ADRIEN, MOST DAYS, HAD ENVIABLE powers of focus.

People had told him—his teachers throughout collège and lycée, photographers, makeup artists, piano instructors, fencing coaches, foreign language tutors—over and over what exceptional drive he had. He could dedicate himself utterly to a task ("You don't require a break? Or water? Really?"), even if it excited him none, and see it through to its end.

That was why, when people complimented his various talents, he shut up and graciously accepted the compliment—he was talented, but not in athletics, or academia, or foreign languages. His one talent was this strange, unending, unbothered, consistent work ethic, which he could apply to anything he needed.

That was the root, and all the other talents branched from this.

"What's wrong with you?" Plagg wondered, lying on the suite's work desk and lazily pawing at a shred of tissue. After each swipe, the tissue would float up in the air and drift back down to be swatted again. "You've done nothing today. It's been three hours since you turned the page."

Adrien pointedly turned over the page in his Calculus workbook, even though the last set of integrals had been left unfinished—unattempted, even.

Plagg raised one fuzzy brow smugly, then rolled over and sunk his claws into the lavender-scented scrap of three-ply.

But his kwami was right. He was horribly unfocused today, yesterday, all the days ever since he kissed Ladybug. It wouldn't happen again, he was sure of that, but that didn't stop his mind from dragging up the kiss and violently blasting it on the panoramic, surround-sound, 4D viewing theatre that was his imagination. Instead of integration by parts, he was memorising was her smell, blueberries and fresh-baked bread, the softness to her body, underneath the fitness of her battle-worn muscle, the little gasp-y sound she made at the back of her throat—

Adrien's hand itched towards his phone, before he realised that he'd shoved it between the couch cushions, across the room, for this very reason.

He squeezed his hands into fists, trying to make the words on the page sink into his head.

His phone hadn't been turned on since the first Emelie-related media appearance requests started rolling into his email and text inboxes, from a wide range of news sites, fashion magazines, and film industry barons. A documentary, one offered, wouldn't that be such a fitting tribute? (No. It wouldn't.)

There was absolutely no downside to the phone vacation, given that he could submit schoolwork and communicate with his friends on his laptop. No downside, except if Ladybug reached out to Adrien, or to Chat Noir through the Mira-Message bypass. He was itching to hear her voice, message her. How could he face her again? How would he face her again?

A pair of fortunate twists had kept them from interacting since the kiss: Ladybug had cancelled last week's interview to give Adrien some time to process the news of his mother's discovery, and she'd relieved Chat Noir from patrol duty last Friday, but on Sunday the Palais Office Disaster happened.

They couldn't get back to usual unless he could successfully put the kiss out of his mind. The mini-fridge underneath the Impressionist painting of ballet dancers looked awfully tempting, all those crystalline vodka bottles inside...

No. He'd come so far, built up so much strength of his own. He didn't need the numbness.

Still, Ladybug would be here soon for their interview, and his knee wouldn't stop bouncing, bouncing, underneath the table like a rapidly vibrating sound speaker—

A knock at the window.

Damn it. Damn her.

Adrien placed his pencil between the pages of his Calculus textbook and shut it, as if there was anything worth bookmarking on the page. Brushing aside the curtain, he swung the window outwards, the frigid wind refreshing on his overheated face. For some stupid reason, he offered his hand to Ladybug to help her dismount from the windowsill as she slipped in, as if she hadn't traversed this threshold dozens of times before, as if her Miraculous-enhanced balance would ever let her slip.

Adrien shoved his hand into his pocket before she noticed. "Ladybug," he greeted casually, painting a hopefully natural smile onto his lips.

It wasn't natural, if her instant perusing expression proved anything. "Adrien," Ladybug whispered, a deeply concerned expression on her face. "It's good to see you again. How are you? How are you holding up?"

Oh. He'd forgotten: from Ladybug's perspective, she hadn't seen Adrien Agreste for weeks, since before Emelie Agreste was located. Everything that happened since—his interrogation of Gabriel, their ensuing fight, the kiss, the run-in in the Palais de Justice—had happened to Chat Noir.

Adrien struggled to piece together a full sentence. "Uh. I'm..."

