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For someone living a Hannah Montana style double-life, Marinette Dupain-Cheng is God awful at lying. Just straight terrible at it, truly. Most of the time, she stutters so hard her sentence is incomprehensible, and other times, she says all her words backwards (Maman had asked if she was opposed to getting tested for dyslexia at that point), and at really, really embarrassing times, she just makes this high-pitched sound like a tea kettle and marches away—no explanations offered.
She’s lucky her family and friends don’t bother to press her about her whereabouts when she starts rattling off complete garbage anymore. A good, “I have to—’cause—and, you know, my fish—” suffices well enough and she’s in the clear to go suit up.
That being so, Marinette is, in every sense of the word, a no-good liar. Inadequate. Flat out bad. Seriously, never ask for her to tell a fib on your behalf because such efforts will be entirely in vain.
One may even argue that lying is just playing a role—acting, if you will—and Marinette would be inclined to agree to a certain extent. If you’re one for philosophical interpretations of the world, then lies are surely truths on some other plane of existence or divergent timeline. Whatever the case may be, however, she has never been able to do the role of alternate-reality-Marinette justice; acting, lying, deceit—she can’t do it to save her life.
Logically, this conclusion raises question to her current perplexity: How in the everloving fuck—Sorry, Tikki—did she manage to secure the leading role in a film?
“You did great, girl! I didn’t know you had it in you!” Alya squealed approximately two weeks ago, right after Marinette—in support of her amazing friend’s upcoming short film—auditioned.
“Neither did I,” she had replied, more than shocked at her own performance.
Alya Césaire, renowned movie-buff and lover of all things superhero, had predictably combined her two obsessions for her Film Production course’s end-of-the-year project: a short film spinning off the adventures of well-known Parisian heroes, Ladybug and Chat Noir, remastered to Lady Noire and Mister Bug.
Marinette accompanied Alya throughout the process, as any good friend would, and that included auditions. While Alya had begged her to try it out, saying “it won’t even matter if you read the script backwards” because it would just be for “fun”, Marinette knew that she’d only make a fool of herself—she could hardly lie about what she ate for breakfast, acting out an entire role for a movie was out the question.
Even when she found out Adrien Agreste, who she is pathetically and hopelessly in love with, would be playing the male lead, she still wasn’t so bold as to try out.
But then Lila Rossi stalked up the stage in her 5-inch stilettos and her Yves Saint Laurent red lipstick and killed her lines—in the good way, unfortunately—and, well, come on! Marinette might’ve been slightly encouraged by jealousy resentfulness spite some unnamed emotion, but she was also just being a good friend—she couldn’t sit by and watch Adrien get forced to play alongside her, some notorious liar who doesn’t care about anything other than climbing the unofficial social hierarchy ladder.
(No wonder her audition went so well. After all, Lila is no stranger to playing roles.)
Marinette doesn’t even know how she got up on that stage. All she remembers is snatching up an extra script, burning and sour with animosity, and—well, acting.
By some fluke in the space-time continuum, she did well. Better than well. Lead role worthy well.
“And here I was convinced being bad at lying and being bad at acting was mutually inclusive,” said Alya after auditions were done and over with, arm slung over her shoulder as they headed toward the metro.
“They are, technically,” Marinette mumbled, turning the script over in her hands, “They’re just… not mutually exclusive, apparently.”
Alya had paused, and Marinette looked at her and faced her kind grin. In the reflection of her glasses, she saw her own worry.
“You don’t have to accept the role if you don’t want to, Mari. You did great up there, and as much as I’d love to have you as my fierce Lady Noire—if you’re not comfortable, it’s totally cool to kick back and be my co-director.” Alya leaned in with a knowing smirk. “And don’t worry, I won’t have Lila Rossi all over your Adrien. She’ll be Bystander 2 at most.”
Marinette, ears burning at the way she called Adrien hers, had laughed and bumped Alya’s hip with her own. While the turn of events had been unexpected, they weren’t at all unwelcomed.
“Are you kidding? I’d never pass up the chance to star in my best friend’s movie. I’ve already memorized the first two scenes!” she boasted, and Alya rolled her eyes.
“That’s what I like to hear. Just don’t go reading the lines out of order on me, capisce?”
“Capisce!”
Fast-forward two weeks, one costume fitting, three script readings, and four separate filming sessions—and there’s only one more scene to record before it’s all assembled and edited. The finale.
Marinette sits at her desk, feet tucked beneath her in her chair and script in her lap. There’s a plate of half-eaten florentines in reach, which she had been sharing with Tikki until the kwami got distracted with trying to braid her hair (keyword: trying; Marinette can feel each twist coming undone as she moves onto the next one) while she reviews the scene.
“What do you think is the best way to say this line, Tikki? More relief or more triumph?” Marinette asks, lifting the page over her head for Tikki to read.
“The first time, more triumph and put emphasis on the word ‘did’. On the repeat, more relief.”
“Oh, good idea! Okay, how’s this: ‘We did it, Mister Bug! We… We did it.’”
“Perfect!”
This is how most of the past weeks’ script readings have gone: Marinette and Tikki would go through the lines over and over (with Tikki taking on Mister Bug’s lines with an equally adorable and awful deep voice) until they found the perfect delivery, which tended to come after running through lots of water bottles and saying the same words so many times they lost their meaning.
The scene they are working on now followed the aftermath of a boss battle of sorts. Lady Noire and Mister Bug stand before the Eiffel Tower while the Miraculous Ladybugs restore the damage done to the city, basking in their victory.
Marinette continues to read the lines, following each word with the tip of one polish-chipped fingernail.
LADY NOIRE: We did it, Mister Bug! We… We did it.
MISTER BUG: Couldn’t have done it without you, chatte.
LADY NOIRE: I’d certainly hope not. It’s you and me against the world, isn’t it?
MISTER BUG grabs LADY NOIRE’s hand. The Miraculous Ladybugs fly behind them.
