"I had a dream

I got everything I wanted

Not what you'd think

And if I'm being honest

It might have been a nightmare..."

Marinette is kissing Adrien, and it is heaven. The second he told her he loved her, all the jittery self-conscious panic she felt around him dissolved into warm fizz in her heart, which is now close to bursting with joy. He's holding her hand, his other is hand on her arm, pulling her closer. He's wearing the beret she made for him – the one that somehow made him realize that he loved her. She can't believe this is real, and yet it has to be. She can hear her friends cheering behind her, feel the warmth of his lips on hers, smell the heat of the sun on his skin, and yet she's so dizzy with happiness it feels like she's falling, falling...

...she is falling, cold air whipping her face, dropping down towards water, angling her red-shod feet to land on a floating bus just as his voice shouts -

"Now you're breaking more than my heart, Marinette!"

Ice seizes her gut, and she glances back towards him –only to see her partner, akumatized. "What?!" she yelps, and lands badly on the bus, just barely staying out of the water. "What did you call me?"

He stands over her, spreading his arms. "Give me a hug... Marinette!"

The venom in his voice knocks the breath out of her, almost pinning her to the spot, but survival instinct kicks in when he tries to cataclysm her. She jumps away, leaping frantically from car to car, but he's gaining on her, he's been here a long time and he knows all the paths and short cuts over the water and she can't figure out how he knows, how does he know her, how did this happen, he's coming, he's going to destroy her and then himself and everything that's left, which is almost nothing, she can't let him do it but she doesn't know what to do, Bunnix is gone and she can't escape and he's gaining on her, he's coming, he's THERE-

Everything went dark.

"Marinette!"

She gasped, suddenly hot and sweaty in her suit – no, not her suit –

"Marinette! Wake up! Marinette!"

Tikki! She must have detransformed, and now she was tied up, something smothering her, blocking her vision –

"Marinette, it's just the pillow! Calm down and breathe! It was a dream, Marinette!"

...A dream?

Marinette forced herself to stop moving and focus on what she could feel. Blankets damp with sweat tangled around her limbs. Hair in her mouth and a large, soft pressure on her face. She took three deep breaths through the soft thing. The air was hot, but at least she was breathing. Trying not to panic again, she began to wiggle her arms out of the blankets until her hands were free. When she pushed away her cat pillow, wiping the hair away from her face, the full moon shone down through her skylight, almost blinding her. She was breathing too fast. She sat up, pulling her knees to her chest, and scanned the bedroom, making mental lists of the objects she could see and feel while she forced shaky breaths into her lungs. Her brain refused to count, so she held each breath for as long as she could before blowing the air slowly out through tightly pursed lips. Tikki nuzzled her hands, clutched tight over her knees. She was stroking Marinette's fingers with her tiny paws and murmuring soft reassurances that barely registered.

As memories of where she was trickled back into her consciousness, details of the nightmare fell away, like the black dust of a cataclysmed object.

Or person.

Don't think of that don't think of that think of now here this room

A shadow passed over the moon and she looked up -

- to see the object of her nightmare staring down at her.

Marinette let out a strangled cry. The creature jumped back, eyes like green headlights, pupils shrinking to tiny slits, and she realized it was Chat Noir, his shiny black suit reflecting the moonlight. He was saying something, but she couldn't hear it through the glass and over the sound of her own harsh breathing.

Tikki, who had retreated to the shadows behind her, whispered: "Go talk to him! It'll take your mind off the nightmare."

Marinette stared at Chat Noir's silhouette against the moon for a few more seconds before Tikki's words kick-started some more rational reflex. She felt her hand open the skylight.

"- sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to scare you Marinette!" His voice was nervous.

Marinette stood on her bed. The cool night air hit her sweat-sticky skin and she shivered. She said nothing.

Chat Noir looked at her uncertainly. "I'll, um, I'll go," he stammered.

"No!"

The shout echoed off the roofs, and making them both jump. Chat Noir stared at her for a second. Then his eyes travelled down her arms to where she'd grabbed his hand with both of her own. She was squeezing it so tightly it was hurting her.

Marinette snatched her hands away from his jerkily, mumbling an apology. Chat Noir just stared at her for a long moment. She looked away. She knew she should say something, laugh it off, make an excuse, but her brain was still half-frozen in panic and all she could think about was that she didn't want him to leave.

