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If Adrien had known his flirting had actually been effective, he would've gone HAM on it.
(He felt odd even thinking the phrase from a song Nino had shown him just that day. It would probably be the last time he used it.)
Regardless of his phrasing, he had honestly underestimated his own flirting skills. Apparently Ladybug had as well.
Now here they were, in an alley, making out.
Chat Noir.
Was making out with Ladybug.
His mind was ready to combust.
(In that case we'll let the narrator explain for the poor child. He's very...distracted at the moment.)
He had been pretty solid on the flirting front today. Of course, the fact that there was an akuma because of a woman scorned might have helped. It made it much easier to flirt. Especially compared to when a man became, say, King of the Pigeons.
Lustery, she had said was his name.
'Hawkmoth needs to get someone else to name these people.' His unfocused mind told him.
Her intentions weren't even that bad though! She wandered the streets, blowing kisses to make men fall in love with the first woman they saw. Since she was standing before them, she had a rather large following by the time Chat Noir arrived on the scene. Only a few men were mindlessly following other women. Obviously they had seen another before they saw Lustery.
It was only a little creepy.
Okay maybe a lot creepy that she now had a few hundred manservants.
Adrien hadn't even gotten within 100 feet of her before he saw a red, cartoonish kiss flying at him. It materialized from the sea of men before him. He was smacked across the face, timed with the sound of a wet kiss hitting him.
...was something else supposed to happen?
He certainly couldn't see the woman with the akuma. He wasn't about to look for her either, since he realized why all these men were following her.
He heard a familiar voice call out from the roof behind him. "Chat Noir! Over here, quickly!"
Turning sharply with raised eyebrows, he caught sight of his Lady. She was standing on a roof, her red frame splashing against the blue tiles of the building. She looked absolutely dazzling in the setting sunlight. Dare he say,even more beautiful than her normal amount of beauty.
He couldn't get out of the man-ocean quickly enough.
Scrambling onto the roof beside her, he reached out and captured her hand. "My Ladybug, I'm paw-sitively thrilled you could join the party." He said, raising her hand and kissing it. Ladybug stared at him in what looked like...bewilderment? He continued anyways, "She seems to have quite the following doesn't she. It's like she has a captive audience." A smile pulled at his lips. It faded quickly though as he looked down on the scene below. The woman had continued on, heading towards the Arc de Triomphe.
He glanced back to Ladybug, before double taking in confusion. She was still standing there, just gawking at him.
"My Lady, I know I'm stunning," he said, swooping his hair dramatically, "but it's rude to star-"
"Didn't you get hit by the akuma?" She said, oblivious to how she interrupted him.
He thought back for a moment before answering, "Oh. Uhh, yeah I think so. But nothing happened." He shrugged. "Maybe my charm overpowered hers, ehh?" He flirted, leaning towards her.
Did...did she just blush?!
It was there. He had been certain! Just a slight pink leaking out from under her mask, but a blush nonetheless!
His eyes widened at the realization. He was about to drop another and keep the heat on until she suddenly jump started back to life.
With a literal jolt of her body, she stammered out, "W-we have to...akuma the defeat!" She yelled out. "I-I-I mean, akuma! Fight. NOW!"
Not daring to embarrass herself further, Ladybug launched her yo-yo and swung to follow the akuma victim.
'...what was that?!' Both of them thought in unison.
The akuma was behind a wall of men. Each of them young and old, coming after Ladybug and Chat Noir at the woman's beckoning. First they needed to get rid of them. It didn't prove difficult. They simply used vehicles to trap all of the men on a bridge, where more than a few jumped off in their akuma-induced obsession.
The akuma was in the lipstick. Of course it was the lipstick. Marinette realized this at the same time as Chat.
"Wear as much makeup as you want, you'll never match up to Ladybug!" He yelled out, trying to taunt the akuma. It certainly made her upset, but there was an untended side-effect. It also made Ladybug stumble.
Ladybug managed to dodge the furious lipstick kiss that was launched at her. Chat on the other hand, didn't even bother with evasion. Having been hit, he knew it wouldn't affect him. (Or rather he guessed correctly.) The flustered woman, in her unadulterated frustration, threw the lipstick at Chat Noir at super-human speed. Her face changed to horror as she realized her mistake, far too late to change it.
