Chapter Thirty Six – Cloud Nerds

Marinette cringes at the loud sound of her pad opening in the otherwise silent bathroom. Because it's so big and there isn't a lot of things in it, the room is quiet echoey and makes everything she does sound ten times louder.

She removes the old pad from her underwear and sits it on the floor momentarily for lack of other surfaces, and quickly peels the new pad from its wrapper and secures it to her underwear, before wrapping the old pad up in the new pad's wrapper.

Now she has a dilemma. Does she put the old pad in the bin beside the toilet and risk Adrien seeing it, or does she roll it up in some toilet paper and put it in her handbag? She's done that before, once, when she was on a school trip and the toilet stall she went into didn't have a bin, and she didn't want to walk out carrying the rolled–up pad so she stored it in her bag until she could throw it away. It was gross, but it was better than announcing to everyone else in the bathroom that she was on her period.

Deciding that the chances of Adrien sorting through his rubbish bin is minimal, she wraps the wrapped up pad in some toilet paper – just enough that the bright colour of the packaging is hidden, making it less noticeable – and puts it in the bin, covering it with the few tissues inside for extra measure. Then she washes her hands with lots of soap twice because she can almost feel the germs on her fingers after touching someone else's used tissues.

Before she exits the bathroom, Marinette checks that Tikki and Wayzz are okay and have enough cookies to last them until she gets home (whenever that will be). Once she knows they're fine, she makes sure her dress isn't caught in her tights or folded up awkwardly. She's only just opened the door, no more than a slight crack, when she hears Adrien say her name and freezes, almost absentmindedly listening in on his and Nathalie's conversation.

"Marinette hasn't told anyone else as far as I know, and she hasn't even told me everything." Adrien sighs and fiddles with his hands in his lap.

He's now sitting with his legs crossed directly in front of Nathalie, and they both have sombre expressions seemingly permanently etched into their faces after that buttload of information he just unloaded about Gabriel's second–best asset. He's a little nervous to be sharing all of the information Marinette's told him when he was in his cat suit, but he trusts Nathalie and he wants to tell her everything he knows about Lila while he has the chance. It's not often she will spend one on one time with him now that she no longer teaches him.

"There's more?" Nathalie asks, her expression turning ashen.

Adrien nods almost guiltily. "I think so. I'm pretty sure there is. I don't know why Marinette won't tell me, or what it could possibly be that makes her not tell me. I can only hope she tells someone so it doesn't swallow her whole."

They lapse into a tense silence and Adrien stares down at his hands, waiting for Nathalie to say something. He wishes Plagg was with him, but he hasn't seen him since he and Marinette started working on their assignment. He's probably napping somewhere, Adrien thinks, smiling to himself at the thought of his lazy kwami.

"Who else knows?" Nathalie eventually asks quietly.

Behind the bathroom door, Marinette strains to hear her. She has so many emotions swirling around inside her. Confusion as to how the heck Adrien knows all of the things she told Cat, betrayal that he's telling someone without her input, regret that she didn't talk to Adrien herself, surprise at how Nathalie's taking the news, fear of what will happen next, and gratefulness that Adrien cares about her enough to be this worried.

Still, it's that confusion that overrides all of the other emotions. How does he know this? It's logical to assume that he's the friend Cat was referring to and that Cat's told him everything, but then that wouldn't explain why Adrien said that she told him these things, when he could just say a friend did. Even with that thought in mind, she somehow knows it isn't true. It's like her heart and her head are trying to tell her something but both are in denial and not sure whether she should know, and without knowing what it is how could she know if she wants to know?

"Not many." Adrien releases a heavy sigh and his shoulders slump. "I know, her parents know, our friend Nino knows, and our whole year knows Lila's a liar but they don't know how bad of a liar." He rolls his eyes.

"What about your teachers? Ms Bustier and Ms Mendeleiev? And Mr Damocles?"

Adrien shrugs slightly and bites his lip, looking at the floor between them. "Mr Damocles knows but I don't think he'll do anything about it."

"And Ms Bustier?" Nathalie knows she's Adrien's main teacher, so surly she must know what Miss Rossi has been doing to Marinette.

Adrien shrugs again. "I don't know."

Normally that kind of answer wouldn't be enough for Nathalie, but this time it is. Adrien blinks in surprise when Nathalie suddenly gets to her feet. She straightens her blazer, eyes drifting to the bathroom door. She sees Marinette move back from it quickly, not wanting to be spotted, and she can only hope she won't be too mad with Adrien for telling her, as clearly the girl didn't want anyone else to know.

