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“This is so stupid,” Ladybug said, as she huffed and adjusted the elaborate Venetian mask over her real mask. “And we look like idiots.” She lifted the voluptuous fabric that cascaded down her hips. “Remind me to never listen to you again.”
Chat pouted. “Joy kill,” he muttered under his breath, audible enough for Ladybug to hear.
“Explain me where is the joy of being in a crowded nightclub in… oh let me check,” she exclaimed, frustratedly holding her skirt, “Period pieces! They’re itchy, sweaty, and not even historically accurate! What period are they supposed to be from anyway? Anywhere from the early middle-ages to NEVER IN HISTORY EVER?”
Chat Noir watched Ladybug freak out over the imperial red dress she was wearing over her suit. The bell sleeves and the bodice, intended to be exposing, were doing an expectedly poor job at hiding her black dotted arms and neck. But still, she didn’t look that bad. To be fair, Chat would find her charming even in a potato sack, so maybe there was a reason why she wouldn’t take his opinion seriously.
“Oh, come on, my Lady! It doesn’t look bad at all!” he still tried to convince her. “And you can’t blame me for party shop costumes not being historically accurate,” he argued, “You can’t expect everyone to be fashion nerds like yourself.”
He took a sip off the orange juice he held in his hand with the same air as a flute of champagne.
“We look ridiculous,” Ladybug restated. She then reached for her partner’s golden bell, which he had tried to conceal behind a neck ruff that was atrociously anachronistic with the rest of his garments. She rung his bell from under the lace with a sly smile on her face. “Well, at least you somehow look even more ridiculous than me.”
Chat Noir straitened his tilted top hat and leaned on his baton as if it were a cane. “How dare you?” he protested snobbishly, “I am gorgeous.”
Not getting a reaction from Ladybug other than rolling eyes, he added: “Besides, it is good disguise.”
“Why did we need disguises anyway?” Ladybug complained, exasperated. “I thought that Tikki and Plagg were doing a good job in hiding our identities.”
“But these,” Chat Noir started, holding and showing his ruff, “are not to protect our real identities, my Lady,” he explained. “They’re as so that people don’t recognise us as Ladybug and Chat Noir either.” He gestured towards the crowd around them, all in various costumes, some poorer than others.
“If only, if only our suits were popular enough to be mass produced by costume companies, Chat,” Ladybug pointed out, directing him towards a girl wearing what seemed to be a Ladybug costume. Except that, for some reason her costume featured a mini skirt and high-thigh socks. Ladybug exhaled in exasperation and continued scolding Chat.
“We could have come here as ourselves and no one would have batted an eye.”
Chat Noir opened his mouth. “I…”
But words refused to come. Ladybug was right. How had he not thought of that already?
“Maybe so…” he pouted briefly, before switching to protest: “But then where is the fun of that?! It is supposed to be a costume party! Just because we’re superheroes doesn’t mean that we get to break the rules, right? Right?!” he tried to convince her.
Ladybug kept looking at him, more annoyed than anything.
She clearly wasn’t having as much – if any – fun as he was.
“Fine,” he said, taking off his hat with the one hand and trying to tear off his ruff with the other. “All I wanted was an evening of normal fun with you. But I guess that’s not possible.”
He was angry at himself more than anything. “Sorry for forcing you into this,” he apologised sincerely, “I didn’t intend to annoy you.”
He started to push people around to make them a way out of the club, but he felt someone grabbing on his wrist.
“Chat, wait.”
He turned to see Ladybug, looking at him, disappointed and sad.
What was had she been thinking? Chat had been so enthusiastic throughout the evening.
It was all fun and games spending time with him on the roofs, away from the public, but the moment they stepped into the crowds, suddenly everything would become about them. And God forbid if they did something that could be perceived romantic, even remotely: they would immediately find themselves at the front page of the tabloids. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to spend more time with her like normal friends do, and he had kinda nailed the solution. There was no way anyone would recognise them in the darkness, with the flashing lights, the loud music numbing their senses, and of course, as ridiculous as they were, their double disguises. Well, maybe those made them stand out a little more. But the other points remained valid.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it.
