Chapter Text
Marinette was in the park when she heard the akuma. Fortunately she was able to slip away from her friends quickly enough.
Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to actually find a place to transform.
Marinette was about to dive behind a half wall when dense greenery overtook her path, forcing her to change directions.
Even more unfortunately, there was no sign of Cat Noir anywhere.
Sighing in defeat, Marinette took off in the direction of the Akuma, silently praying that she would find a place to transform along the way.
Hawkmoth's latest villain cackled in the distance, climbing the Eiffel Tower in a web of vines and cursing the city of Paris and it's polluting ways.
Fortunately, most of the civillians were running away from the Akuma, and barely noticed her as she slipped into a back alley.
Marinette was just about to call for Tikki when a leather clad figure crashed into the wall at the back of the alley.
Marinette winced at the sound of the impact of Cat Noir's body against the stone. She knew, of course, that their suits absorbed most of the shock of impact, but she still knew that had to sting.
Cat Noir slid to the ground and rubbed the back of his head. "That's going to leave a mark."
"Cat Noir!" Marinette called, "are you okay?" She sprinted over to her fellow hero and held a hand out to help him to his feet.
He took her hand with a thankful smile and got to his feet. "Nothing to worry about," he said, "Nightshade over here just seems to have a thorn in her side over some environmental issues. Not that I blame her, but she should really leave violence out of it."
Marinette smirked. If he was feeling well enough to make jokes, he wasn't too badly banged up.
Cat Noir put a hand on her shoulder and stepped past her. He pushed her out of the alley and towards the door of a nearby café, civilians darting past them. "But you should really take cover before this gets worse. Ladybug and I can handle this prickly plant."
Marinette was about to agree so that she could transform, but a streak of green caught her attention from her peripheral vision. "Cat Noir, look out!"
Without thinking, or considering where and who she was, she grabbed Cat's arm, shoved her partner behind her and grabbed the lid to a nearby trash can just in time to shield them both from a heavy stream of thorny vines.
The vines hit the lid with an incredible force, but instinct took over and Marinette stood her ground. As the plants hit the lid, they managed to push her back a few inches, but that was all they could get out of her. She used the metal top to redirect the vines into the alley way where they tangled with garbage bags and fell limply to the street.
When it was clear that this particular attack was over, Marinette dropped the lid and returned her attention to Cat.
"That was close." She said with a smile.
She expected him to make some kind of witty comeback, but all she got was a slack jawed stare.
"Cat Noir?" Marinette tilted her head to the side.
Suddenly, what Marinette had just done came rushing to the front of her mind and she remembered that she was not Ladybug at the moment. She, a civilian, had just shoved Cat Noir behind a trashcan shield.
He seemed to shake himself out of his daze before she did, shoving her through the door of the café before Nightshade reached them herself. He gave her a stern warning about staying safe before jumping back into action.
Marinette ducked into the back room of the café while the workers were distracted, still reeling from what she'd just done. She opened her purse and Tikki fluttered out.
"That was very brave of you, Marinette," Tikki praised.
She only wished she could agree. "It was stupid. I shouldn't have gotten involved, at least not as Marinette." She shook her head, still unable to get the look on Cat Noir's face out of her mind. "Either way, we still have a baddie to catch. Tikki, spots on!"
Nightshade was taken down rather quickly once Ladybug arrived on the scene. The local gardener was returned to normal and made her way back to her shop before the reporters descended. Rather than begging Ladybug for an interview like they typically did, though, they went straight for Cat Noir. It wasn't that they didn't typically speak to Cat, but he tended to stay out of that particular spotlight as much as possible. He always said something about being a little intimidated by interviews--at which point Ladybug always pointed out the fact that he could face off with dinosaurs and giant rock monsters, but apparently reporters were the really scary ones. Typically Cat helped the recently de-evilized civilian regain their bearings and get back on with their lives while Ladybug handled the press.
Today, though, he was totally mobbed with attention.
"Cat Noir, who was that civilian girl that saved you from Nightshade?"
"Cat Noir, what was her name?"
"Cat Noir, was that your secret girlfriend you came out of the alley with?"
"Cat Noir, how does it feel to be the one who was saved for once?"
"Cat Noir--"
"Cat Noir--"
"Cat Noir--"
Finally Ladybug had had enough. She shooed the reporters off long enough for the two of them to escape to a nearby rooftop. Their Miraculouses each gave their second warning chimes.
"Are you okay, Cat? That was a little invasive…" Ladybug trailed off when she noticed Cat Noir staring at her so intensely, like he was studying her.
He realized she stopped talking and snapped out of his stupor. "Oh yeah, I'm fine. Just thinking."
Ladybug raised an eyebrow, but decided not to press the issue.
Instead, they bid each other goodnight and took off towards their respective homes, putting the incident out of their minds for the afternoon.
At least, Ladybug did.
Adrien, on the other hand, couldn't stop thinking about it.
He'd known Marinette for four years now. They'd shared friends and classes long enough to grow rather close in spite of their disastrous meeting in college. Adrien liked to think that he knew Marinette pretty well. He definitely knew that she was a spitfire who never backed down in the face of adversity.
But he had never seen the side of her that she'd shown Cat Noir that afternoon before.
It was like she didn't even have to think. She just noticed danger and her first instinct was to protect him? That was literally his job!
Not that he felt at all emasculated by the incident. In fact, it was quite the opposite. He was proud of his friend, and her killer instincts.
There was one thing that bothered him, though.
There had been something so familiar to him about the look in Marinette's eyes after she'd taken down the vines. It was enough to trigger an inkling of suspicion in the back of his mind. Rationally, he knew he should just let it go.
Then again, Adrien hadn't always been the most rational person when it came to matters of the heart.
The video of Marinette "saving" Cat Noir had gone viral. Alya's blog was booming--because of course she'd gotten her hands on exclusive rights to the original footage of the save. News outlets had been hounding her for days about interviews, and she turned all of them down. There was no reason to make this into a bigger thing than it was.
The only "Interview" she gave was telling Alya what happened over their lunch break at school. Alya, Nino, and Adrien sat around her at their usual picnic table at the side of their Lycee, all of them paying rapt attention as she tried to play along and dramatize the details for them.
"…And that's when I saw the vines coming right at us--right at Cat Noir!" She exclaimed with practiced enthusiasm.
"So why did you grab the shield?" Alya asked in her reporter voice.
"I…didn't really think about it. I just knew that if I didn't do something, Cat Noir would have gotten hurt. He already jumps in front of Ladybug enough. I wasn't about to stand by and watch him get hurt while trying to get me out of the way."
"But what if you'd gotten hurt, Marinette?" Adrien asked, "don't Ladybug and Cat Noir have some kind of superpowers to protect them? All you had was a tin lid."
"I wasn't going to get hurt. I--" Marinette nearly slipped and said that she's dealt with this type of things a thousand times, but managed to catch herself. "I guess my adrenaline took over."
Adrien wanted to press further. Sure there was merit to the fight or flight argument, but Marinette was already predisposed to clumsiness and tripping over air would be the last person to become more coordinated from a random rush of adrenaline. Adrenaline rushes didn't suddenly give you the ability to stare evil in the face and fight them off with a metal trashcan.
Marinette turned her head to address a question Nino had asked, but that he didn't quite catch. A flash of burgundy-black on her earlobes caught his eye, and he was drawn to that.
Adrien could think of a couple of other things that could give a person that ability.