Thirteen: Curious Kitty
Author's Note: After pulling a near-all nighter fighting alongside Ladybug, Chat finds himself a bit sluggish the next morning. This triggers a concerned Marinette to want to know why he missed his morning coffee…
I dropped out of the sky and landed perfunctorily in my four-point crouch onto my balcony, exhausted and mindful that my Miraculous was chirping madly at me. Ladybug and I had spent the evening chasing Hawkmoth's latest creation around the zoo, trying to corral it and the animals that kept getting loose as a result of our fight. Our battle against Alya's zookeeper father years earlier now seemed like a quaint walk in the park compared to the grueling exercise we'd just gone through, and as I dragged myself to my bed, I had half a mind to let the transformation just dissolve of its own accord.
Guilt is a powerful motivator, however; wanting to make sure Plagg was fed properly, I instead collapsed on my back, feline ears on my pillow. "Plagg, claws in," I said, voice still rough from both having to yell over the inferno as well as the dust and smoke we'd been dealing with.
My green wave of transformation washed over me, and an equally tired Plagg floated down to crumple on the pillow beside me. "I think I will cross the zoo off the list of places to visit in the foreseeable future," he muttered, closing his green eyes and wincing slightly.
I turned toward him slightly, concerned at both his actions and the tone of his voice. "Are you feeling okay?" I asked as I tried to see if he'd been physically harmed in any way. Not that is was technically possible – if anyone were to be injured, it would be me, of course, but I was well aware that we'd been forced to press harder than usual in this outing.
"Just exhausted," my kwami said with none of his usual churlishness.
I rolled off the bed and suppressed a groan at my still-sore muscles, thankful they would heal faster than normal due to the Miraculous. The small airtight cabinet holding the camembert was full, and I sorted through the options at hand to pluck a few of the, shall we say, rather aged specimens for Plagg to sample.
Crawling back up beside him, I was struck in that moment just how tiny and vulnerable the Kwami of Destruction looked curled up on my pillow. Despite how tired I felt, I leaned down and carefully propped him up with one hand, while laying out the stinky cheese in front of him with the other.
It took him a moment to polish off the first slice, which was something of a record for him; halfway through the second, though, I could see he was starting to feel revitalized, and I tried not to laugh as he plowed through the remaining selection with his normal gusto. At some point, I'd leaned up against the headboard to watch, and the last thing I saw before drifting off to sleep was a slightly rotund mini-god licking the crumbs off his paws with great satisfaction.
The next thing I heard was an urgent tapping, something I knew meant danger in capital letters, but my mushy feline brain was having trouble processing data. Only when the tapping didn't go away, and instead got louder and possibly more insistent despite pulling the pillow over my head, did alarms finally start to go off in my head.
My eyes snapped open a fraction of a second before my quasi-enhanced human hearing heard the doorknob starting to turn. Without thinking, I rolled off the bed and away from the door, grabbing a snoring Plagg as I went by. I landed in a four-point crouch on the far side of my bed, and tried to flatten myself further as I heard the door open, slightly.
That was followed by a quiet, but insistent: "Chat? Are you in here?"
"Purrincess?" I said, not even bothering to try and hide my normal voice. It still sounded – and felt – raw from all of the smoke. I was having more trouble keeping the spluttering Plagg quiet.
"Dear Lord!" Marinette breathed, then in a tumble of words, continued, concern in her voice. "Are you okay? It's nearly eight! You're never late for your coffee - don't you have to get to work? Someone's gonna be upset. When you didn't appear as I started up the Keurig, I thought something awful had happened to you."
Pulse now pounding due to the near reveal and the fact I was going to be late for my photoshoot, I coughed to try and buy some time. "Sorry to worry you," I replied. "LB and I had a tough one last night and I got in very, very late. I must have forgotten to set my alarm."
She paused, something clicking for her. "Oh my God," she said softly, and I heard her hurriedly back out of my suite and close the door a little. "You're not-"
"No," I said.
"I am so sorry… look, I didn't see anything – well, not a lot, actually – I mean, obviously I'd love to see you – what I mean is, I never intended to barge in like that–"
"It's okay, Mari," I said, silently laughing at both how cute she got when flustered and the fact I was crouched behind my bed, trying to hide from my girlfriend while wearing standard issue House of Gabriel boxer briefs. Honestly, she'd likely seen everything there was to see already in the months I'd hung around her in the Chat costume. "I could make this easier on both of us and just stand up—"
"No!" she said rather forcefully, then, "You can't yet? Right? Until Ladybug says it's okay?"
On many levels, I thought ruefully, which was quickly followed by I need to get better pajamas. "I suppose you're right," I laughed. "I'm fine, Mari, just tired. Thanks for being my backup alarm."
That made her laugh, too. "Don't get used to it!" she said. "See you tonight?"
"Yeah," I said, slowly banging my head against the bedframe.
I heard her start for the door and then turn back. "Chat?"
"Princess?"
"We're going to celebrate your birthday tonight. Be on time."
"Uh, okay," I said. "But it's not—"
"Bye!" she called out as the door shut behind her.
"—my birthday," I finished, pulling my head up over the edge of the bed. I turned to Plagg, who was floating next to me. "Birthday?" I shrugged.
"Don't look at me, kid," he yawned. "But she's not wrong."
"What are you talking about?" I said. "My birthday is weeks from now."
Plagg smirked. "I can't believe your girlfriend knows this better than you," he said.
"I—" I started, then paused. "Holy catnip," I said, sagging down again against the bed. "Is today the day?"
"Yep," Plagg said as he floated off to get yet another piece of cheese.