Chat’s face lighted up. If he weren’t so forgiving, Ladybug was sure that he would have left her to defend Paris by herself a dozen of times by now.
“I’ll play along,” she exhaled in defeat.
He jumped back to her side, all excited as if nothing had happened. “Let me get you a drink then!” he announced cheerfully, before pouncing towards the bar.
Ladybug hurriedly caught on his belt tail and pulled him back.
“Chat!” she exclaimed, “We’re seventeen!”
Chat Noir pulled his belt tail out of his Lady’s grasp. “I know! I’ll get you a juice!”
Chat Noir disappeared into the crowd for what felt like an eternity. When he finally came back, he was holding two glasses, one full of some kind of red juice, the other sparkling water.
“Got you a tomato juice. Did you know that people put alcohol in that?!” he said, with a genuine surprise. Ladybug could not help but wonder if he was born yesterday. He was about to become eighteen in a few of months; how could a teenager live such a sheltered life that they’d not even know about cocktails?
“Yes, of course,” she said confidently.
“And salt and pepper too!” Chat Noir revealed next.
Ok, she did not know that. And that made her realise:
“Aren’t we a bit too young to be in such a place?” They weren’t eighteen yet. Superheroes were supposed to be exemplary citizens, and that made underage drinking a big no-no in Ladybug’s book.
Chat swirled his sparkling water, moving the lemon slice to stir it.
“Maybe,” he mused, pursing his lips. “But I could not think of a better place where we could be both in public and hidden.”
“Next time we should go to a metal concert,” Ladybug suggested, taking the red juice out of his hand and slurping it tentatively. “We could wear leather jackets and maybe I could paint over my mask to make it look like a skull. You’d be fine though.”
“And you were shaming me for my double mask idea,” Chat Noir sighed teasingly.
“Point taken.” Ladybug took another sip from her glass. She then added, way more amused than she should be: “Heh heh! Point! You get it? Because I’m Ladybug?”
Chat Noir froze in shock for a second. Had his Lady made… a pun? Out of the blue? And such a horrible one too? He quickly leaned toward her and took a sniff out of her glass.
“Are you drunk or what?” he asked, all serious. He had specifically asked for the beverage to be non-alcoholic, but the music was so loud that maybe the bartender hadn’t heard him. In any case, his nose only picked the rounded sweet and sour smell of the tomato.
Ladybug pouted. “You’re not happy when I don’t like your puns, you’re not happy when I make puns. Will you ever be happy?” she complained.
“My Lady, I know that you’ll find that hard to believe but I have standards in my jokes. They must be top quality,” Chat explained dutifully.
“You’re not exactly Harry Clown, Chat,” Ladybug stated, taking another big sip from the tomato juice.
Chat’s eyes opened wide at the comparison. How dare she’d mention that name of charlatan? “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he dismissed, sounding offended.
“What are we supposed to do here anyway?” Ladybug asked, now realising that she had no clue what people who went to the nightclub did.
Chat Noir looked around, equally clueless. “I, uh…” he hesitated, before suggesting, “Dance?”
Ladybug tentatively moved her limbs to the techno music. “I guess…”
Chat followed her suit, dancing all too terribly. It was like he was an old man trying to dance to young people’s music. Ladybug could not help but get in a laughing fit.
“Oh my god, what is that?” she blurted, trying and failing at containing her laughter at Chat’s improvised 70’s disco moves.
“This is fun!” he exclaimed, pointing his finger to the sky and back to the ground.
Ladybug took out her yoyo and snapped a picture of Chat Noir while he was striking a badly executed disco pose in his masquerade attire. She promptly showed it to him. Chat Noir glanced at the photo, then shrugged and keep dancing. “This is the only dance I know to this kind of music,” he stated, continuing to point his fingers at everything and everyone.
“Look at you, talking like you know any other type of dance,” Ladybug scoffed, taking another sip from her tomato juice.
“Well, yeah,” Chat said, nonchalantly.
“The Macarena doesn’t count, Chat.”
