Forty-Four: Recharging

Author's Note: Given the crazy period they'd just lived through, Chat and Marinette decide a little downtime is in order so they can regroup – and start to adjust to their new reality as a couple.

After the past few days – heck, the past few months – dealing with the havoc that Manon had wreaked in our purrsonal lives, Marinette and I withdrew to the apartment the very next weekend, pulled down the shades and definitively decided not to go anywhere, or do anything except spend the weekend with each other. There was plenty for the two of us to talk through, for sure, given we'd not yet had a chance to fully digest the abrupt unmasking of our respective alter-egos. And there was the little matter of a second Miracle Box possibly in the hands of our arch-nemesis.

It felt like a weekend off, out of view of Paris, was exactly what the feline would order. And he did.

The weekend started off well. Sleeping in was the first item on the agenda, and as I swam up through the layers of a wonderful dream starring a certain polka-dotted hero, a beach and a black cat that looked suspiciously like me, I blinked and stretched and tried to wake up without disturbing Marinette. It was something of a tall order, given the spooning position we'd ultimately wound up in after certain other extracurricular activities had wound down and we'd given in to our pleasant exhaustion.

Carefully, I slid out from beneath the sheets, noting with an arched eyebrow that Marinette had managed once more to steal the balance of the fabric. Without my costume, it had gotten a little chilly, and I shivered as I quietly tip-toed to my bathroom to toss on a pair of sweats and an old Ladybug t-shirt. The mirror only confirmed that my hair was officially bedhead, a look that my stylist normally spent forty minutes to create. Smiling at my image, it took a moment for me to register how odd it was not to see the mask and ears, given how long I had transformed by rote each morning before seeing my girlfriend to start the day.

I quietly slipped out into the kitchen and padded in bare feet to the fridge, and pulled open the door to determine what my options were for whipping up breakfast-in-bead for Milady. To my surprise, Plagg was sitting on the top shelf, his tiny belly slightly distended. The partially open box for the wheel of camembert told the whole story, and I glared at my kwami.

"Seriously?" I whispered. "You could have taken it out of the fridge."

"I could have," he smiled as he softly belched. "But this is the good stuff. I needed to baby it, to coddle it and keep it happy. It needed to be caressed—"

"Ooooookay," I interrupted. "Do you want some additional alone time, then?"

"No," Plagg sighed. "I'm good."

"I'm sure," I laughed quietly.

Working around him, I retrieved the makings for a cheese-and-ham quiche and put them down on the counter. Marinette and her family had taken Chat under their wing when I first started to date her, guiding me from boiling water all the way through a four-course formal holiday meal with all of the trimmings. While we didn't tend to get that fancy when it was just the two of us, I had discovered the pure joy of preparing a fine meal for someone you love, as well as the emotional benefits of focusing on the work, and forgetting about the troubles of the world for a little while.

Kneading dough was especially helpful during Hawkmoth's more manic periods, and the irony was not lost on me with respect to a cat kneading. Admittedly, as I pressed the butter crust I'd created into a small circular dish, I had found some tasks easier to do while transformed, given how much stronger I was when wearing the ears and mask. The claws were pretty handy, too, though Marinette had never been impressed with the fact I could leave the kitchen wearing the mess I'd created from feline ears to boots, quickly transform in my bedroom and return looking good as new.

Marinette appeared in the doorway of my suite as I was finishing the cream mix for the filling of the quiche. She yawned as she stretched, and somehow had located my oversized black t-shirt with the green paw-print logo I'd bought from a novelty website last year. "Hey, Kitty," she said as she slid onto a barstool. She smiled sleepily at me. "I've not slept that well in months."

"We've both had a lot on our respective plates," I reminded her, brushing back a bang that had fallen into my face. "And felines are known for their somnambulant qualities."

"Adrien," she said with a trace of humor to her voice, "you weren't transformed last night."

I arched an eyebrow at her and smiled. "Latent feline qualities, then?"

"Maybe," she said as she put a finger to her chin. "I did miss the purring, though."

Pouring the filling into the shell, I laughed. "I can fix that."

"I know you can," she said, and then paused. "Don't take this the wrong way, but this is… weird."

Using a spatula, I scooped out the dregs and then put the ceramic mixing bowl into the increasingly full sink. Wiping my hands on a dishtowel, I smiled at her. "I'm happy to transform if you'd feel more comfortable."

"It's not that, exactly," she said, a slight flame on her cheeks. "As I alluded the other night, I've known who was under the mask for some time. But seeing you – as Adrien – here in our domestic space with me… after so long of only seeing the mask and ears… I guess I need to adjust my reality a bit."

"I get it," I said, smiling slyly. "Living with a gorgeous supermodel can do that to people."

"Chat!" she cried out.

I leaned down on the counter and put my chin on my hands. "There it is," I purred, narrowing my human eyes in as close an approximation of Chat's smoldering look I could muster.

