Anything For a Friend : A Miraculous Ladybug Fanfic

Chapter 7

[Text From: Marinette Dupain-Cheng @ 11:03 PM]
Hope you're all right! Sorry I didn't get to meet your father after all.

Chat Noir didn't get text messages from his normal phone on his super hero communicator, so Chat Noir didn't get that text until much later in the evening. At the time that text was sent, he was traipsing about the rooftops of Paris, trying to clear his head.

He had just finished fighting with Ladybug only an hour or so ago--their Miraculous had beeped, they'd gone separate ways, and the day was saved. True, the Mayor's party had been ruined, but otherwise everything was back to normal. Exactly the way things were before an akuma had attacked.

Except Chat Noir's mind was full of blue eyes and fingers brushing his hair out of his face. Except Chat Noir had been almost unaware of Ladybug smiling at him and touching his arm right before they had separated. Except Chat Noir was on the roof of the building next to Marinette's bakery.

He wasn't sure what he was doing there, entirely. What could he say to her as Chat that he couldn't as Adrien? Marinette knew Adrien, trusted him, was comfortable enough with him to tidy his hair--and yet Adrien needed the mask to feel himself around her. She'd liked him as Chat once, been willing to work with him without freezing or laughing nervously. Whatever problems she had with Adrien didn't exist when he wore a mask.

She was up on her roof, leaning against the small fence and clutching a mug of something steaming. She didn't know he was there, and so he contented himself with watching. Marinette pulled out her phone, the glow of its screen illuminating her face, and checked her messages--probably waiting for Adrien to text her back and confirm that he hadn't been injured by Midusa. She sighed heavily, and Chat sighed with her.

Marinette froze, and turned her head to look in his direction. Chat Noir was hidden in the shadow of a chimney, so he knew she couldn't see him, but somehow she'd sensed his movement all the same. She kept squinting in his general direction, and he could feel his heart rate going up under her stare.

"What am I, a peeping tom?" he asked himself quietly with a laugh. "I'll just go say hi."

He scampered from his hiding spot into the light of the moon and leapt over to Marinette's position on her roof. Despite having apparently appeared out of nowhere, she seemed unsurprised to see him. Marinette was full of surprises, wasn't she?

"Chat Noir," she greeted him, taking a sip of her drink. "I thought I heard an alley cat creeping about."

"Alley cat? You have me all wrong Pri--" he stopped short, his tongue gluing itself to the roof of his mouth as he realized that Adrien called Marinette 'Princess' these days and to borrow the pet name now would be more than a little suspicious. He recovered quickly, pressing on with "Pretty girl! I'm a house cat, you see. Perfectly harmless to anyone who'll give me a bowl of milk and a scratch behind the ears."

Marinette laughed, and pushed his shoulder to prevent him from getting too close, but it was a playful thing. "You're really committed to the whole cat thing, huh?" she asked, smiling softly at him. "I almost wonder whose idea the bell was."

Chat Noir grinned, leaning close in the hopes that she might not push him away again, and said, "Ladybug's, of course. She wanted to know where I was at all times."

She snorted again, and turned to face Paris. She took a sip of her drink and looked at him from the corner of her eyes, watching him like a hawk. He turned toward Paris as well, leaning against the fence so close to her that he could almost touch her--but he didn't. Instead, he watched the lights twinkle in the middle of the night, their glow reflecting off of some low hanging clouds in the night sky. There weren't stars in Paris, but the city was always alight, and in that he took solace.