Chat Noir stopped dancing, took a second to watch Ladybug bob her head to the techno rhythm, then asked with a mischievous look in his eye: “You don’t believe me?”
Ladybug took a last sip of her glass, nearly finishing her tomato juice. “No, not really,” she stated, and dismissed him.
So he promptly took the glass from Ladybug’s hand and rid both of their glasses on a nearby surface. He then grabbed Ladybug’s wrist, pulled her towards himself, and caught her back with his palm. “Well then, let me show you…” he said, taking a step backwards and starting to dance a waltz.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Ladybug complained, all while trying to follow his suit. She looked around at the setting of the nightclub at full force.
Chat Noir tilted his head, gesturing at the people completely lost in their dance, many due to the effect of alcohol and maybe some other stuff too. “I don’t think that anyone will care,” he argued, and took a decisive dance step towards Ladybug.
She did not object any further.
It did not make any sense. The music didn’t fit; neither did the flashing lights, or the costumed and wasted people ambulating around them. Nothing did.
They were being squeezed in a tiny square by the walls of meat around them. The loud bass beat their eardrums.
And yet, Ladybug felt so natural and comfortable as she let Chat Noir sway them in a rectangular pattern.
None of this was supposed to make any sense, but when she was with Chat Noir, it somehow did.
They moved slowly, deaf to the hasty rhythm that echoed around them.
“So how did you learn to dance like this?” Ladybug asked, genuinely surprised by the hidden talents of her partner once more.
“Kinda was forced to,” Chat confessed with some strain in his voice. “Not forced forced, but more like… I guess it was a necessity,” he corrected himself and shrugged.
Ladybug really wanted to dig deeper, because she couldn’t imagine the series of events that could lead a seventeen-year-old boy to wind up at waltz lessons.
“I can hardly find a situation where knowing how to waltz is a necessity, unless you’re secretly a time traveller from the Austro-Hungarian Empire,” Ladybug tried to conceal her curiosity as snark.
Chat Noir lifted his hand over their head, gesturing Ladybug to twirl. As she followed his instructions, he couldn’t help but remark: “My my, and they say that the curiosity killed the cat.”
He caught her back again and continued their sway. “But I’m afraid if I give away too much about my identity, it might ki-…” he now realised that maybe that wasn’t the best pun to play with. He gulped.
“Anyway.”
Their silence was absorbed by the loud techno music that filled the dark and crowded room.
Chat Noir looked at Ladybug, who, to his great surprise, actually seemed to enjoy the moment.
He watched his reflection in her bluebell eyes. They shone clear like the ocean under the moonlight; swallowing the flashing lights of the nightclub into the depths of her irises, pulling along Chat Noir and his breath away. He didn’t care where he was; he would always be mesmerised by her.
Too bad that they had to be hidden away behind a mask, or in this instance, two masks. As if he wasn’t far enough already, Chat Noir cursed at himself for stupidly adding another layer separating him from his Lady. And yet, he had to admit that the Venetian mask looked gorgeous on her: the imperial red passionately clashed with the blue of her eyes, bringing them out ever more like precious sapphires nested in red velvet.
“It’s quite the masquerade, isn’t it?” he found himself asking. He didn’t know why he sounded so wistful.
Ladybug looked around to the crowd dancing to a completely different music than the one playing in their heads. She watched the crowd completely dissociated from it, as if she were travelling under the sea in a tiny bubble.
“In what sense?” she asked, not caring that she had to yell for her voice to carry through. She was in a haze; an overload of sound, lights, and feelings.
“Think about it,” Chat Noir started and pulled her closer as so that he could make himself heard. “Balls were kind of the nightclubs of the past.”
He raised his hand once more: now Ladybug knew to take the signal and spin without his guidance. She swirled elegantly but with such abandon that she ended up losing her balance and accidentally stepped into Chat. He caught her and helped them get back to position, while he kept explaining:
“Did you know that waltz was considered scandalous when it was first invented?”
Ladybug let out a giggle. “Oh my, where is my chaperone?!” she acted in panic, clutching her plastic pearls.
