A Fresh Coat of Paint

Summary: Tom Dupain and The Gorilla may one day agree to share the role of Adrien's father, but only Plagg can claim the boy as his kitten. Adrien reflects on his experiences with Marinette, and Ladybug announces that he'll be seeing a whole lot more of her.

As Adrien trips and bumbles his way back home after departing Marinette's room with a gentlemanly bow and an attempt at pressing a kiss to the back of her hand that she forestalls with a shocking nose-boop, he contemplates the fact that there's only one thing in the world that's a worse floppy tangle of uselessness than Chat Noir himself.

His thoughts.

Adrien is the most special boy in the world to the most special girl in the w- his class!

Only his class and maybe the school or the world except for Ladybug who is also his world.

Chat Noir is a suave and competent super hero, though; he would never allow himself to fall prey to errant thoughts pertaining to a perfectly petite pastry princess possibly pining for his civilian self and his alter-ego, even if her hugs were like being dipped in molten-candy sunshine.

Oh ... no.

His feet have barely touched down on his bedroom floor before he dispels his transformation, flooding the gloomy bedroom with a brilliant flash of green energy. He doesn't even give Plagg the chance to yawn and blink, let alone kvetch over cheese.

"Plagg!"

The deity in question cocks his head, a single fang poking out beyond his quirking lip. "Yeah, kid?

It's pouring out from his lips like a secret message that could doom the Allied forces in their battle against the Axis, and it feels like it is. Something so momentous, so ... so well-concealed. It isn't that he had been unable to pick up the signal itself, but there were layers and layers of code that he just didn't have the cipher to decrypt, leaving a senseless mess.

"I- I think that Marinette... likes me."

Plagg blinks his toxic green eyes in a cat version of a languid unpressed eye-roll before a smile spreads across his rubbery lips, larger than any that Adrien's seen save for that one time that the kwami stole his credit card and ordered some particularity rare and ripe Pont l'Eveque that might have actually been produced in the 13th century.

"A-and I... I think that I like her too," Adrien finishes in a whisper, nearly too afraid to give voice to the foreign idea that had been pounding at the inner walls of his skull for release ever since his heart had swelled on hearing... what Marinette really thought about him.

And her hug had just been s-

"Yes!" Plagg screams loud enough to have Adrien clapping his hands over his sensitive ears before pleading for silence. The last thing he needs is for someone to come barging into his bedroom.

In light of Marinette's quasi-possibly-maybe-I-hope-but-I-shouldn't-because-I-love-my-Lady confession, the situation is at its most desperate, and a pint-sized cat god is about the best source of advice he can find.

At least he would have been before what appears to be a kwami mental breakdown.

Cackling in glee, literally pirouetting in the air as if he's dancing a jig, Plagg starts gushing. "Oh, lord, it's over! The long nightmare of my existence has finally come to an end! No more pining!" A little nub chops the air. "No more hormonal rants!" Another chop! "No. More. Misery!"

"Plagg," he whines like a child, such a child! "What am I supposed to do?!"

"Ask the hat kid. He'll tell you all about dates and smooches and icky stuff like that, but you're not getting it, kid!" In his jubilation that has Adrien grimacing most severely, Plagg smacks right into his nose, causing him to wince once again. "Oh, our nightmare is over!"

"What nightmare?"

"Your love life!" Plagg squawks, still cavorting.

"This doesn't solve anything!"

"Of course it does! What part of "no more hormonal ranting" did you not get?" It's almost amusing, almost enough to make Adrien smile despite the seriousness of the situation, as Plagg offers an aerial cat butt-wiggle "That's like ... 70% of the problems in our lives solved."

"But I love Ladybug!" He winces and the thought is like getting the air and life squeezed out of him by Gorizilla, right before the tumbling fall. The only solution is to trust Ladybug. Hold on to her. She's solid, sure, will never let him fall because she'll never give him the chance. "Not Marinette."

Plagg's waltz aborts mid-barrel roll as he whips around. Blooming consternation sets his brow trembling. "What?"

"I love ... Ladybug?"

"Oh, kid." Plagg's head shakes as he floats over to the grand piano and flops down to it, using the action frame as a fainting couch. "Why are you like this?"

"Look, Plagg, I know objectively that Marinette's awesome, always looking out for us, making gifts to give to the class to boost people's spirits and really sweet and kind and she opened up her bedroom to me when I really needed someone to talk to-"

Plagg is flapping his paw and making 'blah blah' motions, but that's not enough to stop Adrien when he's on a roll.

"- and she's really sort of cute objectively speaking not that I've noticed but everyone has noticed, you know? And she's a hero to the entire class even though she doesn't get any thanks for standing up against Lila and – and taking on so many responsibilities without ever complaining, but- but I could never – never do... that!"