“Huh,” Marinette mumbles, flitting through the lines, “You know, this is kind of starting to sound like that one fanfiction Alya wrote for the Ladyblog back in collège—the ‘Ladynoir’ one, remember?”
“The one she dared you to read out loud during the sleepover you had for her birthday?” Tikki asks, and Marinette flips through the pages with growing curiosity.
“Yeah… I never finished the dare, either, huh? I know there was one scene that I just couldn’t get past—You know the one I’m talking about?”
Marinette’s eyes jump to the final line of the script—she’d yet to read it, holding it off as long as possible so as to not spoil the grand finale Alya gushed about.
“The ki—”
Marinette throws the entire script at the wall, effectively cutting Tikki off.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no. That is absolutely not possible. No.
“Marinette? Is everything alright?” Can’t Tikki hear her internal monologue? No, there is nothing alright about anything.
For a long moment, Marinette stares, horrified, at where the paper flops innocently over itself on the floor. Okay, maybe it’s not so bad. She probably just misread something, right? Right. Definitely.
Hesitantly, she picks it back up, peeks at the scene—
LADY NOIRE enthusiastically kis—
She slams the script face down on her desk.
Oh no.
“You… have got to be kidding me.”
Marinette vigorously scrubs her eyes and the heel of her hand comes back with an eyelash. She blinks through the spots in her vision, snatches the script up again and brings it to her nose. Rereads it. Suffers.
The words aren’t changing. They’re the same. They won’t even disappear, for Christ’s sake, no matter how many times she blinks. In fact, she’s seeing double—twice the problem—eyes crossing with how far the paper is shoved in her face.
This—it’s simply not possible. She’s got to be tripping on some serious, hard drugs, and all her cognitive functions are suffering in consequence.
Unless, of course, it is possible, and this is her own personal doomsday.
Marinette holds the script at arm's length and rereads it properly about eight more times, and each time, it’s still there—the words—the scene—she isn’t just having one huge, stress-induced hallucination, that much is clear. It’s in the fine print.
LADY NOIRE enthusiastically kisses MISTER BUG.
(She briefly considers faking her own death and fleeing to Mexico. Cancún’s beaches are gorgeous, after all.)
There it is, a picture eerily reminiscent of a twenty-thousand word Google doc Marinette was forced to read over during too many advisory classes. It resurfaces with appalling ease from the depths of her memory.
“What. What. Tikki” —Marinette’s hands crumple the script— “are you seeing this? Do you—Oh, my God. There’s—It’s the kissing scene!”
She’s so going to kill Alya for this.
Tikki floats over her shoulder to read it as well, diffusing into nervous laughter once she comes across the current demise of Marinette’s adolescent life. She offers a smile that Marinette is sure is meant to be reassuring—but just makes her stomach drop about six stories into purgatory.
“On the bright side,” Tikki starts, and Marinette hears the words before she even says them, “At least it’s Adrien... right?”
Marinette could faint.
“That’s exactly the problem here!”
She throws the script somewhere, anywhere other than her direct line of sight, and marches toward the skylight hatch. She needs some fresh air, now. Desperately.
The fresh air on the balcony may very well be out to get her with how cold the insistent draft is, but it’s still fresh air, and the sight of the boundless sky above her is worlds better than being stuck in her room (where the walls were definitely closing in on her).
Marinette paces from one wall of railings to the other, arms wrapped tightly over her chest in an attempt to both trap her own body heat and to keep herself from falling apart like a disassembled Potato Head toy. It’s working to the extent that all her appendages are still intact. For now.
“I’m—I have to kiss Adrien Agreste. Adrien. Agreste. My lips on his lips. A kiss,” she mutters to herself, much like a maniac, like a complete and utter crazy person, and thank God nobody is outside right now to witness her impending meltdown.
How is she supposed to kiss Adrien? Adrien, the boy she’s been crushing on since she was fourteen, the boy she rhapsodizes about in her diary, the boy she has written ridiculous love letters and made playlists for? She’s breaking the fourth wall of her dreams!
And that’s not to mention the fact she’s never—
She slaps her hands on her cheeks. “I’ve never even kissed a boy before!”
This is beyond her. It literally couldn’t get any worse than this.
“You’ve never kissed a boy before?”
Wow. Famous last words.
Marinette groans and drags her hands down her face. Behind her, where she knows Chat Noir is perched on the railings with his stupid, smug grin, is a smattering of laughter.
“Are you here to mock my imminent doom, chaton?” she says, turning to fix her visitor with a glare.
Chat Noir, as she predicted, is balanced on the railings with his baton twirling effortlessly in one hand. He meets her glare through the brush of his messy fringe—his hair has gotten longer these past months, it seems—and smirks. The stars twinkle annoyingly behind him.
“Not at all, Princess,” says Chat Noir, “What’s this about kissing boys? Trying to make me jealous?”
“In your dreams,” Marinette returns, too preoccupied to indulge him with her usual fire. Instead, she collapses into the deck chair—originally brought up here so she could read outside, but has more so become her go-to nap spot when she returns from a particularly taxing Akuma battle—and heaves a sigh.
Chat, now understanding the current state of things (re: grim), hops off the railings to sit beside her on the ground.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice softens in that sincere way of his when he knows something is bothering her, “Look at me. What’s got you so worried, huh?”
And so she does—look at him, that is—and some of the weight on her chest lifts at the sight of his attentiveness.
Chat Noir started making his nightly visits during a particularly rainy April a few years ago. The thunderstorm winds would perpetually knock her pots over, so Marinette was forced to go out to move them from the crash zones. Coincidentally, Chat Noir always passed her house on his way back from patrols while she moved said pots.
On the evening of one downright torrential storm, Marinette noticed Chat was still vaulting through on his baton—until she flagged him down and made him sit it out. You’ll catch a cold, she had said, and Aren’t cats not supposed to like getting wet anyway? She couldn’t not look out for him. He was her partner, after all, even if he didn’t—doesn’t—know it.