"It's a difficult time for the entire city," Ladybug interjected hastily for him, wincing slightly. "Your mother is very dear to Paris."

"Yes," he agreed dumbly, dropping his gaze. He noticed a pastel pink box clutched beside her thigh. "What's this?"

"Oh, a gift." Ladybug pressed the box, slightly warm, into his hands. Were her fingers trembling? "Fresh-baked mille-feuille. I thought it would be nice to get some variation from the hotel cuisine, splendid as it is."

Adrien blinked, pleasantly warmed by the small token of generosity. "Thank you, Ladybug." He turned the box the right way around and noticed the fashionable sticker on the lid. "The Dupain-Cheng bakery."

"Do you like the place?" Ladybug wondered.

"Yes," Adrien said. Electing for small talk—he was fantastic at small talk, having been trained since the age of seven to show face—he continued, "Actually, I love it. It's one of the first places I'll visit when I'm not under house arrest anymore."

Ladybug blinked, tucking a loose strand of midnight black hair behind her ear. A soft smile played across her mouth. "That's certainly something to look forward to." She glanced over to the couch and ottoman, their usual environ. "Shall we?"

Just as she breezed past, Adrien smelled blueberries and fresh-baked bread and shut his eyes, face pinched with concentration, forcibly exhaling. She is just an investigator. The Guardian of Paris. You do not remember what she tastes like—

Ladybug whirled around, misread the gesture, and melted into an earnest, sympathetic frown.

"Oh, wait. Is it still too soon to talk about your parents?" she asked, shifting uncomfortably on her toes.

If she ever knew how much talking to his parents he'd actually done...or if she knew about the multiple conflicts of interest in holding an investigatory role while interrogating his own father, reading and compiling his own interview transcripts, befriending and even kissing the people supposed to deliver an impartial evidence dossier to Heloise Hessenpy for the Agreste v. Paris trial.

Ladybug would ask for the Black Cat Miraculous back just for his own good, and the entire process would have to start from square one.

"—I completely understand if you'd like to meet next week instead."

Adrien felt cowardly for taking the out, for using his external circumstance to fix his internal circumstance, but he simply couldn't be this close to her and concentrate properly on providing factual, helpful answers. He coughed, painting an apology across his expression. "Are you sure? I don't want to delay your work."

"Have the lawyers reached out?"

"Briefly. I'm not checking my phone much at the moment."

"Well, I only really need to ask you a few more questions pertaining to parole," Ladybug explained, "and then that will be it. The audit of Gabriel, the brand, is far more behind than we are, so don't worry about our timeline," she quipped, throwing a light humorous smile at him. "Just focus on yourself. Oui?"

Adrien nodded rapidly, turning to the grand piano and leaning casually against it as Ladybug walked to the window. "I'll see you next week, then."

Her face was once again sympathetic, those sapphire eyes swimming with pity and compassion. "Please take care of yourself till then, Adrien," and she was gone, slinging herself through the streets below.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Marinette didn't consider herself very talented, but, by God, did she have willpower.

In her bedroom, she spent five minutes practising somersaults, another five walking exclusively on her hands, another five yo-yo manoeuvrability, another five fiddling with the Lucky Charm fidget spinner, and then, when the post-Lucky Charm Ladybug suit was straining on her limbs like bags of flour, she simply slumped against a wall and chatted dazedly to the kwamis until her willpower snapped.

The Miraculous magic left her body and whirled Tikki back in front of her eyes.

"Marinette," her kwami said disapprovingly.

"Please, don't," she interrupted, offering a madeleine to eat. Tikki took it in her tiny paws and swallowed it whole. How can she fit so much inside such a small body? "I know I can do this."

"Of course you can do this. You are doing it," Tikki agreed diplomatically.

After calling her Lucky Charm, Marinette had spent nearly half an hour without transforming back into her civilian self. That was impressive! That was an improvement! Did it really matter if every moment after the first five minutes felt like walking up a steeper and steeper hill—lasting ten minutes was relatively easy now, hence the acrobatics—until she was hanging on by the very fingertips, pushing down the twinging and exhaustion that threatened her mind, body, and soul?

Yes, Tikki seemed to believe, it mattered very much.

The Ladybug kwami swept a consolatory paw across Marinette's sweaty brow. "Maybe it's time you tried a different approach. Something less draining."

