I really need to start pacing myself throughout the week instead of trying to cram-write the chapter on weekends and releasing it late on mondays ;-;
I will take a note!
I also DID have this ready to go last night, but because I'm not naturally a sarcastic, snarky, or sassy person (usually? I think I'm pretty selective about my sass because once I had a co-worker who said my defining characteristic was how sassy I was, but he's literally the only person who's ever said that about me so -shrug- maybe I just thought he deserved sass all the time? I digress) so it wasn't snarky enough for Félix. And I'm definitely the kind of person who can only come up with a nice comeback the day after, so I thought I'd sleep on it, and then come back today and voilà, Félix is now sassy.
I thought I'd rather have it be a little late, but a better quality, than what it was originally
So there ya go!
I will try to pace myself throughout the week and try to get future chapters out on time
___________
"Félix, a moment?" My mom called from her room mere seconds before I left through the door.
Exchanging quick glances with Fuko, I turned to face her. She was in her bedroom's doorway wearing some bathrobes as she usually wore when getting ready in the mornings. I was surprised she was up so early to be honest. I always made a point of leaving early to keep as much bad luck out of her day as possible.
"What?"
She walked towards me, "I'd like you to be home early today, Claude's going to be here and we have something we'd like to tell you together," she could barely suppress her smile.
I tilted my head, "What are you two officially together now?"
My mom furrowed her brows, "Surely I'm not that easy to read!"
"Well gee, why else would you and your non-boyfriend go out for dinner on Valentine's day, it's not exactly hard to put together," I said completely deadpan. "Congratulations," I continued on with a bored tone.
"Are you okay with this?" she asked.
I pressed my lips together for a moment. Honestly, I was just hoping that Claude wasn't just a toxic person that Fuko's bad luck managed to summon. "Just make sure you know what you're doing," I muttered before leaving.
"I still want you back early!" My mom called after me as I shut the door.
"Monique and Claude, sitting in a tree-," Fuko began singing. Upon my irritated glare, she drooped her ears submissively and went silent.
"Tell me Fuko," I asked as I walked to work, "Can your bad luck summon demons in the form of handsome men?"
"I don't know, but that would explain so much!" Fuko laid on my shoulder loaf-style. "You've been unusually chipper these past few weeks!" She told me, "Is there anything you're not telling me?" I suspect, if cats had eyebrows, Fuko would be wiggling hers at me.
"Fuko, you're by my side 24/7, you know what goes on in my life. What are you implying?"
"Is there a special someone in your life that I don't know about?!" she kept going on playfully.
"Yes, of course," I rolled my eyes, "NO!" I snapped. "Have you met me?!"
"Such a shame," Fuko teased, "they could take the ring off for you."
I turned a corner, "So I want to get rid of you because you continuously ruin my life with bad luck, but why do you want to get rid of me?" I asked.
"You're too grumpy," Fuko said. "Too much angst!"
"Yeah, and who's fault is that?" I waited to cross the street.
"On a more serious note," Fuko dropped her playful tone and hovered in front of my face, "Would it really be so hard for you to believe that I do care about my bearer?"
"Yeah? You have a funny way of showing it."
******
Ah, average morning at school: Chloe was a brat, I got to mouth her off, multiple carts of books to shelve, students in the library to rush through homework (and apparently, Paws and Nino had been telling people how smart I was because every morning I got about five or six people asking me for help on their homework. Most of them were just hoping I'd do it for them, lazy bums), and of course taking a pile of papers to the esteemed principal.
While I was heading down to his office, I noticed Paws standing at a corner of a hallway. One of his hands was tucked under his arm, while the other held a phone up to his ear. I couldn't see his face due to his back facing me, but judging by his slightly bowed head, and sagging shoulders, he wasn't happy with what he was hearing.
The papers for M Damocles could wait. I headed in Paws' direction. Paws visibly sighed and put his phone in his pocket.
"Something going on Paws?" I asked him.
Paws turned and looked at me, clearly upset. "It was just my dad's assistant, Natalie. She was telling me that my dad had to cancel something with me."
Ouch. He couldn't even bother to tell his own son himself? Wow, I'd hate to have him as a father. "What did you guys have planned?"
Paws sighed and crossed his arms, "I mean it wasn't really special, he just said I could go with him to park. He was going to check out to see if it was a nice place he'd like me to do a photo-shoot at. Just... business really."
It was painfully obvious that Paws had been really excited to spend time with his dad, even if it had been purely for professional reasons. "Which park was it?"
