Scene #5079: Anxious Months

Owner	Pose
Chat Noir	ACROSS SEVERAL MONTHS... Ever since the Akuma had escaped the multiversal meet-and-greet at the Grand Paris, life had been especially tense. The problem was that the situation simply never resolved itself. The akuma seemed to have spread to their limit, leaving numerous people transformed into iterations of the akuma that had been defeated, but not decisively. But the original had yet to be susceptible again, and so they remained, still as statues. For his own part, Chat Noir had been on edge for the first few months. He had felt it was his responsibility for getting stuck in a position where he couldn't join Ladybug in dispatching the villain of the moment, and had since then appeared much more frequently in the streets of Paris. Looking, waiting. But what he was watching and waiting for had yet to come to pass, and so... Slowly, he had fallen into a pattern, albeit not an entirely regular one. Chat Noir would do his rounds and at the end of them, if he had the spare time and felt particularly lonely, he would go visit Marinette. On the days when he found himself patrolling alone, he /always/ found himself at the bakery sooner or later. Usually sooner. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ONE SUCH DAY... "You're a fan of the Agreste fashion line, then?" It wasn't uncommon for Chat Noir to turn up with too little notice to tidy up, and that particular day he'd taken notice of one of the pictures along the wall next to Marinette's desk and computer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANOTHER DAY'S PATROL... A guilty-looking Chat Noir surveyed the streets of Paris surrounding the Eiffel Tower, his final meeting spot with his partner for the night. It was a location they'd used primarily for its good view of the surroundings. They could see almost any disturbance happening from up there. "Do you ever wish that he'd... just get it over with?" He asks, wearily.
Ladybug	ONE SUCH DAY Marinette sighs, having to put her things away under the ever-trolling cat eyes of Chat Noir. His regularity had demoted him from 'awkward nighttime visitor' to 'that damn alleycat'. She had started a nightly ritual of preparing some form of food, though her attic window had been covered with a thick drape since early fall, and now her room sported a little chugging heater filling the room with a bone-reddening heat. Marinette herself seemed unpreturbed by this, and still wore fluffy winter pajama bottoms and thick socks. "Chat, I really respect Gabriel Agreste as a designer! He's a visionary, and each season his designs are at the cutting edge. You can really see the work he puts in, and... Well, maybe I think his... choice in models is good?" She frets and fidgits slightly, but she knows this alleycat pretty well by now. And she is plying him with her father's cheese bread. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANOTHER DAY'S PATROL Ladybug sits, one leg precariously over the edge of the rooftop, as she rests her arms around one propped up knee, her chin resting atop the red spotted suit. "I wish a lot of things, Chat. I wish it'd warm up already, or it'd rain less. I wish there were less bad people in the world, like purse-snatchers. I wish people would just learn to be /nice/ to each other..." She heaves a sigh, outwardly buckling under the sheer Weight of her heroism requirements, and inwardly just cheesed off at how shit of a human being Chloe Bourgeoise is. How she wishes she could tell Adrian how she felt. How... A lot of things. "I don't wish Papilion would just attack. The waiting's hard, but... Maybe Paris is better off with a looming threat, rather than an active wound in it. People can get on, and have been. Shopping, eating, loving... living. I can't wish it all to be thrown into chaos, /again/. Especially if I can't /be/ there this time."
Chat Noir	The strange thing about dealing with Chat Noir over time was that he had actually become /less/ flirty over time. It never went away altogether of course, he seemed absolutely unable not to be a weird dork. But he seemed more content to simply Be There and interact like a mostly normal person. Mostly. He traced a finger over the particular photograph -- a magazine cover, it looked like -- while examining it. It was perfectly true that his father did a good job with his fashion line. It was also true that he buried himself in it. A sour expression passes across the young man's face as he withdraws his hand and turns to face Marinette again. There's not much he can say that isn't incriminating, but he really can't resist. "It's purrrfectly true that his taste in models is nothing short of meow-velous," He agrees, "but he /does/ have more than one of them, you know." As he (nearly) always does, Chat Noir accepts the proferred cheese bread with a mouthed 'thank you'. Like any cat, he is easily bribed with food. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For his part, Chat Noir sat perched on an elevated section of the tower a small distance away. He sometimes dropped to all fours, sitting or standing, and right now he was sitting crouched with his hands rested forward between his feet. He craned his head in Ladybug's direction, having to look down to get a proper glimpse of her. "I don't..." He started, and paused for a moment before continuing the thought, "It's nya-t that I want something bad to happen, but it's a purrr-oblem that has to be fixed /some/time. The longer it takes the worse it's going to get, isn't it?" "And what's this about not being there, Buginette?" He got to his feet to drop down a level with a light clank of metal, surveying Ladybug quizzically. "You're almost always there before I am, and I /know/ you're not the quitting type." "You'd better not be thinking of retiring, /My Lady/," Chat Noir added, crossing his arms over his chest and lifting his eyebrows in a deliberately exaggerated manner, "I don't have /that/ many lives left to spend."