Forty-Seven: May Showers

Author's Note: Chat has to adjust on the fly when is lunch plans go awry.

There were very few meetings I looked forward to at House of Gabriel.

For the most part, that was because they invariably involved Father (or, as I found our staff had begun to call him, iGabriel due to his penchant for appearing only on a tablet). As I soared through the brilliant morning sky of Paris on my morning commute to the office, it struck me how much more comfortable I'd become expressing my opinion since becoming the number two guy nearly a year earlier. Most of our meetings wound up devolving into a pointed disagreement over the strangest things – last week, it had been over the shape of a button on a blouse that was part of the teen fall portfolio – but to be honest, as Chat Noir, I had faced challenges with far more at stake. Staring down Father over a few thousand dollars on a design was nothing by comparison.

Who knew wielding a Miraculous could be so effective as an internship tool?

Hooking a claw on an antenna aerial to quickly shift directions, I smiled my special Chat smile for today's meeting was with our liaison to Chateau Le Blanc. Helicoptering over an alleyway with my baton, I smirked a little at the gossip I knew had begun to run rampant within House of Gabriel, for Marinette had been sighted increasingly frequently in the building; technically, it had more to due with the logistics of pulling off a co-branded product release, but optically no one could dispute that it seemed as though the heir to the empire was smitten with the junior designer assigned to the project.

Far be it for me to correct them.

I'm sure it didn't help my case that I'd asked my assistant to book the meeting over lunch in my private conference room, with catering from a particular bakery. When my girlfriend found out about my preparations, though, she raised an eyebrow and warned me about appearances.

"Sooner or later we need to get Adrien and Marinette together," I'd reminded her as I'd sipped my last cup of coffee preparatory to vaulting out the window for my commute. My masked eyes had narrowed. "Unless you want to keep me encased in skintight magic black leather for the rest of my life."

"A girl can dream," she laughed wickedly as she trailed a finger along my arm on her way out the door.

Landing on a secluded part of the rooftop, I dropped my transformation as I pulled open the door to the stairwell, tossing Plagg his taxi fare in the process. He managed to down two slices before I emerged in a side hallway outside of the executive floor, for all appearances engrossed in my cell phone. I met my assistant in the doorway to my office suite and immediately noted his frown.

"This can't be good," I said to Tomas.

"It's not," he replied, and I realized immediately how stressed he was. It was rare for his Latin accent to bleed through into his French; combined with how more tousled than normal his brown hair was, my stomach started to ache. "Your father is insisting that we shuffle the photo shoot today. The weather forecast isn't favorable this afternoon – rain, I guess – and given that it's for the weekend fashion spread…"

I sighed. "How badly does it kill my day?"

Tomas paused and then put a hand to his face, allowing his long bangs to fall forward.

"Ah," I sighed again.

"I'm so sorry, Adrien," he mumbled through his fingers. "Flipping the budget meeting and the design meeting to accommodate the new shooting schedule leaves you with about fifteen minutes to eat. Period."

I laughed. "That's one way to ensure I keep my svelte form."

"I didn't—" his face shot up, worry in his eyes.

"Kidding," I said. "I know you look out for me, Tomas. I appreciate it."

"I'll call Chateau Le Blanc, then," he said sadly as he walked around his desk and picked up the phone. "And cancel the catering."

I paused at the threshold to my inner office. "Where is the photoshoot, anyway?"

He looked down at his tablet and then looked up, a smile forming on his face. "Oddly, the park by the Dupain-Cheng Bakery."

I couldn't help the sly Chat smile appeared on my face. "Shove the budget meeting to one and shorten it to thirty minutes."

Tomas looked up, and slowly smiled. "That'll still only give you forty-five minutes."

"I'll take it."

Half past eleven found me cozily ensconced against Marinette, masked eyes closed and purring set to eleven as she gently rubbed along one edge of a feline ear. The tension from the photoshoot had dissipated immediately beneath her tender touch, and I smiled a bit at how I hard I had pressed to wrap the thing in record time. I mean, really, when you have a chance to lounge with your girlfriend atop one of the best Bakeries in Paris, munching on freshly made morsels, it really a hard decision, was it?