From that point on, Chat would wait out thunderstorms beneath her awning, and they would talk, and he would flirt, and she would punch his arm. Then he started stopping by on days where it wasn’t rainy, and she started offering him leftovers from the bakery. Don’t you know not to feed strays? he had said, and she just smiled and shoved macarons in his mouth. His visits started getting longer, more frequent, and at some point—they were… whatever they are now. Not Ladybug and Chat Noir, the inseparable power duo, but Marinette and Chat Noir: Unlikely friends.
Now, crouched at her side, Chat Noir is the picture of concern: eyebrows pinched, lips pulled into the slightest of frowns, his ears downturned—he’s always had such an honest face.
Marinette sighs again, staring at where her hands curl into fists in her lap.
“It’s just—It’s stupid. I don’t even know why I’m getting so worked up about it,” she says.
Chat, unsatisfied with her answer, shoves his head onto her lap so she’s forced to look at him. Marinette can’t help it; she laughs despite herself and pushes his hair back—it is longer—from his forehead.
“That doesn’t answer my question, Mari. Seriously, what’s up?”
“It’s just this film I’m performing in,” she starts, carding her fingers through his hair, “There’s… a kissing scene I’m in and I’m really not looking forward to it.”
As soon as the words leave her mouth, she feels Chat tense beneath her hand, and that open expression of his shutters into something she can’t pin a word to.
In hindsight, Chat Noir knew Marinette didn't like him. Sure, there had been that one time when she supposedly had a crush on him, but even that had been years ago—back when they were still going to Collège Françoise Dupont—and she had let him go so he could pursue Ladybug. Moved on within days, even.
But nevermind that, because if her outwardly saying she was over him wasn’t enough proof, listening to her gush about some mystery guy that she’s make-30-hour-Spotify-playlists in love with is. For a long time now, he’s known he doesn’t stand a chance.
It still sucks to hear her say it so blatantly, though. Is he so undesirable to her that even kissing him for a movie upset her to this point? He overheard her mention something about having not kissed a boy before—Could she be dreading losing her first kiss to him? Is that the problem?
“Chat? Are you okay?” Marinette’s voice brings him back to reality.
“It’s nothing,” Chat says, but then he picks his head up from her lap and scoots away from her. “So... Is it the person you have to kiss? That’s why you’re not looking forward to it?”
“Yes. No? Ugh, I don’t know!” she replies, frustrated, “It’s just… he…”
Ouch. Chat Noir ducks his head.
“He what? Do you hate him or something?” he murmurs petulantly, and he knows he shouldn’t let Marinette see him this hurt on behalf of Adrien Agreste—but he is hurt.
Because Marinette—Marinette is sweet and kind and she smells like the bakery if it was built in the middle of a garden, and no matter how many times she says she thinks they’re stupid, she laughs at his puns and—and one time, she called him lovely, lovely, and when she smiles at him he feels warm, and at some point, he started falling asleep with her on his mind instead of Ladybug.
When he found out that he was going to kiss Marinette, he had been elated. How lucky of him to have the privilege of kissing her, acting or not. And she… does not share the sentiment.
Not that she has to—of course, she has no obligation to him, but he can’t help but be a little selfish in his feelings. He loves her, after all.
He braces himself for the ultimate rejection.
“No. Far from it, actually,” she admits.
Chat Noir hikes a brow. What? But she just said—
“No?”
Marinette, suddenly very flustered, looks off to the side. “He’s the—you know—that guy.”
“That guy?” Chat repeats, and for a moment he’s confused until—
That guy. That guy. Holy shit. The guy she’s in love with?
“Yes, that guy I have a stupidly massive, awful, monster of a crush on!” Marinette rushes out, flinging her hands into the air before sinking further in her seat.
Chat Noir swallows. Is he missing something here? Are they talking about the same person?
“You know, you never told me this guy’s name before,” he says slowly.
“Duh,” she sulks, “You’d totally tease me if you knew who he was.”
“I would not.”
“You so would.”
“You hold me at such a low regard, Princess.”
“I just know how you are, kitty.”
Chat grins and leans back into her space, revitalized with hope.
“Come on, tell me! I promise I won’t tease you. Scout’s honor!” he promises, raising his hand into a three-finger salute.
All he needs from her is a name, any name at all, even if it’s not his, so he’s not left thinking himself into knots trying to read between the lines. He’s never been too good with mixed signals (nor is he wonderful with signals that are color-coded and organized alphabetically—Plagg says it’s a blonde thing—but, still). Marinette narrows her eyes, suspicious.
“I bet you weren’t even ever a Boy Scout.” Which, okay, true—but that’s only because Père isn’t easily convinced when it comes to that kind of stuff. He was a self-proclaimed scout in spirit.
“Please, Princess? I paw-mise to be cool about it.”
Marinette rolls her eyes at the pun, much like she always does, but Chat Noir knows she’s considering it. He can tell by the way her bottom lip is pulled between her teeth and bitten red, or by the line of worry creased between her brows, or how her fingers flex nervously in her lap. Finally, she sighs: a true sign of defeat, and he knows he’s got her.
“If you so much as giggle, I am launching you off this balcony and into the Seine. Immediately,” she threatens, jabbing a finger at him, and Chat Noir nods giddily.
“I hear you loud and clear, Princess.”
Silence settles between them, taut with anticipation (or lack thereof, in her case), as Marinette prepares the reveal. Then, over the rustle of Parisian nightlife, is the sound of her hands slapping onto her face (again). Chat jumps in completely justifiable shock.
He opens his mouth with every intention of asking if that hurt because Christ, he can already see the red blooming beneath her hands, but he’s deferred by the miserable groan she (again) lets out.
“It’s Adrien Agreste.”
His mouth continues to hang open uselessly.
Marinette had uttered the three words all in a single breath, letting the syllables fly out like a bird at the door of an unlocked cage, but Chat heard them with the clarity of a boombox. Just, like—not one of those old, dingy boomboxes from the 90s with the shitty sound quality and the continuous static. This was easily a new-age Jensen or Sony, but he digresses.
