Although Adrien expects the intervening period between his most recent encounter with Lila and patrol night with Multi-Marinette to be yet another slog, punctuated by slips on mossy outcroppings that send him tumbling into quicksand pits of his father's reproach, there's nothing.
Nothing awaits him when he arrives at home for his meals.
Nothing resides in his room – no surprises or losses; just the palpable absences that seem novel but have truly been lingering all the while.
No masterstroke reprisal from Lila; no further restrictions on his behaviours or hobbies.
The action figures, assuming that they went out with the regular waste, are gone, their trash taken away yesterday morning. He watched the passing garbage truck from the second floor music room, a sweat-sodden workman wearing earphones and stained jeans, wiry arms lightly tattooed and visible under his off-green city vest, clambering off a rung and foot-well on the back. He watched as this stranger gathered up each pail to toss one tightly sealed black garbage bag after another into the back. He made himself watch the slow, mechanical press crush and fold and chew them up to the crash and clatter of refuse being smashed.
With the windows closed, he couldn't smell the diesel of the engine, or the wafting odours of rotting food and muck and slime that smeared up all of his figures – if they were even there – before his three little Chat Noirs, his Guitar Hero, his completed Build-a-Figure Stoneheart, and all the rest had their flimsy plastic limbs mangled, joints ripped apart, heads and torsos crushed, straining and straining, stress-fractures and fissures spider-webbing their way across the black and pale-pink plastic, until the support pegs gave way, spraying shards.
It would be stupid to feel anything for them, as if they were sensate to pain, but in the crush, he can hear the scream of tortured plastics.
He doesn't care.
Of all the reactions that he could have imagined, that surprises him.
There are so many items in his room for which he cares, all the wonderful mementos that he accumulated from the little Ladybug signal buzzer to his limited edition Cordelia – pining romantic, forever devoted to her Prince – statue with the alternate colour scheme, to his collection of Star Wars figures and Majestia, beaten up, battered, her paint scarred and scored and pitted, worn away with use and time spent in a tub of other action figures.
He can still hear his mother's "Majestia" voice, cottony and penetrating, an unacerbic authority that left him staring up at the woman and seeing the figure as she mimed the motions of a triumphant victory flight or inspiring pose, hands locked into molded fists, planted firmly on her hips. It was at those moments, when his father was most distant, that the little figure seemed to swell up in her hands, as large and imposing as the giantess from New York herself, like she contained within herself a whole universe of possibilities.
She grew larger as his mother diminished.
And then there was Ladybug.
So many things to lose; so many things to be taken away as punishment.
He doesn't care.
Maybe he's just lying to himself again.
It doesn't matter.
He's wallowing, or "sulking like an infant." When he passed by the dinner table while Adrien was eating lunch yesterday, Gabriel had ordered him to stop doing just that. For just a moment, his brow had folded up in confusion, his eyes flicking to the door and back as he stopped in his tracks, like he had to think in order to recall the reason that Adrien was pushing kale salad around his plate in the mansion dining hall instead of eating lunch at school. Then, delivered with a characteristic sneer of cool command, his exhortation had been wholly emotionless, direct and disinterested.
"Stop sulking like an infant. You're an Agreste."
There really was nothing there for him.
From comparisons with other students at College, Adrien knows that he's well-educated; the privileges and responsibilities afforded to him by his father's position, his father's demands, his father's name, and his father's wealth have never been cause for smugness or self-satisfaction.
Quite the opposite.
Only alienation.
But nothing in his vast education has prepared him.
From the convolutions of rhetorical thought and logos, the couched narrative sparring of the Symposium as Plato reflected on the myriad forms of love or Aristotle, following his chain of causes and teleology back to the ultimate good and the unmoved mover – to the gloom and the sublime of poetics ranging from Poe's kingdom by the sea and love that was more than love or Shakespeare's imperfect actor on the stage, fear and awe plucking out the threads of his once-memorized part in the play.
That might at least be apt.
His tongue is heavy and thick in his mouth; his throat aches to the point that he would croak like a man hoarse with pneumonia if he tried to articulate thoughts that are themselves gummed up with molasses, rich and dark and oh-so-sweet.
Multimouse scampers into view, having lashed her jump-rope to the side of the wide rooftop on which he stands.
While her skin-tight costume is all pastel pink highlights and what should be a dull-grey bodysuit that hugs and caresses every plump, mousy inch of her figure, she glows.