"That?" Ignoring the rest of the ramble, Plagg scrunches his nose, as if he's finally realized that Camembert is foul enough to peel paint. "You mean like pigtails? Give me one reason why."

"I... the same reason as Kagami. I can't-" It feels like his lungs are compressing. The roiling rage, the icy silence, the way that Kagami tried to hurt him by- by just using him as a tool at fencing practice because he'd used her as a tool to get over Ladybug. The memories are like a pleural effusion; he's drowning inside of himself, and winces as he continues, "She.. wouldn't understand why I have to leave her all the time, and – and that wouldn't be fair to her."

He expects an immediate response; Plagg is conditioned to overreaction and offence, both genuine and feigned. In a way, Adrien understands that, expects the normalcy and craves it, something to resettle the world.

Instead, after rising and crossing the distance between them, stopping only a few inches away from Adrien's burning cheeks, Plagg stares at him, really stares as if he's judging something, distances and angles and force, assessing the scope and breadth of a chasm that he's contemplating an attempt at leaping.

"Kid," he begins, chasing after an itch behind his twitching ear with an absent motion of his paw. "I think that you're so afraid of being hurt that you choose to run after someone who you know will reject you. At least that way, you can just... get hurt on your own terms."

"That's ridiculous, Plagg! Ladybug would never hurt me! And she doesn't owe me love. She's her own person and can make her own choices." Foul like banana-flavoured antibiotic paste that slimes its way down his throat, the words make him want to vomit, even though he knows they're true.

"I'm not just talking about Ladybug, and she may not owe you love, but someone does." Plagg's little paw is so, so soft against the bridge of Adrien's nose, his green eyes suddenly anything but toxic as he speaks slowly. The nasal snivel that typically defines his voice as it oscillates between ridiculous tones and pitches while he whines for cheese is suddenly airy but even. Plagg's being serious and gentle.

"You deserve to be loved, Adrien."

He can't stop the snarl, not anger but a hiss of air because he doesn't have enough, the only thing that's holding back his tears.

What a child.

His father would be ashamed because he didn't lov-

He looks up.

Plagg is just a black haze, an indistinct shape that he can't bring into focus no matter how hard he tries, no matter how hard he blinks the pressure building behind his eyes until they feel like they're going to burst.

He swallows, and the whisper – the one in his head – finally spills out: "... do I?"

"Yes." Plagg's voice is just as soft as his, but as sure and tender as it is hushed. Impossible for him.

"Why... why do I feel like this?" he asks, even though he's not sure what he feels.

Plagg responds with a listless shrug. No answers. No more understanding than Adrien might offer himself. "I don't know how you feel, Kid. You'd have to tell me."

"I don't think that I can. It's... I don't know how."

"That's okay too. We have all the time that you need to figure it out." Adrien watches the kwami with keen interest as the little black creature darts off to the mini-fridge to tap at its surface, his nose upturned. "As long as you keep me well-stocked with cheese."

He snorts, nearly blowing phlegmy saliva right up through his nose.

Plagg's still looking at the fridge. "But, Kid, I think that it's because you're afraid that... that someone will realize – not that it's true or they would – that you don't deserve to be loved," Plagg continues, tone mocking but not Adrien himself, and the petulant dismissal is a balm, "that you don't see things that are right in front of you."

The little fellow has waited patiently enough to receive his cheese, a recharge after a night on the town, so Adrien crosses the room to gather up a few wedges from the top shelf in his refrigerator and hand them over, one at a time. While typically Plagg inhales his cheese like a drowning man cresting the surface and sucking in life-giving air, this time, he truly savors them, nibbling away at each piece while Adrien shifts each ugly, stinking hunk in his fingers before handing it over.

"Plagg?" he asks while offering the kwami a final wedge.

Plagg takes it, but doesn't begin to eat - just holds it. "Yeah, kid?"

"I... I think that I'm scared, and I don't know why."

The cheese is ignored, left to quiver alone on the top of the fridge as Plagg rises. "It's okay to be scared, kid, or sad, and darn, it's okay to be angry to the point that you want to, I don't know, punch someone in the nose or shred up his very important papers, which I can help you with, by the way."

"I ... shouldn't be scared, though," Adrien insists, collapsing back against the wall beside his fridge as Plagg continues to judge him. "I'm a hero, and if I'm... becoming an adult, I shouldn't let things like ... whatever get to me."

"Bull."

"Plagg!"

"And let me tell you something, Adrien-" Punctuating the word, Plagg jabs his chest with a surprisingly forceful nub before floating back up to eye-level. "Angry, sad, or scared, here or out there, even if you burnt down this entire city, I'm always here for you."

"...thanks," he says as he draws in the cat for a hug to his cheek, Plagg's doughy, rubbery body straining against the tug of his hands. Fangs flash as his ears pull back flat against his head, spit flying, little teeth nipping and nibbling. Camembert breath reeks in Adrien's nose, but he swallows down the vomit, holds on through the struggle.