The point of it all was that she said his name: Adrien. This entire time, it’s been him. She loved him, loves him, and has done so for—for how long? Years? How hasn’t he noticed? Especially now, when he returns her affections, when she is the only one he sees—
“See! I knew it,” Marinette says, her exclamation leaving him blinking back to reality, “You think I’m an idiot.”
She covers her face with her hands, flushed up to her neck, and Chat smiles at the sight. She loves him. She loves him.
The most beautiful girl is sat before him, pajama-clad and in socks that don’t even match, blushing, fumbling, embarrassed—and she’s telling him that she loves him. The only idiot here is him for not noticing sooner.
“No, no, wait—I absolutely do not think you’re an idiot, seriously,” Chat Noir says, making every possible effort to keep his face from splitting open into smiles—Which, for your information, is more than a difficult feat. The girl of his dreams just told him she loves him and he has to sit here and pretend like it’s not a big deal!
Face still hidden behind her hands, Marinette turns to the side so that her body is away from him. He can feel the dejection radiate off of her in waves, in the inward curve of her exposed shoulders.
“No, I get it. It is stupid—I mean, he’s Adrien Agreste, and I’m—well—I’m just me,” she says, and her voice wobbles with sarcasm but she’s heartbreakingly sincere. She means it.
“Exactly, Marinette, you’re you,” Chat agrees, and a part of him wilts when she flinches, “And you are—”
She cuts him off with a humorless snort. “Spare me, chaton. I know you’re just morally obligated to say all of that stuff as my friend.”
He furrows his brows and marches over, situating himself right in front of her.
“As your friend, I know you. I know how ridiculously intelligent you are and how dedicated you are to learning, how you’re always aiming to be a better version of yourself, how brilliant you are. As your friend, I’m the one who sees you stay up making éclairs for your friends just because, and I watch you knit a new pair of mittens for your parents every Winter. I’m—I hear you talk about him like he hung the stars. You’re you, wonderfully and amazingly you.”
Gently, Chat takes hold of her wrists and pries her hands away from her face. They come away weakly, no fight left in her, and leave watery eyes in their wake.
“Do you mean it?” she asks, “You think I’m brilliant?”
Chat Noir pretends like his heart isn’t about to beat out of his mouth and bare itself to her in earnest, like its sonnets aren’t kept at bay by a barricade of teeth, and squeezes her hand. Brilliant doesn’t hold even a matchstick to what he sees in her.
“Of course I mean it.”
As much as he wishes to say more, it’ll suffice for now. The smile she gives him is worth a thousand suns as it is.
Marinette sits up and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Well, now you know. For better or for worse, Adrien Agreste is my soon-to-be victim, and tomorrow will surely be the end of my life as I know it,” she says, waving her hand vaguely at the sky.
Chat hums understandably before confusion strikes him again. “If you like him so much, what’s so bad about having to kiss him? Shouldn’t you be looking forward to it?”
Because he sure as hell had been looking forward to it. From the instant he finished reading the script in full, in fact. Why wouldn’t Marinette be just as happy to kiss the guy she loves?
Staring directly ahead, Marinette offers no response for a long, silent moment. He spots the color returning to her ears and realizes.
“...Does it have something to do with not having kissed a boy before?”
“Of course it does!” she blurts out, standing up so quickly the chair nearly topples over onto him.
Blind to the actual heart attack she nearly gave him, Marinette slumps over to the railing and continues, “Not only is my first kiss about to be broadcasted in a movie, but I have no idea how—how kissing even works, so it’s probably going to be terrible and Adrien is going to think I’m some weirdo with a suction cup for a mouth and then never talk to me ever again!”
Chat Noir’s shoulders shake with suppressed laughter. “S-Suction cup—?”
“Quit laughing, or so help me God I will—”
“Sorry, sorry! I’ll stop,” he says through a bout of giggles, pressing a gloved hand over his mouth to no avail.
“How can you laugh during a crisis like this?” Marinette questions, offended, “I’m about to murder any semblance of a future I had with Adrien!”
“I would n—Ahem, I’m sure this Adrien of yours wouldn’t drop you over a little bit of an awkward kiss. Why don’t you have a little more faith?”
She glares at him. “Chat.”
“Yes, Princess?”
“I’m being serious!”
Chat Noir stands up and leans against the railing beside her, staring out at the lights.
“I’m sure there’s some kind of solution here,” he says, because, well, there is—but all the ones he’s currently capable of considering involve a premature identity reveal and his Miraculous getting confiscated.
“Yeah, sure,” Marinette scoffs, “like divine intervention. Or Wikihow.”
“I would personally advise against relying on Wikihow.”
Beside him, Marinette drops her head and lets out a resigned sigh. Her hair, unbound from its usual ponytail, follows the motion and curtains her face in a black sweep. Chat itches to push it back.
There had to be some kind of solution, right? Something that didn’t end up with him exposing himself?
“It’s no use. I’ll just make a fool of myself and move schools,” she says, “Sorry for making you listen to all of this. I bet you weren’t planning on holding my hand through an entire meltdown—”
“What if you practiced?”
Chat Noir bites down on his tongue out of pure shock.
What? Did that actually just come out of his mouth?
He asked the question before he even thought it. Paralyzed with regret, he wills the words to dissolve into the air, maybe pass as a whistle of the wind—It’s probably not that bad, right? From his peripheral, Marinette hasn’t even moved—maybe he got lucky and she didn’t even hear him? Maybe—
“Practice... kissing?”
He swallows. Okay. No turning back, then.
“Yeah!” Act natural, Chat Noir. Shameless. Charming. Suave. “You know what they say, practice makes purr-fect.” Oh, my God—Really? A pun? Right now?
Marinette, oblivious to the way Chat physically laments his words as they come out of his mouth, chuckles and gives him an incredulous look.
“What, you want me to practice kissing on my hand or something?”
There: the ball is in his court.
By assuming he’s just making another one of his stupid jokes, Marinette is giving him the perfect out. All he has to do is take it, say something witty, drop an exaggerated wink, and it’s a done deal. The conversation will be salvaged before it ever has the chance to become irredeemably awkward and, consequently, plague his subconscious for the foreseeable future.