"I'm not drained," Marinette insisted, letting her wall take the weight of her head. "Besides, if Chat Noir can do it...so can I."

That kitty was dangerously distracting. When he was in front of her, all her priorities slipped. She should be focusing on Adrien and the Agreste trial, not the way Chat Noir's purring had thrummed through her ribcage and into all her fingertips.

In a roundabout way, Chat Noir had even ruined today's encounter with Adrien. The whole time in Le Grand, Ladybug was unable to stop berating herself for kissing Chat Noir while she had a person like Adrien in her life. Of course, that berating just meant she was unable to stop thinking about kissing Chat Noir in the first place.

And then there were his new powers. The day he returned from hiatus, Chat Noir had used his Cataclysm on a homemade bottle bomb and simply, seemingly, walked away from his transformation. Underneath the Agreste mansion, in that cavern, she'd seen Chat Noir called multiple cataclysms—one in each hand—and revoke them like it was nothing.

The rules of the Miraculous meant nothing to him.

Why, hello, Cat Walker, the Familiar, why, yes, of course you may have my Miraculous.

Damn him, his rebelliousness, his stupid face, that annoying mouth.

If he had access to the full range of his adult powers, why didn't Marinette?

Granted, she was seventeen until July, and— wait, how old was Chat Noir anyway? A pointless question, one that she shouldn't try to answer.

"This isn't a competition," Tikki frowned, crossing her arms. "In fact, if you are fuelled by trivial thoughts like this, how are you supposed to truly focus on connecting to the Ladybug Miraculous? To learn its full powers, you need to listen to it, to yourself, and not to all the external noise in your life."

Marinette felt like shooting back, "what external noise?" but that would have been a lost cause. She needed to dig deep and consider many mystical things about the nature of Creation and her relationship to it, before its full powers truly became second nature. She knew that, but her existence felt like nothing but noise these days.

Noise woke her up (her alarm), and noise stalked her through school and student council meetings. She grappled with noisy thoughts of Chat Noir and the rest of her team and Heloise Hessenpy. She felt guilty for letting herself get so sidetracked from Adrien, and re-dedicated herself to making it up to him: endless pastries, cheerful video calls with Marinette, limitless patience and compassion when Ladybug interviewed him, and the best fucking Christmas present she could think up.

Their homeroom class would all get involved, of that there was no doubt, because the way things were going, he would spend another Christmas alone. Marinette knew Adrien hated being alone during the holidays, but now he was on house arrest and his parents were both... incapacitated in some manner. This year, the more people rallying around him, the better. She would stop at nothing to bring all the Yuletide festivities right to his hotel suite, despite the house arrest. If she was judicious about it, Ladybug might be able to help out once. Any more than that would start to cross some boundaries, both in using the Miraculous for personal gain and by drawing Adrien's attention to the connection between Ladybug and their high school.

In fact, why wait till Christmas? It was time to pick up the slack. Adrien deserved more joy and laughter in his routine, starting as soon as possible. Marinette resolved to find some way to see him—

Tikki cleared her throat and widened her bluebell eyes pointedly. "How is concentrating working out for you?"

Marinette released a frustrated groan. "Alright. Point taken."

She was further than ever from discovering the true nature of Creation or whatever secrets Tikki knew but couldn't exactly describe.

"Why are you in a rush to achieve this? Do you know that eighteen years of age is just this culture's arbitrary marker of adulthood? What is a year, even?" Tikki pointed out, now crossing her arms and legs in a sagacious levitating pose. Marinette thought she looked alarmingly similar to Wayzz at this moment. "I've had wielders unlock their adult powers at all stages of human development. You are not behind, Marinette."

"I know I'm not behind," she said quietly, sucking on her water bottle. I'm behind Chat Noir, though, but she knew better than to voice this. "You're right," she conceded amicably. "It's not like I need absolute access to my adult powers. It's useful enough just to stave off a detransformation for half an hour."

"So you'll rest now?" Tikki asked hopefully.

"Yes," Marinette said, smiling tightly. To appease her kwami, she washed up, slid into bed, and slept.

(Under the covers, she sent a message to the class group chat: guys, I have an idea.)