"You should have realized I have cat-like reflexes lady! There's no way you could plant one on me." He said simply (and also proudly because of his own jokes) after catching the object. He used his Cataclysm to make the lipstick fall out of its casing with a messy plop to the pavement.
Ladybug swung her yo-yo up for her normal akuma catch and release. Adrien took note that her eyes flicked to and from to him throughout the entire process. It...was intriguing.
They still had her Lucky Charm since the akuma victim lost from her own incompetence. Ladybug threw the unused makeup remover into the air, returning all the men back to their former selves. The ones who had jumped in the water were even dry now!
The only thing that hadn't been fixed was Ladybug's troubled expression.
Both of them bounded off the bridge, away from the city's island and towards Le Gran Paris. Adrien took great care to stay on her tail. Something was up, and he was going to find out what.
The second building they landed on, Ladybug stopped. Adrien paused in his retreat. Before he could question why she had stopped, she looked him in the eyes and asked plainly. "You were hit by that lipstick-love-spell thing, right?"
He nodded his head, too confused to speak. What was she getting at?
"An-and..." she was left searching for her voice suddenly, struggling to turn her forcibly rushed thoughts into words. A beeping reminded her that she was on a time limit.
Although maybe that didn't matter anymore.
Marinette swallowed hard to make room for the words in her throat. "And I was the first girl you saw...correct?" She would have been shocked that the words had come out steady, but was too distracted. She was preparing herself for a different shock, if he confirmed what she was suspecting...
"Well, yeah. I couldn't see the akuma woman, and then you yelled out my name so...I guess you were the first one I saw." He said with a smile. An innocent, naive smile.
'Oh.' She thought.
"Oh." She said.
Her heart suddenly felt like it was about to explode. So many emotions were running in her mind, emotions she had kept under a tarp until she suddenly couldn't deny their existence any longer.
Her mind rushed a single thought to her consciousness. It was blazing hot. It almost spilled out of her mouth before was able to stop it.
'He didn't act any different though. Does that mean...'
She suddenly failed to keep her thoughts to herself.
"Do you love me?"
He was obviously caught off guard. His head jerked back and eyes shot wide. Suddenly finding the Seine was where his eyes needed to be he fumbled to come up with a coherent response.
"W-what makes y-y-you say that?" He got out. Hand on neck, not making eye contact, tail twitching like a bumblebee on coke. He felt about as smooth as he looked.
The logical side of her brain took control, shoving her emotions under the tarp to be hidden for just a moment. If she could see the metaphorical tarp, she knew it would be at its breaking point. That tarp would be in the verge of tearing away at any moment and flooding her mind with new self-revelations.
'He loves you.' Slipped out into her conscious thoughts. Suddenly a myriad of tiny moments rushed through her mind. Every moment Chat had saved her, the looks he held Ladybug had saved him, the way he craved her attention, every small joke he had uttered when they were alone together, even his God-awful puns suddenly held meaning to her. She realized how much she had been taking him for granted.
All this was hidden behind a heavy nervous gulp in her throat.
Everything had changed so rapidly. So you could see how a young teenage girl that was clearly not ready for this magnitude of a revelation, could make some rash decisions.
She fell into the sudden blossoming in her chest. Like a massive rose, she let herself get swallowed in it. It beckoned her to find somewhere more private, so she obeyed.
Grabbing his wrist, she dragged him further into the city. He was confused for sure, but didn't bother to resist.
"Wha- Hey where are we going?" He asked, this was definitely not like her. Or maybe it was? She was always an enigma to him. One he desperately attempted to solve, so at second glance, this didn't actually seem too out of place. Ladybug did have a habit of letting her emotions get the better of her after all. Whatever she was feeling, whatever was going on, he trusted her, regardless of the incessant beeping from his ring and her earrings.
'That must be loud, I can hear it from here clear as day and she has it right next to her ears.' He thought, blissfully unaware of where they were going. He didn't seem to care either, as long as she was doing the leading. 'Of course, my hearing is improved. I can't really use that as a guide of how loud the beeping really is.'
His attention was forcefully dragged back to Ladybug when she jumped down into an alleyway. Still holding his wrist, she more carried him than lead him. Once down off the building, she turned around to face him.