"Are you..." He reached out slowly, so as not to startle her, and the pad of his thumb brushed her cheekbone. It came away wet. "Are you crying?"

His fingertips lined her jaw, tilting her face gently to meet his eyes. Green sclera, black pupils dilated with worry. Nothing white or blue about him, just her partner, alive and well and unakumatized, visibly concerned about her.

Marinette felt the lump rise once more in her throat, and before she could stop herself, she burst into tears.

She buried her face in her hands, horrified, but before she could apologize she felt him pulling her forward, and then somehow he was engulfing her in a tight hug. She hesitated no more than a second before throwing her arms around him, too. Chat Noir held her close, cupping her head with one hand while rubbing soothing circles into her back with the other, whispering soft words to the crown of her head as she sobbed helplessly onto his suit.

How long they stayed like that, neither of them knew. In the relative quiet of the Parisian night, time suspended itself, and Marinette allowed herself to forget about secret identities just long enough to cry her heart out in her best friend's arms.

When her sobs had run themselves down to sniffles, his voice brought her back to the present.

"Did you have a nightmare?"

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak without setting the tears off again.

"Wanna talk about it?"

She shook her head. She really needed to grab a tissue, but she didn't want to let go of him just yet.

Seeming to read her mind (or maybe just noticing the increase in sniffles), Chat Noir unzipped one of his pockets and took out the packet of tissues he always kept on hand for whenever Monsieur Ramier got akumatized. She unwrapped her arms from around his waist – he was sitting at the edge of her skylight, his feet dangling over her bed – and took them gratefully, although she didn't move from where she stood right in front of him. Noticing the wet patch of her tears on the front of his not-quite-waterproof suit, she took out another tissue and pushed it against his chest.

"Sorry, I got your suit wet," she croaked.

He let out a low chuckle and took the tissue from her. "It's okay," he said. "I'm sorry I scared you."

"You didn't... I mean, you did, but I was already scared. I'm... thank you for being here. I don't know why you were, but..."

It occurred to her then that she had no idea why Chat Noir was there in the first place. A tiny needle of fear pricked her gut as several unlikely possibilities ran through her mind: Akuma? Hawkmoth? Did he figure out I'm Ladybug?

She didn't have to wonder long.

"To be honest, I was having trouble sleeping, and... well, something felt wrong. I guess I felt like checking up on you." She looked up at him in surprise, just in time to see him hide his embarassment behind a cheeky grin and a wink. "Cats have a sixth sense, you know."

Marinette found herself smiling for the first time since she'd woken up.

"The only sixth sense you've got is one for the worst possible timing," she joked, poking him in the side. "Do you have any idea how scary is was, looking up from my bed and seeing those glowy green eyes?" She wasn't about to admit that it had been the moonlight turning his suit white that had scared her. That would take more explaining than she was willing to get into right now.

He pouted. "I said I was sorry."

"I know, Chat Noir, I'm teasing," she reassured him. "Though I'm not sure about this whole sixth sense thing." If a sixth sense did exist between them, Marinette was willing to bet it had to do with their bond as superheroes. Better not to let him think too hard about it while she was just Marinette.

"If it wasn't a sixth sense, then explain to me why I felt the need to check up on you?"

Marinette tapped her chin, pretending to think about it. "I dunno, maybe you missed me?"

The surprise on Chat Noir's face was comical. "I didn't know you could be such a tease, Marinette Dupain-Cheng!" He smirked. "As it happens, I do care about you. You're my friend, and all my friends are very important to me."

How can he say such sweet things in such an annoying way? She wondered.

"Half of me wants to hug you and the other half wants to punch you," she told him.

He nodded solemnly. "I get that a lot. I'll accept both."

"You'd accept me punching you?"

"You'd probably miss, Mademoiselle Maladroite."

She narrowed her eyes at him, but she was still feeling too vulnerable to attempt to punch (even jokingly) the boy who had just brought her back from the nightmare. He must have seen some of that vulnerability in her eyes, because his gaze softened, and he smiled at her.

"At least tomorrow's Sunday, right? You can sleep in?"

"We're open Sunday mornings," Marinette groaned. She ducked down just far enough to see her alarm clock. It was 2:35AM. She sighed. "I have to get up at four to get the bread ready with my dad," she explained. "If I go back to sleep now, it's going to be way harder to get up later."

