I'm not sure if "street magic!AU" is the right term for this, but I love the exploration of magic in modern day. I wrote this when I was really discontent and wanted to write during a block on all my other ideas. The entire story flowed really well after I found the prompt on writeworld.

Thanks again to Lauren who edited this once (before I messed with the tenses again). Any mistakes left are my fault :)

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He keeps his heart on her kitchen counter: green jar, brown cork.

It's not like he particularly wants to have his heart outside his chest! But that's... it's the price for Chat Noir's power. The Miraculouses are more than just street magic. They're more than the coin tricks or the makeup spells or the tingle of health-happiness-fulfillment that's in the home-cooked meals Adrien has never tasted for himself. The Miraculouses are awe inspiring, powerful, and old.

Old magics always have a price.

So now he has his heart in a jar instead of inside him.

He isn't even sure how that works to be honest. What's pumping his blood if his heart isn't there? Is it still there physically but not metaphysically? Is this a representation of his heart or his actual heart because he could literally feel fingers in his chest when he first touched it after putting on Plagg's ring.

And he could feel pain when the shock of that had made him grip it too tightly right afterwards.

Putting it in a jar just seemed safest after that. No way to touch it or for it to get damaged accidentally. It's safest behind glass. (That's something he had already known far too well before he even met Plagg. He's just... never been very good at making his heart as untouchable as his father's.)

But what to do with it?!

He had thought it would be safe in his room. Didn't even think twice about that until after the first week where he'd spent the entire time on edge whenever he was away from the house without being Chat. Every moment had been spent with half of him practically bristling, fur straight up, worrying about it.

Because Adrien really does think the staff might throw it out if they found it.

He's never been stupid enough to think that he really has anything to himself at home. Even though he does clean his own room, he's sure one of the staff goes through and cleans more thoroughly or just checks that the room doesn't need it. And his father certainly wouldn't think twice about inquiring after anything to do with him even if it should be Adrien's personal business. His best defense there is that his father would have to actually take interest in his room before he'd bother coming in, and given that Adrien hasn't seen him in over a week at this point... well, it speaks for itself.

It still doesn't feel safe though, because none of them would hesitate to throw out a simple flower.

And that's all his heart looks like after Plagg's magic had removed it. Just a flower. And maybe if someone looks at it closely enough they'll realize that it has a twirl of magic so that it changes every day to a new species, but that just makes it a much more expensive flower. Adrien's sure that there's a florist somewhere who makes money doing just that with a twist of plant magic, but the only thing special about his heart is that it doesn't decay like even an enchanted flower would.

He does like it though. The changing surprised him on day two but not more than the fact his heart looks like flower to begin with. And Adrien had laughed hard on day three when he'd looked up the flowers and realized they were named Cat's Tail, Pussy Willow, and Tiger's Paw.

Apparently his quiet love of puns is so pawsitively thorough that it goes right down to his heart.

But it still leaves him with the problem that a single flower in a jar isn't safe in his room. And Plagg is more soberly avoidant than lazily unhelpful when he fails to mention what would happen to Adrien if something happened to the flower. Except Adrien isn't an idiot and it is his heart.

Adrien might only have had some normal minor magic before receiving his ring, but he knows his stories and legends.

So he worries about it a lot. He takes his heart and its bottle with him to school and modeling and fencing lessons. He spends a lot of time online researching spells when he's stuck at home under his father's curfew, and he creates a protective spell with Plagg's reluctant help that will keep the glass from being broken or from opening to anyone without a Miraculous. He practices getting used to being Chat Noir and getting ready for whatever might come as well, but Plagg absolutely refuses to cooperate for any patrolling of Paris until Adrien has a safe place for his heart no matter how much Camembert Adrien tries to bribe him with.

And yeah, he could see why being worried or distracted while you were fighting would be a really bad thing.

But it isn't until he, Nino, and Alya are all invited over by a stammering Marinette to work on their school project before having dinner that he finally hits on a good idea. Because Marinette is a genuinely nice person, even if she's maybe too nice to tell him how he makes her uncomfortable. And her family is a good family, and they seem to care about any of her friends who walk through the door, and dinner is... it is one of the nicest things that has happened to Adrien in a very long time.

It's a good home.

Plagg had said that it was vital to keep his heart somewhere safe and that warm, happy, sunny places were the next best thing to cheese and naps. So instead of leaving right away when the night finally ends, Adrien plucks up the courage he has as Chat Noir (even if he can't manage the confidence) and stammers his way through giving Mrs. Cheng a thank-you gift.

"It's— it's not much. But the glass has a protective spell scratched in so it can't be broken and the flower changes every day, and—"

"Thank you, Adrien. It's very lovely, but you didn't need to bring a gift."

"No, I... I wanted to. If you don't think you'd keep it, that's ok, but it's important to me and you have a really nice family and—"

"We'd love to keep it."

And maybe it's stupid to just give his heart away like this. It probably is stupid given the inscrutable look Plagg gives him before saying that every cat makes its choice about where it leaves its pawprints.

Even if it turns out poorly though, Adrien thinks he's ok with that. Maybe he'll collapse one day as Chat Noir and never know what happened. Maybe he'll end up as a warning to children by being the new victim in a modern-day Black Witch fairytale. Maybe it's really dumb to have your heart so far away from where you spend your time when you're a growing teenager who hasn't even hit eighteen yet.

But Adrien remembers the kind smiles and the laughs and the good food and how everything just felt better that night, and no matter what Marinette might think of him, the wide-eyed look of wonder she gave that flower when her mother held it was better than anything he can imagine his father giving it.

It'll get a lot more sunlight in their kitchen at any rate.

He just hopes that Ladybug found somewhere just as kind and safe to store her own heart, whatever it might be. Maybe she'll trust him enough one day that he'll find out what it is.

And maybe he'll be able to show her his own at that point, too.