Chapter Eighteen – Drowning

"Why are you looking at home schooling?" The words burst out of his mouth before he can stop them and she jumps at the sudden volume in the otherwise quiet room.

The look she gives him can only be described as guilty. "No reason." She says it too fast, too high–pitched.

Wanting to keep the mood light in the hopes he can get the most information out of her, he smirks. "You're not very good at lying, princess."

She huffs out a breath and runs her fingers through her loose hair to push it back from her face. "I know." She smiles at him tiredly and rests her head back on his shoulder. Due to the angle, he can no longer see her face, and he wonders if that is deliberate.

"Princess?" He curls his arm tighter around her, his hand resting gently on her hip, but all he gets in response is a small sigh. "Is everything okay?"

"You're my superhero Godcat, you tell me?" Her tone is almost sarcastic and he bristles slightly, biting his lip. She sighs again, letting her tablet drop into her lap. "Do you know what it feels like to be drowning but everyone around you is breathing perfecting fine and oblivious to your struggle?" She doesn't give him enough time to think of an answer, her words ringing in his head. "Why are you stalking me?"

"What?"

She turns to face him and he almost cries at the defeated look in her eyes. "Why are you stalking me?" She repeats. "I know you don't have a sixth sense or kitty senses or whatever you call it to know when I need you, and I know that before you started coming here we'd only met a handful of times; that's not enough for you to know when I change. So, why are you stalking me?"

"I–I–" Cat clears his throat, before flashing her the most dazzling smile she has ever seen. Her face remains the same. "I thought we established I'm not stalking you, I'm–"

"Cat." She shakes her head once and moves away from him so his arm is no longer around her. He sits up straighter against her pillows, pulling one knee up to his chest to wrap an arm around it. "I'm too tired for your games. Can you just tell me straight? So long as it doesn't reveal your identity." She adds before he can open his mouth.

He looks like he's about to protest, but then he nods. "Okay," He fiddles with the end of his tail and glances away from her, trying to gather his thoughts. "I . . . have a friend who is in your class." Her eyes widen and he holds his hand out to stop her from saying anything. "I'm neither confirming nor denying that I go to your school or that I'm even in your year, I'm just saying I have a friend who is your . . . classmate and he commented on you acting . . . differently lately, and I took it upon myself to check it out." He bites his lip, scratching the back of his head as he awaits her verdict.

She purses her lips, eyes studying his face as if the answers to the questions she doesn't want to ask are there. "Okay?"

He takes that as his cue to continue. "He didn't tell me a whole lot, he just told me that you're more closed off and that you don't really seem to be behaving around your friends the same as you used to. He thought it was because you were having problems with your prince." He tilts his head at her, wondering if he's close.

She raises an eyebrow. "My prince?" He nods. "I don't have a prince."

Cat blinks, stunned. So, she and Luka . . . "Oh."

"Oh?" She repeats. "Does that surprise you?"

"A little." He admits. She rolls her eyes. "It's just . . . you're amazing and the thought that no one has noticed that never crossed my mind." She hums noncommittedly and gestures for him to continue. "Well . . . my friend must've been wrong then." He pauses, unsure of how he's supposed to get to where he wants to go without revealing that he is his so called 'friend'.

"You said your friend is in my class?" She questions and he nods. "Is he friends with Lila?"

"Lila?" He repeats. Truthfully, he doesn't know how to answer that. If he says 'yes' she may not tell him anything, if he says 'no' she may become too curious about who else doesn't like her, and when the only people in the class who don't hang off Lila's every word are herself and Adrien . . .

"Lila was Volpina and Chameleon." Marinette says, taking his hesitance for trying to remember who she is. "She lies a lot."

"Yes, I know her." Cat rolls his eyes, exasperated. "I've met her in costume more times than I wish I did." This gets him a giggle from the girl and he beams. "Honestly? I'm not really sure. He doesn't mention her a whole lot."

This seems to be the right thing to say, because she doesn't immediately shut him out and end the conversation. "Was he in class today?" Her expression becomes blank again and he can only nod. She sighs and turns away from him slightly, looking back at her tablet. He thinks he sees a small eyeroll, but he's not sure. "I guess I don't have to ask why you're here, then."

"Princess–"

"I'm not pregnant." She interrupts him, keeping her gaze locked on her screen. She doesn't want to see his face, to see him questioning whether she's lying or not. "I went to the store on Saturday to get some things we needed at home, some Band–Aids, and when I took a box off the shelf it knocked off a pregnancy test and it fell into my basket, so I put it back on the shelf." Her jaw tightens and Cat puts an arm around her again, holding his breath until she relaxes against him rather than knocking him off. "Apparently Lila was there and apparently she just so happened to 'accidentally' take my photo." This time it's impossible to miss her eyeroll. "I'm sure you can guess the rest."

"I'm . . . really sorry." And he is. He's also incredibly relieved that his princess isn't actually pregnant, but that still raises the question of the home school research. "But if you're not pregnant, why are you looking at home schooling?"

