Adrien couldn't concentrate, and honestly, it wasn't surprising. Today he'd learned that a) Marinette, the girl he'd been crushing on, was in love with him; b) she was Ladybug, aka – the other girl he was in love with; and c) he'd once been akumatized into a pale blue-eyed version of himself that had destroyed Paris, killed everyone he loved (and Hawkmoth) and split the moon in half, and he didn't even remember it because Bunnix and Ladybug had fixed everything.

Everything, that is, except the relationship they'd undoubtedly had in that timeline, which had almost not been allowed to happen in this timeline because Marinette had managed to deduce that their love would destroy the world.

Adrien had never been so grateful to an akuma. Hell, Adrien could have kissed Hawkmoth right then and there (but also yeeted him into the Eiffel Tower and taken his miraculous because Hawkmoth was the reason they'd had to hide from each other in the first place).

Oh, and d) Marinette was an amazing kisser. Mind-blowing. Or maybe he was just that obsessed with her, but either way, ever since they'd stopped, he'd been yearning to lean over – she was right there – and do it again.

Admittedly, Adrien had limited experience with kissing. Not counting the slobbers he'd shared with Chloe when they were small children playing house, and the two (or more?) he'd shared with Ladybug without remembering them, he'd kissed Kagami exactly one time and it had just felt awkward and wrong. Yet even the clumsy tooth smash he'd pulled Marinette into to save her from the akuma had lit a soft, relentless fire under his skin that rekindled every time he so much as glanced at her.

It was very distracting.

Adrien found himself hoping she was less distracted by him than he was by her, while at the same time ardently wishing for the opposite.

Plagg, he thought. Think about Plagg. Think about having to go back without him.

The idea felt like being doused in cold water. It had been forty-eight hours and he missed the abrasive little cat-god terribly.

But it still didn't stop fluttery heat tingling under his skin every time their arms brushed, or when he focussed on the way her thigh was pressed flush against his.

Technically there was no need for them to be sitting so close together. Marinette had lent him her tablet and transferred a copy of the Guardian book onto her computer, so technically he could have gone to sit on her chaise or her bed. Sitting in the other chair at her desk (where she'd kicked his butt at Ultimate Mecha Strike III that one time and now he thought about it, maybe that was when he started falling for her), close enough for their bodies to be in constant contact, wasn't strictly necessary.

In his defence, she had done nothing whatsoever to discourage him.

He blinked and frowned at the tablet in his hands. Marinette had shown him the symbols that supposedly spelled out Plagg's name, and he'd been going through the manual from the beginning, while Marinette was looking for any information pertaining to healing or potions. So far he'd gone through nintey pages and found two mentions, neither of which had been useful. There were 851 pages.

Adrien took a deep breath and sighed it out slowly. There was nothing about Plagg on this page, nor on the next two, and then Marinette moved to tuck her hair behind her ear (most of it was pulled into a messy bun that gave him a delicious view of the back of her neck and reminded her of that time she'd outwitted Kwamibuster as Multimouse and maybe that had been the start of his crush on her?) ...and he was distracted again.

Focus, he scolded himself.

He felt her tense up. "Here," she said, with more hope in her voice than he'd heard in the last...

(he glanced at the time on her computer screen. It was 3:14AM.)

...hour and a half.

Adrien peered uncomprehendingly at the part of the screen she was pointing at. "What does it say?" he asked.

Marinette's brow furrowed, and she didn't reply straight away. "It's something to do with fusing Tikki and Plagg," she eventually replied. "I overlooked it before because I thought I knew what it said – it does talk about the wish you can make and the consequences of that wish."

Adrien felt the blood drain from his face. "You mean the only way to heal Plagg would be to fuse him and Tikki and wish for it?" he said, unable to keep the dread out of his voice. Wouldn't it be impossible to fuse them in the first place without the holder getting sick? Would another kwami get sick as a result of the wish? Would one of them die? Kwamis couldn't die, though, right...?