Marinette sighed. "Incorrigible," she muttered as she leaned her forehead into her hand.

"Black cat," I reminded her as I slid the quiche into the oven.

"How long does that have to bake?" she asked from behind me.

I turned and saw the look on her face. "Long enough," I smiled.

The balance of Saturday was spent pretty much in that manner; when we weren't eating, we were entangled in each other, making up for what seemed to have been an endless amount of lost time. Hawkmoth managed to intrude into our early afternoon, but even that turned out to be fortuitous, allowing me to pick up some fresh ingredients for salad and lasagna, as well as some items of a slightly more purrsonal nature. Our earlier, albeit brief, discussion about kittens mandated I keep up my end of the bargain, and I'd been a little surprised at how empty my nightstand drawer had become.

Time and supplies fly when you're having fun, it seems.

Marinette found a still-transformed Chat unpacking the groceries in the kitchen; she'd returned to the apartment ahead of me after our brief but ugly fight with Hawkmoth and managed to sneak in a shower while I'd been out shopping. As she toweled her hair, I paused, one paw holding a jar of pasta sauce as I smiled my best Chat smile. "Your hair is gorgeous when it's down," I said. "I'm glad you wear it like that more often these days."

"Thanks," she replied as she folded the towel over the edge of one of the chairs. "You did a much better job of disguising your hair than I did," she said as she came around to unpack the final satchel.

"You think so?" I laughed. "It's just longer and has two feline ears."

She reached up and brushed back a bang. "Maybe, but add the mask like you have," she said as she ran a finger along one edge of it, "and you don't look much like your alter-ego, Chat." Marinette smiled as she pulled out the box of lasagna noodles for me and then snapped on the burner where the pot with water was sitting. "I, on the other hand, just added a mask. I don't know how you didn't recognize the pigtails."

"Willful blindness," I said as I pulled out the baking dish and set it on the counter beside the baguette that would soon become garlic bread. I'd had that particular oddity when on a photo shoot in the United States and had fallen in love with it, though my twist had a definite French flair to it. "We both saw – or didn't see – what we wanted at the time."

"True," she said, and then smiled wickedly.

My masked eyes narrowed. "What are you-ooooooooohhh," I gasped, squeezing my masked eyes shut as Marinette gently rubbed the tip of a feline ear between two fingers. "Princess… oooh, boy…. I'm trying to make dinner…"

"It's not my fault you didn't de-transform," she laughed merrily as a rumble of a purr burst from me. "What's a girl to do when she sees those cute kitty ears?"

"Purr-purrincess-" I tried again, then faltered, completely unable to focus on anything other than her amazing touch.

I'm not sure how long it was before she released my ear, and as I took a deep breath to try and tamp down some pretty intense feline instincts, those same feline ears pivoted as I heard Marinette snap off the burner to the stovetop. Cracking open a masked eye, I watched as she reached up and snared my bell to gently pull me down to a kiss. "I think," she said softly as she tugged me toward her room, "dinner can wait for a bit."

Who was I to argue?

Lasagna preparation long forgotten, I was curled around Marinette, protectively covering her with my costumed body against the chill of the early evening. We were enraptured by the twinkling lights just visible through her doors to her balcony as the city embraced the night, though to be honest, I only had feline eyes for my Princess.

It was the first time I'd been invited to enter her suite, having studiously avoided intruding on her privacy from the moment we'd moved in together; now, knowing she was Ladybug, I realized that had served a dual purpose, as she had used her balcony escape much as I had on the other side of the apartment. As my night-enhanced vision looked around the space, I could see she had made it her own; I'd provided the initial furniture, but the interior decorating was all Marinette. Soft tones of pink and white were the order of the day, and to my delight, she still had the cat pillow I had first seen back at the Bakery.

Framed pictures of us – mostly taken by us using selfie mode on her phone or my baton – had pride of place on one wall, with another wall full of portraits of her parents and our friends. It occurred to me that other than my two very precious photos of Marinette in my room, I had very little in the way of personal effects. Much of that had been intentional, since I'd been trying to mask my true identity when we first moved in; but now that I thought about it, I realized there had been hardly anything from my life before Marinette that I had wanted to bring with me. There were a few cherished possessions from my childhood, but that was about it.

Marinette was my world, and as I snuggled down into her a bit more, purring, I realized that had been true from nearly the very beginning.

"We stay like this much longer and there will be no dinner tonight," I whispered to my girlfriend.

I felt her chuckle. "I've never had lasagna for breakfast," she said as she swiftly flipped around to face me. "I'm game if you are," she added as she pressed her lips to mine.

Any resolve I'd had melted away beneath her kiss. With a quiet meowrr, I flipped the sheet over our heads with a free paw and proceeded to become the attentive kitty my girlfriend deserved.