This follows on directly from Day 4 - Croissant Murder but can be read as a stand alone piece


Day 5 – Yarning For You

"Marinette! Can you come upstairs for a moment please?" Sabine called down from the corridor leading up to their home. Marinette was lucky she'd heard her mother to be honest, as usually, they kept the door which connected their home to the shop front closed during business hours. But it was a particularly warm day and they had opened the side door as well as the connecting door to help create a little cross breeze with the bakery entrance during her weekly after-school shift.

Gesturing to one of the college students her parents employed to take over the register for her, she made her way up to the apartment to find the living space completely deserted. "Maman?" she called.

"Up here," came her answer from above her and raising an eyebrow Marinette made her way up to her own bedroom to see what her mother was doing in there. As soon as her head breached the open space into the room, her eyes widened at the utter chaos surrounding her.

The room was a mess of unravelled yarn. A quick glance at her supply basket told her that every single ball she owned for knitting and crochet was currently tangled across her floor and furniture. And in amongst it all, there was a very large, very colourful lump. The lump was tangled up with blond hair and black ears sticking out from the strings wound around them and a pair of deep green eyes blinking at her sheepishly.

"Oh for the love of-" she said, bringing her hand up to slap against her forehead in exasperation, "You really do destroy everything you touch don't you? Get up, will you? You are so going to be the one tidying up here, you know that?"

He glanced up uncertainly at her mother, who she finally noticed was standing over Chat Noir's cross-legged form, hands on hips, remaining still and unmoving. She had a stern expression on her face, a look somewhere between annoyance and disappointment and Chat's ears drooped flat against his hair as his chin dropped to touch his chest. Marinette's heart went out to him at that moment despite her irritation at the disarray of her room.

And then her mother snorted. It was a long snort, as she desperately tried to hold it in and continue pretending to be angry, but it was already too late and it quickly developed into a full-bellied laugh. Her hands came away from her hips to hold herself around the middle and she bent over a little as she laughed while Chat's eyes just widened and he lifted his head to look back at her in utter disbelief for a moment before he started to laugh as well.

"Do I even want-" -laughing- "-w-want to know why you-" -more laughing- "-have a superhero in your room?" Sabine managed to say before going into another giggling fit along with Chat which lasted quite a while before they both finally started to calm down and breath normally again.

"I caught him drooling over pastries the other day," Marinette said, smiling a little herself too, "so I told him he could always come here if he's desperate for sweet foods. I promised to leave my skylight open for anytime he's hungry."

Chat looked over at her, her green eyes sparkling with humour now that the most awkward moment had passed. "I came in but you weren't here. I was just going to wait quietly, I swear, but then I saw the basket and couldn't help myself-" -he turned back to Sabine again- "-and when I heard you coming up, I tried to leave, but...well..." He lifted his arms to demonstrate how thoroughly stuck he was.

One arm lifted without much difficulty but it was tangled in at least a half a dozen colours of yarn all of which linked to his opposite arm as well, very loosely tying them together. The other arm - the right one - however, refused to lift very high at all because most of the pieces (and there was over twice as many as his left) were wrapped much tighter and also looped over his legs, which she now noticed he had crossed more out of necessity than comfort. Even his tail was swatting back and forth awkwardly due to being confined against his upper back.

"I'll get some scissors dear," Sabine said, giggling, "I'm sorry but I don't think we can save all of it and still get him untangled."

"It's okay Maman," she replied with a snicker of her own.

"I'll buy you more. I'll replace everything I've ruined. Sorry."

"Thanks, Chat. Yarn isn't exactly expensive but there were a lot of balls in that basket. It all adds up. Maman?" she added, turning to look at her mother before she finished descending the staircase, "can you bring us up something sweet to eat, please? It's what he's here for after all." Her mother nodded, a smile still adorning her face.

"It's not all I'm here for," Chat said as Sabine disappeared into the room below, "I like the company too, Princess."