"Wow," I breathed and then found myself stifling a cough. As raw as my throat was from the prior evening, I could already tell my quick-healing abilities had taken the worst edge off it. By noontime my voice might even seem somewhat normal.
I sat there for a few more minutes, knowing I was quite late for a photoshoot, but also not really believing that it was, essentially, the birthday of Chat Noir – the day I accepted the Miraculous box and then appeared in public for the first time. I tried not to grimace at the memory of how raw I had been as a superhero that day; the pain of those missteps was offset by the fond memory of meeting Ladybug and falling in love.
It might not have worked out with Ladybug, but she was still an important part of my life.
Sighing, I managed to haul myself to the shower and got my morning back on track; fortunately, my favorite photographer was working the photoshoot I was seriously, egregiously late for and rolled with it in good humor.
I apologized profusely during the entire shoot, and managed to somehow compress the six hours I'd been asked to do into the four we'd had left. It may have also helped that I'd swung by the Dupain-Cheng Bakery on my way to the shoot in order to bribe everyone on the crew with Tom's macaroons. Still, landing back on my balcony after work, I remained bone-weary, muscles hung over from the prior night's fight and having to hold very specific positions for extended periods.
Staying in cat mode, I crept across my bedroom floor on all fours; reaching my door, I was pretty sure I could hear Marinette in the space beyond. That was odd, and caused me to arch a masked eyebrow as I pulled out my baton to confirm the time. It went higher when I realized she was home a full two hours early.
Gently, I tapped on my door with my claws. "Princess?" I called out. "Is it safe to come out?"
"Kitty!" I could hear that I'd startled Marinette, and she begin rustling something. The crinkling noise was music to my feline ears, and I ignored what followed. "Don't come out!"
I cracked the door open and slid my mane out into the space. "Whacha doing?" I said slyly, my eyes scanning the space and locating my girlfriend crouched over her design table in the corner of the room. Feeling a bit frisky, I stayed in full cat mode and kept to all fours as I skulked toward her, tail twisting in anticipation of discovery.
"Go away, Chat!" she cried as she furiously started to cover something on the worktop.
"And why are you home so early?" I asked as I carefully came up behind her and rubbed my head against the back of her leg. As a human-sized feline, that nearly knocked her over, but to her credit she held firm on the counter.
"I forget how curious you are," Marinette muttered as she slid a wooden pattern board over whatever she'd been fussing with; I placed my paws on the edge of the counter to pull myself up and saw the sewing machine had been plugging in and it's tiny work light was on.
"I got off early," she said, swiftly sliding the cover over the sewing machine, then turned her back against the table.
"What was that?" I asked, attempting to lean around her to see what she'd hidden. My feline sense of smell had already told me it was something made out of elastane or polyester, with a touch of cotton. Though she'd tried to hide it, a trailing thread in day-glow green was visible below the wood. I started to go for the thread with a claw tip when she swatted at me.
"Nothing," she said, carefully ignoring my shocked expression. "Now be a good kitty and go take a shower."
I pulled back, wondering if she could actually smell the styling products I'd been wearing at the shoot and knowing it was impossible that she would. "Princess? Are we going somewhere?"
"No," she said, "but clearly you've been somewhere rather… fragrant."
Two things occurred to me at that point. First, my sense of smell was better than hers, so I knew it was unlikely she could detect something on me that I couldn't. That led to item number two: she'd not expected me home quite so early and needed me out of the way to finish whatever she had planned.
Deciding to play along, I smiled and slid back down to the floor, but not before wrapping my tail around her ankle. "All right, Mari. I'll wash off… whatever I stepped in…" I said as I slowly pulled away from her and stalked back to my room on all fours.
"Take your time!" she called after me. "I'll let you know when you can come back out."
After carefully closing my door behind me, I zipped to the bathroom and turned on the shower, then skulked back to my door and pressed a feline ear to it. I was, after all, a cat, and secrets drove me wild.
My efforts were rewarded by hearing Marinette say, "Chat, get in the shower," followed by her cranking one of Nino's more obnoxious playlists on her iPad.
Chagrined that my girlfriend knew me as well as she did, I resigned myself to actually taking the third shower of the day (for I'd actually taken one after the shoot was over to remove the worst of what had been applied to me). I dropped my transformation and let Plagg wander off to have some cheese and generally relax; for my part, and despite myself, I luxuriated in the hot water as it cascaded over me and found myself unwinding. I'd not realized how tense I'd been, but it shouldn't have surprised me – after battling an akuma last night and then being the perfect model all day, I was a bit more frazzled than normal.
As I toweled off afterward, it dawned on me that perhaps one other person had realized that, too. I smiled again, once more amazed at how seriously wonderful my girlfriend was.
I tossed on some casual gym clothes and then dragged Plagg away from his issue of Camembert Illustrated. "I've been a good cat," I said to him quietly, "but I really want to know what she's doing out there."
My kwami rolled his eyes and popped in one final slice of cheese before allowing me to call for my transformation. As soon as the green glow had washed over me, my feline ear was pressed to the door, straining to the Chat Noir limit to hear any clues from the other side. While there was a lot of movement out there – and, now, some very interesting smells in the kitchen – it wasn't indicative of any one thing. Making it more difficult for me, perhaps, was Marinette having swapped to a track of background white noise on her iPad. It was cleverly masking almost everything she was doing.
A part of my brain hoped no akuma would think of that, for it was truly interfering with my feline hearing.
"Princess?" I called out. "Can I come out now?"
"Not quite yet," she called back. "I need another thirty minutes. Hang loose for a bit longer."
Grumbling under my breath good naturedly, I leapt onto my bed and curled up facing the door to await the summons from Marinette. It was going to be a long half-hour.