Chapter Text
“So, what exactly are we?”
Marinette doesn’t look up from her desk and her physics homework, but she heaves a sigh. She’d been dreading that question because she has no answer for it. She waits until she hears the sharp inhale that means he’s getting ready to speak again.
“You tell me,” she interrupts him, putting down her pencil and spinning slowly in her desk chair. She can only see the back of his head from where she is under the loft, since he’s currently hanging upside-down with his knees hooked over the railing. Still, she can see the way his tail twitches and one ear twists uncertainly.
He’s actually really worried about this.
She gets up and pads around to face him, unable to stifle a giggle at just how red his face is. He quirks an eyebrow at her, ears going back (they’re almost lost in his cascade of golden hair, and she giggles again).
“I thought you were the stray I fed and now I can’t stop you from turning up,” she says lightly, but he doesn’t smile. “I don’t know. What do you think we are?”
His green eyes flicker, tail waving nervously behind his back. “I don’t know.”
In a quick motion he curls up, catching the railing of her loft and hauling himself back upright. He crouches there in the dark, eyes glowing, and Marinette plants her hands on her hips as she watches him.
“What’s got you so nervous, Chaton?” She sees his jump, and sighs. He still doesn’t seem to realize how expressive his ears and tail can be. Especially in times like now, when the former are flattened tight to his head and the latter lashes back and forth across her bed.
He looks away and down, gaze flashing to the pinks of her bedspread before he meets her eyes again. “Are we…friends?”
Not for the first time she wonders at the hesitance in his voice. What kind of life did he have, behind the mask, if he’s so nervous about asking? “Of course we’re friends,” she answers without hesitation. “I wouldn’t keep letting you in if I didn’t like you at least a little bit.”
Her tone is light and teasing, and finally he responds with a grin. “Only a little bit, Princess?” he drawls, leaning forward. “Now I know you’re making fun of me. No one can resist my charm.”
She snorts, loudly. “The puns cancel out any charm you might have.”
He clutches his chest in mock hurt, and she laughs outright. “Now, are you going to help me with my physics or not?”
He hops down from her loft, landing with a thud that she silently scolds him for. He seems unrepentant, and she huffs as he starts explaining the problems she was stuck on. If she didn’t know her kitty so well, if she didn’t see the way his ears still angled back, the tension around his eyes and in his shoulders, she’d think the topic was dropped.
Chat Noir turns up on her balcony about every other day. Marinette liked to joke about him being a stray she’d adopted, but it was truer than either of them let on. She’d never gotten an answer on why he’d clattered down on her trapdoor that rainy evening halfway through April.
He’d seemed tense and stressed, and she couldn’t resist the urge to care. To pull him inside, provide him with warm cookies and a listening ear he had yet to take advantage of. But he’d turned up three days later with (surprisingly expensive) chocolate for her and a sheepish smile. The day after that he’d brought his history textbook and asked if she minded him doing his homework at her place. Something about his room being “too cold” (she’d again decided against questioning that on such a balmy night).
After that he turned up at random intervals, but never stayed away for more than a few days. That had been the status quo for just over a month when things started to change.
Marinette was expecting a follow-up to that conversation, though she hadn’t been expecting it the very next night.
“So you’re okay with being secret friends with a superhero?” he asks, leaning over her where she’s stitching at a new design, and the warm breath against her neck makes her jump and jab herself with a needle.
She glares at him, sucking her wounded finger. “Yeah, as long as he respects my personal space,” she retorts, shoving him back a bit with a finger on his nose.
He blinks, and she yanks her hand back, cursing her own carelessness. She’d done that to him so many times as Ladybug, he’s smart enough he could easily make the connection—
He doesn’t, leaning away from her with a smile. “You don’t mind having to keep secrets?”
She stabs herself again and swears, much to his amusement. Keeping secrets? Compared to the secrets she’s been keeping for the last year, this is nothing. “No, I don’t mind.”
He persists, leaning over until his head is almost in her lap, blocking her view of her fabric again. He’s such a cat sometimes.
“You don’t mind that you don’t know my real name? Or what I really look like?” he asks seriously.
She puts her project down, granting him her full attention. “I don’t mind,” she says slowly, firmly. “Because I still know you, Chaton.”
He blinks at her, and she smiles down at him and pets his hair.
When Chat Noir turns up on her balcony three days later, Marinette is pacing her room, nearly vibrating with excitement. “Someone’s happy this evening,” he comments, sticking his head down through her unlocked trap door. “Good day at school, Princess?”
She looks up and absently waves him in, smile widening as he carefully avoids getting any spring muck on her bed. “Today was amazing!”
“Really? Care to share details?” He seats himself on the edge of her bed, a soft smile tugging at his lips that gives her momentary pause. She’s seen that look before, but only when she was Ladybug.
But today has been too wonderful for her to dwell on it for long. “My crush talked to me today,” she bubbles, pausing on the way past him to tweak his tail. “And he said he wants to hang out this summer, and he gave me his phone number!”