But then he looks at her, at the stippling of freckles on her shoulder, at the jut of her collarbone where it meets the base of her throat, at the curve of her jaw, at her smile, the subtle tilt of her mouth and the dip of her Cupid’s bow—
“What if you practiced with me?”
—and au revoir to whatever ball he might’ve had, for he has launched it into the endless abyss. Have mercy.
The laugh is startled out of her.
Marinette is sure she heard incorrectly. What Chat just suggested—what she imagined he just suggested—must clearly have been a product of her own insanity. Had to be. She probably needs to lie back down before these hallucinations get too vivid, maybe have a drink of water on her way there.
Thirty seconds of uninterrupted nervous laughter later, though, and Chat is still looking at her in that way that makes her skin tingle. No bad punchline or Just kidding! ever comes.
Oh. Could she—Did she not just hallucinate that entire interaction?
“Are—Are you serious?” she asks, suddenly feeling like she just ran a marathon.
“Only if you wanted to, of course,” says Chat.
(Her eyes dart to her hands. The railing. Notre-Dame. Back to the railing. Back to her hands.)
“You’d. With me? You want to“ —kiss me?— “help me?”
“I wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to help in any way at all,” he says, and then, teasingly, “...but if you prefer to kiss your own hand, then by all means—”
“No!” she says quickly, “I mean, I just…”
She can feel Chat scoot a little closer to her, hesitant but there.
“It’s fine if you don’t want to, okay? We can always think of something else.”
Unless “something else” meant kissing her hand, which in such case, no. She’d rather not.
Marinette chews on her lip. She should say no. She should’ve said no.
Because this—this is ludicrous. How did kissing Chat even become a suggestion? Her partner, her best friend, helping her in this way? Kissing Chat Noir is not something Marinette does so long as she can help it. The stars don’t align every morning for this kind of reality.
And yet, she is considering it anyway.
Her partner, her best friend—really, who better than him to do this with? At this point, can she help it? Sure, it’s so ironic it’s almost comical (all this time she’s rejected his advances as Ladybug, and now look at her), but she already trusts him with her life. What’s a first kiss, too?
It wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Kissing Chat Noir? She doesn’t think it would be, and she’d die before ever admitting it, but it is something she’s thought about—too many times to justify.
(The unholy world in which Adrien doesn’t exist lives amongst the rest of her most lawless fantasies: at the bottom of the dusty file cabinet in her subconscious.)
It could work. Chat probably has a lot of experience, which he could use to tell her what she’s doing right and wrong (definitely more of the wrongs). If not that, kissing him would at least help rid her of all these awful first kiss jitters. And, although she would never tell it to his face, it doesn’t hurt that he’s attractive. Really attractive—objectively speaking, of course.
Somewhere in the back of her head, Marinette knows they’ve skipped a few steps. She knows there are alternatives—plenty of them, even—far more reasonable and doable than… this, but she can’t bring herself to consider them.
Yes, realistically speaking, Alya would never force her to do the kissing scene if she didn’t want to; as insistent as she is with Marinette’s helpless crush on Adrien, she’s always been reasonable when it mattered. And yes, they could get away with a kiss scene without any real kissing so long as they have the right angles and a little bit of movie magic. And fine, at the end of the day, kissing her hand is, unfortunately, an option.
There are so many ‘buts’, though. Like—Marinette would ask to cut the kiss, but that would completely ruin Alya’s original image of the film! She’s worked hard on it thus far, it would be a dick move to make her change the grand finale at the last second—and what would Adrien think? He was born and bred for this kind of stuff, you can’t knock Marinette for wanting to make a good impression in his field. Should she opt out of a little kiss, he’s bound to think she’s unprofessional. As for kissing her hand… it’s kissing her hand.
Marinette sucks in a breath that does little to fill her lungs, hands squeezing around the railing.
Oh, God. Is she really about to do this?
“No—No, I want to. If that’s… okay. With you,” she admits, her voice getting higher and quieter with each word.
Yes, apparently she is.
“Really?” he asks, about as shocked as she is, and Marinette finds herself nodding.
“Really.”
Chat Noir absolutely beams. “Then that is so okay. With me.”
“O—Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Super okay.”
Marinette wets her lips and detaches herself from where the front side of her body had started to fuse into the iron railings. Stiffly, she turns away from the lights, from the sky, and from those damn twinkling stars.
It’s just a kiss. Nothing serious. Nothing mind-blowing. Just some lip-locking action. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation without the resuscitation—hopefully.
Chat Noir stands in front of her looking like he’s about to say something, but Marinette’s already braced herself, brimming with determination.
She can do this. She can. She just needs to do it, get it over with, and move on with her life. Hesitation forgone, Marinette wedges her arms to her sides, screws her eyes shut, leans in and—
Marinette’s mouth collides with Chat Noir’s in the most un-romantic, un-okay way ever.
“Ow!” In synchronized pain, they both reel back.
Who knew so much could go wrong in the span of three seconds? Because really, so much just went wrong.
For one, Marinette clearly overestimated her aim—although it’s probably for the better that she only smashed into one side of his mouth instead of all of it. And her nose? Since when were noses such a large factor in kissing! If either of them come away without a bruise after the way their faces just smashed together, it’ll be a miracle.
She takes everything back. She cannot do this, nope, not at all.
“Oh… my God,” she says, absolutely mortified, “Oh, my God. Chat! I’m so sorry, I can’t believe that just happened!”
Chat Noir cradles his nose with one hand and waves the other at her dismissively, shaking his head.
“It’s fine, don’t worry—”
“No, that was terrible.” Humiliated, she reaches toward Chat’s face.
He reveals his nose and, while pointedly avoiding all eye contact, Marinette gently prods at it. He winces slightly, but from what she can tell (which isn’t a lot, considering the mask and whatnot), there’s no bruise. Hopefully his Miraculous magic will spare him a mark.
“It hardly hurt, I promise. I was just a little caught off guard,” says Chat in an attempt at reassurance, but it just makes her feel worse.