"The one right here, next to the school," he looked at me, "Why?"
"Why don't we go after school? Plus Nino if he wants to tag along," I offered. I knew I wasn't his dad, but I had idea that could make him feel better.
Paws' face lit up slightly, "Really?" then his excited expression changed to confusion, "But what would we do?"
"Guess you're going to have to find out," I put my hand on his shoulder, "Why don't you go to class now?" I suggested, slightly leading him in that direction.
Paws smiled, "Thanks Félix," but then his smile faltered, "but I have something scheduled after school and my bodyguard will definitely be there. Plus, now he knows to keep an eye for me when the car breaks down!"
Fuko eyed me, "Don't worry my kitten!" she declared, "I will make something new up!" she buffed out her chest heroically.
I suppressed a laugh, "Fuko just said she'll handle it. A little too eagerly may I add, but if that'll satisfy her daily chaotic needs..." I gave her a small grateful glance.
"Alright!" Paws accepted, "Just so long as I can blame you later," he playfully added.
"Sure, I'll write your father and assistant and entire argumentative essay on how I did it, and why it was important too. With plenty of colorful vocabulary that you aren't allowed to use in school."
Paws eyes' widened in alarm, "You don't have to go that far!"
"Too late, you put the idea in my mind," I gave him a shove, "Get to class!"
"I like big bro version of you!" Fuko commented.
"Yeah whatever, you better start figuring out how you're going to distract the gorilla without giving him a heart attack," I told Fuko while heading to M Damocles' office.
"Can I have some props?" Fuko asked.
"Absolutely not," I hissed at her, then knocked on his door.
"Enter," answered his voice.
I calmly walked into the room and showed him the papers.
"Ah yes, thank you," he nodded at me, and gestured to where he wanted me to put it on the table.
"Book filing time!" Fuko commented as we left his office.
"Oh yes, grand adventure time," I agreed flatly. "The most interesting thing that happens is me trying to keep you from knocking books over on other students, stop your sparring match with the tissue box, and keep you from knocking over bookshelves, which I still don't know how you managed to tip that first one over." I was only glad I caught it in time before it dominoed across the library.
Having books fall down on me as I tried keeping a bookshelf from falling and crushing me, wasn't exactly what I'd call fun.
A young man was with Mme Dubois when I walked into the library. He was mostly wearing grey clothes and a dark grey jacket. He had long brown hair that was tied back into a messy bun.
"Félix!" Mme Dubois walked up to me, "I have great news!!" she gestured to the stranger, "This is Théo Barbot! He applied to be an assistant library too!"
"Is that so?" I eyed him, "Hope you brought your raincoat, it regularly rains books in here."
Théo laughed, "I'll keep that in mind. " He gave me a friendly wave, "Nice to meet you!"
I managed to nonchalantly snatch Fuko out of the air as she tried making a beeline for the books above the new-guy's head. I stuffed her in my pocket, and passed it off as an awkward wave.
"HEY!" She squealed in protest.
"M Barbot, this is Félix Blanc," Mme Dubois introduced me. "If you have any questions, you can ask both me and him," Mme Dubois turned to me, "Félix could you give him a tour, and show him how everything works?"
"Beats filing," I shrugged.
"That's the spirit!" she encouraged.
I gestured for Théo to follow me.
"You know, I've done a lot of odd jobs, but I've never worked in a library before!" Théo commented. "Must be relaxing!"
"Actually, it's just me and Mme Dubois right now because the other people were having so many anxiety attacks that they had to leave," I said flatly.
"Félix! That's not true!" Fuko yelled from my pocket.
"Wait really?" I heard a slight panicked edge to his voice.
Gesturing to the aisle I'd taken him to, I ignored his comment and pointed to the sign on the shelf's side that said: Fiction, "This is our fiction section."
"So I'm guessing you guys put fiction here?" Théo nervously tried pulling some small talk with me.
"No. This is where the ghost cat resides, the books on the shelf are merely decorative and have fiction titles." I moved on to the next aisle. I would be lying, if I said I wasn't purposefully saying ridiculous things to see how long it took him to catch on. At least Mme Dubois and M Damocles thought I was joking all the time. Théo seemed sarcasm immune though.
"This is the science-fiction, mystery and horror section," I gestured to the aisle, "don't let the title mislead you though, we actually store cook books and gardening books here."
Théo looked down the aisle, "Really?" he gaped surprised.
I blinked at him, "No."
Théo gave me a bewildered look, "Okay..."