Chat Noir faked annoyance at her joke. He was hardly convincing though, a giant grin plastered across his face.
“Well,” he stated, adopting an instructive tone, “Balls were how people met back then. How they mingled, enjoyed themselves…” He approached her ever so slightly. “How they flirted…” He didn’t know what had suddenly come to him and made him speak so softly and lowly into her ear. He retreated, a blush invading his face.
Ladybug threw him a knowing smile before she cheekily pointed out: “Good think you flirt through puns exclusively.” She decided to ignore how her comment acknowledged his advances, or how her heart has skipped a beat when he had approached her just a second ago.
Chat Noir pouted at first, but then he opted to defend himself in the most Chat Noir way possible: “You know, my Lady, my mastery of balls goes beyond yarn balls.”
“First of all, that was an atrocious pun,” Ladybug said, shaking her head disapprovingly despite the smile that formed on her face. “Secondly, Minou, as much as you seem to believe it, you are not a real cat. You wouldn’t actually play with yarn balls.” She stopped dancing as the doubt fell onto her. “Right?..”
Chat gently pulled her into his next step, prompting her to keep dancing.
“Mmm, who is to tell…” he hummed mysteriously, “You don’t know what I do when I’m not with you…”
“I’m sure as hell that you’re not scratching at your parents’ couch in your free time though,” Ladybug scoffed.
Chat Noir exhaled in abandon.
“I’m trying so hard to act in the spirit of our costumes, but you’re such a wet blanket, my Lady. I bet you’d take me more seriously if it were a real masquerade,” he complained with little contempt.
Ladybug ran her gaze through Chat Noir’s attire once more, and confidently said: “Yeah, I doubt it.”
So Chat Noir grabbed the small of her back with no warning, pulled her close, extended his baton, and lifted them over the crowd and out the window.
As they hit the fresh summer sky, the rushing air blew the flimsy fabric pieces that constituted their attire. Ladybug’s Venetian mask also flew off, but Chat managed to masterfully catch it. He grabbed onto both their masks against the wind that claimed every single one of their costumes’ accessories as they skipped through the roofs. After all, they were not made to withstand superheroes’ favourite form of transportation.
Finally, they landed on their usual roof with an open view the Eiffel Tower. It was likely one of the closest buildings in the city to the glittery tower.
Ladybug’s ears were ringing despite the silence, a ghost of the loud techno music still howling in the back of her head.
“I thought that I’d go deaf,” she said, yanking her head to the side as if she were trying to get water out of her ear.
“Tell me about it,” Chat exhaled, fixing up his cat ears.
“Once again, Chat, you’re not actually a cat.”
Chat Noir rubbed his shoulder to Ladybug’s. “But I am chat-rming, right, my Lady?”
Ladybug giggled all the while rolling her eyes. So Chat swooped between her arms, grabbed her back and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“What about now?” he asked, making the first step, starting to dance once more.
“I get it, you can dance,” Ladybug admitted, but despite her protest, she continued dancing with her faithful partner.
“Now back to the masquerade…” He stopped, took out their Venetian masks he had attached to the back of his belt, and handed hers to Ladybug. He watched her cover her eyes with the imperial red velvet, while he tied his black feathery mask over his golden hair.
He promptly held her hand again and continued dancing.
“Now imagine. It is 18th century, maybe 19th, and we’re at…” he started counting, but Ladybug cut him off.
“18th or 19th century?” She asked in all seriousness.
“Does it matter?”
“Well, I need to know what to wear.”
Chat Noir exhaled in fake annoyance, but he couldn’t contain a smile. He liked how she tried to do everything she did at her best. So he briefly let go of her hand without moving his other hand behind her back, took out his baton, slid up its screen, and a gentle waltz started to emanate from it. He placed it back to its place and held his partner’s hand once more.
“Ok, so it is 18th century, we’re at a masquerade at Versailles and-” He stopped midsentence. “Oh, the French Revolution is about to happen. So maybe not Versailles…”
“I’d prefer to keep my head, if possible,” Ladybug noted.
