouth she knew it didn’t make any sense for him to come here if there was, but it was too late to stop Ladybug’s inquiry from coming out of Marinette’s mouth.
Lucky, Cat didn’t seem to notice as he put a hand out and boosted her onto the roof. “No, no, nothing like that. I just wanted to check and make sure you were okay.”
“Me?” Marinette asked, still confused. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“Your arm?” Cat Noir said. She couldn’t actually see his eyebrows under his mask, but his tone made her think they were raised. “Remember?”
Her arm! She actually hadn’t remembered — she hadn’t been able to feel it under the suit (she suspected the transformation had painkilling properties) and the Miraculous Ladybug had healed it completely.
“Oh, r-right, my arm!” Marinette exclaimed, cursing the stutter that slipped into her voice when she was nervous. “I did kind of forget about it. It turned out not to be nearly as bad as it looked. I cleaned it up, slapped on a couple Band-Aids, and it’s basically as good as new!”
“Let me see,” Cat said. He looked like he wasn’t sure whether to believe her.
Marinette put her hand to her arm, trying to come up with a way out of this. The touch of her sleeve gave her an idea.
“Oh shoot, I really would like to but my sleeve is pretty tight and it won’t roll up that high!” she said, tugging on the long pajama sleeve covering her arm. It was actually pretty snug, but not quite as snug as she was claiming. She pretended to try to pull it up, stopping after a few inches and and giving a few fake pulls to make it look convincing.
Cat looked unconvinced. “I’d really like to be sure…”
Marinette decided it was time to deploy her emergency weapon. After all, no matter how much Cat Noir flirted and acted confident when wearing his mask, underneath she knew he was just a boy around her own age. And those, she could deal with. (Except for Adrien, of course; she was a mess around him.)
“I’m not taking off my shirt to show you my arm, Cat,” she said flatly.
Cat reacted just as she hoped he would. He backed away so fast that he bumped into the balcony railing, hands spread in front of him and waving in a negative gesture.
“No! I didn’t— I mean— I wouldn’t—” he fumbled.
“Please just take my word that my arm is fine,” Marinette said.
“I’m sorry,” Cat said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” To Marinette’s surprise, he started fidgeting, drawing a circle with his toe.
“I know you can’t actually help being around akumas sometimes,” he said. “They show up where they show up, and I know they have a… fondness… for your class.”
Huh. Marinette thought. She had noticed that, of course, and had even talked to Cat about it as Ladybug; she just hadn’t realized that Cat was aware that Marinette Dupain-Cheng was in that particular class.
“But I do worry about you,” Cat Noir said, sounding sheepish again.
“Why would you worry about me ?” Marinette asked, genuinely confused. He barely knew her as Marinette.
Cat shrugged. She thought maybe he might be blushing a little, too. “I don’t know… you’re just so sweet and quiet and shy...” She fixed him with a glare that had him mumbling his last words as he trailed off.
“What was that?” she asked, using her best Chloe-cowing voice. “Did you just say something about a ‘delicate flower’?”
Cat looked at his feet and nodded. Marinette stuck a finger in his chest.
“You don’t know me, buddy,” she said firmly. “So don’t go thinking I need extra attention to keep from swooning in a dangerous situation. You’re right, my class is like an akuma magnet. And I’ve dealt with it plenty without your help.”
His eyes were wide, surprised, and maybe a little frightened. She sighed. She wasn’t being fair to him. It was actually very sweet that he was worried about her, if a little unexpected. She just hated being underestimated.
“Look,” she said more gently. “I really appreciate your helping me get out of danger. And I know you’ve helped my friends before, too, and I’m more thankful than I can say for that. And I’m really touched that you’re concerned about my arm. I just… I’m not a damsel. I’m not a princess. I’m capable , Cat Noir.”
He smiled. “I guess you are,” he said. “Maybe all the... pink threw me off a bit.”
“It’s all right,” Marinette said. “I do like pink a lot. But please note: girliness does not equal weakness.”
“Noted.”
There was a pause; neither of them was quite sure what to say next.
“I, um, guess I’d better be going,” Cat Noir said, several moments too late to keep it from being awkward. “Take care of your arm, okay, Pri— Marinette?”
“Sure,” she said, almost to herself, as she watched him vault off the roof and land on the next one.
“Well, that was strange,” Marinette said to Tikki as she climbed back down the ladder.
“Was it? How so?” her kwami replied.
“Why would Cat Noir worry about Marinette? I mean, he doesn’t know I’m Ladybug — I’m sure he doesn’t. I’ve never been akumatized, and as far as he knows I’m around fewer fights than just about anyone in my class. From his perspective, I must be exceptionally good at making myself scarce when an akuma is around. I mean, maybe he thinks I’m a coward because of it, and that’s why he was worried — like he thought I’d panic or something?”
“Do you think that was it?” Tikki asked.
Marinette shrugged. “I don’t know. Where did he get the idea I was quiet and shy? I’ve been perfectly friendly whenever I’ve interacted with him as Marinette. And delicate flower? Really? ”
Tikki giggled. “Yeah, sure seems like he knows a different Marinette than the one the rest of us do.”
Marinette looked at Tikki curiously. There was something in the way she said that… Marinette shrugged. Cat Noir was a strange duck anyway. Who even knew what went on in that shaggy head of his? Oh well. He was gone, and she didn’t imagine that she — or Marinette, rather — would be seeing him again anytime soon.
Who was that even? Cat Noir thought as he leapt his way toward home.
The girl who had poked him in the breastbone and told him off today was not the Marinette he knew from school. That Marinette was shy, stammering whenever he spoke to her, jumping like a startled rabbit when she didn’t see him coming, and occasionally straight-up hiding from him. He had always assumed that that was just the way Marinette was.
But this Marinette had been a firecracker, looking him straight in the eye and calling him out for assuming she was weak. He also suspected that the thing with the shirt was calculated to fluster him. (It had worked. His cheeks were heating up just thinking about it.)
Which one is the real Marinette? he wondered. He ran over some things in his head — moments at school when she hadn’t known he was there. He remembered bright smiles and exuberant laughter. He could remember seeing her talk animatedly to other people in the class. Of course, he’d seen her go after Chloe for bad behavior on more than one occasion, but he had always assumed she just had a bit of a temper that made her forget to be shy when the occasion arose. It tended to come out when someone needed protecting or defending.
Huh.
He was intrigued.