Chat Noir X Reader: The Muse

Chapter 29: Sacred and Profane Love

You didn't know where you were. You tried to look around, but what seemed to be a thick fog impeded you from seeing your surroundings. Muffled sounds reached your ears and there was a constant pressure against your eardrums, like you were underwater.

"Please," you almost didn't hear the man beg in front of you. You couldn't see his face thanks to the fog, and when he tried to speak again, his voice cut off, like a malfunctioning radio.

The dream changed, the previous gone as if blown away by a strong wind, and Chat appeared in front of you. His eyes were red, brimming with unshed tears. The loud noise of the airplane behind you filled the air, and the wind made your clothes ruffle around you. Final call for boarding, the woman kept saying. You tried to touch Chat one last time, to say goodbye, but he backed off, face scrunching up.

"I wish I had never met you." He said, turning his head away.

Your eyes snapped open and you sat upright on the chair. You looked around, expecting to see an airport, but was met by the early afternoon light reflecting on the furniture of your flat's living room. The open curtains allowed you to see the Parisian rooftops bathed in light outside. Your muscles relaxed and you passed a hand over your face. A dream.

You looked down at the table and sighed at seeing the damage you had done to the drawings in your sketchbook. They were all smudged now, thanks to your face. You let out a small, tired chuckle and scrubbed your cheeks, hoping to get rid of the graphite. Well, at least you hadn't drooled all over the pages.

You got up with a groan and stretched, blaming yesterday events for leaving you so exhausted. After assuring a very drunk Julien and a quite inebriated Marinette had made it home safely, you had been able to go back to your flat. When your head finally rested on the comfort of your pillow, it was already way past 4 am.

But although you had closed your eyes, hoping for a peaceful night, your subconscious had other plans and decided to provide you with a night filled with dreams of spiders and blonde angels. And now these two last nightmares were the cherry on top.

You couldn't understand the first one; you had never had a dream like that. It felt so real, but at the same time it seemed that there was a veil that stopped you from seeing everything. The dream held no meaning to you, so you would let it remain on the outskirts of your thoughts until you could try to make sense of it.

But the second one, oh the second one... There was no mistaking it. You already knew Julien's words about Luan had impacted you, but it seemed that your mind wanted to remind you of how much it had.

You leaned a little on the table and rearranged the bouquet Julien had given you, which was now inside a vase filled with water. Would Chat react the way Julien had when you had to leave? You had never really talked to him about your departure, but you were postponing the inevitable. France's law had changed a lot in the past years, and thanks to their strict international policy, you couldn't stay more even if you wanted to. It had already been difficult for you to get to Paris, and it would be impossible to stay longer.

You had to mentally prepare yourself for July, when you had to leave, but you didn't want to think about it. You didn't want to imagine having to leave this life behind, your friends, your muse... Chat was more than special to you now. You did love him, there was no other way of expressing what you felt. Just the utter of the word 'love' seemed to resonate with the mess that happened in your chest when he was around or in your thoughts.

And the others you would also leave behind, Marinette, Alya, Nino, Julien and... You swallowed dry and looked down at your sketchbook on the table, the next name stuck in your throat.