“Yes, yes,” Chat Noir shrugged her off. “Some other European palace then!”
He picked up the pace which he had lost in the hesitation of historic accuracy.
“So it is the 18th century and we’re at a grandiose masquerade, in a ballroom basking in the golden light of candles and mirrors.”
“Look at you, being poetic and all,” Ladybug remarked.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” Chat Noir replied to her, with a charming air. “I happen to read on rainy days and write verses to my ladylove after long strolls on my horse…” She knew that he was joking, but she kinda wished he didn’t. In any case, joking was easier than facing whatever feeling he had just stoked in her once again.
“And I’m probably leading some armies somewhere so that you can sit tight and warm on your tushy,” she snarked.
Chat Noir enlarged the square they were dancing in, now sweeping over the entire surface of the roof.
“Maybe, but tonight you’re not at the battlefield. You are invited to a ball. And when you enter the ballroom, all the heads turn to look at you, the majestic, legendary Lady of Bug. How can they not?” Ladybug looked at his green eyes, thinking she’d see the usual glimmer of mischief. She only found admiration, which prompted a blush.
“Yeah, ok, I am not that amazing,” she tried to brush him and her blush off.
But his reply only made her blush further: “You’re right, you’re even more amazing.”
What was with him tonight? Ladybug was used to Chat Noir’s incessant flirting and advances; they were usually not too hard to ignore given how goofy he was. But tonight, it felt different. He felt different.
“In fact, you’re so amazing that, no one is up to your liking. So many fine gentlemen ask to dance with you. You turn them all down.”
“I sound awfully arrogant,” Ladybug protested.
“You’re only selective, and for good reason too,” Chat Noir replied. “You hold such power in your hands, you can’t love at your heart’s content.”
Ladybug didn’t know why, but his words, as gentle as they were, stung. She wanted to believe that he was still talking about the fantasy world where she seemingly was this mighty knight, but she knew that he was cleverer than that.
“Lady of Bug seems to have a lot of responsibilities,” she remarked, blending fantasy and reality.
“Seemingly so. But maybe with the right partner, things could be easier…”
Chat Noir flung her away from himself, the only thing keeping them together becoming their fingertips. He then gently pulled onto her hand, bringing them together once more.
“Well, here he is,” he declared cheerfully.
Ladybug looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time. Maybe she was.
She tried to dissipate her thoughts by returning to her default behaviour, which would be to banter with him.
“Is he a stray cat?”
Chat Noir giggled at the comment. “I thought that I wasn’t a real cat,” he reminded.
“Then explain the ears,” Ladybug retorted, letting her hand go off his shoulder to flip his cat ear.
Chat Noir gently took her hand off his ear and guided it back to his shoulder. He also didn’t know what had gotten in him tonight. Maybe his orange juice was left out for too long.
“Hmm, the guy in the story doesn’t have cat ears though.”
“Then he can’t be my partner,” Ladybug quickly responded.
Chat Noir gave her a blissful smile. He loved when she’d get protective over him.
“Well, this is not about us. This is about the Lady of Bug and the mysterious stranger…” he reminded her, pulling her closer, his fingers instinctively clawing on her back.
“What’s with the mysterious stranger?” Ladybug asked, now too vested in the story. “Do we know who he is?”
“No one does. He just appeared in the dark.”
“How convenient.” Ladybug rolled her eyes. “Then how is Lady of Bug supposed to trust him?”
“Because despite the mask, she recognises him.”
“Oh?” This had just taken an interesting turn. Could he be meaning that she somehow knew him in real life? But that would not make any sense. What were the odds anyway?
As Chat Noir continued his story, Ladybug’s doubts dissipated. “She had once seen him on a moonless night. He had saved her from an ambush but gotten injured, so she had healed him with her magical powers.”
“She’s magical too?” Ladybug scoffed. “Seems to me like she is overpowered.”
Chat Noir held Ladybug close and led her to a sharp turn. “I told you that she was amazing.”
“But no one knew who he was, including the Lady of Bug,” he continued his story. “The crowd wondered: was he a count? A duke? Some mentioned that a prince was to arrive to the city, but no way he could be a prince, right?”
