Adrien's next day at school had been just as short, his bodyguard with him wherever he was now (he wouldn't exactly follow him into a cubicle but he did now enter the school bathrooms with him). Adrien was glad there weren't going to be any akuma attacks because he wasn't sure how he would get away from him if there were. He really did appreciate the protection the Gorilla was giving him, especially knowing that he could have walked away from his job after finding out what had been done by his employer. He didn't feel as suffocated by it all as he thought he might as he could appreciate how much of a magnifying glass he was now under as 'the son of Hawkmoth'. He had tried to keep his usual schedule running as normal even though his father wasn't there to enforce it, partly to distract himself from the weight of what was happening, and partly to keep up appearances that he was who he had always been and was not another supervillain in the making. But he had found himself really quite disengaged in whatever task was at hand. He could talk to his friends pretty much without issue (even if Marinette would freeze up on him or stumble on her words), but the topics of classes were going in one ear and out of the other, and his extra tutoring in piano and Chinese that day more or less happened on autopilot.
Instead, all he was doing was thinking about Ladybug. Well, he was thinking about what she had shared with him the previous night. It had never really occurred to him that their dynamic could change if they took off their masks, and he had realized that he had always just assumed that they would carry on as usual, only with different names to call each other by. The thought that the way they saw each other might change had only now started to take root, and it completely reoriented his thinking on the matter. What had been an insatiable desire for the knowledge of true identities suddenly had an element of uncertainty introduced to it and he had spent all day thinking about it.
Having gotten back in from Chinese and eaten his dinner he had retired to his room "for the night". Plagg got a rough outline of his thoughts from throughout the day and a destination before being called into the ring on Adrien's hand. Out the window they went again.
…
He had known not too long into the day that he wanted to talk to Marinette about this again. Her presence two days before had really made him feel better and he was hoping she might be able to help him process this next train of thought a little. He had really wanted to turn and ask her before leaving the school, but that wasn't exactly a possibility as Adrien and his bodyguard's unrelenting presence made a transformation near impossible too. Sometime during his piano lesson, hitting several off-key notes and earning the chastisement of his tutor, he had finally decided that he was going to turn up on her rooftop this evening and hope to find her.
As he approached the corner where her house and family's bakery were located he found himself delighted to see that the light was on in what he knew to be her room. 'She's in,' he thought to himself, clambering up to her roof and tapping on the trapdoor. He jumped over and took a seat in the beach chair she had up there, wondering how she would take his appearance.
"Cat, is that you?" he heard her call as she pushed open the trapdoor. Well, there wasn't going to be an element of surprise then.
"How did you know?" he asked, realizing she was in her pajamas. It must have been later than he had realized. "Oh, I didn't wake you did I? I mean, your light was on…"
"There is literally no-one else who would come to see me via the roof," she explained, "and no, I just wanted to have a comfort evening". She had reached back in and pulled up a blanket. It wasn't cold, but a blanket would aid a comfortable evening. "Would you like one?" she asked, as she noticed him assessing the covering.
"Sure," he replied. He didn't really need one since the suit kept him at a more or less comfortable temperature whatever the circumstance, but the idea of settling in for a while would be underscored by taking one. Plus it did look cozy.
"Here you go," she said, throwing another one to him, "I hope you don't mind pink." He gawked at it jokingly before unfolding it & draping it over the lower half of his body. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" she enquired of him, placing a cushion on the floor and taking a seat on it in front of him, her back leant against the small wall alongside the beach chair, blanket wrapped around her fully up to her chin.
"Where are my manners," he suddenly exclaimed, rising and gesturing towards the chair.
"Don't be silly," she declined, "I'm quite comfortable here". Taking a moment to consider this he returned to his seated position, arranging the blanket once more.
"Am I not allowed to visit you just because I feel like it, Princess?" he suggested, hand on heart and feigning hurt.
"Of course you would be, but you normally come to me for a reason," she countered, "and I know this is an important week for you."
"Fair enough," he admitted, "but I do enjoy your company."
"Well," she said, standing back up, "If you're going to be here for a while how does a hot chocolate sound?"
"Wonderful, but I really shouldn't…" he tried to say.
"Is the 'irresistible' Cat Noir worried about his figure?" Marinette teased, using air-quotes, oblivious to the boy underneath who had always lived under a somewhat regimented meal plan.
"Ha ha, no," he laughed, quickly disputing her, "in fact I'll take two!" he tried, worried he was overcompensating.
"That would be greedy," she informed him, "but I can use one of our bigger mugs." With that she disappeared back down the trapdoor as Cat considered the position he was in – wrapped in a blanket, sharing a rooftop hiding spot with a girl he was coming to consider a close friend. It all seemed a little more intimate than he had had in mind coming over, but he was warmed (even without the impending hot chocolate, he thought) that she was this comfortable with him. And that bought him back to thinking about what he wanted to talk to her about.
