Eighty-Four: Feline Musings

Chat ponders the fallout from dinner with Marinette's parents.

We were perched atop the giant glass dome of the Grand Palais, watching the night lights of Paris and considering what had transpired at dinner just a few hours earlier. Or, considering as best as one could after enjoying a bottle of wine with Marinette after her parents had left for home. I had to admit, my feline brain was a little fuzzy around the edges, and as I glanced down at Ladybug snuggled into my chest, she seemed a bit looser than normal, too. I couldn't blame her; despite how we'd thought the dinner was going to turn out, it had been something else altogether.

Hugging my polka-dotted-wearing fiancé a bit closer, I replayed the moment where Sabine essentially telegraphed she knew who was under the Chat mask, and, far more concerning to me, that she had a pretty decent idea Marinette was moonlighting as a superhero, too. I wasn't completely surprised that Sabine had puzzled it out – she was the mother of the smartest woman I knew, after all – and, in retrospect, I probably had grown far too comfortable in her presence over the years. Marinette had essentially figured out my alter-ego years earlier; it was a good bet I had inadvertently dropped more than a few clues to her mom over that period.

My tail flipped as I looked up at the dark sky, twinkling with what few stars were visible. Plagg had once told me that people saw what they chose to see; it was his way of trying to calm down my anxiety when I'd been asked to dress as Chat Noir for a music video, worried that it would be painfully obvious the real deal was standing there in spandex. He'd been right, of course, given Marinette had been on that same stage, decked out in a Ladybug costume herself; I'd rather willfully ignored what I was seeing, and she had, too. Had Sabine known back then? I wanted to think we'd been far more careful in our early days, when we'd just been starting out as heroes; now, with the complacency of experience, I'd clearly become complacent that the mask was absolute.

Clearly it hadn't.

How and when Sabine had made the connection probably was water under the bridge at that point, nor was I truly worried that she wasn't capable of keeping our secret, but it served as a cautionary tale for our relationship moving forward. I had to be honest with myself, though: I'd come to rely on my feline abilities to help me see to the wellbeing of my fiancé. Hanging around her as Chat enabled me to snuggle up to her at just the right time with a soft purr to knock her stress down, or to quickly make a round-trip across the skyline of Paris in search of a very specific color of thread needed to complete a project on deadline. Or to curl around her protectively on movie night, sharing a bowl of popcorn while my tail snaked its way around her leg, hugging her in a most uniquely Chat way.

In ways subtle and not, my feline alter-ego had been able to reaffirm to her what my heart had been beating out for years now; I worried a bit that I was at a disadvantage when I wasn't transformed, given how regularly I made use of my many kitty tricks. I worried further that maybe, just maybe, I had done a few of them out from beneath the mask, accidentally exposing my inner Chat in such a way that long term observers of Adrien's interactions with Marinette might have been able to make a connection.

I figured that might have been one way Sabine had uncovered my secret. For I knew I was defelinely unguarded around Tom and Sabine, either as Chat or Adrien; in many ways, they had become my surrogate family, given my current status with my own father. Marinette had chided me on more than a few occasions for punning my way through purchases at the bakery, something the supermodel was not known to be able to do. I'm sure it hadn't helped my cause that more than a few of them had been cat-centric; it was such a hard habit to break, considering how long I'd been making them up on the fly.

"Hey."

The quiet phrase had me glance down to see Ladybug's special smile she had just for me. "Milady," I replied fondly, brushing back a bang that had somehow come loose from her pigtail. It made me wonder if Tikki had been experiencing some of the aftereffects of the wine, too.

"How long was I snoozing?"

"An hour or so."

Yawning, she snuggled even closer. "Sorry. I guess I was more stressed out than I realized."

"No worries." I buried my face in her hair. "I'd hold you for days on end."

"You get all mushy when you drink."

"Yes," I laughed. "And I own it."

"That you do." She yawned again.

I fiddled with her hair. "Bugaboo," I started, "when we do finally get married… do you want my name?"

"Which one?" She asked.

I laughed. "Well, I figured Madame Noir was out. I guess I was thinking of my civilian name." Pausing, I looked down at her, and smiled a bit. "Although I am more than happy to take your name."

"Mine?" she asked. "You're practically a brand name! Mine is so… ordinary."

"It's anything but," I replied. "And I would happily set it aside to become Monsieur Du-"

My feline ears pivoted toward a whisper of a sound behind us, putting me on full alert; in an instant, I'd slipped out of my embrace of Ladybug and turned toward the intruder. Crouched against the glass with my baton slightly extended, my night vision quickly located the short figure standing placidly a few meters away from us. Frowning, I crept a bit closer, but stayed in battle mode.

"Master Fu," I said, unable to keep a slight tinge of surprise out of my voice. "Welcome back."

As I am currently participating in Camp NaNoWriMo 2021 at the moment, I'll be updating less regularly than normal - and with somewhat shorter chapters - during the month of April but will return to my normal schedule in May. Thanks in advance for being patient with me. -ep