Marinette put an end to his panicky thought spiral by squeezing his shoulder. "No," she said, still peering at the computer screen. "We wouldn't have to make a wish. I think the healing is a different thing you can do while they're combined." Her hand wandered down his arm to his hand and entwined their fingers. He resisted the sudden temptation to kiss it.

"How?" he asked instead.

"I'm... still decifering some of it," she said. The concentrated frown deepened, and Adrien felt a little useless. "It's so weird," she muttered, half to herself. "When Tikki got ill, Master Fu just put his hands over her body for a while and closed his eyes, and after a few minutes she was fine."

Adrien blinked. "Wait, Tikki's been ill?" He watched Marinette's expression go from concentration to a grimace of remembered guilt.

"She caught a cold once after we'd fought in the rain," she said. "I was late for school when I found out, and I was stupid enough to wait until lunch break. It was the day Rose got akumatized for the first time, and I couldn't transform because..."

"It wasn't your fault, Marinette!" Tikki interrupted her, swooping up between Marinette and the screen. "I'm the one who told you I could wait!"

"I lost you, Tikki," Marinette retorted. "Chloe had you for, like, an hour."

"Wait, Chloe got hold of Tikki?!" Adrien saw Marinette flinch at his words and immediately regretted them. He squeezed her hand, and she graced him with a half-smile.

"I fell down the steps in front of school," she admitted. "You caught me, actually, but my bag was open and Tikki flew out. By the time I realized she'd gone, Chloe had found her and grabbed her."

Adrien's mind was trying to connect dots that existed in totally different areas of his memory. It made his brain ache. "Wait," he said. "Princess Perfume happened before Chloe ever got a miraculous, right?"

"She thought I was a toy," Tikki piped up. "I didn't have the strength to phase out of her bag, so I stayed very still until Marinette found me again."

Marinette was frowning at the screen again. She was biting her lower lip, which meant she was either thinking or worrying or both. "Tikki, do you remember Plagg ever getting ill before?" she asked.

"Yes," Tikki answered. "But I didn't see him being healed. In fact, often it passed on its own, although never without disastrous consequences. Usually he'd just eaten too much cheese. I bet that's what it is this time, too."

"Wait a second," Adrien said. "Do you mean to tell me that all this mess happened because my kwami ate too much cheese?"

"This is nothing," Tikki deadpanned. "You should've seen Atlantis."

Adrien blinked, wondering whether he could get away with strangling Plagg. The tiny catastrophe (pun entirely intended) would probably phase through his hands, he thought. "I'm putting him on a diet as soon as he's better," he said, deciding that would be revenge enough. Tikki giggled.

"Guys, I think I've got something," Marinette gasped excitedly. "It's just a theory, but... I have fuse Plagg with Tikki, call up my Lucky Charm, and it should be a potion or something to eat that'll make him better."

"A theory?" Adrien questioned.

Marinette's eyes were still scanning the page. She flipped through to the next one, too, consulted the handwritten list of symbols in front of her, and checked again. "I think it's worth a shot," she said, turning to look at Adrien with a determined excitement in her eyes that made his heart skip several beats.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"I'm sure about what I've read, and I think it's worth the risk. Will you help me?"

"Of course," he said. Adrien would have said "of course" to anything she asked right then.

Marinette grinned and stood. "Tikki, spots on!"

Watching her transform was... there was no other word for it, it was sexy. Adrien swallowed hard and wondered vaguely if watching him transform would have the same effect on her, or if he was just weird.

When she began to rummage under her desk and pulled the miracle box out of a pile of fabric, though, he caught her arm.

"You might not want to do this in your room," he warned her. "I found out he was ill when I tried to transform and it made me throw up."

Marinette's grimaced. "He didn't warn you?"

"Said he didn't want to bother me," Adrien remembered. "In hindsight, he probably just didn't want me to yell at him for pigging out on cheese."

Ladybug rolled her eyes. "Right," she said. "And I guess maybe we shouldn't take the risk of letting him out of the ring inside my house. I don't want another Hole in here." She frowned. "Where should we go?"

"We could go to my house?" Adrien smirked. "My dad can afford any damages."