A few minutes later she returned with a couple of thermos flasks, his noticeably bigger than hers – her dad's perhaps, he wondered – and a couple of baguettes. Noting the puzzled look on Cat's face she explained, "look, it's not like I get to choose which baked goods haven't sold at the end of the day!" He laughed at that, and she went on, "it shouldn't surprise anyone that all the sweet foods get sold out first, so no pain au chocolat or macaroons today." He snickered some more and she glared at him, "do you want one or not?!"
"Yes, yes, thank you," he said, "it's purr-fect."
"I should have known you wouldn't last ten minutes without a pun," she teased him, "though you didn't make a single one at Notre Dame, so I take it you're feeling more positive today?"
She passed him one of the baguettes before handing him the oversized thermos. He wasn't sure he would actually drink that much hot chocolate but he'd made his bed and now he had to lie in it. "Yes, I was cat-astrophically off my game the other day."
"Well don't think you have to make up for it now!" she chided him, playfully.
"That's a shame, I had some baking puns all bread-y to share with you," he joked.
"Please don't!" she implored him, placing her face in her palm, a smile poking through underneath.
"Ok, ok," he yielded, breaking the baguette in half and taking a bite. "This is good!"
"I know," she agreed, "but I'm sure you didn't come here so that you could compliment my parents' culinary skills. I take it you're still having trouble thinking about yours and Ladybug's decision?"
"You see right through me," he admitted. "But I don't mean to burden you, you did say you were wanting a comfort evening – are you still having your own heart issues?"
She was, of course, but there was no way for her to tell him that. Her heart and mind had been so occupied with thinking about it that she didn't really have the wherewithal to make something up to cover for herself either. "No, you don't have to worry about me," she lied, "I was just looking forward to a night off." She didn't like misleading him and the last conversation they had had had affected her, but she hoped she could get through this one again without risking him figuring her out. "And you aren't burdening me, silly kitty." She took a sip of her hot chocolate and Cat suddenly remembered his own.
"Ouch!" he cried, burning his mouth on the still steaming drink, "how can you drink it this hot?"
"Aren't you supposed to be the super one who can handle things us mere mortals can't?" she said, poking fun at him once more.
"I'm beginning to wonder if you weren't one of the people Ladybug gave another miraculous too," he joked, not noticing the stiffness that her body suddenly developed underneath her blanket. She was glad only her head and arms were uncovered, but looked away with a fake laugh and hoped that he didn't notice anything else. "It's a really nice blend," he said, already shifting topics and saving her from having to come up with a way to try and rebut his comment.
"Yeah, Dupain-Cheng secret recipe," she claimed, now able to return to a relaxed position. This might be harder than she had thought.
"I, erm… thank you for talking with me the other day, Princess,", Cat shared, managing to take proper sips of the drink now.
"I don't think I did much talking, Cat," she claimed.
"Well you were an excellent listener, and what you had to say really helped," he encouraged her.
"Thank you, glad I could help," she told him, smiling sincerely.
"It's been a lot to process since then, but I found myself thinking about something else." He wanted to be careful not to give away what had come out of a private conversation between Ladybug and 'Adrien', since it wouldn't be fair to share anything about Ladybug without her permission. He thought about how to explain his recent reflections on what would be the realities of sharing identities. "What if the dynamic Ladybug and I have changes?"
That likelihood seemed obvious to Marinette, so the question left her unsure of what he was thinking. "You mean," she ventured, "you're worried things will be different if you know who each other is?"
"Yeah," he confirmed. "I realized that I'd always thought we'd go on as before, I'd just get to call her by her real name."
Cat was an eternal optimist she remembered, but it seemed a bit naïve to her. "You didn't think things would change?" she asked, her tone communicating that she considered that position unlikely.
"I guess I hadn't ever properly thought about it," he admitted. "I'm not sure why it would have to change, but what if it does?"
Marinette had to be careful not to betray an intimate understanding of these lines of thought. "Well, I can't see how they wouldn't change, Kitty. You'll suddenly learn a whole lot of new things about her, it could be like meeting a whole new person. Well, maybe a half new person."
"Yeah, I guess you're right. There are things we don't know about each other, because we've intentionally not shared about certain areas to protect our identities. I suppose she'll learn a bunch of new things about me too."
"Exactly," she agreed. "Is that what you're worried about?"
"Well," he started, rolling the thermos flask back and forth between his palms, as though suddenly nervous, "what if she doesn't like those things about me?"
"Cat, haven't you always wanted to share identities?!" Marinette asked him firmly, realizing that she shouldn't really know that but thinking she could probably argue it as relatively common knowledge.
"Well, yeah." He agreed, sheepishly.
"Are you now telling me that your scared to do so?!" She hadn't meant for him to, but he suddenly felt like he was in some sort of interrogation. She was finally coming around to learning who each other was and now he was the one who might prevent it?