'Why is she breathing so hard? We weren't running or anything.' He noted. Her eyes darted around his confused expression. She looked as though she was searching for something. He only saw the way she captured her lip between her teeth for a second.
Suddenly he blinked and missed it. The moment where she had rushed him. He was caught in her tight embrace, arms wrapped sloppily around his torso and biceps. She held him like her life depended on it though. Like if she let go, she wouldn't see the next day.
"Thank you." She whispered into his chest.
He stared down at the top of her head, wide eyed. "T-t-thanks for w-what?"
She hold on him tightened.
"Everything." Her voice was sharply sweet, piercing into his emotions. It was gentle, yet held so much force behind it that he had to stare at the brick wall behind her.
His hands, hesitant and shaky, wrapped around her waist, entwining behind her. His breathing abruptly became a manual process. Every ounce of focus that wasn't used for simply standing up straight, became enveloped by her.
He became absorbed in the feeling of her thumb pressing into his back, it was wrapped around her own wrist so her hold wouldn't loosen. The way he buried his nose in her hair overwhelmed his thoughts. She contained a sweet smell, like sugar and lavender and maybe even a little pineapple.
The thought that smelling her might be odd dashed across his consciousness, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. She hadn't reacted negatively, if anything she burrowed further into his hold.
His mind told him that the hug had been going on longer than it should. He loosened his arms around her, giving the freedom to leave.
But she didn't budge.
He stood there in limbo. It felt more like she was the only one holding on, despite his arms still being around her back loosely. If he tightened again, it might be she would make to leave at the same time and make things awkward. But if she had no intention of leaving soon (as was looking more likely by the second) then barely holding her just felt...wrong.
Whether it was right or not, he let his heart decide, and the beating in his chest, that she could surely hear, persuaded his arms to bring her closer to him. She had already been plastered to him, but now he pulled her in even tighter than before. The movement caused her to curl into him, as though he was the only thing that existed.
It made him feel wanted. He wanted to make sure she felt the same, if not more so. So he did the only thing his mind could comprehended in the moment. He held her tighter, they both held each other almost desperately.
Till finally her hold on him loosened, the entire ordeal must have only been a minute or two because they both had time left to spare.
Just enough time in fact.
She looked up to him, eyes fluttering. Her bluebell irises shone at him through her lashes. Despite having lessened their pressing hold on each other, the distance between them hadn't changed.
Ladybug's nose brushed his lip in passing. The sensation caused both of their chests to tighten in unison. They stared at each other, dazed, for a scant few seconds before either realized.
Their lips were touching.
Marinette froze, and she felt Chat stiffen as well.
'Is this...is this okay?' She thought. She nearly said it aloud, but that would require breaking the contact.
Breathing into his lips, she felt his own breath enter her dance across her teeth. She stared up at him, his normally thin slit pupils blown wide. If she were a gambler, she'd bet all the money she had that hers were just as massive.
Oddly enough, his uncertainty pushed Marinette forward rather than cause her to retreat. She dared to push up, to lean into his lips. It took only a fraction of a second to feel a matching pressure push back.
Their eyes hadn't yet disconnected.
She pulled away slightly, but never removed her lips. Instead she used the pull backwards as a spring, and pushed into his a tiny bit farther. At first, he didn't react. It was only the feeling of contact, the sensation of his lips still there and not ripped away in fear or disgust that kept her from shying into herself.
Her patience was rewarded swiftly as he came at her with even deeper urgency. He wasn't rough in his approach, but rather she watched his eyes close as he slowly began the incline of intensity. The increase in sensual bliss draped over her eyes, and without thinking she shut them to drown out the rest of the world. To focus on his touch.
As the kiss slowly ramped up, Marinette found herself pinning Chat Noir against a wall. They both heard the final beeping of her miraculous. Seconds later his beeped as well.
They both paused, panting heavy in their ears, drifting apart by only centimeters. He looked in her eyes, mask covered brows raised questioningly.
A very Chat Noir grin spread across Ladybug's face and she didn't spare him another second before she took his lips again. She tasted the ear-to-ear grin he wore. One coherent thought ran through her head.
'This is the start of something miraculous.'