Chapter Text
There’s not many worlds where Nathaniel is Tikki’s Holder and, in her opinion, that makes this all the more special. Or — it would, if he was actually paying attention to her.
Gabriel Agreste was a — “Nathaniel.” — hero who sacrificed — “Nathaniel!” — himself to — “NATHANIEL!”
“What, Tikki?!” he practically spits out, levelling her with a glare she would’ve expected from Chloé — she really is rubbing off on him.
Fortunately, he’s paused the playback of Anatis and Cheshire’s announcement to Paris, the one he’s been replaying for the last half an hour while laying near catatonic on his bed, barely reacting more than a twitch as she fluttered about his room to find anything to distract him with. Nothing she’d found had worked, not even the comic he was making with Marc that he hid with the empty Miracle Box inside his placard. Less fortunately, she’s now face-to-face with just how bad he is: dark circles nearly black in the dark of his room, hair leaning more chestnut than ginger, cheeks becoming gaunt, eyes hollow and red rimmed — shining with unshed tears. It’s not the first time in this or any universe that she’s had a Holder lose their spark but it never, ever gets any easier. And she never, ever figures out how to properly help them.
”You need to eat, Nathaniel,” she says, softer this time. With a scrape she nudges the plate of macarons he’d gotten her after lycée across his bedside table, taking a few flakes of dried, wayward paint with it. Instead of picking up any of the sweets, he turns over so his back is to her, burrowing further under his mountain of blankets.
A Rayures themed one covered in purple-pink claw marks and tiger stripes is held closest to him, practically clutched to his heart — it was gift from Marc, given during Nathaniel’s recent birthday with a flustered, blushing comment of: you said he’s your favourite, right? and Tikki had needed to bite down on one of the many paintbrushes in Nathaniel’s bag lest she started screaming about how beautifully stupid they both were. Autumn is beginning to settle over Paris and he’s already not faring well with the approaching coldness and with everything else happening — she’s so very worried. “Just a bite, Nathaniel. Please?”
“I said I’m not hungry—“
”You haven’t had anything since breakfast! And no — Marc’s protein bars don’t count. You’re going to make yourself sick and your Miraculous will start—“
“I know, alright? You don’t need to tell me again. I’m just — I’m really not hungry right now, Tikki.” He turns over then, pushing the plate back towards to her. A few teeter on the edge precariously, but the only things that spill over are the tears in Nathaniel’s eyes. “Please can we drop it? I’ll go get something during patrol tonight. See, I’ll even text Chloé,” with a sniffle he taps his phone and a few seconds later he spins it around for her to read. All it shows is a thumbs-upped reply to his misspelled request to stop at Tom & Sabine’s Boulangerie Patisserie but it’s enough, for now at least.
Hesitantly she nods, settling in the crux of his neck to give him a tentative hug. His exhale is shaky at the contact but he doesn’t push her away, which she takes as permission to hug him harder. He even pulls his Rayures blanket over her as well, letting her make a little nest. “Do you promise?” she whispers, just to be sure, just to hear him say it.
”Yeah, I promise.”
The sincerity of it is almost enough for Tikki to forgive him when she hears the quiet drone of his phone start up again, the broadcast unpaused and tormenting him once more. Almost.
Chloé used to have a best friend she could spill her guts to and sometimes, when she can’t sleep at night, she half considers chasing down Leporine to beg him to take her back to a time when she still did. It’s usually about halfway into this fantasy that she realises she’d have no clue what to actually say.
Hey, ‘Brina, you know the magical terrorist whose been tormenting Paris these last few months? Well, guess what: he’s Adrien’s father! Y’know, the guy whose house we used to have sleepovers at! The guy who was best man at maman and papa’s wedding! The man who built the biggest fashion empire in Paris! What were his motives, I hear you ask? Oh, nothing much really, just trying to revive his dead wife that he keeps hidden in the basement. The same wife who used to read bedtime stories to us, who let us dress up in her fancy furs and silks! And I can’t even tell Adrien — huh, how do I know all this? I’m the purrfect superheroine Cheshire, of course! Why didn’t I tell you — well it’s complicated, Sabrina, obviously. Anyway, not only that, Adrikins is a sentimonster! Oh, you don’t know what that is yet? Shit — um, Leporine —
It’s also usually about halfway that Plagg interrupts her ruminating with demands for more putrid camembert, whether it was because he was still hungry or because he was worried about her, she wasn’t sure. It was probably a bit of both. She’s transformed now, though, sat upon the Eiffel Tower with a basket of food and gazing into the black abyss of space, so there’s no one who can interrupt her envisioning.
Well, almost no one.
”Sorry I’m late,” Nathaniel — sorry, Anatis, because we can’t use our civilian names in costume, Chesh! What if the Butterfly Holder is listening to us? We’re already compromised as it is, we can’t risk — don’t tell me to calm down! — murmurs, dropping down to sit on the ledge with her, dangling his legs over the edge. It makes her want to hike her shoulders up to her ears in unease but instead of doing anything as ridiculous as that, she just fiddles with the edge of the cat-ear bow holding the wavy cascade of her hair back. “Any activity to report, Cheshire?”
”You would’ve gotten an akuma alert if there was,” she replies, aiming for indifferent and missing by miles. Kwami above, I’m really off my game tonight. She gives herself two seconds to compose herself before she points across the city to the other heroes, willing her claws not to shake and her voice to give the purrfect report which will keep Nathaniel from a total breakdown. If she’s not careful she’ll end up saying something too honest like: All these heroes on patrol is overkill or I’m really worried about you and I’m not the only one; I overheard Marinette talking to Marc about an intervention or Can you feel the secrets we’re keeping eating you alive too? or I think you’re my best friend, actually or, and this might be the worst one, I Cataclysmed the Gabriel Agreste statue in the park last night and Foxtrot caught me leaving the carnage.