Marinette ducks her head, hot embarrassment rushing to her face. “I’m sorry, chaton. I didn’t know I could ruin my first kiss to the point of it becoming an act of terror.”
How utterly cringeworthy. What was she thinking! They already established she doesn’t know the first thing about kissing, and yet—she went on and tried to do it anyway.
This night is going to haunt her in her sleep.
“Come on, Mari,” he says, hands winding around her wrists, “it wasn’t that bad—”
She gives him a hard look.
“—Okay, fine, fine, it was kinda bad, but only in the sense that minor injuries were suffered. Not to fear, though! Your first kiss isn’t ruined.”
For some reason, Chat Noir isn’t telling her off for the mess of a kiss—if it can even be called that—she just subjected him to. He’s strangely resolute, if anything, undaunted by her demonstration of… whatever that was.
His smile is all encouragement, not a (rightfully deserved) sneer in sight.
“What do you mean? I wouldn’t exactly call that a smooth first time,” she mumbles, staring somewhere over his shoulder—she still can’t bear to look him in the eye after that blunder.
“I mean,” Chat starts, far too eager, “that kiss doesn’t count. These are just... pre-first kisses. Yeah! It’s your practice round.”
Despite herself, Marinette huffs out a laugh. “Chat, I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”
“Sure it is! Besides, who would know other than you and me?” he insists, and Marinette shakes her head in amusement. Leave it to him to think up something so ridiculous and somehow still cheer her up in the process.
With the way his eyes lit up with sincerity, she was doomed to succumb from the beginning.
(Where did that draft go? Before Chat appeared out of thin air, lounging on her balcony like he was born there, she’d been covered in goosebumps. Now she could light a fire with her face alone.)
“Alright, fine. It’s just my practice round.”
“Now you’re getting it!”
“Although, if that first kiss was running the diagnostics, I definitely just failed.”
“You can’t fail a diagnostic test, silly.”
“First time for everything?”
Chat Noir pouts. “You’re insufferable, you know that?”
Marinette dissolves into another fit of laughter and shrugs.
“I’m a realist.”
“Yeah, as in you really need this practice round,” he shoots back.
“Touché.”
“Lucky for you, though,” says Chat with a wide, big-headed grin, “I’m here.”
Marinette leans back onto the railings. It’s cool against her skin, and she welcomes the relief.
“I was under the impression black cats were lacking in the luck department.”
“Well, I guess that last kiss was—“
“No, shhhhhh—We’re forgetting that happened, okay? Please?” she begs, putting on her best pleading puppy eyes.
“The mind may forget, but the body” —he gestures dramatically to his nose— “always remembers.”
With a groan, Marinette drops her head into her hands. She knew this was a bad idea. She knew it, and she still convinced herself into doing it anyway.
“Sorry, again. I guess I should’ve gone with the hand thing after all, huh?” she says, and then, to herself, “That is definitely not how I expected my first kiss to go.”
“Pre-first kiss.” Chat finds his spot beside her again, just like he always does. “What did you expect?”
Marinette untucks her face from her hands and hums. Honestly, she barely even knew what she expected in a first kiss—pre-first kiss—only that she didn’t expect it to involve nearly chipping a tooth and anything to do with Chat Noir.
“Well, up until about five minutes ago, I didn’t know pre-first kisses were something I would need to have expectations for,” she says laughingly, “As for the real deal… I don’t know—movie stuff, I guess? Like in the pouring rain, or while slow-dancing at some fancy ball. Oh! Maybe at the top of the Eiffel Tower, that’s romantic.”
“Quite the one for theatrics?”
“You, of all people, are not to speak to me about theatrics,” Marinette says, bumping her shoulder into his, “What about you? What was your first kiss like?”
Chat Noir’s nose scrunches up into something sour at the question. “Wet.”
“Wet?”
“Uh huh, wet. And reminiscent of crackers.”
“Crackers?” Marinette snorts, “What on earth is the story behind this?”
“Oh, Princess—let me tell you. It was on a playground, right? Massive one with slides and monkey bars and everything. I was barely 6 years old, and there was this girl who was hogging the only swing on the swingset that I could reach—’cause, you know, 6-year-olds tend to be short,” Chat says with grand gestures, “I asked her if I could have a turn and she looked at me, tilted her head, and said, ‘That’ll cost one kiss’.”
“And you accepted that?” Marinette questions, eyebrows flying to her hairline.
“Sure did! I was going to have my turn on that swing one way or another, so I puckered up and gave her a kiss.”
“You—Where did the crackers come from?”
“Oh! That’s right. She must’ve just finished having them as a snack because there was crumbs all over her face—”
“Gross!”
“—and I got a good taste of ‘em when we kissed. But it’s fine, she kept her word and I got my turn on the swing.”
Marinette shakes her head in disbelief. “Of course. A personality like Chat Noir is bound to be a veteran in the delicate art of kissing.”
“So what I’m hearing is… you think I’m a good kisser?” Chat asks, smug and smiley and too close to her face. Marinette’s cheeks burn.
“I—I said nothing of the sort!”
“But you implied—”
“I’ll imply your face—”
“Definitely not how that word works, Princess,” Chat teases, poking her nose.
“How would I even know if you’re a good kisser?” she questions, “I can’t judge you off of whatever that was earlier.”
“Well,” he starts slowly, “...you could find out.”
Oh. Oh, yeah—that’s still on the table, isn’t it? Somehow?
Marinette flexes her fingers. Suddenly, she’s very aware of herself, of her flannel pajama pants and the thinness of her socks (she can feel the coolness of the ground through them) and the spot of dampness on her shirt from her post-shower hair. She can smell her own shampoo, something sweet like rosemary and mint.
One of the fairy lights hanging from the awning flickers—she ought to take those down, or at least change them. They’ve been up there since Christmas. Chat helped her put them up.
Chat. Chat Noir, who is now in front of her, an offer in his eyes and open kindness in his smile. Her best friend, asking her if she wants to kiss him. Her mouth feels dry.
