There were times Marinette wanted to do psychological research on cats to try and figure out what the heck Chat Noir was doing. She nearly did one day.
"Hello!" Chat Noir popped his head down into Marinette's room with a grin from the sky entrance.
Marinette was sprawled out on the floor. She groaned and rubbed her face, causing Chat Noir to leap in and land on all four next to her. "I hate math." She explained in a dead tone. Chat gave a slight laugh that Marinette glared at. "Math is literally the devil coming to earth. I hate it." She complained. Chat didn't bother to cover his laughter.
"It's not that bad." He cooed, patting her cheek. She swatted his hand away and forced herself to sit up. "Does Mari need my help?" Chat Noir teased, walking over to her desk and picked up her note book. His candy apple green eyes scanned through her messy scribbles of numbers and symbols.
"I'm not that crazy." Marinette retorted, rolled her eyes. Chat pouted at her, still clutching the notebook.
"I'm good at math!" He defended himself. Marinette gave him a skeptical look. Chat pointed to one of the problems Marinette had gotten wrong. "Look, if RS is equal to 3x-8 and HN is 7-" The black-haired girl snatched back the notebook, cutting him off.
"Thanks for the offer, really but it's fine. My friend is teaching me how to do it in like 10 minutes." She said with an appreciative smile.
Chat Noir pouted, okay maybe he was a kitten since he was such a child at all times. "But I'm here now! I can help."
Marinette smiled at him, stood up and patted his head lightly. "I know you can. But I also know you'd much rather watch mindless videos with me until I have to go on call." The girl said with a smile. Chat was quiet for a second, before climbing up to Marinette's bed at an alarmingly fast pace, and stretching out.
The black-haired girl pulled out her laptop and fell onto her pillows. Chat Noir, as always, curled up next to her like a cat. Quickly flickering her eyes over at the black-clad superhero, Marinette almost wanted to laugh. It was moments like this that made her feel like she actually had a cat. Like she needed to go to the pet store to pick up some salmon treats and a scratching post now. She almost burst out laughing. If she was to do that, which she should totally do just to mess with him someday, he'd probably throw a huge hiss fit and end up actually using the scratching post to get out his annoyance. Mmm, most of Paris didn't know that Chat Noir was one heck of a drama queen. For what it was worth, he was calm now, interacted by the video and breathing softly. Marinette smiled fondly, maybe salmon treats weren't the way to go with him but any type of baked goods certainly were. Especially croissants. He had practically cleaned them out last time.
Marinette checked the time, Luka would be calling her in about 3-5 minutes. She tapped Chat Noir on the forehead. "Hey, my phone is about to ring. I'm gonna go up to the balcony, I get better WiFi there. If you want you can just stay here." Marinette said, attempting to push Chat's hand off her shoulder. He held on tight.
"I'll watch up there with you!" He offered. Marinette shrugged and finally was able to get up and grab her notebook and a couple pencils.
As soon as she set her materials down, Luka's photo showed up on her phone, the call tone sounding out loudly. "Hey, Luka! Thanks for helping, by the way." Marinette said brightly.
Luka nodded and smiled. "It's no problem." He said kindly.
Luka was a very good teacher, that was no surprise. What was a surprise though was his aptitude for math. "It's the only subject I like other than music because it's the only one I actually understand." He joked.
Marinette firmly disagreed with him. She did not like math and was rather vocal about it. Sometimes Alya joked that's why she was always late, in a defiance of numbers and math along with it. She had said if you gave Marinette the amount of time to drive somewhere and then what time she had to be there. She'd take longer because she could not let math win. Alya got a playful punch after that sentence.
"What subject do you like then?" Luka asked Marinette.
"Um, I like history."
"Really?"
"Yeah, I was as surprised as you are when I figured out that I enjoyed learning about the past."
To be fair, Marinette realized she liked history when researching past Ladybug's but she couldn't tell him that without getting questions she couldn't answer without putting him in danger.
"My teacher was very happy when my grade started going up because apparently paying attention in class is a thing." Marinette joked. Luka laughed from the other end.
