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“You know, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind when you said ‘another dance’,” Marinette mentioned casually as she and Chat Noir walked into the building arm in arm. She had it in her mind that they would share another dance on her balcony where she would be forced to admit that her silly kitty could be graceful sometimes.
“You can’t tell me you didn’t expect this, princess,” he tutted in return. “You finally admitted the elegance of that movie and admitted that anime can be good. I’d say that’s cause for some real celebration!”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you were going to get us gussied up and going somewhere,” she shot back. “Much less somewhere fancy. I don’t know how long you’ve been planning this and I don’t even know how you got us into this event. The waiting list was three months and they just let us in!”
“A cat never reveals his secrets,” Chat responded with a clawed finger up to his lips. “Besides, I thought you would enjoy the chance to get ‘gussied up’.”
“You wore a suit over your suit,” Marinette said with a deadpan look on her face.
Chat Noir shrugged with a grin. “What can I say? It suits me.”
Marinette moaned. Chat chuckled. The band played on.
“Besides,” Chat said with a grin. “You look—”
“Excuse me.”
The duo turned to see a young man with combed black hair and chocolate eyes. He was tall and well-dressed and—from what they had heard two seconds ago—foreign and well-mannered. Marinette smiled politely while Chat gave the boy a nod.
“Might I ask this lovely young maiden for a dance?” he asked, looking directly at Marinette. She could feel Chat Noir begin to bristle on her arm, but the most he did was entwine their fingers and holy crap was that his tail?!
“I’m afraid I already requested her first dance for the evening,” Chat stated in a cool voice. Marinette’s eyes widened at him. “However, if you would like to try again later, you might catch her after we’ve finished dancing.”
“Ah, yes! Very good! I will come back later then. For now, I will see if I can find my cousin,” the young man remarked, a sparkle in his eye as he left the two behind. Marinette cast a curious look at her partner. She knew when the gears in his mind were working and she only had to think for a moment as to what his plan could possibly entail.
“I could have just said ‘no’. I am a big girl, you know,” she informed her date. The tail—which she was pointedly ignoring, thank you very much!—twitched as it had wrapped around her ankle. His ears drooped the slightest bit and he let loose a nervous chuckle.
“I know. But for tonight, I hope you’ll allow me to help you fend off possible suitors. I wouldn’t want anyone to steal my date tonight, would I?”
There were several things about what he said that could have sent a pleasant sort of shiver up Marinette’s spine. The fact that when he told her that he knew, she knew he was validating her ability to do it herself instead of brushing her off. The fact that he thought she was pretty enough to think she needed to bat away suitors. The fact that he stated he would help her doing so instead of doing it for her entirely.
But it was the slightest emphasis on ‘my’ that caught her. That made her smirk at her partner in crime. Err, dancing.
“Well, chaton,” she said, curling her fingers around his hand as she led him to the dance floor. “I do recall someone promising me a dance. The first, if I’ve got it right.”
Chat grinned. “Well, purr-incess, I hope you’re prepared to dance the night away.”
It was a challenge they both rose to with matching grins. Meanwhile, a certain chocolate eyed foreigner found his cousin, the prince, with a bowl on his head, smiling at his special—if not discreet—guest and his date.