Golden and red radiance, crisp in the cool evening air so that the intersecting beams and ambient illumination from the stoplights and lampposts in the street below bloom over her body. Her wiry arms are tight, bulging even as they uncoil. That smooth belly expands with her heated breath, quick panting gasps for air as she recovers from her jaunt across the rooftops, and her flushed and sweaty face is consumed with a smile that grows as she watches him looking at her.
He has to use his extended baton to help him maintain balance.
Or he would, but for the fact that he's already plopped down to his butt because his legs gave way, even though this is expected.
Yet nothing prepared him, or gave him the words or the thoughts for this, and his heart crashes and clatters like a bull, drunk on fermented grapes, meandering his way through a cupboard full of pots and pans.
His stomach growls, and not just because she's carrying in hand a picnic basket, just like his Lady so often did, intending to spoil him after a patrol. The feeling is there again, and even deeper than his gut, deeper than his flesh. On and in and beyond him, the hunger pangs ache.
He aches.
For what, he doesn't know, even if he's starting to realize just how special this hunger is – that he could live off the starvation alone – a painless, easy comfort that's becoming a pleasant throb accompanied by the luscious odour of buttery pastry and the curling stormy exhilaration of sky-blue eyes open and gleaming and splitting with forked lighting.
So very unexpected, that little hint of swirling danger, sweet adventure and mystery.
So much like Ladybug, but so different. Marinette's not the leader here.
She's arrived at long last, sauntering towards him, treats in hand. Ready to patrol or veg out or – or do something that has his muscles quivering like he's a race horse, ready to burst from the gate, flaring nostrils flooded with the scent of his competitors' sweat and frothing mouths.
"Loving the mask, there, Princess," he hums, shooting her a flirty wink because that seems appropriate for Chat Noir. There's no letting all this mess – his mess – him show. He's got to keep up the act; she knows Adrien, and has seen too much of him, and for whatever reason the idea of permitting her to see more is unconscionably terrifying. "Perfect thing to help you remain anony-mouse."
"I hear that's pretty important for a superhero." After setting down the basket of goodies that his sensitive cat nose lets him smell, however distracted he is by the sweet odour of vanilla and rose perfumed mouse that he's an absolute heel for noticing, she rolls her shoulder, thumb working the divot between her breast and the socket, as if the joint is unused to the strain of bearing her weight.
That is rather strange since, sometimes, when she lifts him up and carries him through the day, the rippling sinew of her arms and back seem sufficient to hold up his entire world – oh, God, this is bad because he's got it bad, he realizes as he gulps down a puff of air to restrain a whine, whether over himself or her, he doesn't know.
"Yeah. Second only to the part about rescuing princesses and protecting civilians in general," he schmoozes, laying on the cream as thick as he can. "How are you finding it?"
"It's alright." The handle of her jump-rope flicks and twists in her hand, a little showboating that even he can't quite manage when he bungles around his baton. She's talented, masterful with the quick wrist-flicks that are nearly like the hypnotic sway of a little mouse's tail, drawing in a predatory pussy cat's gaze. "A little bit weird getting used to the feeling of the jump-rope. I don't know how long it extends, but it sure seems to. It's almost like the more I think about it, the less it does what I want."
"Same with the baton, really." Not that he's as good with it as she'd probably be, if her jump-rope is any indication. "If I start trying to judge distances and math out the jumps, I fall flat on my face."
"Ouch." She mock flinches. "That would be a real shame."
"Oh, absolutely, my purrity face is a treasure." Is it wrong, the way that he showboats, mirroring that gesture from so many months ago, boxing in said purrty face with his fingers so that it looks like he's framed, caught in the camera's eye, photo-perfect complete with airbrushing? It's almost like he's taunting her, knowing how she feels about Chat and Adrien.
All of him.
Multi-Mari-Mouse looks unimpressed, but he likes to think that the subtle blurring of pink around her mask is more than just his imagination. "That's one way of putting it."
To dispel that awkward air as his busy fingers start to drum The Imperial March on his knee, he clears his throat and can't force the mouse-sized lump out. "So how much have you practised with the jump rope?"
"Not much." As if to show off her admittedly marvellous talents, perhaps accrued from her sewing not that he knows about the transferability of skills, she lashes out with the jump-rope like a bullwhip. The thick cord coils and releases, tip splitting the cool Parisian night air with a supersonic crack as she arches a brow.
