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"If you weren't afraid of anything, what would you do?"
Marinette broke off a piece of her muffin and chewed it thoughtfully. "Watch a horror movie."
Chat Noir laughed. "Really?"
She nodded, rearranging her cushion against the balcony railing. "I've always wanted to know what they're like, but every time Alya's dragged me to one, we had to leave halfway in.”
Like that one awful jumpscare-addled film Marinette didn’t even know the name of. It had been sometime last year, back when she had still been hung up over Adrien, and, determined to look cool in front of him, Marinette suggested that the two of them and Alya and Nino all go see a horror film.
“It’ll be a nice way to remember the first time we went to the movies as a four,” Marinette had said. “You’ll book the tickets, won’t you Alya?”
Alya did.
Marinette feigned sickness after the first fifteen minutes, and had Adrien believing she had a severe popcorn allergy for almost a month after that.
Chat Noir laughed again, this time tipping his head back against her balcony. "Is that all you'd do?"
"No, obviously."
"What else would you do?"
"Hm…" She tapped her tablet screen before it turned off. "I'd kiss a lot more people."
"Really? Even people you're not in love with?"
"You seriously have never thought about kissing people you're not in love with?"
"But— My Lady, where would the fun be in that?"
"Kissing is fun!"
"How many people have you kissed that you're not in love with?"
Marinette opened her mouth.
Chat Noir interrupted her. "Other than me. Saving me from Dark Cupid doesn't count. You did that because you had to."
Marinette closed her mouth. "Alright, smart ass," she said. "I don't have to kiss lots of people to know kissing is nice."
"Oh, do tell me about the wonderful experiences of kissing, Miss I've-Kissed-Two-People-In-My-Life."
"Sorry, how many have you kissed, again?"
"One."
"Despite having had a girlfriend? Tragic. Plus, I don't count. You don't remember it."
"I'm not the one saying kissing random people is fun."
"It's not— they wouldn't be random people. They'd be like… my friends, you know?"
He blinked at her, giving into an amused half-smile. "Is it normal to want to kiss your friends?"
An embarrassed flush crawled up her neck. She struggled, for a moment, to collect her words. "I mean… some of my friends are attractive. But just because I want to kiss them doesn't mean I'd want anything serious. Just a little kiss, you know?"
"Who would you kiss, then?"
"Oh.” Her flush died away. “That’s easy." She began to count off her fingers. "Alya, Kagami…"
Chat Noir turned his head away sharply. Still, Marinette caught the twitch in his brow.
He didn't let her dwell on it for long. "Well, what are you afraid of, then?"
She scoffed. "Are you kidding? Kissing could change everything ."
He watched her from the corner of his eye. "Everything?"
A breeze blew past. Marinette held the muffin wrapper down with one hand, and fixed her hair with the other.
He was still watching her. Anticipatory. She looked down, and pulled her pink blanket around her shoulders.
"Uh, yeah," she said quietly. "That's how I broke up with Luka, after all."
Chat Noir sat up. "What?"
She sighed. This wasn't the direction the conversation was meant to go. If she had wanted to think about Luka and give herself a guilt-induced tummy ache, she wouldn't have invited Chat Noir over to watch movies this evening.
The prospect of having to tell Chat Noir the truth had been looming over her head since two weeks ago, when she simply said things hadn't 'worked out' when he had asked her why 'boyfriend' had turned into 'ex'.
"It's— well…" She played with her fingers. "I don't know, we— I was too scared to kiss him, at first, but when we did…"
She didn't know a feeling could replicate itself so clearly, even after two weeks of it happening. Marinette's stomach twisted, blood rushing in her ears, tear ducts pulsing, because how could she have gotten it all so wrong?
Marinette took in a deep breath. And, just as she had told Luka they had to break up, blurted it out. "I realised I felt nothing for him."
Chat Noir's eyes widened. "Oh."
The silence that ensued was thick and stifling.
"Didn't you guys date for a month?" he asked.
She dropped her face onto her pulled-up knees. "Yeah."
He looked away, turning up to face the sky.
Marinette turned away, too.
The muffin she ate, along with their microwaveable popcorn and milk chocolate bars, churned in her stomach. She remembered a time last year, when they had only been fourteen, and she hadn't shown up to Chat Noir's date and he had told her she was playing with his feelings. She knew, then, that it had all been a misunderstanding, and that neither of them had really done anything wrong. In fact, she had almost forgotten about it until the quick, awkward peck she had shared with Luka. Since then, like a jammed cassette tape, it played and replayed, rewinding time and time again, a cutting accusation that Marinette couldn't for the life of her drown out.