Marinette bites her lip, staring down at her tablet. The words on the screen blur together as tears fill her eyes and she tries her hardest to keep them from falling, but eventually her eyes get overwhelmed and one breaks free, running down her cheek furthest from Cat. She doesn't wipe it away in case he notices. She hesitates for a moment longer before turning her tablet off. She pulls away from Cat long enough to move it out of the way before settling back against him, curling into his side. She fiddles with his bell to keep her hands busy.

"Your friend said I had been acting different lately?" Her voice is slightly muffled because her cheek is pressed against his chest, but he understands her clearly enough.

"Yeah," He scoots down the pillows slightly so he's not so upright and rests his head against Marinette's, gripping her wrist loosely with his free hand and stroking it with his thumb lightly, imagining how her pyjamas would feel under Adrien's thumb.

"There's a couple of reasons for that." She flicks his bell and it jingles. "I'm not going to tell you them all; they're not really relevant." He loosely translates this to mean she doesn't want to talk about them yet. "I suppose the first thing is Lila." She sighs and snuggles closer to him, wriggling her arm not fiddling with his bell into the gap between his back and the pillow so her arm is wrapped around his waist. "One of my friends, Adrien, knows that she is a liar, but he didn't want to confront her about it when it first started. He still doesn't." She sighs again, this time a little sadder, a little more frustrated. "He told me to take the highroad, to ignore her and just let her get caught up in her lies on her own."

"What's wrong with that?" He murmurs, trying to keep the defensive note out of his voice. "I mean . . . I know some of her lies and they don't seem to really be hurting anyone."

Marinette pulls away from him immediately, sitting back on her heals to look at him properly. She frowns, a mixture or hurt and anger. "Not hurting anyone?" She questions and he swallows nervously. "Cat, she just told my entire class, my parents, that I was pregnant when I've never even had sex. I know losing your virginity isn't as big of a deal for boys, but it feels like she took mine from me, like she violated me." He flinches and bites his lip hard enough for it to hurt. "And that hurts." Her eyes fill with tears again but she blinks them away stubbornly. "Have you ever had a rumour go around about you?"

Only by the tabloids. "Yeah, but they don't really affect me, I don't let them." He pulls his legs up to his chest and wraps his arms around them. "I know that they're not true and that's the only important thing." At least, that's what his mum always said.

"But it's not." She says, shaking her head sadly. "If someone went around saying that you had gotten a girl pregnant, you'd be hurt by that, wouldn't you?"

"Of course."

"And you'd want to tell everyone you know that it's not true?" He nods. "That it's a lie."

"Of course." He repeats, nodding.

"That the person who started the rumour was lying." He hesitates briefly, before nodding. "And you would expect to be believed because you would assume that the people you bother telling, those who matter the most to you, believe you."

"Y– . . . yes." He swallows uneasily, glancing away from her guiltily. "Yes, I would."

"Well, thanks to Lila I don't have that option. No matter what I say, no matter how I look, they're going to think I'm having a baby because they were told that I am." She wipes her cheeks on the back of her hand when she feels some tears start falling and she sniffs, drawing Cat's eyes back to her. "People are going to stare at me, whisper about me, judge me for something I didn't do, and if I go by Adrien's advice, then I'm supposed to just rise above it and pretend that it's not drowning me." A sob interrupts her speech and Cat springs forward, pulling her to his chest in a hug.

"I'm sorry, Mari. I am so, so sorry." He whispers into her hair, squeezing his own eyes closed so he doesn't cry; he can't cry, he doesn't have that right.

"It's not your fault." She mutters, returning his hug.

But it is, he thinks bitterly, wishing he could go back in time and tape his mouth shut so he doesn't say anything to her, or maybe, somehow, stop Lila from lying in the first place. "I'm still sorry."

They lapse into silence, filled only by the occasional sniffle, but they're content to just hold each other, to relish in the warmth and feeling of being held by someone they care about and who cares about them. Eventually, Marinette's tears subside and her eyes start to close. Knowing she's about to nod off, but not overly concerned by it, she pushes Cat back gently until he's laying against her pillows.

"Princess?" He questions, confused. She doesn't answer him, at least not verbally.

With their arms still wrapped around each other, she curls into his side with her head low on his shoulder, finally letting her eyes slide closed. Sleep doesn't immediately take her, despite how tired she is, so she is conscious enough to feel Cat's nervous breathing, his slightly increased heart rate, the hesitance in his placement of his hand on her waist. She doesn't know how long she lays still, eyes closed, willing sleep to take her, but at some point Cat shifts under her slightly and she blinks her eyes open briefly, shutting them immediately as the light coming from her bedside lamp invades her vision. She feels the blankets shift, and then they're pulled up to around her shoulder and she feels a slight, warm pressure on her forehead, the brush of a nose against her hair.

A kiss.