The next morning, Chat was helping Marinette down in the kitchen again. She had been asked to make some mini macarons for an event that her parents were hired to cater, so she was using a stand mixer to mix the egg whites while she poured in the hot sugar. She was focused on her task in order to not burn herself, but Chat Noir was stuck in his own head, thinking about the conversation he'd had with Ladybug.
He sighed, trying to be as quiet as possible to not distract the girl who was doing something he almost deemed too dangerous to trust her with, especially with no coffee in her system yet. He'd known her for years and knew that she tripped over blankets during spring break, this entire situation just felt risky to him. He looked at the whisk attachment on the stand mixer and couldn't help the smile on his face.
He didn't want to distract her when he knew she was holding a pot of extremely hot sugar so he was patiently waiting for his chance to make a pun. She put the pot down and touched the side of the bowl of the mixer. It was warm to the touch, but not too hot. She set a timer to the side to remind her when to turn off the machine. She looked longingly at the pot of coffee that still wasn't close to being ready for her first cup of the morning
"Anything I can do to help?" Chat offered when Marinette turned to face him. She looked at everything in front of her and went through the next steps in the process mentally while she thought about what she could ask of him.
"It would sieve me some time if you could sift together the powdered sugar and almond flour," Marinette responded, pushing the containers closer to him. He smiled and reached out to pick up the sieve.
"Yeah, I think I can handle that." He poured the powders into the container and shook the handle of the sieve to get the carefully measured ingredients into the bigger bowl. He picked up one of the measuring cups. "Say, do you think I could have a cuple of these macarons when we're done making them?"
She rolled her eyes at his puns. "I think I might be abowl to sneak a few of them away for you. Stove long as you keep being helpful." She had her elbows resting on the counter as she looked at her partner who was actually being careful to not make a mess (for possibly the first time in their friendship).
He couldn't help the smile on his face at her comments. "Well, if that's the case, maybe I can keep helping you. You know by now how much I loven your pastries. I'd fold and do whatever preparation you'd ask me to do for the promise of something made by any Dupain-Cheng, honestly." She wondered, momentarily, how much he knew about baking and how much of that knowledge was just so he could make puns.
"As long as you promise not to stir up trouble, I'm sure we can find something for you to do to be productive once you're finished sifting." The timer went off just as Chat finished sifting together the ingredients for the third time. Marinette took the bowl from him and emptied the sieve into the sink.
She turned the mixer off and separated the meringue into several bowls to be colored and mixed with the dry ingredients. "You know you don't need to spoon-feed me tasks?" Chat asked once everything was separated. "I can probably figure out how to help, based on how much I've watched you bake."
She raised an eyebrow at him and wondered, briefly, if she should trust him to make them with her. She opened her mouth to answer, but he quickly spoke up before she could. "That was just for the pun. I've never baked anything, let alone a macaron. Please, don't take me up on the challenge."
She couldn't help the full-bodied laugh that escaped her at his admittance. She trusted her minou with so many things, but she wasn't about to trust him to make the macarons her parents had asked her to take care of, especially without keeping a close eye on him. He blushed at her laugh, she looked so happy, like there was a chance that she could be as happy to spend time with him as he was to spend time with her.
He bit his lip as he looked at her and she shook her head to zone back into the work that she should've been doing to make the pastries. Marinette was working on folding some dry ingredients into the first bowl that she'd set up. This didn't require as much purrcision as streaming in the hot sugar earlier, so he decided that distracting her wouldn't be harmful.
He went over to the stand mixer and took off the attachment. She couldn't help but watch him out of the corner of her eye as he moved. His actions looked deliberate, but she didn't necessarily understand what he was doing. She figured that the most he would do to be helpful would be to take out some baking sheets for her.
"Just felt like mixing things up?" Marinette asked, turning her full body toward him to watch his actions more clearly. "What are you doing?" He was standing there, holding the whisk attachment and the look on his face was almost as surprised as the look on hers.
"Ladybug said I should take a whisk with you, so that's what I'm doing," he responded, swallowing his saliva. Marinette knew that wasn't what Ladybug said, but she shouldn't know that, so she didn't mention it. She just stared at him as he took a deep breath and held the whisk out toward her a little bit.
"I've been traying to tell you how I feel for a few weeks, but for some reason, the words have been escaping me. I don't want to macaron choice by confecting to you and ruining our friendship, but I really like you, Marinette. I wanted to know if there was any chance of you having felines for me, too."
"You bake me really happy and I would really like a chance to find out if there's a possibowlity of maybe taking you on a date, or I can bring us dinner to eat on your balcony. Whatever you'd feel the most comfortable with." He winced, wondering how he'd managed to word vomit a pun riddled confession to her.
She knew he liked her, she should've seen the confession coming and been prepared to say something. She should've been ready to say anything except for her real answer, "oh, sheet."
save, handle, couple, able, so, love, fold, spoon, precision, mixing, risk, trying, make a wrong, confessions, feelings, make, possibility,shoot/sh*t