Or confess to anyone that she was worried it was true.
She wondered if Chat Noir, looking up at the night sky so similar to the one he had laid candles out for her under, was thinking of what he had said, too. If he was thinking that he had been right.
When her tablet dimmed again, she let it switch off.
Chat Noir broke the silence — of all things, with a smile. "That's okay. It's good that you figured it out, then."
Marinette hadn't realised how hard her heart had started beating until it began to slow down. "Really?"
"Yeah. It's important to be true to yourself and how you feel — even if it takes a while to figure it out." He shook his can of soda. The thin sound of his leftover drink rattled inside. He drank it up in a quick gulp. "I don't think the kiss changed anything, though. I think it just made you accept something you’d always known deep down."
"Huh." She rubbed her arms against another breeze. "Since when did you get so wise?"
He chuckled, but the amusement, if it was any even there to begin with, was dry. "Since I refused to kiss my girlfriend."
Marinette stared at him. "What? Why?"
He rolled the can around in his hand. "I didn't feel ready. And, like, I know it's normal to not feel ready to kiss someone. But… with her… I think I just didn't like her in that way and didn't quite realise it."
"How did you figure it out?"
His eyes met hers briefly, then flitted away once more. "Kaga— I mean, my ex-girlfriend was upset because I kept finding excuses to, you know, avoid kissing her." Chat Noir fiddled with the tab on the soda can. "And I remember thinking to myself, 'why was I always so ready to kiss Ladybug?' and then I realised."
Marinette flushed. A funny reaction, considering none of his closed eyes and puckered lips garnered much more than an eye-roll from her last year.
"So even not kissing can change everything," she mused.
He shrugged. "I guess."
They passed into another silence. Marinette switched her tablet on and off until the flashing screen gave her a headache.
"Kissing is nice, though," she said. "It's everything else around it that makes it less nice."
"What do you mean?"
"Like… the actual kissing part — in theory — feels good, right? You know, being close to someone, and feeling their breaths on you, and—"
She looked up from her tablet at an inopportune time. Chat Noir had frozen, staring at her with a mix of curiosity and surprise.
Marinette shook the fog out of her head. "A-anyway, it's objectively pretty nice. But the thing about kissing is that people don't usually go into it for just that, you know? And all that thinking and all those expectations for it to mean something just… sort of takes the niceness out of it."
"But wouldn't it have to mean something for it to feel nice at all?"
Marinette shrugged. "I don't know. I've never kissed someone just because. But it doesn't sound half bad, if the kiss doesn't change anything." She rested her head back against the railing and looked over at him. "No unexpected revelations. Just kissing."
She waited for him to break eye contact. To turn back to his soda can, or to look back up at the sky.
But he didn't.
They held each other's gaze until the air turned thick. Warmth that she could have simply chalked up to her blanket crawled up from Marinette's chest to her neck.
"What if we kissed?" he suggested.
"Just because?" she said, the reply on her tongue even before he had spoken.
He nodded. "Just because. No unexpected revelations. Just kissing."
Marinette smiled. She sat up, the pillow she had propped up on the railing falling aside. "You'll see. It'll be much nicer than you think."
"Alright," he said through a soft laugh, opening his arms out to take her in them when she came closer. He held her without much fuss, comfortably and naturally like they had done this before. "Okay. We'll see."
"Okay."
She looked up at him. The tip of her nose grazed his lip until he lowered his head for her. Her blanket began to fall away from her shoulders, but it hardly mattered when he was as warm as he was, embracing her, sharing his heat.
They kissed.
And Marinette realised, after the muscles along her neck and back and shoulders clenched at the touch of his mouth, that there was no such thing as 'just kissing'.
They kissed, and he tasted sharp like his fizzy drink, but it was okay because she was sure she was an amalgamation of popcorn and soda and milk chocolate bars and the taste of being proven wrong.
No unexpected revelations? Oh, what a wishful thought.
Because when he brushed his tongue against her lower lip, she realised she would rather die than never kiss Chat Noir again.
That this was what had been missing all along.
She knew she'd known it for much longer than this. These feelings couldn't crash against the shore of her heart so hard without having been there before.
No, he'd been right. Maybe it wasn't about the kiss as much as it was about what it made her accept.
Marinette put both hands on his chest and pushed him back, gulping down mouthfuls of oxygen, scanning his face for anything, anything to tell her he'd felt it, too.
Chat Noir pressed his forehead to hers. "That was more than 'just because'," he said.
"Yeah," she breathed, hands coming up to touch his face. "Yeah. It was."