I'd cancelled my car and had "walked" to the photoshoot from the office; landing on a rooftop along the way allowed me to call Marinette from the baton and reschedule our meeting to be more personal lunch appointment with my favorite designer – if she was amenable to the change. She was, with one interesting twist of ensuring I emphasized the purr in personal. As usual, I could deny her nothing and readily agreed with her terms.

Normally a two minute walk a best from the park to the Bakery, it had taken me ten precious minutes to escape from the set as Adrien in order to walk two blocks in the wrong direction before transforming. Then it had by necessity been a circuitous route through the skies of Paris to further cover my tracks; the only upshot had been seeing our lunch carefully laid out and ready to go when I landed atop my favorite conical chimney. Pressed for time as we were, I should have realized my girlfriend would have planned accordingly and quickly vaulted down to dig into the food, more famished than I realized from the morning's exercises.

Somewhat later, I languidly stretched a paw up to halfheartedly play with the ribbon Marinette had used for her ponytail that morning. "This would have been easier if we were officially a couple," I said lazily, trying hard to fight off my pressing feline desire to sleep off the wonderful bread bowl chili we'd dined upon. Sabine knew it was one of Chat's favorite dishes and had apparently adjusted the menu when Marinette's lunch date with Adrien was ostensibly cancelled. "Not that I mind transforming, of course."

"I know," Mari said as she switched focus to my other ear.

The sensation of her touch turned me into a puddle of goo as always, and I struggled a bit to remain in the moment. "About the meeting we're having right now," I said, trying to stay professional despite my loud purring and immediate desire to cuddle even closer to her. "The numbers in your email were exceptional. I was impressed at how quickly the… oh, wow…" I trailed off, caught up again in her ministrations. "I don't know if it's cool that you know how pliable the co-CEO of House of Gabriel becomes when you do that," I observed as I sighed contentedly.

"It's part of Chateau Le Blanc's master plan to do a hostile takeover," she laughed as she leaned down for a kiss.

"Deviously brilliant," I admitted.

Pushing me up so she could slide off the chaise lounge, I rolled into a cat-crouch at her feet and tried not to look put out that she had stopped paying attention to me. "About that," she continued as she stepped to the carafe of hot coffee to warm up her mug. "As good as that line is doing, as a whole Chateau Le Blanc is still struggling."

My feline ears went up and I stopped purring. "How bad?"

"I don't know all the details – I'm not as high in the executive food chain as you are," she smiled as she sipped from the steaming mug. "What I am hearing from my boss, though, is that our line of credit is maxed and we are running short on cash." She looked to the sky. "HR is already preparing pink slips for some of the design staff."

I stood and pulled her to me. "Are you-?" I started, my masked eyes wide with concern.

"No," she said quickly. "My role with House of Gabriel is probably all that's saving me at this point." She paused for a moment, her deep blue eyes betraying her worry. "Our joint product line has to succeed, kitty. Otherwise, we're done."

"Mari, why didn't you tell me this sooner?" I asked, cupping her face with my paw. "I had no idea things were so bad."

She smiled and pressed her hand to the back of my paw. "You have enough on your plate as it is," she said softly. "And until this morning, I was unaware of the full extent of our financial problems."

Stroking her hair, I reminded myself yet again how much rested on the petite shoulders of my girlfriend. As if moonlighting as a superhero weren't enough, now she was quite probably also going to have to save her company, too. Fortunately, she had a partner incredibly vested in her success – on both fronts. "All right," I said softly as I leaned down to kiss her. "I have some meetings this afternoon that might actually be useful, now that I know about this."

Mari sighed. "I don't know what can be done. We can't make people buy stuff they don't want."

I stared at her for a moment, seized with inspiration. She caught the narrowing of my masked eyes and the smile that slowly spread across my face.

"What…?" she asked.

"Maybe that is the problem," I laughed, a plan starting to form within the portion of my brain reserved for House of Gabriel business. "People want your stuff. They just don't know it yet."

"Kitty…" she started, smiling slightly. "You have that look in your eyes."

I smiled wider. "What look?" I asked innocently as I leapt away from her and balanced on the railing. "I've got to scat; an executive's job is never done, and I have a busy afternoon ahead of me…"