Mme Dubois, who happened to be walking by, started laughing and faced us, "Don't worry M Barbot! Félix is quite the jokester! Don't take anything he says seriously! The sections are on the sides of the bookcases."
Théo stared at me with a look of utter betrayal.
I ignored that, and pulled out three books from the shelf and brought it over to him. "You can sort books in a couple of different ways," I told him, "You can just go by author if you want to be boring. The spines also have color coded stickers that indicate which section a book should be in, the color reference can be found under each sign that Mme Dubois pointed out. Or you can use the numbers on the spines. The books here are ordered numerically, so if all hope is lost and you're trying to sort a textbook in the fantasy section, just check the number."
Théo glanced at Mme Dubois nervously.
Mme Dubois smiled widely, "Don't worry, now that I called him on his bluff, I don't think he'll be trying to pull any fast ones on you! It's all true."
Théo nodded in acknowledgement, "Alright."
I shelved the books I had pulled out. "When you go to shelf books, check the cart to see what sections you'll be going to," I advised him. "Also, if you're not finding a section down here, make sure you check upstairs too." The tour and training continued.
******
"So what are we going to do here?" Nino asked.
The school day had ended, thank goodness. Théo seemed to be more lost than a fish in a desert, and I had spent most of the day babysitting him! At least now I was finally at the park with Paws and Nino. Somehow, Fuko had managed to make a kit of pigeons do some crazy synchronized pooping on the gorilla.
"You said your father was going to evaluate the park right?" I asked Paws who nodded. "We're going to pretend we're him. For example," I cleared my throat in an attempt to mimic his voice, "No no no! This simply won't do! The grass is clearly a different shade of green than his eyes! They don't match! Pull out all the grass and replant it with a more suitable green!" I even buffed out my chest, and held my hands behind my back, the way I had seen him in photos.
Paws burst out laughing almost immediately.
"There's no way he'd say that!" Nino argued.
"Actually," Paws caught his breath, "he did once completely redo a fashion line from scratch because the company that was supplying him, kept changing the yellow fabric every so slightly with each new order!"
"No way!" Nino gaped.
"Hey I know something he would comment on," Paws looked around, then followed my lead in attempting to mimic his father, "These trees are all different widths! They're distracting from my clothes-line! Replant them immediately!"
Nino grinned, "Alright! Let me try! Hmmm," he looked around the park.
I crossed my arms and smiled at the boys.
Fuko hovered near my face, "Félix..." she whispered even though she knew no one could hear her but me, "Can I please chase some pigeons? Please?"
I glared at her a very firm 'No!'
"The dirt here is too yellow!" Nino finally spoke, "Compared to my son's hair, it becomes flat and dull!"
Paws and Nino seemed totally into the game now.
My phone buzzed. I glanced at it. My mom was telling me to come back to the apartment. She knew that the school day had ended. I ignored it.
Paws pulled his hair back to mimic his father's hairstyle. "I'm afraid the amount of pigeons here make my duck's butt hairstyle look out of place! We must relocate them at once! Bring me some swans!"
Even I couldn't help but snort at that one.
"Natalie!" Paws looked at me.
I rolled my eyes, "Yes sir?" I went along with it.
"The grass is much too wild, braid them all together!"
"As you wish sir!" I gave him an over-exaggerated bow, "Would you also like for me to reprogram the fountain to be anti gravity? And which kind of swan would you prefer? The trumpeter swan or the mute swan?"
"Yes, get to it!" Paws went right along with it. "And the trumpeter swan of course!"
"Hey wait," Nino piped in, "If you're your dad, and Félix is Natalie, who do I get to be?"
"This is simple math Nino," I said, "You're the gorilla."
"What?! I can't be him!" Nino protested.
"Natalie! Gorilla!" Paws buffed out his chest again, "This place is lacking entertainment! I order you to fight each other!"
"Pfffft," Nino snickered, "That wouldn't be a fair fight!"
Paws laughed too, "I know right?! Natalie would totally win!" He eyed me.
Well, I did have an invisible cat spirit of misfortune on my side.
Nino shook his head, although he was still smiling, "I meant in real life."
"I'm pretty sure Natalie would still win," I commented.
"Adrien!" We all flinched when the real Natalie called out Paws' name. "You're late! You were expected at your Chinese lesson half an hour ago." She looked in my direction, "You're his tutor," she noticed.
"I am," I agreed, equally as deadpan.
Natalie pushed her glasses further up her nose, "Then as his tutor, you have the responsibility of making him follow his schedule and act responsibly!" She said slightly angrily, "M Agreste is extremely upset right now!"