Ladybug snorted. "I don't think that's a good idea," she said. "We need a place where it won't matter too much." Her eyes widened suddenly. "The Hole! We'll go back to The Hole!"

Adrien gasped. "Great idea! He can use it as a sick bucket!" But then he frowned. "People might see us."

"I'll use an Illusion," Ladybug said, winking at him.

"Combining three miraculouses? Isn't that too much?"

She pursed her lips, thinking. "Okay, you'll use an Illusion. That okay, Trixx?"

Trixx, who had been nibbling on a cookie crumb he'd found in Tikki's nest, flew up to grin at Adrien eagerly. "Ready when you are!" he said.

Ladybug unhooked the foxtail pendant from around her neck and leaned forward to put it around Adrien's herself. He could have sworn she bit back a smirk when his breath hitched. "Ready, Adrien?" she asked.

Adrien grinned back at the mischievious-looking fox kwami. "Trixx, let's pounce!"

Ladybug and Goupix (Adrien's fox hero name, which she was sure she'd heard somewhere before) could see Marinette's balcony from their perch on the roof of the Collège François Dupont. It made Ladybug a little nervous, because it was getting close to 4AM, which was when one of her parents – they took it in turns – got up to start working on that morning's bread. They wouldn't be able to see what was going on in front of the school (unless the operation turned out more... spectacular than she'd anticipated), but they might hear her sneaking back in. She'd put Kaalki and Sass back in the miracle box, just in case, but she hoped she wouldn't have to invent an excuse for being out in the middle of the night.

"Ready, M'lady?" Goupix whispered next to her. The fox miraculous suited him even better than the horse miraculous had. It made him look somehow adorable and mysterious at the same time, in a somewhat androgynous way.

"Do your thing, Ch-Goupix," she whispered back.

Goupix stood and spun gracefully on his heel, playing a soft, haunting series of notes. She looked down at the place where The Hole had been cordoned off, with proper police tape this time. Nothing happened.

"Done," he said.

"Are you sure?"

"Trust me, we're completely invisible."

Oh. "You put the Illusion on us," she remarked. "Good thinking."

He shot her a smile and a wink that sent the blood rushing to her cheeks, before dropping lithely to the ground. She followed, opened up her yoyo, and pulled out the small box containing the cat miraculous. She took a deep breath.

"Let me open the box," Goupix said suddenly. "That way you have both hands free to grab the ring and put it on your finger as fast as you can."

She nodded. "Good idea. I'll combine them as soon as it's on. With luck, he won't even have time to throw up."

Ladybug hoped her good luck would be enough to counter Plagg's bad.

Goupix took the box from her hands and stood in front of her. "Ready?" he asked, and she nodded. "One... two... three!"

She snatched the ring so fast she nearly dropped it. Squinting in the bright light that flashed from the box, she fumbled with the ring and managed to get it onto her finger, shouting "Tikki, Plagg, combine!"

The combination felt different. A sense of awe and elation washed over her as Plagg's cat ears appeared in her hair, which lengthened once more into her version of the cat's tail, though she saw her red ribbons braided into it when it flicked over her shoulder. This combination felt heavier, but also more powerful and more stable than any other she'd had.

At least, until the nausea hit.

Ladybug – she had no time to think of a name for this combo – turned to The Hole just in time to empty the entire contents of her stomach into it.

Marinette had been sick a number of times in her life. As Sabine had pointed out the day before, she'd always had a sensitive stomach. As a child, she'd learned the hard way not to steal too many cakes from the bakery. As she'd grown older, the digestive issues had become less frequent, but they still occurred with enough regularity that she was now mostly used to the sensations and the pain they brought with them, and she knew how to deal with them.

This was different. This was – to put it lightly – worse than anything she'd imagined. It felt like her stomach was trying to turn itself inside out and crawl up her oesophagus. Or like someone trying to fold it over and over and over. Bile like molten metal burned her throat and churned her belly, which was cramping so painfully that her head swam and her knees buckled. She felt Goupix catch her and guide her to her knees in front of The Hole, into which she was still dry-wretching uncontrollably. The contact of his hands only served to increase her nausea – Adrien's hands, which she'd wished she could hold forever, but now even the idea of touching another human made her gag even more.