She waves the much-folded and –refolded piece of paper over her shoulder, before she realizes he didn’t actually know she likes someone. She glances up guiltily, and isn’t at all comforted by the shocked expression he’s currently wearing.
“Your…crush?” he asks slowly.
She rubs the back of her head sheepishly. “Ah, yeah, sorry.”
For a second she wonders if she hurt him, if maybe he hadn’t been kidding with his constant flirting and bad pick up lines. But then his face breaks into a wide grin and he hops down in a sudden burst of energy. “That’s great!”
He sweeps her into a hug that lifts her feet off the floor, spinning her giddily. “I’m happy for you,” he says seriously, and he really looks it. For a second Marinette is scarce inches from dancing green eyes and a sharp-toothed smile, before he seems to realize what he’s doing. He clears his throat awkwardly as he sets her down. “Sooo…tell me about him?” he asks, seating himself on her lounge, and she laughs at his hopeful expression.
“Are you sure, Chaton?” She answers his question with a question, picking up her diary box from her desk and slipping Adrien’s number into it. She clicks it shut and pads over to stand in front of him.
He looks up at her, ears perked. “Of course I’m sure. I want to know about anything that makes you this happy, Princess.” He’s looking at her in that soft way again, and she shifts her weight, unsure of what it means.
“Well.” She sets her box down beside her as she sits, a healthy space between her and the leather-clad superhero. “His name is Adrien Agreste—“
She jumps as his belt-tail thwaps against her back, simultaneously sending her box clattering to the floor. He pins the unruly limb with both hands, a blush just visible under the edge of his mask. “Sorry,” he mumbles, looking so ridiculous that she can’t help but laugh at him.
He laughs with her, releasing his tail and scooting a little closer. She takes a deep breath, continuing from where she left off. “He’s in my class, and he’s a model…”
By the time she’s done talking she’s somehow ended up pressed against him, aligned from knee to shoulder, leaning into his comforting warmth and the steady whoosh of his breath. His tail had curled around her at some point, the tip occasionally flicking against her thigh.
“It sounds like you’re really into this guy,” Chat says, and she looks up at him in confusion. Rather than wistful, he sounds honestly happy.
“You don’t mind?”
He gives her his Cheshire grin. “Mind? Absolutely not, Princess. I mean, the game isn’t much fun without some competition.”
“I am not a game,” she corrects him, and his laugh vibrates through her.
“My mistake, Princess. You should know I would never play with your heart.”
A sharp-taloned finger presses under her chin, tilting her head up to look at him. Her heart gives a little skip because he keeps doing that look why does he keep doing that look and if she tilted her chin up just a little more they’d be kissing—
He lets her go and stands, leaving her off-balance both physically and mentally, and bows in his over-dramatic way. “I’ve bothered you long enough, Princess. I’ll leave so you can get started on texting your prince charming.”
Okay, she has his number, but actually using it is an entirely different matter. But her kitty bounds away before she can say anything.
School ends the next week, and to Marinette’s (quiet) delight her kitten’s visits don’t stop. Instead of doing homework they played video games, or he watched as she scribbled away at new designs or stitched them into reality. She is as comfortable with him as she is with Alya, and she knows this is going to come back to bite her. She’ll have to make him stop eventually, she can’t risk him compromising her identity…but not just yet.
Mid-July he lands on her balcony with more than the usual clatter. More interesting, he didn’t bounce right down through her trapdoor, and eventually Marinette climbed up to her loft to see what was holding him.
She was not expecting to see him holding a picnic basket of all things, shifting from foot to foot and there is a slight nervous tremor at the edges of his grin. “What are you doing, Chaton?” she asks, propping the hand not holding open her trapdoor against her hip. “It’s 11 o’clock at night.”
He offers her a hand up, eyes certainly not straying to her loose t-shirt and boys’ shorts. “I have something I want to show you,” is all he says, and this is her kitten, she trusts him implicitly. She ducks back down long enough to grab her purse, with Tikki inside, and allows him to yank her up and onto his back with only a quiet yelp.
He shoots her a smug look over his shoulder. “Hold on. I need both hands for this.”
She nods, linking her arms around his neck and—more hesitantly—squeezing her legs around his waist. He waits for her to settle before extending his baton one-handed, and lifting them both off the roof in a powerful leap.
She barely holds back an exhilarated shriek. She is used to flying across the rooftops of Paris, but the way Chat moves is entirely different. It’s great weightless bounds, catching himself at the downward curve of his arc and using his baton to launch back skyward. She can feel the shift and bunching of lean muscles under his suit, against the bare skin of her legs, and the powerful bursts of his breath in his chest, and this feels closer to true flight than she ever has before. Her eyes water in the wind as he lands lightly on a rooftop before springing off again, and she squeezes them shut.
It takes her a long moment to notice when they stop. It’s only his slightly-breathless chuckle that snaps her eyes open. “I mean, if you want to stay like this all night that’s fine with me,” he teases, and she lets go with a squeak, barely catching herself as she hits the ground.