Pretty darn impressive, really, he has to admit as she spools up the rope once more and the compact handle is affixed to her hip.
She blinks. "Since, uh, Ladybug made sure that I was coming back, I haven't used the mouse."
"Then how do you want to go about this, M-uh Mouse?" Well that's a stupid nickname. Suddenly, the most important thing about tonight is not offending her again, not driving her away like Adrien had before."Is that okay"
"Mouse is fine, Kitty, though a little uninventive for you." Her brow furls as she scratches at the edge of her hair bun. "I'm pretty new with these powers, so why don't you let me know how we should handle this ... training session? I know that Ladybug was hoping that I would keep out of sight. Stay – what did you call it?"
"Our – our secret weapon?"
Her smile shifts, strangely nostalgic, and she affirms him with a head-bob. "That's it."
"She told you that?" He asks while focusing on her expressions, trying to read any subtle shifts, though what he's looking for is a real mystery.
Arranging the picnic basket – a literal wicker picnic basket which just seems so whimsical and childish – she plops down next to him, so close that he can admire the subtle honeycomb hexagonal texture of her costume which is so appropriate because she's just dripping with sweet honey. "I think that I know pretty much everything about the conversation that you two had about me."
"Oh, well... good." Did Ladybug narc on him too? Share his mortifying More Multimouse Campaign list? Like he's savouring the air around her, flowing with full-fat milk and honey from the promised land – oh, lord – he smacks his lips."That's good."
Keep it together. It's just Marinette it a skin-tight mouse costume, dressed like the hero she is everyday.
"If I'm only going to be called up for emergencies, then we shouldn't tip our hand while training," she begins, tracing the edge of her picnic basket like the weave of wicker is a maze she's trying to navigate. "I kept a pretty low profile getting here, and transformed only a few blocks away from where we were supposed to meet, just to be safe."
"Pretty clever, Mouse, but, uh, what did you tell your parents?" He can't help but shuffle his butt a few inches closer, the full experience of her like this, Marinette all wrapped up in super-hero garb, just too much to process.
"My parents?" If only she had whiskers to twitch. Only that would make her scrunchy nose cuter as she turns away from the labyrinth she's tracing out.
"Yeah," he offers, dragging out the word. "I know that my – mine wouldn't just let me out of the house at 22:00 without at least some explanation where I was going."
"Oh." She slaps a fist into her palm, abandoning the poor picnic basket while loosing a chuffing laugh and grinning so, so wide that it sets off a cascade of heat that rises up from his belly and staves off the chill of the evening breeze. "I... uh, sneaked out from my balcony."
"You what?!" How could she possibly have done something so utterly asinine?" Clambering down from a rooftop somehow – she really was inventive and brave, if stupid and reckless – was a prime way to get her neck broken, and that would be his fault too. "You can't just do something like that, Mouse! You'll get yourself killed."
"It's – it's okay, Chat," she assures, clearly slightly aggrieved by his wholly justified concern for her well being. Utterly ridiculous! "I'm staying safe."
Clawing at the air, he scoffs before he senses a sliver of hurt in her expression, as if the chastisement, however justified, cut too deep, but he's committed, and doubly so to ensuring her safety. "Obviously not if you're climbing down from your balcony into the street to sneak out in the middle of the night! Who knows what could happen to you?!"
"It's not like I can transform into Multimouse if we're keeping her a secret. Do you have a better idea?" The oddest glimmer of a challenge sparks in her eyes, a little candle-flame next to the atomic breath weapon that he's seen in all those Marinette vs Lila films that played on a reel for weeks.
Playfulness is a fetching quality, mingled with a little bit of heat, but far more smoke.
Does she want him to have a better idea?
"I can pick you up," he blurts, leaning into her space so that they're nearly nose-to-nose. He's not going to be taking no for an answer. Imagine if she was hurt because of his stupid insistence!
That's a horrifying place for forgetting, but it's not just pain that's being plastered over. Oh, no. Not when his mouth is going dry and every sense is flooded with her; her face so close that it blots out every other sight; he skin's scent hot and cloying in his nose; his ears twitching as they strain to luxuriate in the whistle of her breathing, picking up.
She's not leaning away, despite the quiver of her jaw. "What?"