"Alright, it doesn't sound good when you say it like that," he responded. "I've been doing a lot of reflecting is all."
"Well do you have some bad habits, or weird hobbies, or something else that you think she wouldn't like?" she probed, trying to understand where this was coming from.
"No!" he insisted. As best as he could tell all of his hobbies were high culture – even if they weren't hobbies he had exactly chosen for himself – and as for bad habits, anything remotely distasteful was disciplined out of him by now – he hadn't so much as bitten a finger nail in years.
"Then what are you worried about?" This conversation really was as much for her as it was for Cat. She understood her own misgivings about telling him who she was, but this sudden uncertainty in Cat Noir bothered her. She'd never known him to be apprehensive about telling Ladybug who he was and wondered what could be behind it.
"It's just…" he was crossing into a gray area again. Should he be telling her this? She'd handled everything they'd talked about so far really well so he could see little reason not to trust her, but he would still have to be careful. "I've met her – Ladybug – when I wasn't Cat Noir." He knew this was risky, that he had to make sure not to tell her too much.
"Oh." Marinette stopped. She hadn't known that, but she quickly reminded herself that her response had to be the response of not-Ladybug and pushed down all the questions that revelation had raised in her mind, trying to carry on 'naturally'. "And did something happen?"
"I can't really say without giving away too much about myself I'm afraid, but I guess I can say that I think I made her uncomfortable – I'm not sure she liked me." Sure, Ladybug had spoken kindly to him when she left last night, but the whole interaction had had an awkwardness to it. He didn't think there was any more he could explain without her picking up details that could give away who he was.
Marinette was aware of the clear possibility as well and told him, "you're right, don't say anything more, so I don't learn too much." She knew she had had to say that, but that extra bit of information just raised even more of her own questions – questions she couldn't just ask him without giving the game away. She had met a lot of people in her time as Ladybug and responses always varied – how many people had she felt uncomfortable around? How many people might have thought she felt that way when she actually didn't? In reality this information didn't do much to clue her in on who Cat Noir could be.
He looked at her. There wasn't really any more to say at the moment – what he had shared basically summed up all that had been on his mind.
"I'm not sure how to ask you more about this without finding out details, but maybe you misinterpreted her? Or maybe she was having a weird day?" She stopped coming up with possibilities there for fear of sounding like she was just making things up to help him feel better. These were, after all, the possibilities that she thought most likely, but she wouldn't be able to go into detail with him as to why. She couldn't think of many people who made her uncomfortable as Ladybug, save perhaps Gabriel Agreste, and he obviously wasn't him, so she didn't put any stock in the idea that Cat Noir could really turn out to be someone who made her uncomfortable.
"It's possible, I suppose," he agreed.
They sat in silence for a while, Marinette not really knowing what more she could say and hoping that the quiet was ok as space for him to think.
Just the suggestion had actually taken a huge weight off of him. The significance of what Ladybug had been processing could have just left her a bit off the night before, and for the first time since then he realized it was possible that the tension hadn't actually been anything to do with him. They had met a few times before last night, not that he would go into detail about how many times with Marinette, and he supposed their previous interactions had been varied too. Plus he had to be honest that if she was just an ordinary citizen when not Ladybug, then talking with a celebrity might throw her off balance as much as anyone else. He supposed he really could have misinterpreted her, just as much as she could have just been having an off night. Eventually, with a smile, he spoke up once more. "Thank you, Princess."
She nodded and after a moment asked, "did you really think you'd make her uncomfortable just by being you?"
"I really hadn't properly thought about any of this until now," he admitted again, "so I've not really known what to think. It's only now that it seems to be a real possibility that I find myself dealing with it for real. All the times I've imagined it with action figures I…" suddenly he stopped. How did he find himself talking so comfortably with her that he'd let something like that out?!
Marinette had spat out the drink she had just taken a sip of, coughing and then laughing at what Cat had let slip. She looked up at him and immediately started laughing again, him too embarrassed to say anything to try and take it back.
"You are never to repeat that, and I am never going to make reference to it again," he informed her, deeply red-faced, and tried to hide himself by taking a drink from the huge thermos.
"Sorry, Cat, that was just…" she started, still giggling to herself, "I don't know what to tell you… I didn't take you as the type to have action figures."
"I told you we're not talking about this," he tried. "I'm sure I can find something embarrassing about you that you'd rather I didn't bring up," he threatened playfully.
"Ok, ok," she complied. "But do you still feel you'd make her uncomfortable?"
"Well I suppose it's still possible" he shared, "but I think you've helped me see it's probably not what was going on. Thank you, Marinette, you've done it again."
"Done what?" she enquired.
"Eased this poor stray's heart," he said and winked.
She rolled her eyes at him, but she smiled.