"What was it before." He asked. Marinette's face darkened.
"We do not speak of that." She deadpanned, making Luka chuckle.
Chat Noir perked his head up from the chair in which he was sitting on. He sent Marinette a question look and head tilt to which she waved off. He gave off a cat screech that Marinette prayed Luka didn't hear.
Unfortunately, he did and made a confused expression. "What was that? Was that like a stray cat?" He asked. Marinette nodded quickly, throwing Chat a look.
"Yep, we have a couple strays that roam around. I'm not sure why though." She said quickly. Chat Noir hissed. Marinette kept her smile up through.
"That's strange. Rarely do cats climb up so high." Luka commented.
"I know. This one's quite annoying though." Another cat yowl. This time it was accompanied by a dull thud. Marinette's eyes went wide and she spun around to face Chat Noir with a frown on his face crouched onto the railing. Her blue eyes narrowed as she spotted the potted plant on the ground. Luckily, it was plastic, because god knows Marinette even has time to breath let alone keep a plant alive. "What did you do." She demanded. Chat Noir stared defiantly at her. Marinette rubbed her temples and brought the phone closer. "I don't think I'm a fan of cats right now." She said exasperated.
"Uhhhh." Luka droned but Marinette didn't have time to respond since she was sprinting back down to her room with a screeching cat on her heels, er tail?
"I don't know either." She slammed the trap door closed.
Unsurprisingly, it swung open with a rather angry looking Chat Noir sticking his head into her room. He hissed loudly at Marinette. Luka asked a question but she couldn't really pay attention to it. She was a bit busy trying to keep her phone away from Chat Noir who was swatting at it. "Can I call you back." Marinette asked, getting more and more exasperated. Luka nodded on the call and waved goodbye before Marinette ended the call.
Chat Noir pounced onto her bed, launching a pillow off in doing so. "You have some explaining to do." Marinete reprimanded. Chat Noir crossed his arms.
"I'm not a stray." He said shortly. Marinette rolled her eyes.
"You threw my plant onto the ground. You better know how lucky you are that it was just fake." Marinette scolded him, pointing her finger at his chest. Chat huffed and turned away, arms crossed over his chest.
What a drama queen. Marinette sighed and leaned back onto her pillow, possibly more aggressively than she needed to and clicked open her phone. She logged onto instagram, getting a notification that Alya had posted something. That's when she felt something wrap around her waist.
Looking down, Marinette was agaped to see Chat Noir's tail curled around her. He clearly didn't notice as he was still turned away throwing a hissy fit at… whatever. She had no idea Chat Noir could move his tail, at least not in this way.
Decidedly, Marinette searched online what it meant when a cat wrapped their tail around you. Apparently, it meant they enjoyed your company and was basically giving you a hug. It was a cat's way of showing that they loved their owner. Marinette's blue eyes flickered to the cat in question. Even though he was 'mad' at her, he still wanted to be close and be around her, if even subconsciously.
"Hey Chat." She asked after a couple minutes. The blonde turned to look at her, doing the childish thing of still acting mad. "This was subconsciously right?" The girl pointed to the tail curled around her waist.
Chat Noir's eyes bulged and he almost leapt into the air. "Oh my god! I'm sorry! I- I didn't know that could happen! I didn't, I don't know how that did happen. Oh my god." Chat rambled, eerily sounding like Marinette herself. The black-haired girl chuckled at the superhero's frazzled speech.
"You're okay. I'm fine with it. I mean, according to the internet it means you're giving me a hug." She said, but it did nothing to diminish the red stain on his cheeks.
"Sorry." He mumbled again. Marinette once more brushed it off. She spread out her arms and nodded her head to get him to come closer and snuggled into her side. He complied and she wrapped her arms around him.
"See this is a human hug." She teased him, earning a glare from the cat.
Their breathing was the only noise in the room and not even before 5 minutes had passed, synced up. And somewhere along the line, a red blush also appeared on Marinette's face and the thought of this becoming normal...well that entered her mind too.