He was talking, saying something urgently, which she could hear, but not interpret. She had to do something, call her Lucky Charm, but she couldn't remember how. She could only focus on the things that were making it worse – the smell of her own vomit, the sound of it, the heat and pressure of his hands on her shoulders, the edge of the costume on her neck, even the orange of his suit in the corner of her eye, and the red on hers. She squeezed her eyes shut.

His hands moved to her hands, which was better than them being on her shoulders, but he was pulling on one of them and she needed it to lean over The Hole -

The nausea vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Ladybug blinked her eyes open, and turned to find Goupix crouching next to her, the Cat ring in his hand and worry bordering on panic lining his features.

"Are you okay?" he asked, putting his hand back on her shoulder. It felt pleasant again, and she revelled in the relief of not being sick.

She nodded, sitting back and wiping her mouth with shaky hands. "Was it like that with you?" she asked as her breathing slowed.

"Not that bad," he said. "It was sudden, but I could still stand and say the detransformation words."

"I couldn't even think," she said. "Everything made it feel worse – even colours and sounds!"

Goupix's eyes widened. "Maybe this was a bad idea." He was looking more and more worried, and her heart dipped unpleasantly as she thought about what they'd do if this didn't work. She couldn't afford to fail.

Ladybug shook her head. "Let me try again," she said. "I felt fine for maybe a second before it hit. Maybe if I do it as soon as the fusion's finished..."

"Are you sure?" Goupix ventured closer in order to push her fringe out of her eyes, and she fairly fell into his arms.

"I can do this," she said. "I have to."

"You don't."

"I want to," she insisted, and he hugged her tight.

"I'll catch the Lucky Charm if the nausea comes on again," he volunteered, and she nodded against his chest.

"Shove down my throat if you have to. I don't want this to last any longer than it has to."

They pulled apart and stood once more, facing each other. Goupix handed her the ring. She held it at the tip of her finger and took several deep breaths. At least this time they wouldn't have to worry about Plagg being sick before she got the ring on; apparently her mind had been only to eager to renounce its claim on this miraculous, and he was already inside the ring.

One more try, she thought. Just get through this one last time and then it'll be over.

She shoved the ring onto her finger.

"Tikki, Plagg, combine!" she shouted, and even before the light had settled on her body she was throwing her yoyo into the air. "Lucky Charm!"

As the Lucky Charm fell, the nausea hit her like a punch in the stomach, and she doubled over, hands flailing, the tiny charm bouncing off them dangerously close to The Hole -

Ladybug saw a white-and-orange gloved hand shoot out and grab the spotted thing, retracting just in time for her to retch again. Oh gods, let this be over. She could feel his hand on her back again, and then something was shoved into her mouth. Her body did not agree to this treatment, but she forced her jaws shut, forced the gross salty-squishy thing towards her throat, forced her head to tilt backwards, pushing back the hand that was holding her plait out of the way, tears streaming from her eyes. She pinched her nose shut and, with a herculean effort, gulped the thing down.

The effect was instant. Ladybug opened her eyes – she hadn't realised she'd closed them – and found herself gasping against Goupix's hand on her mouth. She raised a hand to give his a weak pat, and he peeled it back, wiping her mouth with a tenderness that made her heart backflip strangely. She'd just been violently sick in front of Adrien Agreste and now he was wiping the spit off her face with his gloved hand, but when she peeked at his expression, his eyes shone with relief and awe.

How can you see me do something so gross and look at me like I've just saved the world?

"You probably did," he chuckled, and she realized she must have spoken out loud. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yes," she said. "Thank you."

He wiped the offending hand on his thigh, and Ladybug let out a mortified giggle. He smiled as his other hand left her plait but lingered on her cheek, and she marvelled at the sudden and pleasant heat that bloomed there.

"You wanna yell at your kwami for me?" she asked. "I'm not sure I'm up to it yet."

Goupix nodded solemnly. "It would be my pleasure," he said.