Blushing Miraculous

The Pictures on the Wall

The next day at school Adrien tried again to stay away from Marinette. Fortunately, he was successful this time. Unfortunately, he realized that he missed being around her. After the great time they had the night before, he was disappointed to think that they would never be able to talk like that in real life. Not when she was always so nervous around Adrien.

Right after school he had fencing practice. He usually did well in his bouts, but today he could barely focus and ended up losing most of them. He couldn't shake an uneasy feeling growing in his stomach. Maybe he had eaten too much yesterday.

"You seemed really distracted out there. What's going on?" Kagami asked him at the end of practice.

Adrien sighed. "I'm just not feeling like myself today."

"I'm sorry," Kagami said, grabbing his hand. "Do you think you're getting sick?"

"I don't know, maybe," he said.

"Why don't you go home and get some rest?" she suggested, leaning in and kissing his cheek.

"Yeah, I think I'll do that." He finished packing up his gear and waved goodbye to Kagami as he left.

By the time he got home, dinner was ready. He sat at the huge dining room table all alone, picking at his food. His stomach still wasn't feeling good.

Back in his room he started on his homework but had to stop and get up.

"What's going on, kid?" Plagg asked, noticing that he was acting strange.

"My stomach is all upset. I think I ate too much yesterday."

"Well that's what you get for not saving any food for me!" Plagg said unapologetically.

"You didn't save any food for me the night before," Adrien argued.

"Hey, that was your own fault. Don't blame me for the fact that you were too busy moping about Marinette."

"I wasn't moping," Adrien mumbled.

"Yeah, sure kid," Plagg said.

Adrien sighed. "I'm sorry, you're right. I should have saved some food for you. "

"It's okay, you can make it up to me by getting more food tonight!"

"What?" Adrien asked incredulously. "We're not going over there again."

"Oh, come on. You know you want to go see her."

"No I don't, I just like talking to her," he mumbled.

"Same difference," the kwami replied.

Adrien looked at him from the corner of his eye but didn't say anything.

"Just say the words," Plagg said teasingly.

Adrien let out a long exasperated sigh. "Plagg, claws out!"

"That's what I thought..." Plagg said as he was sucked into Adrien's ring.

Chat Noir hurried to Marinette's house. It was a little cool that evening and a light rain was falling. He landed on the roof and jumped down to the balcony. A second later Marinette opened the hatch.

"Come inside quick before you get soaked!" she said to him.

He happily hopped in after her, landing on her bed. She was already climbing down the steps to her room. He was about to follow her but got distracted by the collage of pictures hanging on the wall. About a third were pictures of Adrien. His heart sank a little at seeing them.

"I'm glad that you came over tonight," Marinette called to him.

"Really?" Chat Noir asked, climbing down the steps.

"Yeah, I made some new things today for the bakery and I wanted you to try them. I'll be right back," she said before going downstairs.

He looked around the room while he was waiting. There were more pictures of Adrien on the wall behind her desk. He was so focused on the pictures that he almost jumped when he heard Marinette come back into the room.

She was holding a tray of different croissants. "You said that croissants were your favorite so I figured that you would be the perfect person to try these. If you want to, of course," she added.

Chat Noir suddenly felt like he was starving. His stomach wasn't bothering him anymore. "I'd love to," he said with a huge smile on his face.

She smiled back. "Great. These ones over here are chocolate-hazelnut, and those are apple-cranberry. Help yourself to as many as you'd like." She placed the tray down on the edge of her desk by the computer.

Chat Noir grabbed a chocolate hazelnut croissant and took a big bite. "This is delicious!" he exclaimed.

She giggled. "I'm glad you like it. Let me know what you think of the other ones too." She moved over to her sewing machine and looked at the open notebook on the desk. She started flipping through a couple of pages.

Having finished the chocolate croissant, Chat Noir grabbed an apple-cranberry one and bit into it as he moved over to stand next to her. "This one is even better!"

"That one was my favorite too," she said, keeping her eyes on the notebook.

"Well, great minds think alike," he started saying.

"But fools seldom differ," Marinette and Chat Noir said simultaneously, finishing the mostly unknown second half of the famous quote.

They turned towards each other in surprise. Their faces were only inches apart.

"I guess we're both fools then," Marinette said, staring up at him.

"Yeah," he said quietly, nodding his head. "I guess so."

After a second, Marinette turned back and flipped another page.

Chat Noir reluctantly tore his eyes away from her to see what she was looking at. The notebook was full of design sketches. "Did you draw these?" he asked in amazement.

"Uh, yeah. I did. I'm really into fashion so I've been sketching some things. Right now I'm trying to decide which piece to make next. I figured that I need a project to work on." She kept flipping.

"Wait," Chat Noir said, pointing at a page. "How about this one?" The sketch was for a long pink and white dress with a scalloped neckline and ruffled layer skirt.

"Well, this one would definitely be a project with all these details."

"Oh I'm sorry. If it's too complicated you can pick something else," he protested.

"No," she said smiling at him. "This one is perfect."