Ladybug scoffed once more. “Lady of Bug wouldn’t know the face of the guy she saved?”
“Well, it was dark and now he wore a mask. Maybe she didn’t get to have a good look. Maybe she saw his face, but didn’t know who he was,” Chat Noir mused. “And he didn’t know her name either.”
“I thought that Lady of Bug was famous?” Ladybug continued to argue, now also feeling confident enough to defy Chat and take the lead of the dance.
“Maybe he had his reasons,” Chat suggested, then added, giggling: “If he were sitting tight and warm on his tushy while she fought…”
“Chat!” Ladybug protested, letting go of his hands to gently pound his chest. She hadn’t liked that he seemingly had taken her earlier addition to the story personally.
“Well, not everyone can be as amazing as the Lady of Bug,” Chat scoffed, grabbing her hands. But instead of putting them back to his shoulders, he stepped back still holding to them, curtsied, and then stepped in to finally resume their usual dance.
“But he still thought that he could be worthy of being her partner,” Chat said, took a step behind without letting go of Ladybug’s hand. He then bent down saluting her, and bringing her hand closer to his face: “Would you have this dance with me, my Lady?”
Ladybug tried to defy the blush that threatened to take over her entire face.
“I thought that’s what we were doing?” she brushed him off.
“Oh no, now it is the Lady of Bug and the mysterious stranger dancing for the first time…” he said, grabbing her closer and looking into her eyes sensually.
“And we have danced before, have we not? My Lady? Even just back at the club.” Ladybug nodded in confirmation.
Chat Noir got back to his story.
“Because, you see, the mysterious guy hadn’t been able to take out of his mind the knight ever since he had encountered her that night.”
He kept insisting that they were not the protagonists of his story, but something told Ladybug that he was lying. No way could he hold her so softly, so warmly, speak to her such tender words, and not mean them. Or so she hoped.
“He must see pretty well in the dark to fall for a girl he never saw in daylight,” Ladybug tried to deflect Chat Noir’s words and the warm feelings that were forming in her chest.
“He needn’t to see her,” Chat Noir promptly replied to her, raising his hand over his head, guiding Ladybug to a twirl again. He then caught her, this time way closer than the previous times. “He fell for her bravery.”
But Ladybug did not feel brave at all. If anything, she felt like putty. She looked in Chat Noir’s eyes, shining in a mesmerising green, and could not help but gulp.
“He must be pretty brave himself, to risk himself to save someone he didn’t know,” she managed to say, but her voice came out way lower than she intended.
“He did his best,” Chat Noir replied.
The distant notes of the classical music lingered in the air as they danced, silent.
Ladybug couldn’t help but give in to the warm comfort of the moment.
“This is nice,” she said wistfully.
“…And as they danced, they felt the world dissolve around them…” Chat Noir narrated.
“Quite the fairy tale,” Ladybug exhaled blissfully. However, as if the word “fairy tale” had triggered her childhood memories: “Please don’t tell me that she’ll soon detransform and will need to run away,” she begged.
“She could…” Chat Noir answered, to her biggest regret. Seeing the sadness in her eyes, he quickly added: “But there was another ball next week too, so don’t you worry, my Lady. They would always meet again.”
“She doesn’t have to go now though, right?” she asked, to confirm.
Chat Noir shook his head left and right, and ever so subtly, and pulled her closer. “No, they have the entire night together this time.”
“Great,” Ladybug said, and the timing was great really, because the music changed and a far more energetic tune started to play. Ladybug pulled Chat Noir along as she haphazardly tried to fasten their dance. She didn’t know how to waltz, after all. And she bet she looked stupid. But she didn’t care.
Besides, Chat Noir was catching up to her quite well. In fact, he quickly caught up with her and started to lead them to more synchronised and slightly better-looking steps.
“Turns out, you’re not that bad of a dancer yourself,” Chat Noir commented, noticing Ladybug’s natural ability to mirror his steps.