"Thank you for telling me Adrien. If you excuse me, I have some matters to attend to." She nods once and walks to the bedroom door stiffly. Before exiting, she looks back at Adrien as another thought occurs to her. "Why don't you take Miss Dupain–Cheng for a walk in the garden? It will give you some fresh air and let you spread your legs." And give Adrien a chance to run away from the possibly angry girl awaiting him behind the bathroom door.

She reaches for the door handle on autopilot, before her instincts kick in and she pulls her hand back to her side so the door remains wide open and prevents any accidents from occurring. Although, she muses as she walks back to her office, judging by what Adrien just told me, neither of them are ready for that . . . occurrence just yet. And thank heavens for that, because Gabriel is so not ready to give Adrien that talk. The puberty talk was difficult enough for him. I can't begin to imagine how Gabriel would possibly be able to handle the safe sex talk.

Nathalie shakes her head, dismantling those thoughts from her mind as she enters her office. She resets the timer on her phone for ten minutes so she can remember to check on them again (although if Adrien takes her advice and they go into the garden, she'll just peak through the window so she doesn't disturb them), before collapsing into her desk chair and releasing a sigh.

As soon as some of her tension has been released, she sits back up and positions her keyboard in front of her, opening a blank word document to start typing.

If there's one thing Nathalie's good at, it's manipulation. And she's prepared to manipulate the truth right out of the Rossi girl so she never comes within a hundred meters of Adrien or Marinette again.

. . .

The garden was Adrien's mother's favourite place. The two of them used to spend hours playing there while Gabriel was working away in his office. They'd play tips, chase bugs, make up silly stories, have tea parties, and, Adrien's absolute favourite thing, lay on the grass and stare up at the sky, waiting for dragons to go past. And pointing out funny shaped clouds. Then, when it would get dark and the stars came out, Emilie would teach him the constellations and tell him the stories of the stars.

Sometimes his father would join them for those moments, but not often. Gabriel was usually too tired, and he didn't know how to play like Emilie did. He isn't as good at using his imagination outside of clothing designs.

Even though it's a little cold outside and Nathalie told them to 'stretch their legs', Adrien automatically leads Marinette over to where he and his mother used to watch the sky. They lay down together, side by side, hands folded over their stomachs and heads close but not touching.

It's peaceful laying on the grass in the afternoon winter sun. From this angle he can't see the wall that surrounds his house, and he can imagine it isn't there. Keeping him inside. Keeping him imprisoned in his own house.

"Those are cirrus clouds." Adrien says, pointing them out. "They're about six thousand meters above sea level."

Adrien can imagine Plagg facepalming, but the information is out there now. There's nothing he can do about it. Marinette's going to think he's some kind of cloud fact freak and then she'll never fall in love with him so they'll never kiss or get married or have three kids and a hamster named–

"That's a cumulus cloud." Marinette says, pointing at a cloud a little to the left of the cirrus clouds. "It's about a thousand meters off sea level."

Adrien blinks in surprise and turns his head towards her. Her eyes remain on the sky, but her lips are curved up in a small smile. He grins and looks back at the sky.

"You're a cloud nerd too?" He jokes, smiling at the idea of them bonding over their weird knowledge of clouds.

Marinette hums. "I guess so. I did a project on them a couple of years ago and got a little obsessed. I used to be able to name every type of cloud there is, but I can only remember a few now."

"Still pretty cool." Adrien spreads one leg towards hers and bumps their feet together, their shoes making a surprisingly loud banging sound. "I did this with Chloé once when we were little, but she didn't get it. To her clouds are clouds and nothing else."

Marinette giggles slightly. "Nino thinks the same. I think that was just because he never quite got the hang of telling them apart though, so he used to just say that all clouds were stratus clouds."

Adrien giggles. "But those are rain clouds."

Marinette shrugs, smiling growing bigger in her amusement. "We do live in Europe. There's a lot of rain."

They lapse into silence again and Marinette bites her lip. She needs to ask Adrien how he knows so much, but she doesn't want to ask, because if he is who her head's trying to tell her he is then she doesn't know what she's going to do because she can't handle this.

Does she cry? Scream? Run away? Kiss him? She so wants to kiss him but she can't kiss him because he went out with her friend and she can't do that to Kagami and it feels like she's constantly standing on thin ice and everyone keeps giving her more plates to balance but each plate must weigh about a thousand pounds and she doesn't know how much longer she can keep everything upright before is buries her under the ice.

But if it isn't him, and she's just reading the situation wrong and her head isn't trying to tell her anything and she just thinks it is then what? What will she do then?

She can't very well ask him if he's Cat Noir without expecting some questions in return, can she?