When she doesn’t respond, Chat inches closer.
“Do you want to try again?” he asks.
Marinette nods tentatively. “I do.”
Slowly, Chat’s hands come around her face. The back of his claws are smooth where they touch her. She wonders, distantly, if he likes the smell of rosemary.
“Follow my lead, okay?” he murmurs, “I got you.”
He’s got her.
“Okay.”
This time, Marinette lets him find her. She’s done seeking him out for now, what with the way it left her the first time, and she’s happy to just—be kissed.
She tilts her chin up towards him and waits, the swell of her own anticipation unfurling slow and hot in her chest.
Chat Noir is tall. She knows this—it’s part of the reason she missed half his mouth earlier—but there’s something about him having to bend towards her, lowering his face to be level with hers, that makes her hyper-aware of it. It’s in the way his hair falls forward, how his fringe brushes against her forehead—the way she can feel his body heat as he comes closer. She swallows—have his eyes always been so green? And his lips, he—
“Close your eyes,” he says, and there’s this teasing lilt to the way he says it, “I know I’m pretty and all, but you’ll make Adrien nervous if you stare.”
“You—Shut up,” Marinette stammers, but she squeezes her eyes shut anyway, “I could never make Adrien nerv—”
He kisses her forehead. It’s featherlight, barely there, but it stuns Marinette silent all the same.
His hand follows the line of her jaw, thumb smoothening across her cheekbone and leaving fire in its wake, and deliriously, she wonders how it’d feel if his gloves weren’t on—if his fingers would be flawless and smooth or rough with callouses.
Chat guides her face toward him until his lips brush against the corner of her mouth, a question, a May I?
Marinette moves to meet him in the middle. Yes, of course the answer is yes.
Finally, his mouth presses wholly and properly against hers, eases her lips apart, and she is melting. He’s kissing her.
There aren’t any explosions, but Marinette supposes those will be saved for her real first kiss—it’s only fitting. As for these practice round kisses, they are fireworks without the gunpowder: a lightshow, sweet and colorful and of quiet shock.
It is gentle and warm and Marinette hadn’t expected him to feel so soft but he is, impossibly so, and she’s almost afraid to touch.
Scratch that, actually, she is afraid to touch, or at least she has no idea how to. She assumes she should be using her hands somehow, putting them—somewhere. Anywhere. Anything would be better than how they are now, clenched into fists in front of her, itching to reach out, but not knowing how.
How really is the big question. Does she touch Chat the same way he touches her? What if he doesn’t even want her to touch him? What’s the proper etiquette here? She has questions, definitely, but she can hardly consider any viable answers to them when she’s so focused on every point of contact between her and Chat Noir.
“Breathe, Marinette,” he says against her mouth, and good God, she forgot to breathe, “Don’t want you passing out on set, right?”
How can he expect her to breathe like this? He’s so close and so—so—
“Can I touch you? Is that—Should I be touching you?” she asks breathlessly, pulling away just far enough to catch pure astonishment clear his expression.
“Please,” he says, whispers, and she revels in the red dusting beneath the edges of his mask.
Experimentally, Marinette’s hands uncurl. She dares to reach toward him, let her fingers trace the cut of his jawline, cup his cheek—and Chat—Chat leans into her touch. He turns his face into her open palm, plants the ghost of a kiss against her hand, and oh.
Marinette’s brain fries instantaneously.
“Is this right?” she asks, or at least she thinks she asks—she can’t hear herself talk over her heartbeat in her ears.
“Purr-fect,” he preens, leaning back toward her to capture her lips once again.
She’s never been kissed like this before—well, until 60 seconds ago, she’d never been kissed before, but if this is what she's been missing out on, she feels robbed. Terribly so.
Marinette revels in the arms around her waist, the drag of eager hands up her back, her spine, the flutter of eyelashes against her cheeks—how has she gotten so far needing this and not even knowing it? Because she does; she wants this, she wants—
Too soon does Chat part from her, slowly, like he’s afraid he’ll scare her away should he be too abrupt.
It dawns on her, then, that he’s gauging her reaction. He’s giving her a choice. If she opens her eyes, she’ll meet the question in his gaze: So? What do you think?
And what she thinks is the only thing stopping her from chasing after his lips is her own pride and dignity, because God knows Chat Noir would never let it down if she did.
He’s but a breath away. Marinette knows that if she looks at him now, sees the face behind such tenderness, she won’t fall asleep tonight—so when she does dare to look at him, it’s at his mouth. Temptation licks fire in her chest and makes her feel bold.
“Again?” she asks.
Marinette memorizes the way his lips curve before they slant over hers. She finds it very in character that Chat Noir kisses her into smiles.
Again becomes the blueprint of their exchange. She asks a second time, and he smiles, and he kisses her, and she kisses him, and then she asks for a third, fourth, fifth time, and he indulges her with every request until again is just a funny way of saying don’t stop.
He doesn’t.
And for some horrible reason, it doesn’t feel nearly as awkward or wrong as it should. It doesn’t feel wrong at all, and Marinette has half the mind to be scared of this realization because according to everything ever, it should not feel right. Not like this, not at all, because she’s Marinette and this is Chat Noir and Marinette and Chat Noir simply do not kiss each other, not on top of her balcony and not with the flickering fairy lights as their only witness—but it does and they are and she wouldn’t have it any other way, scary or not.
He kisses her and she feels like a star underneath his hands, bright and burning and brilliant. God knows he doesn’t hold her like anything less.
Marinette decides that whatever epiphany creeping up on her right now can wait for later, preferably when she’s not wrapped in Chat Noir’s arms and nipping at his bottom lip with her teeth like she knows what she’s doing. She would like to enjoy her first kiss, thank you very much, or—pre-first kiss, the second, no, sixth? one, or practice round kiss, whatever he wants to call it—
The piercing wail of a siren startles them apart.
Marinette quite literally jumps out of Chat’s arms, and he stumbles back away from her.
