Chapter Text
It started with a dream. A stupid, annoying, mind-twisting dream that Felix had not sanctioned.
He had gone over to Marinette’s to work on their project. He had brought her flowers, even though they had nothing to do with their science report. It was just because he thought she would like them. And he found himself standing frozen in the middle of her pink rose of a bedroom completely ignored while Marinette lay casually on her chaise holding the Chat Noir plushie over her head.
“Today was such a long day, minou,” she said, smiling up at the doll in such a way that Felix wanted to violently shred the roses he had brought for her. “I’m glad I have you to come home to.”
She brought the little plush figure to her face and rubbed her nose where its own nose would have been if it had one. Marinette stroked the soft fabric of its hair and cuddled it to her chest, its head tucked smugly under her chin. With every pass of her hands, the doll became larger and more real, until a full-grown, life-sized Chat Noir lay sprawled across the length of her. Chat Noir was purring like a car engine as she ran her fingers through his hair and his tail flicked idly from side to side before wrapping itself possessively around Marinette’s ankle.
The imposter glanced at Felix out of one half closed eye and his lips twitched in a smug smile. With slow, deliberate movements, Chat Noir turned Marinette’s head and pressed his lips to hers as if daring Felix to challenge him.
Worse yet? Marinette kissed him back.
Felix swallowed hard. He wanted to shout. He wanted to growl. He wanted to jerk the stupid, synthetic doppelgänger off of her and curl up in his place. Her hands should be in his hair. He should get the nose brushes, the soft confidence, the kisses. He should be the one she clung to after a long day, not some poly-fil plaything!
“NO!”
Felix jerked awake, sheathed in cold sweat and his sheets tangled around him like strangling vines.
“No,” he muttered between panting breaths. “This is unacceptable.”
“What?” Plagg groaned from the other pillow, rubbing one eye with a paw. “The fact that we don’t have twenty-four hour room service or that you can’t bring yourself to tell Bakery Girl you like her?”
“Will you stop thinking with your stomach for once in your existence. This is important.” Felix ran one hand through his sweaty hair. “I’m being haunted and it must stop. I have to know.”
Plagg snorted. “Know what?”
“I need to know if she—actually—cuddles with it.”
“This is still about the doll?” Plagg asked, suddenly wide awake and grinning like the miniature chaos gremlin Felix called him. “If it would help I can sneak over there and cataclysm the stupid thing. Then you’re done with it and it can’t ‘haunt’ you any more.” He made tiny air quotes with his paws which was somehow far more sarcastic than just his grating voice alone.
“No. I need to see for myself. Plagg—“
“Oh no you don’t. I refuse to go galavanting off in the—“
“—claws out!”
The wind in his face woke him up a bit, but it wasn’t enough to blow the thoughts from his mind.
I just need to peek in her window, Chat thought, launching himself from rooftop to rooftop. See if she really sleeps with it in her bed… if she cuddles with it. I’ll pop by for a moment, peer into her skylight, and that will answer it. After all, she is seventeen years old. We are far too old for toys or dolls. It is probably just a relic from an earlier time. Ladybug and I have been protecting Paris for four years now. Thirteen isn’t too young for a girl to want a comfort object. That’s it. It’s just a leftover.
The bakery appeared over the rooftops, the scent of bread that usually surrounded it had faded in the cool night air before dawn.
Chat Noir landed lightly on the balcony above, hoping to sneak a peek and be off before anyone—especially Marinette— knew he had even been there.
Crouching to all fours, he scurried silently over to the skylight and peered inside. Thanks to his night vision, his eyes pierced the protective darkness with ease revealing the sleeping form of Marinette below. She was curled on one side like a sleepy kitten, her hair released from its normal, tight pigtails to spill around her like ink on snow. The pink coverlet only covered her to her waist, exposing an adorable pajama top in the ‘boyfriend’ style, covered in what might have been cartoon croissants.
That wasn’t all. Wrapped tightly in her arms, its head tucked under her chin in far too familiar a manner, was the Chat Noir plushie. The fluff-filled traitor to the mask!
Marinette sighed in her sleep, her lips just barely forming a word that his enhanced hearing caught with painful clarity through the glass.
“…Kitty.”
Chat found himself suppressing a growl deep in his chest, a growl that throbbed angrily behind his eyes and pulled his lips back into a sneer.
That eighth-scale, felt imposter. That moth-eaten bean bag of betrayal. It just lay there, tucked under Marinette’s innocently sleeping chin staring up at him with embroidered eyes and a smug little smile.
Chat Noir doesn’t smile like that, Chat grumbled to himself. Not even close. I smile as if I know things, not as if I’m waiting to rub someone’s nose in their own mistakes! Stupid, little poser. Don’t look at me like you understand me. You’re not even licensed merchandise!
Torn between tearing the skylight open to steal the dratted little effigy and running off in a proper sulk, he forced himself to choose the latter. After all, destroying private property and stealing a doll right over the peacefully sleeping form of an innocent young woman would not make a good impression on anyone and explaining his current obsession with a stuffed toy would not make that go any better for him.
What could I say? Chat thought angrily as he pounded his way across the rooftops, trying in vain to outrun the uncomfortable simmering in his chest. That I’m angry Marinette is cuddling a doll of me while I spy on her from her windowsill like some glorified gargoyle? Sure. That would be swell. I’d be lucky to not end up arrested.
The whole of Paris passed beneath his feet and he had run himself to near exhaustion before he returned to his room.
“Happy now?” Plagg demanded grumpily as Felix flipped him a wedge of cheese. “Now you know she cuddles the thing and much good did it do you!”
Felix groaned as he collapsed face first onto his bed.
Plagg sniggered, no doubt spraying cheese crumbles all over the floor in the process.
“You see it now, don’t you?” he asked. “She made a doll of your alter ego. She snuggles with it at night. She even called it Kitty. That would be downright adorable if it wasn’t so nauseatingly cute. You win, kid. She likes you.”
Felix rolled over and glared at the kwami. “It’s not me, though. It’s… that doll!”
Plagg scoffed. “Nothing but polyester, fluff, and thread. And she made it to look like you. You are Chat Noir, remember? You imagined the suit, the hair, the bell. You decided on the attitude, the swagger, the smirk. That’s all you, kid. So what’s the problem?”
Felix ran a hand down his face before slapping it impotently against the coverlet. “She likes it more than me!”
“That’s because she doesn’t know it is you, dingus!”
Felix shook his head. “She cuddles it,” he whispered, knowing he was acting completely deranged and not caring just then. “She hugs it and trusts it. She called it ‘Kitty’! That could be me. It should be me!”
That was when his tired mind finally caught up with his raving mouth. A stunned silence reined.
“Oh, no,” Felix whispered, horrorstruck.
“Oh, yes,” Plagg laughed. “The cheese has finally slid off the cracker. You’re in love, kid, and you’re a mess!”