I crossed my arms, "Oh I'm sorry, was making Gabriel Agreste's son feel better after being neglected by his parent interfering with his busy schedule?"
Paws was motioning for me to cut it out. I didn't care though.
Before Natalie could reply though, I continued, "Well gee, how was I supposed to know that he didn't want to be cheered up and instead wanted to attend a Chinese lesson that he's being forced to take?" I sighed exaggeratedly, "I guess that appearing on time to forced lessons is more important to the egregious M Agreste, than his son's happiness. Of course what do I know. It's not like I'm his parent, or caretaker or anything." I glared at Natalie, daring her to challenge me.
Natalie straightened up, clutched her clipboard tighter, then faced Paws, "Come along now Adrien," and gestured to the car.
My phone started buzzing with a call.
Paws sighed, then he faced me and Nino, "Thanks guys, it was fun while it lasted." He climbed into the car and gave us a wave before Natalie shut the door.
Natalie looked at me, "M Agreste will be hearing about this," she informed me.
"Just ask Adrien for my number," I replied smoothly. Oh yes. I would like very much to speak to M Agreste for blowing off his own son like that.
Natalie climbed into the car and drove away.
Nino made a nervous laugh, "You might not want to get in Adrien's dad's way..."
"Oh what's he going to do to me?" I asked, "Ban me from his stores? That man needs a wake up call."
"Speaking of calls," Nino pointed to my pocket, "your pants are vibrating."
"Oh really? I didn't notice that a piece of fabric that I'm wearing is vibrating," I rolled my eyes then answered the phone. "Yeah?"
"Félix," it was my mom, "why aren't you here yet?"
"On my way," I sighed. Seriously, I already knew that she and Claude were officially dating now. Why did she want me to come anyways?
"Got to go?" Nino asked.
"Technically, I had to be there a while ago," I shrugged. I waved Nino farewell and headed home.
"Call me crazy, but given your luck and Gabriel's status as a celebrity, I think he could do a lot worse than just banish you from his stores," Fuko flitted around my head like a fly.
"Not without appearing like a complete jerk to the rest of the world," I reminded her. Plus, Paws' ring absorbed any bad luck she summoned, at least while I was with him. However, merely being in Paris, had greatly subdued the usual amount of bad luck I usually got, so either Paws' miraculous was just that powerful, or it was also Ladybug's luck that was nullifying some of the bad luck Fuko summoned.
After ignoring several consecutive phone calls from both my mom and and unknown number (which I assume was Claude), I arrived at the apartment and walked through the door.
My mom crossed her arms, "You're late, after I specifically asked you to be here."
"I'm here now, aren't I?"
"Where were you?" she demanded.
I crossed my arms defensively, "I was doing something important."
Claude pretended he was shot in the heart, "But what could be more important than supporting your mother's new relationship?!" Then he straightened up and looked at me pensively, "Unless...." he smiled dubiously, "you were busy saving Paris or something..."
I cast him a hostile glance. Not that again! "I'm not Chat Noir," I told him flatly.
Claude held up his hands, "Look, I'm just sayin," he shrugged, "I did some research, and did you know that there aren't a lot of cat rings out there? And most of them are bought by girls?" he eyed me as if he had cornered me.
"Wow, you must be getting all sorts of cat jewelry ads from web-searches now. Hope your dead end was worth it," I shook my head disappointingly. Then I looked at my mom, "So why did you really want me here?"
"I want you to tag along with Claude and I today! We planned the whole afternoon. Today is your day to get to know each other since-," her phone rang. "One second," she interrupted her thoughts. "Hello? Mmhmm... Oh that's horrible! I'm so sorry!" She hung up the phone. "So the restaurant we made a reservation for, kind of caught fire and is now closed..." she looked at Claude worriedly.
"Wow!" Fuko chided, "You haven't even agreed to coming along and you already caused them bad luck!"
"I'm out," I said flatly, and tried leaving the apartment.
"Hold on there young man," my mom grabbed my shoulder, "I didn't say this was optional!"
"Give me extra chores this weekend then," I bargained, "Believe me, you two will have a much better time without me around."
"Don't say that!" Claude smiled warmly at me, "I'm sure you're a lovely cactus underneath all those spines!"
"You flatter me," I said deadpan. Then I left the apartment.
"Félix!" My mom called after me.
"Sorry Mom," I murmured as I closed the door behind me, and made myself scarce. I made a fist with my ring hand and stared at the ring. Would I really be able to get it off in time, or was I doomed to die from bad luck?