"It's simple." And it is. Like the myriad objects that lock together into one of Ladybug's Rube Goldberg machine plans, the pieces are slotting into place so easily. It's nice to have a plan for once, to tamp down on the feline urge to leap forward and play with his food. "You need a training space where no one can see you, and have to get there safely. Well, I can figure something out for the first one, and, when I do, I'll stop by your rooftop to pick you up as Marinette."
"Won't people be able to take photos or footage of you?" she objects with a floundering grin, worrying out nervous energy by scraping her ungainly hands together as if she needs to burn off all that mouse-anxiety, but he can't bring himself to relent. Not when her safety is in the balance.
Does she want him to relent?
"Maybe, but it's night, and I'll sneak up to your balcony, and- and if you're not wearing something that really stands out, no one is going to be able to tell who's with me."
"I guess that you could climb down from the chimney behind my balcony," she offers, still clearly uncertain as she steeples her fingers.
"Totally stealthy." He taps at his puffed up chest, flexing, feigning and serious at once, and the little squeak that pops from her pink lips that glisten with flare of Parisian lights frays every fibre of his being. Is his cheesy grin enough? Wide? Too wide? Too needy? She doesn't look like she can perceive the tumult, but they're wearing masks. How could he know? "I'm already dressed for my night operation."
"Well," she snarks with a tiny jab at his chest, the motion fumbling just before she reaches her target. She holds her breath visibly, poking the piping over his pectoral while glancing away. "I- I wouldn't want to leave you hanging, after you put in all the hard work to dress for the occasion."
"Speaking of being dressed for the part, you're looking good – I mean for what we're doing tonight-" he only just holds off a face-palm because what is he even doing or feeling or wanting? - "Which is just training, so – ugh – how do you want to start?"
"Chat, you've had your Miraculous much longer than I've had this one, so where do you think that we should start? What did you learn when you were just starting out?"
"Well... actually, I hadn't really thought about it." A deep inhalation, so rough and jagged that the air is gravel as he thinks back to Fu and the desperate, petulant pleas for mentorship, and feels his chest constrict with an unnameable fear. "You're so good with plans – at least from what I saw when you dealt with Kwamibuster, not that I really know you very well or anything, that, uh, that I thought that you'd have an idea of where you'd be comfortable starting."
Fully confident this time, her hand presses to his chest as she re-angles herself on the rooftop ledge, and beyond the facade of her mask that dissolves away in the twisting veneer of shadows cast at this new perspective, he just sees the girl herself, as she is when mulling over a math-problem, focused, chewing the nub of her eraser absently. Is he a problem? He feels like it, and doesn't know if that's a good or bad thing.
"From what I heard, Ladybug put you in charge of my training, and I trust you with that," she says.
"O- okay." He nods in part to affirm her, but her smile does that and more for him. "Well, then, I guess the first thing that we have to worry about are the basics."
"The basics?" Though her hand falls away in a jerk like she's just suffered a static shock, and she takes a few seconds to stare at her gloved palm that appears to contain the road-map to El Dorado from her expression of enthrallment, there's no queasy sensation of abandonment or distance. She's still here.
"Yeah. Like – how strong are you, how agile, how fast?" he offers, and a brief hesitation is enough for her to look up from her hand, tossing her head as if she's just remembered something vital and is kicking herself mentally. "That may have something to do with our natural fitness, like Lu- uh, Viperion was pretty strong, but that could have been because he's a little older than us or because of the unique effects of the Snake miraculous. I'm a lot more flexible and quick on my feet than Carapace, so it's different for each one of us."
Mulling over the suggestion, processing it to weigh the idea, she strokes her chin. "So we test the basic physical powers that my miraculous grants me first."
"Right." He taps his baton, fearing that perhaps she's going to reject the idea – tell him that it's stupid and realize that she should have just taken charge – his Everyday Ladybug leading the way just like his... other Everyday Superheroine Ladybug. "And then... then we move on to how to use those physical attributes. Powers and weapons are always an extension of what you're capable of doing with your own body."
The Dodge! meme from Dragon Ball Z Abridged is echoing in his head, but it's mingled with a hundred fencing matches, footwork drills on the piste as he stared down Kagami, sharing smirks, then grins, then frowns, then nothing – pure cool absence because the lies piled up and crushed out anything but mechanical function.
Start with the basics, and the one that can best ensure Marinette's safety.
"A lot of things come down to instinct and preparation," he elaborates, fixating on her even breathing as she listens to him, her attention rapt. "There's not much time for thinking in the middle of a fight, at least not for you or me if we're giving Ladybug a chance to plan."
