One shots

After Transmission

"Can I come in?", Gabriel asked shyly, after he had knocked on the door frame to Nathalie's room, as her door was slightly ajar.

"Would you leave, if I said no?", she spat.

The designer winced, but entered anyway, closing the door after he did silently. Then he sat down beside the woman on the bed.

"You're still angry on me, I assume?"

"Oh really? You're noticing fast today!", Nathalie mocked him, then she gave him a stern look and hissed, "you made me believe, you were going to comfort him, not make him wear alliance, so you could give him more abilities, once you akumatized him! He's your son, for fuck's sake, Gabriel! You should have just been there for him and maybe given him some advice. Consider yourself lucky, that he went back to the girl and they talked again and agreed to give their love another chance. I would like to think, that you didn't even try, but...", she sighed, "just tell me, you didn't try."

His silence was enough of an answer to her.

Gabriel kept his gaze on the floor, when he sat down at the foot end of Nathalie's bed, burying his face in his hands, his body trembling.

"Can't you see, why I was doing that? I am desperate, Nathalie! I'm running out of time! It's...", he gulped, then looked up and directly at her face, "...it's spreading. I don't know, how long I'll be able to....well.... pretend to be fine. It's painful. And the more skin it covers, the more I'm hurting!"

"Show me!", she said, her voice barely audible.

"I'd rather not!"

His assistant inhaled audibly, then accused him:

"So you're lying to make me feel pity? Or what are you up to now?"

The man jumped to his feet, his face showing his rage, when he violently opened his blazer and shirt, tearing the buttons off, as he went. Then he let both drop, revealing his upper body, the from the impact of ChatNoir's cataclysm necrotic skin now not only covering his forearm, but had spread along his upper arm and had reached his shoulder and back.

Nathalie gasped in shock, when she saw the damage, he had brought upon himself, but didn't avert her gaze and demanded:

"Come up here, let me have a closer look!"

"Please, don't ask that from me! I.... I am only fourty years old, yet I look like an old man. I.... I feel ashamed. You've last seen me, when I was a young man of twenty four years. I don't want you to pity me, no matter what you thought before!"

"Just get your aged arse up here, Gabriel! There is no need to feel ashamed because of me. I don't look the way, I looked sixteen years ago anymore either!", she said much softer now and patted the mattress to her right, "just sit and let me see. Maybe there is something in the grimoire, I can use, to at least stop it from spreading any further!"

He moved reluctantly, butt eventually did as he was told and sat down at the spot, she had pointed at.

"Fuck!", she couldn't hold the word back, when she saw the dead skin and tissue from close by, "I am going to touch you, please tell me, if I am hurting you, okay?"

He nodded, but kept his lips together, not making a sound. At least not, until she touched a very painful spot.

"That's enough!", he yelled at her, seeing her flinch and immediately contained himself again. "Sorry, that just hurt a lot! I can't see the point in touching it anyway, so please, stop, okay?"

Nathalie instantly agreed. 

"I'm really sorry for causing you extra pain. But I needed to figure out, how deep it goes. I...", she gulped, then placed her hand on his right forearm, the one, which wasn't hurt yet, "...I can only tell, that it goes really deep and I feel so useless right now, I..."

She couldn't hold the tears back any longer and turned away, so he wouldn't see them. But he did and reached out to grab her hand, pulling her back to face him. Cupping her cheek with his left hand, he muttered hoarsely:

"Please don't cry for me, dear! I really don't deserve your tears. Let me just get up and get dressed and then I'll leave you alone!"

But the crying woman laid her own hand on top of his, while she leaned into his touch, taking his free hand into the other and intertwined their fingers.

"Stay!", she whispered, "just get out of your trousers and lay down, you really look as if you could use some rest. Let me hold you this time!"

Being told to get out of his pants, made him quirk an eyebrow and he teasingly said:

"What would you do, if I wasn't wearing any underwear, Nath? Would you still want me to take of my trousers?"

She scoffed, then said cockily:

"You're all the time dressed properly, as you used to call it, Gabriel! Even in the jungle, where Emilie and I could barely breathe, you wore your underwear and all the other stuff!"

Gabriel gave her a pensive look. Considering if he should say it or not, he decided he had to:

"Do I really have to remind you, that your trouble with breathing didn't come from the dampness and the heat? Damn it, you were in so much pain and you were bleeding so heavily. And still you wouldn't let me carry you. You just forced yourself to go further and further. You even tried to crawl, to keep me at distance. If you hadn't finally passed out, so we were able to take care of you...!"

It was the designer, who was crying now, while he had pulled her taut to his chest and was desperately stroking along her back.

Nathalie raised her head, her eyes brimming with tears as well, when they found his and now both gulped strongly.

"Don't!", he gushed out, when he saw her opening her mouth to speak, "just this one time, don't talk and just.... just..."

And then he leaned in and smashed his lips onto hers, still holding her in a tight grasp, desperately hoping she wouldn't hit him or send him away, because he overstepped each boundary, they had built over all those years, when he felt her tension resolve and she hesitantly reciprocated his kiss.