He steadies her lightly as she takes a moment to survey where they’ve ended up. They’re perched on the eves of one wing of the Palais de Chaillot, looking out over the splashing fountains of the Jardins, toward the Seine and the gleaming Eiffel Tower. She’s seen it before, of course; the midnight skyline of Paris is as familiar as the walls of her own bedroom, but it’s still breath taking.
Chat is looking at her uncertainly, and she remembers that she shouldn’t have seen a view like this before. The smile she turns on him is entirely genuine, though, and his ears perk. “It’s beautiful,” she breathes, and he turns away with an awkward cough.
“I brought snacks,” he mumbles, leading the way over to the edge of the roof to set down his basket. She seats herself on one side of it, and he flops down on the other. She eagerly pulls back the cover, and laughs. “Got a bit of a sweet tooth, do we?” she asks, reaching in and snagging a shortbread cookie.
“Maybe a little,” he admits, smiling at her and making no move to take a sweet himself.
She grins and looks back to the view, absently taking a bite. It tastes familiar. Very familiar. “You got these from my parents, didn’t you?” she accuses.
He grins, but one ear flicks. “Well, it is the best bakery in Paris…”
She pouts at him, debating whether to be annoyed or not, when something occurs to her. “Wait—you didn’t come in costume—“
“Of course not.” He sticks his tongue out at her.
She returns the gesture, ignores his laughter at the cookie crumbs on her lips, and turns back to the ‘tower, kicking her feet against the edge of the building. She’d worked register that afternoon after school. Had she served him without even knowing? No, she decides, watching him out of the corner of her eye as he takes a piece of fudge and bites into it with obvious delight. She would have noticed a tall blond dork like that.
She turns back the Jardins, fingers tapping at the stone beneath her as she tries not to ponder the warmth that wells up in her chest.
But, he chose to show this to her. Her, Marinette, not Ladybug. Out of all the people in the world, he’s the one most likely to understand. “Do you think it’s possible to lo-like two people at once?”
She keeps her eyes on the tower, but she still sees the way his back straightens, stiffens. He kicks his booted feet for a moment, tail softly slapping the ground behind him. “I know it’s possible,” he says, just as quiet as her.
“A-and, do you think is can still be…okay?” She looks at him, meets his gaze, watches his slitted feral pupils minutely expand and contract.
“I think it can be, as long as you’re honest about it.”
She takes a deep breath, turning towards him and scooting the basket out of her way, rocking up on her knees. “I still like Adrien.”
He mirrors her, though it brings his head up almost six inches higher than hers. “I still like Ladybug.”
She swallows down a flash of something that feels like guilt. “I also really want to kiss you right now.”
He blinks, eyes going wide, and she can’t help but smile because of course her kitty wouldn’t want to assume she was talking about him unless she said it outright. His gaze flickers down to her lips and back up, and she leans in to meet him—
Chat Noir swoops in, pecks her lightly on the mouth, and rears back, blinking nervously while she’s still trying to process what just happened.
Marinette blinks once, twice. “Chaton, was that your first kiss?” Well, she knows it wasn’t, but unremembered kisses don’t count.
“Um…” he shifts his weight back, ears down. “Sorry?”
She grins, reaching out a hand that he hesitantly takes, letting her pull him up to meet her again. “Want to try one more?”
It’s gratifying how eager he looks, and this time she cups her hands against his cheeks and slowly brings his lips down to meet hers. She’s not that much more experienced than he is, but she knows to take her time.
His mouth is tense and still against hers for a second, then she tilts her head just a bit, parts her lips just so, and he melts. His hands find the small of her back, deepening the kiss. It’s chaste, clumsy, inexperienced, their noses bump and she accidentally pulls his hair a bit and he can’t seem to decide if he wants to rest his hands on her back, shoulders, or face, and it’s perfect.
It can’t last more than a minute, but for Marinette it’s a pulse-pounding eternity and why had she refused his advances for so long? Finally he pulls away with a wrench, gasping in a shaky inhale and leaning his forehead against hers. Marinette whines at the loss of contact, her eyes fluttering open (when had they closed?).
His eyes are open already, searching her face. “You like…me?”
He sounds disbelieving, and she giggles. “And you like me.”
His grin widens, and she knows what he’s about to do a second before he does it. “Don’t you—“
He speaks over her, eyes sparkling. “Princess, would you say I whiskered you off your feet?”
She groans. “I take it back,” she grumbles, leaning away from him.
“Oh, you just want the prestige from secretly dating a superhero, I see how it is.” He doesn’t even try to sound hurt as Marinette laughs.
“I can’t exactly be famous for it if we’re secretly dating, Chaton.”
He catches her and draws her into another kiss, effectively silencing her when he captures her bottom lip between his and oh mon Dieu he’s a fast learner. He looks way too smug as he draws away, slower this time, and he looks happier than she’s ever seen him. “So is that a yes to secret dating?”
“Yes, you silly cat.”
Somehow in the ensuing wrestling match she ends up half in his lap, tangled together in comfortable silence, occasionally sharing bites of the sweets from his basket, until the tower lights turn off.