"That's rough, buddy," he said, and Marinette scowled at him.

"Did you just..?"

"Want me to stay up with you?"

Marinette blinked. "Don't you want to go back to sleep now you know I'm okay?"

Chat Noir looked at her, and as well as she knew him, it occurred to her that green sclera were far more difficult to read than human eyes. "Are you really okay, though?"

Maybe it was the weird hour, but Marinette couldn't bring herself to lie to him. "I guess... I'd be okay if you stayed," she admitted, not looking at him. Tikki was a great help usually, but Marinette knew from experience that the dream would haunt her until their next patrol. Or until she'd spent an hour or two forgetting it with him. It probably wouldn't hurt to do that as Marinette.

"Okay, fine," she said. "But we can't make too much noise, and my parents cannot find you here. As soon as my alarm goes, so do you."

Chat Noir's eyes danced in amusement, and Marinette felt a flush of embarassment. Why couldn't she just act grateful for his presence? He was doing her a favour, and she was treating him like a stray she was indulging by letting him in.

It's his fault for being so annoying about it, said a petulant voice in her head.

He cut through her inner quarrel.

"Shall we hang out inside or outside?"

"Outside," she said immediately. "Less chance of waking my parents. Here, I'll get us something to sit on."

Five minutes and much back and forth between her room and the roof later, they were sitting side by side on a blanket and cushions with their backs against the wall and a plate of cookies between them (generously donated by Tikki), looking out over the Place des Vosges. What they could see of it, anyway. There had been a tense moment when he'd remarked that Ladybug sometimes brought the same picnic blanket to patrol, and she'd had to shrug it off and say they were a pretty common brand, but he hadn't pushed it, thankfully.

"Do you get nightmares a lot?" he asked after they'd demolished most of the cookies.

Marinette shook her head. "It's only started happening recently, and it's always the same one."

"Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

Marinette shook her head. "It's not like I can remember much of it, anyway. It's frustrating, because maybe if I did remember, I'd be able to process whatever it is it's trying to tell me and be done with it."

"Huh," he said. "That's weird. I've been getting dreams like that, too. Like some weird repressed memory thing."

"Really?"

"Yeah, except it's not always a nightmare. Sometimes it feels like a really good dream, but when I wake up, all I remember is the feeling I had in it. And... and when I remembe who and where I am... I feel this weird, deep sadness, even though my life is better now that it's ever been before."

He turned to her then, and his eyes took on that same inscrutable quality as before.

Marinette looked away. "It's always a nightmare for me," she said quietly. "But it always starts as a nice dream. I don't remember what happens in it, just that it's good. Amazing, even. But then, suddenly..."

"It all falls apart," he finished.

Marinette glanced up and away again just as quickly. The questions in his eyes scared her.

"Stupid brains trying to make us think about our feelings and stuff," she muttered, and he laughed, which was what she'd intended. "They're like those wise old men in fairy tales who hand out weird metaphores about the meaning of life," she continued. "Why can't you just tell me what it is you need me to know? I don't have time to work out your riddles, subconscious brain!"

"Hey, be nice to your brain," he said, reaching out to ruffle her hair. His hand lingered, and she let her head fall to his shoulder. "It's a good brain. It works hard."

"Are you kidding me? My brain can barely get me to school on time. It's constantly forgetting things that are really important, like assigments that are due or promises I've made! It requires way more sleep than most people's brains, but only at the least appropriate times, like in class, or – did I ever tell you I fell asleep in the cinema once?"

"Your brain remembers everyone's birthdays, favourite foods and colours, and it always knows exactly what to say to make someone feel better," he countered. Marinette barely had time to wonder how Chat Noir knew all these things about her before he continued: "Your brain produces incredible designs – I saw that magazine feature with your hat, by the way, and I heard you designed an album cover for Jagged Effing Stone. And you make your own clothes. You're, what, fourteen or fifteen? And you're already more talented than a lot of the adults I know."

Part of Marinette's brain wondered, not for the first time, if Chat Noir knew her in real life.

The rest of it was blushing furiously.

"That's just because I get obsessed about stuff and forget to eat and sleep sometimes," she muttered, keeping her head on his shoulder and hoping the fairy lights would be too dim for him to see how red her face was.

