The buffaloes are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,
Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone.
Marinette doesn't mind as much when it's her things Chat accidentally tears with his happy pawing. When it's a dress she made for Alya, turns out she minds quite a bit.
Rated G || 1,610 Words
Cross posted on Ao3 || FF
Not Retractable
Since Chat Noir had begun to visit her, Marinette had fixed three pillows, thrown six shirts into her ‘scrap fabric’ pile, and even had to reupholster her lounge once. If Chat had been a real cat then these disasters probably wouldn’t have happened since cats have small retractable claws. Unfortunately, Chat was a human boy in a cat suit which meant his claws were bigger and not retractable. Of course, when he transformed he had to be given cat like tendencies as well. Add those two together and one gets shredded fabric during happy pawing.
Marinette didn’t blame him, it wasn’t under his control. Okay, she did a little since he admitted to her that he knew what caused the pawing but refused to tell her. If she just knew what set it off then she could remove the trigger from her room. He said it wasn’t something she could just get rid of so she let it slide. Since it wasn’t something he could help while in the suit so she tried not to get too angry when her things got wrecked, especially since he had replaced the shirts and brought her the fabric for reupholstering her lounge. He was the lucky charm of his own destruction.
The only thing that didn’t make sense to her was why he wouldn’t tell her what it was that set the pawing off. He always became really red and said it was embarrassing when she asked. The two of them had talked about so many different topics considered embarrassing so she didn’t know what could possibly make this so different than any other embarrassing topic.
The dress that Marinette had been working on for her friend’s first official date with Nino was finally ready. She laid it across her lounge before going downstairs to fetch the box she was planning on giving the dress to Alya in. Marinette wanted her best friend to feel like her dress was as high end as possible.
Box in hand, Marinette climbed back up the ladder to her room. She pushed open her trapdoor only to be met by a cat boy on her lounge with tattered cloth in his stupid paws. Marinette was pissed. It wasn’t one of her things he had ruined this time. No, this was something for someone else and he had absolutely destroyed it.
He looked like a deer caught in headlights when she began to yell at him. “That’s it you stupid cat, this crosses a line. That wasn’t even my dress you ruined.” He looked confused at that but Marinette continued on. “I’ve been working on that for days for my best friend’s first date with the guy she really likes and you just went and ruined it! What am I going to tell Alya? I don’t know if I can fix it in time, it’s a complete mess!” She could feel angry tears beginning to well in her eyes. “Either you tell me what causes this stupid pawing of yours or you need to leave until you’re able to control it!”
He hung his head and whispered so softly Marinette could barely hear it. “I’m so sorry about the dress. It’s you Marinette. Your scent is the trigger.”
Her anger was halted at his words. “W-What?”
Chat lifted his head and spoke a bit louder. “Your scent is what triggers the pawing. When I’m with you I’m just so happy so when something smells strongly of you, like a dress you’ve been touching for days, I start to paw at it. I don’t think there’s a way for me to control it so I guess I’ll just stop coming around.”
He began to move towards the window. “Wait, don’t leave.” She didn’t want him to actually stay away, her words were said of anger and she already regretted them. “You know you could have told me this before kitty. We could have figured something out about the pawing earlier if I had known it was just my scent.”
“I just didn’t want things to get awkward if you didn’t feel the same way.” Chat tried to back pedal once he realized what he’d said. “I-I just m-mean if I d-didn’t make you happy. I-I mean as f-friends.” His face was read and he couldn’t look at her.
Marinette knew what it meant when someone blushed and stuttered. Chat was crushing on her, he was crushing on Marinette and Ladybug. He liked her twice. “I do feel the same. I like you too.” She said it too softly for normal human ears to hear but she knew he’d hear it with his advanced senses.
“W-What about your crush on Adrien?” She’d never directly come out and talked about her crush but the posters she used to have up had made it pretty obvious.
“I still like him kitty, but not as much as I like you.” She walked over and wrapped him in a hug mumbling into his chest. “I’m sure you still like Ladybug and that’s okay, you can like two people at once. What matters is that you’re honest about your feelings for both people to whoever you end up with.”
Chat was still reeling over the fact that she liked both sides of him. All he knew was that their feelings were mutual and his heart was about to burst because of it. “Marinette, I like Ladybug but I don’t think I just like you.” She looked up at him, meeting her eyes with his own. “For a long time, I thought I was in love with Ladybug but overtime I realized you can’t really love someone without knowing them. I know you and I love every bit. I love the good and the bad.” He gently whipped a tear as it slid down her cheek. She rose up on her toes while he leaned down. It was the first kiss of many.
Unconsciously he began to knead at her back. Marinette quickly broke the kiss to pull his hands between them, afraid of being clawed on accident. However, when she looked down at his gloved hand, the claws had vanished from the suit. They looked at each other in surprise before Chat tilted his head, listening to Plagg in the back of his mind. “My kwami, the being that lets me transform, just told me he made the claws retractable. He says he didn’t do it before because he wanted to see how long it would take us to have this conversation. He ‘ships us’ apparently.” They both began to laugh.
“Well, now I have to fix Alya’s dress because of him. You get to help, my newly declawed kitty, since it was Plagg’s fault that it got ruined in the first place.” Before Chat could realize that she had mentioned Plagg by name even though he hadn’t, she kissed him again.
Chat was Marinette’s assistant for the next two nights while she worked overtime on the dress. It was ready in time and on the day of the date Nino asked if Marinette would switch him seats for the day. She obliged and sat down next to Adrien who she wasn’t nearly as nervous around since starting things with Chat. Part of her not being nervous around Adrien could have been the two days of practically no sleep too. As class began, Marinette’s eyes became heavy and she was soon asleep, neck craned to the sky as her head rested on the back of the seat. If she had stayed awake just a few minutes longer she would have seen the tired boy next to her slowly slump down onto her shoulder.
When Marinette awoke, she couldn’t remember where she was. All she knew was that Chat had his head in her lap and was happily pawing at her leg. She cracked her eyes open wondering how they got in such an odd position only to realize she was sitting at a school desk. There was a note on said desk and she picked it up to read it, vaguely questioning why Chat was in her classroom. The note read, “Hey girl, Nino and I were going to wake you two up but I wasn’t going to ruin your snuggly Adrien time. See you after lunch.”
Adrien? Marinette finally looked down at the head in her lap noticing the lack of cat ears. The smile spread across Adrien’s sleeping face was one she had seen on Chat many times. Even if he wasn’t currently pawing at her leg, that smile would have given him away. Apparently, those cat like tendencies were starting to bleed over to his civilian form. She hoped the purring was next. Learning that the two boys she liked were one person wasn’t as surprising as she thought it would be. Actually, it made a lot of sense. She nudged Adrien’s shoulder until his tired eyes opened and looked up at her. “Hey kitty, it’s lunchtime, we slept through class.”
Adrien shot up off Marinette’s lap. “I’m so sorry for not telling you sooner Princess. Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad kitty. What do you say we go back to my house to eat and talk though? There’s something I actually want to tell you.” Adrien nodded his head and the two grabbed their things to leave. Chat wasn’t the only one to reveal his identity that day.