“Chariot saved three separate cats from the same tree — don’t ask me how they got there, neither of us know. Piglette had to cancel last minute and Ophidia had something come up twenty minutes ago but Testudine was already down as backup for tonight and Rayures,” he smiles at that, small and sweet, “was able to sub-in. Hachi stopped a burglary and Leporine—“
”Wait — Leporine isn’t scheduled for patrol tonight, is he?” Nathaniel frantically asks her, even though he’s pulling out his yo-yo’s calendar to check himself. The smile has been completely wiped from his face, replaced now with an ugly frown and a pinch between the brows.
”He invited himself,” Chloé responds anyway, leaning back on her hands. Here we go again…
“Did he say why? Did something happen? Did he — Fuck. Chloé, what if the Butterfly—“
”Stop, Anatis! If you want an answer so bad then maybe give me a chance to speak, hm? You are so — utterly ridiculous!”
She feels like a capital-B bitch the minute it leaves her mouth because it’s not like she hadn’t been worried about that either when he’d popped out of the Burrow earlier, already reaching for her baton to send off an emergency Code Butterfly (or as she calls it: We Are So Fucked) alert — but then he’d stolen two of the pastries from the basket and bounded off in the direction of Hachi without anything more than a arrogant smirk. But when Nathaniel gets like this, it’s hard to get him to stop and Chloé needs him to stop, before he drags her in too.
“Have you considered,” she starts, voice intentionally softening, falling into the practiced ease of interviews and post-akuma citizen calming and tones used between pleasantries with Pére’s business associates, “that a certain someone is buzzing around patrol tonight?” She turns to look at him properly, coaxing her mouth into a teasing smile. “And that, maybe, the boy with time itself at his fingertips might want to spend all of it with her?”
“Oh.” He says, perfectly crimson hair bobbing with an embarrassed shrug. Kwami, he looks terrible. His Miraculous is doing a lot of heavy lifting right now, because Chloé knows with certainty that the bruises under his eyes should be visible below his mask and his skin shouldn’t be so full of life — Tikki must be working overtime. Great, now she feels even worse! “Sorry, I’m just on edge.”
“You’re fine, we all are at the moment.” With a twinkle of her bell she scoots back from the edge, opening up the basket and pulling out enough pastries for the both of them to have leftovers. She’s been worried, okay? And it’s not like she’s hard pressed to afford it (neither is Nathaniel but, well, Chloé’s not the depressed one, thank you very much!). She picks up an éclair for herself and tosses him her favourite: a caprese croissant sandwich — no one makes croissants quite like the Dupain-Cheng family. “Catch! Consider it a peace offering. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”
”It’s okay. I didn’t mean to freak out at you.” Carefully, he unwraps his food, takes a small bite and the tension in her shoulders finally seeps out. Maybe patrol picnics should become a permanent fixture. “But if I get a caprese sandwich out of it every time I do…”
Nevermind.
”Don’t test your luck. Cats eat bugs, y’know?” she threatens around a mouthful of eclair. It may possibly be the most unrefined she’s ever been but Nathaniel’s seen her at her worst and stuck around, she doesn’t think there’s much that could scare him off now. With a flash of genius, she realises she can test that theory.
”Cannibalism, Chesh, really?”
“I’m pawsitively certain that you’re not a feline.” Chloé nudges a bottle of water towards him with her foot and waits until he’s mid sip before going in for the kill. “I bet big cats eat ladybugs too. We should ask Rayures about it, find out if he wants to take a bite out of you.”
Just as expected, the water goes absolutely everywhere. She’s pretty sure some even comes out his nose. When Nathaniel whirls around at her, pointer finger levelled accusingly at her, he’s practically the same shade as his costume and his hair — she desperately itches to take a photo but he might actually push her off the Eiffel Tower if she tries.
“I… Chesh—Chloé! What is your — I don’t—” he flounders, shaking his head back and forth. The blush isn’t going away, it’s getting redder!
“What wrong, Nath? Cat got your tongue?” she asks, batting her eyelashes innocently. She looks like the cat who got the fucking cream. “Oh, sorry, big cat got your tongue? I bet you wish he did, hm?”
With an inhumane shriek he stands up to full height, flicking her bell in the process. She can barely hear it over her own raucous laughter, though. There’s a single minded focus on his flushed face as he flips open his yo-yo and bathes the pair of them in pink light; one by one he places items from their picnic inside, leaving all her food untouched. He tosses it in the air a few times — does that affect the stuff inside? Chloé wonders to herself — muttering all the while, before launching it at a building and pulling the string taut. She can see a flash of magenta hair zipping back and forth near where it landed and — ah, yes, there he is.
“I’m going to share the food around with our friends,” Nathaniel says, hopping up onto the railing to launch himself. She can tell he’s trying to sound composed and she knows that he knows that he’s failing at it. For his efforts, she’s kind enough to gift him an only half teasing smirk. “When you’re ready to be mature, you’re welcome to join us.”
”I’d never want to intrude on your date with Rayures, though,” she simpers. He makes this way too easy. “Oh, do make sure to feed him some of those chocolate covered strawberries, they’re absolutely meowvelous!”
For a split second Chloé thinks Nathaniel’s genuinely going to burst a blood vessel until he takes a huge breath, tugs on the left antenna part of his costume and directs a purposeful, “I hate you. I’m never talking to you again,” at her before flinging himself away.
His eyes are bright, though, brighter than they have been in weeks. Bright enough to distract Chloé from the endless sky and the memories of what once was, bright enough to convince her to leave wallowing to tomorrow — to put her best foot forward tonight.
With a small wave to the void, she launches herself up on her baton and follows after her closest friend; her north star.