“It’s not me, it is the Lady of Bug,” retorted she. Two could play this game… dance this dance?
“Well then,” Chat Noir kept narrating, “Lady of Bug was as good a dancer as the mysterious stranger, so they easily spent the night dancing together.”
At this note, he grabbed Ladybug’s waist and lifted her up, then spun them fast like a top.
“Chat!” Ladybug protested between giggles.
“And they danced and danced and danced…” he continued telling the story as they kept spinning.
“If you don’t want the Lady of Bug to throw up, you better put her down!” Ladybug cried, only half joking. So he put her down.
She found her balance after stumbling a bit.
Chat Noir realised that the ribbon of her mask had gotten loose. His hand went to her hair attempting to grab the mask before it fell.
“Without knowing each other’s names…” he muttered, his eyes finding hers, fingers unintentionally tangling into her hair.
Ladybug found herself putting her hand onto his. Her fingers brushed through his and reached the red ribbon that barely held onto her head. She pulled onto it, setting it free. The Venetian mask silently slid off her face. Its plastic shell made a loud thump as it hit the floor.
She didn’t know what she was doing. There were no thoughts in her head. She could barely register her red gloved hands reaching at his face, holding the sides of his mask, and tracing the black ribbon to the back of his head. She looked into his eyes, hidden behind two masks, and decided to rid them of the second one. She slowly pulled on the ribbon, her heart beating in her mouth, her hands trembling with hesitation and excitement alike.
He just stood, observing her, letting her do whatever she needed to do.
The black ribbon finally came undone and the mask fell. It made no sound, but the black feathers that got detached on the impact scattered at their feet and danced at the freedom of the wind.
“They can know each other’s names,” Ladybug replied, not daring to look away from Chat Noir’s eyes even for a second. It was like there was a magical thread between them, and the moment she’d turn her head, it would snap.
“Who is he?” asked she, one hand lingering on his cheek.
“Does it matter?” he asked back, lifting his hand to hold hers.
It didn’t matter at all. She loved him, whoever he was.
And yet, she had to know.
“He was the prince,” she answered herself. “The one rumoured to be in town.”
Chat Noir smiled. That’s who he thought the mysterious stranger would be. A rascal prince, but the prince, nonetheless.
“He was,” he confirmed.
Ladybug ever so slightly brushed his cheek with her thumb.
“Then I guess now, they must kiss.”
And she placed a gentle kiss on his lips. She died to hold him, to burn the most fervent kiss of all times on his lips as if to release all the times he had made her heart flutter and she had dismissed him and her feelings. But she couldn’t. Her lips, soft and trembling, brushed onto his, afraid that if she pushed too much, he would dissolve into thin air, like a phantasm from a story.
Chat Noir closed his eyes and let his Lady place the final dot in his story on his lips. Just like a full stop, it was dismissably small and yet tremendously impactful.
Just like that, the story of Lady of Bug and the mysterious stranger was over.
“And they lived happily ever after, I guess,” Ladybug said, suddenly the noise of the city overwhelming her ears. The music did not sound magical anymore. It was just some old classical tune playing out of the small speaker of Chat’s baton.
“Mmh hmm,” Chat Noir confirmed.
Ladybug wrapped her arms around herself and walked away from him.
“Must be nice to be the Lady of Bug,” she said in a low voice, gazing at the glistening Eiffel Tower. “No Monarch to use their identities to hurt them and those around them.”
“They have it simpler,” Chat Noir said, approaching Ladybug and standing just next to her. He also had wrapped his arms around himself, as if to fill an emptiness he was afraid would never be filled.
Ladybug looked at him and herself, glooming. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
“Then let’s make it simpler,” she said at a whim. She grabbed his hand and pulled him back to the centre of the roof. She then took out her yoyo and put on the Macarena.
“Wha- What are you…?” Chat Noir questioned, but not for too long. The silly music was too catchy, and it was impossible to not follow Ladybug’s suit and do the stupid dance.
It was so stupid, indeed. And they looked like idiots. Just two idiots who danced on the rooftops and told each other stories of a world that didn’t exist and never would.