It’s almost guilty, what with the way they go from being nose-to-nose to a solid four feet away from each other in a single movement—like they’d been caught doing something wrong.
(If Chat feels the same way, he doesn’t let it on.)
Car alarm. Of all things, it would be a car alarm.
It’s turned off within moments, but still, neither of them speak—the silence polarizes the longer it stretches. Marinette can feel her heartbeat in her fingertips.
She just kissed Chat Noir.
She kissed him and she liked it. She kissed him back.
Something comes over her, then, a sense of hilarity or utter ridiculousness or both, and she can’t help it. She erupts into laughter.
Beside her, Chat Noir looks understandably confused—but he starts laughing, too.
“So,” eventually comes her voice, winded.
“So?”
“...What’s the verdict?”
“Well,” Chat starts, and she looks at him, his flushed skin, his eyes, ”No injuries were sustained.”
Of all the things he’s said tonight, it’s that that has her flustered. Not because she’s embarrassed—well, she is embarrassed—but because Chat’s easy playfulness is a reminder that it’s still him, her Chat Noir, that she was just all over.
“You’re actually terrible,” she huffs, and she hopes he doesn’t notice the way her voice shakes.
“And you, Princess, are a natural.”
“You think so?”
“Uh huh. Kiss him like that and Adrien won’t know what hit him.”
Adrien. Adrien. The whole reason she was doing this in the first place, and yet, somehow, she feels like she’s betraying her own feelings by doing so.
Marinette feels—she doesn’t know what she feels.
What happens if she kisses Adrien tomorrow and she feels nothing like what she felt kissing Chat, what will she do then? What is she even thinking—she shouldn’t want to want to be kissed the way Chat kisses her, not with Adrien right in front of her!
(It wouldn’t matter. Adrien hardly knows she exists and Chat—he’s moved on from her for a long time now.)
“What about me, then? What’s the verdict?” says Chat, effectively snatching her from an oncoming downward spiral into scrutinizing the validity of every emotion she’s felt in the past four years.
“Huh?”
“Are you impressed by this ‘veteran in the delicate art of kissing’, after all?”
“No,” Marinette deadpans. It’s a lie, sure, obviously, but it’s funny to see Chat’s face fall in honest shock.
“Wha—Really?”
“You were tolerable at most.”
He sputters, genuinely and delightfully taken aback, before narrowing his eyes. Marinette laughs behind her carefully projected facade.
Then, because Chat Noir is supposedly out for blood, he starts, “Someone who wasn’t impressed wouldn’t have—”
“AH!” Marinette shouts, her resolve shattering as she reaches to cover her ears, “Don’t finish that sentence!”
“—clung to me—”
“La la la la la, I can’t hear you!”
“—or forgot to breathe—”
“Wow, I am so glad I don’t know how to read lips right now!”
“—or ask for more—”
“Fine!” Marinette grumbles when Chat makes it clear he won’t be stopping anytime soon, accepting defeat, “You… are.”
“I’m what?” he presses, shit-eating grin and all.
She turns her head sharply away from him. “Good.”
“At?”
“Kissing, chaton!” she says, “You’re a good kisser! Now get off my balcony before I throw you down myself.”
Chat Noir has the decency to at least look sheepish, eyes wide and adorable, color rising back to his cheeks—While he probably expected her eventual yield, she doubts he predicted straightforward agreement. He can dish it but he certainly can’t take it, and Marinette will gladly swallow her pride to see reactions like these.
“And you are a fast learner. You’ll nail your real first kiss, whether it’s tomorrow with Adrien or with someone else on the top of the Eiffel tower. No doubt about it.”
“You think?”
“I know,” he says, hopping onto the railings.
Marinette’s eyebrows draw together at the motion. Instead of reaching out for him the way she has the sudden urge to do, she stops a step away from him.
“Why don’t you wait here? I can get us some chouquettes,” she asks, because offering a meal is much easier than directly asking him to stay.
Whether or not they even have any chouquettes leftover from today’s sales, Marinette can’t say; Chat loves chouquettes, though, and he rarely ever says no to them. If it means he’ll stick around even a little while longer, she’ll figure something out.
Much to her disappointment, however, Chat doesn’t leap back onto her side of the balcony with his usual ridiculous flourish. Rather, he readies his baton in one hand and stands to his full height on top of the railings, towering over Marinette even more than he normally does.
“If I recall correctly, I have been requested to vacate the premises,” he points out, and something about the way he says it has her suspecting he knows she doesn’t want him to leave.
“I was joking, you know,” she mumbles, rubbing her arms, “I don’t actually want you to leave.”
He gives her a cheeky smile. “Miss me already?”
Yes, always. What kind of question is that?
“Are you really leaving?”
Chat Noir’s smile softens.
“As much as I’d love to stay by your side, duty calls.” He nods toward the streets where the car alarm went off earlier, and Marinette is dutifully reminded that he actually is on patrol; he must mean to make sure somebody didn’t just get robbed. “Besides, you have a shoot to prepare for, right?”
She purses her lips. She does still need to memorize those couple lines and emotionally prepare herself to kiss Adrien Agreste.
“...Perhaps.”
Chat dips down to tuck her hair behind her ear, hand lingering against her skin.
“I’d wish you luck, but we black cats are lacking in that department, apparently,” he says, winking, “Thankfully, you don’t need it.”
Marinette rolls her eyes and tries to ignore the immediate chill that finds her when Chat stands up again. “It’s the thought that counts.”
“And I do think of you often.”
Damn flirt. Does he even know what his words can do to a girl? He ought to consider that more, for her sake and everyone else’s.
“Come see me tomorrow, okay?” she says quickly, “I’ll prepare you those chouquettes as a thank you for—for helping me tonight.” For your patience, for your thoughtfulness, for your kisses—
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. A bientôt!”
Chat Noir vaults off on his baton and blends in seamlessly with the night. The wind picks back up as Marinette watches him go.
She stays there on the balcony, arms wrapped around herself as the goosebumps resurface, until she can see him no longer. Tikki looks awfully smug when she comes back down to her room.