"You seem to be doing a good job of planning out our training," she assures as she rises up, extending him a hand so that he can do the same.
As he makes certain that he has his feet under him – his legs are a little bit limp and noodle-y after sitting down for so long, or maybe from sitting next to Multimouse for so long – he replies: "Yeah, well, it's important and – and I have the time to do it, you know?"
"Like you give Ladybug time to plan things out by distracting Akuma," she says, a wistful air to her voice as she takes him by the hand and guides him to the rooftop edge. Her palm is soft, fingers snug and gentle at once.
"I guess so."
With that settled, the actual training session goes well, with a bundle of Dupain-Cheng pastries as a reward for a job well-done waiting for them. There's an exceedingly abnormal ambience of domesticity and normalcy to that: a rooftop picnic... meetup with... a very good friend who it's obvious now he's crushing on so very hard.
Liking Marinette was just so easy, such an eminently simple and vital aspect of every day as unspectacularly dazzling as waking up to the feeling on the sun, slipping through the cracks in your blinds to warm your cheeks and ease you into the day. A great atomic furnace gave life to the entire world, scalded your skin, left you pink and peeling if you exposed yourself for too long; only when you actually contemplated the seething nuclear fire that burned a hundred and fifty million kilometres away, warming you but still out of reach, did you realize how astounding it truly was.
It was just so natural that you didn't notice the miracle shining above your head every day.
Maintaining a low profile even with two rather garish super-heroic teens cavorting about is actually slightly easier than he'd anticipated. An economic downturn and the inquiries he had made into homelessness rates before signing off on those action figure contracts, permit him to identify a construction zone for low-cost subsidized housing that suits their purposes well enough.
He doesn't like how the place makes him feel – not that he's better than this dilapidated portion of Paris! Far from it!
But that his father probably thinks that they are.
And that he has so much, whines and complains and sulks over so little.
Their contributions were a drop in the bucket, a meaningless gesture like so many that Adrien Agreste and Chat Noir offer, that seem to define him, but every action has led him here, and he can't find it in himself to regret a single one.
Here: sparring with Multimouse through the skeleton of a new housing complex, correcting her shockingly well-developed stance and form with observations gleaned both from his self-defence classes and his own experience as the more direct melee combatant in his partnership with Ladybug, who preferred to hold back at mid-range to strategize or lance out with her yo-yo in lightning quick precision strikes rather than barging into battle like ... well, like a bit of a foolhardy dullard.
It's ... bizarre, unnatural, to teach someone else, especially when it feels like he should be learning – is always learning something new and vital at this very moment. Even as he slides up behind her, hand to her hip to nudge her legs slightly further apart, radiating cheeks amplified by the glowing flush that's mirrored on her face as she glances over her shoulder at him with a stuttery smile, he knows he's being taught something too, though for the life of him determining its nature, let alone its implications and application, is impossible.
He retreats into simple, direct commands and detached observations, hard though it may be, because this is just too important for him to play. Marinette's safety – her life, he realizes and feels like he's just bathed himself in reeking, molten Camembert – could depend on her being well prepared for battle. Responsibility to Paris dictated that he could only ever die for Ladybug.
And that's the feeling.
Responsibility.
On parting from her with a ... date set for them to organize another training session after he gathers up his precious cargo from her balcony, he sees the lighting in a sea of blue, placid and churning with luxurious heated currents.
He knows what it is, now.
That lightning in her eyes.
It's the fear of loss in the thunder and the storm.
And it's good to feel afraid to lose something – to be able to feel that.
Chat Noir returns to Adrien's prison.
He thinks that there's nothing there for him. That it's empty.
He carries warmth home with him.
And finds it waiting for him.
His painting supplies are stacked on his desk, everything in order, right in its proper place not as determined by the cleaning staff, but just as he'd left them, save for the box of flesh-toned paints that his bodyguard had bought him.
Tucked under that gift is a note.
Check the trunk tomorrow.
After the students are released for the day, with Lila conveniently distracted on the other side of the school by a dispute with Chloe that Marinette, as everyone's "good friend," is trying to defuse, he hands off a bag to Nino.
Doffing his cap to the Gorilla, addressing him as sir instead of dude, Nino promises that there's more than enough space in his room for three little Chat Noirs, and both an open and mint-in-sealed case collection of the first wave of Miraculous figures.