It's ten seconds...

Thirty seconds...

A full minute before he finally lets go.

Plagg looks like a cat who's just been woken from a nap by having a bucket of ice water poured out over him. "You didn't let me finish."

What more could there be?

"I'm here as long as there's cheese," he huffs, folding his arms over his chest and turning up his nose like a haughty gentleman. "So you'd better keep me well-stocked."

"I forgot that you were only in it for the cheese," Adrien laughs, surprising himself at the genuine tone that echoes through the room as he pokes Plagg's bulging belly.

"Well don't. You forget my cheese, and I'm outta here!"

Even if he's realizing it only just now, treading the mire, blinking the stars out of his eyes so that he's no longer blinded by the light, he knows that people lie to him... so very often.

This time, it's actually kind of nice to know it.

That ethereal and indescribable feeling persists until he's just preparing to fall asleep, winding down by watching School Babysitters on his phone while curled up in bed, Plagg snoozing on the other pillow beside his head. There's always been something engrossing about the way in which the screenwriters used a depressing backstory of recently- orphaned brothers as a springboard into the series proper, somehow transubstantiating melancholy and misery into something distilled, free from impurities and harsh realities, washed away in the antics of toddlers playing and embracing.

Now, he thinks that he's beginning to understand why.

So many things slot into place; so many things remain a disorganized jumble, pieces of himself butting up against each other.

But there's motion, and anime, and hobbies – good places for forgetting, when he needs to hide in them.

That feeling is broken by the buzz of the "Lady-alarm," a little chibi Ladybug figurine that sits on his shelf, a toy to anyone who enters his room, but the reassurance that his Lady is right there with him, only a buzz away.

An akuma?

A scrabbling transformation. Heart palpitations and the rush of adrenaline set his hands trembling as he's fully awake, his cell phone clattering to the floor as he gropes for his baton and pulls up the messaging app, certain that -

Bugaboo: Hey, Chat! I'm really sorry that I had to "Bug Out" so quickly today. That was really rude of me, and I should have at least said goodbye.

It's the first of a series, sent only a few minutes after he returned to the mansion. The latest one arrived only sixty seconds ago, which might have led his oftentimes impatient Lady to make use of the "Lady-Phone," even if this wasn't an emergency.

Though it kind of feels like it.

Bugaboo: Marie was just so cute! Ugh. I could just die over that little bean. She loved your gift. I could really tell.

Bugaboo: That's what I wanted to talk to you about.

Bugaboo: What you did meant a lot. Thanks for reminding me that we don't just fight akuma, Chat. We can be heroes in lots of other ways too.

Bugaboo: With the toys for charity and the way you handled civilians.

There was a long wait. A single glance for him covers the ten minutes between messages.

She thought about this: weighed, considered, judged it to be real before she sent it.

Bugaboo: Thank you for always being my hero, Chat.

It's good that Chat Noir can cry, even when he's trembling, shoulders hunched and heaving as he weeps ugly tears that would appall his father and ruin his makeup, leaving his stylists and makeup artists furious with him, rather than for him as they shoved him back into a cosmetics trailer and began the painstaking work needed to render Adrien Agreste presentable.

Chat Noir cries on the edge of Adrien Agreste's bed.

Magical leather cradles him from the tips of his clawed fingers to his thick-booted toes, the pressure like a warm comforter on a cold winter evening and if he thinks just hard enough, he can still taste the hot chocolate that Marinette made for him, completing the picture. He's warm and swaddled.

And the latest messages, five minutes old now.

Bugaboo: By the way, your gift reminded me that I really have to see Marinette. If you believe in her, then she deserves the Mouse, just like you said.

Another message from about five seconds later.

Bugaboo: I mean that you gave marie a gift and that made me think about you and gifts and giving things so I thought about Marinette and giving her a miraculous you know?

A minute later in his timeline.

Bugaboo: lol

Bugaboo: If we're going to train her as our secret weapon, I think that she should join you for patrol on Friday.

That makes no sense. Ladybug would be the obvious choice to induct Marinette into their ranks, so he responds.

Chat Noir: Sorry for not being around to respond earlier.

Bugaboo: np

He thinks long and hard about the question he needs to ask, that he needs to have answered, watching as those three little red dots that indicate that Ladybug is typing spring to life and then die out over and over again.

Chat Noir: Are you sure that you want me looking out for her?

The three red dots again, but the message flies out in only an instant.

Bugaboo: Of course! There's no one better. No one I'd trust more.

That might not have been the question that he needed to ask.

But it is the answer he needed to receive.

Even better than an action figure, which he'll still have to make one of these days, Chat Noir is getting a life-sized Marinette-Multimouse.