"That's a superpower, Marinette," Chat Noir insisted. "But it's like any superpower, there are downsides. You just have to learn how to deal with them." He hesitated, then went on: "I hyperfixate too, you know."

"You do?" She craned her neck, trying to look up at him without taking her head off his shoulder. It felt awkward and uncomfortable, so she gave up.

"Yeah, but I don't have any productive hobbies like you," he said. "I'm more likely to get lost in a video game or an anime. I'd forget to sleep if I didn't put a timer and several alarms on my phone."

"That... kinda feels like cheating," Marinette admitted. "I feel like I should be able to manage without. Like it's not self-discipline if I'm using my phone as a crutch."

"It's not a crutch, it's a tool," he insisted. "Self-discipline is still necessary to obey the alarms, switch off and get ready for bed. I need at least three alarms to be able to do that because I have so much trouble switching from anime mode to sleep mode. Or any other mode, really."

"When you put it like that, I guess..."

They sat in silence for a while. At some point during their conversation, Chat Noir's arm had settled around her shoulders, and he was playing with her hair absentmindedly. The now-empty plate of cookies had been pushed aside, and the warmth of his body against her side was comforting in the cool of the night.

Marinette found later that she couldn't remember what else they talked about, just that it was easy. It reminded her that even though she had no idea who he was behind the mask, Chat Noir was the one person she was closest to, apart from maybe Tikki. As much as Marinette loved and appreciated Alya, she was always on, always competent, always energetic, while still being the down-to-earth bestie who talked Marinette out of her thought spirals and texted her to make sure she was up for school. There was something amazing about Alya that made Marinette feel a little inferior, through no fault of Alya's – just because she seemed to be so much more on top of her life, whereas Marinette was constantly struggling.

Alya doesn't moonlight as a superhero, Tikki would say.

She could have, though, and that was what hurt in Marinette's moments of self-doubt. Sometimes she wondered if she'd been right in her first instinct to give the Ladybug earrings to Alya. Maybe she should have been more direct in presenting them to her. She'd been incredible as Rena Rouge, after all. Only the knowledge that Master Fu had chosen her, Marinette, and nobody else, kept her from spiralling completely in those moments.

So it was immensely comforting to know that her strong, fearless, happy-go-lucky partner was also secretly struggling with such silly things as remembering to eat and sleep.

A click from the room below them stopped their conversation in its tracks.

"Marinette?"

Oh crap! Chat Noir scrambled up in a panic, snatching his warmth away from her, and Marinette wondered if he'd ever get over the lingering fear of her father instilled in him by the Weredad incident.

She grabbed his hand and motioned for him to sit still and be quiet.

"I'm up here, Papa," she said, turning away from Chat Noir and peering down through the skylight. Her phone was on, vibrating next to her pillow, and she saw Tikki flit over discreetly to swipe it off.

"Up already?" Tom's eyebrows shot up. "Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?"

"Ha, ha." She stuck her tongue out at him and he chuckled. "You use the bathroom first, I'll be down in about twenty minutes."

"Alright sweetie."

When he'd closed the trap door to her bedroom, Marinette turned back to see Chat Noir watching her with something between admiration and wariness.

"You're used to this, aren't you?" he said.

"Used to what?"

"Hiding things from your parents."

Oh CRAP.

"Only since a certain cat started visiting me," she retorted, poking him in the ribs. "Now get out of here before I have to do it again!"

If the unease his words had woken in her showed on her face, Chat Noir didn't mention it. Together they stood and stretched, noticing the tiniest hint of dawn peeking over the eastern horizon.

Then, without warning, he hugged her again.

"Thanks for letting me stay," he murmured into her ear.

Marinette let out a surprised laugh. "You're the one who cheered me up after my nightmare," she said. "I should be thanking you."

"I needed the company as much as you did," he said, pulling back to look at her fondly. She smiled at him.

"Anytime," she said, and meant it.

Later, she noticed that for the first time since she'd starting having the nightmare, it hadn't ruined her day. In fact, despite the early morning, the hard, hot kitchen work, and the boredom of being grounded, today was the best day she'd had in weeks. She spent the day humming the same refrain, a song she'd heard on one of Luka's playlists:

"I had a dream

I got everything I wanted

But when I wake up I see

You with me"