Work Text:
Marinette watched as her chaton attempted to hide himself. Over the course of the evening, he had played with her favorite yarn and gotten himself all tied up and the yarn was making such a task all the more impossible.
She supposed that was the only thing keeping him from bolting after saying...well... that.
“Can we just...forget I said that?” he asked. Marinette blinked herself into reality. The confession had shocked her, but that question just jarred her something fierce. “Water under the bridge? Bygones be bygones? That kind of thing?”
“I think those kinds of sayings refer to when someone needs forgiveness, Chat,” she said automatically. She watched him struggle with the yarn for a few more moments before deciding that letting him struggle alone was cruel. She walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
He immediately stilled.
She began with the string that had wrapped itself around his feet, biting her lip as she contemplated what to say. She struggled, oh how she struggled with what just happened.
On the one hand, her heart was doing flip flops and summersaults and she felt so happy that maybe, maybe, maybe he could be interested in her as Marinette. On the other hand...
“What about Ladybug? You know, the other half of the party?” she asked, trying to get a joke in there if only to lighten the mood. Maybe if she did then he would not see how badly she wanted the answer?
The moments drained away and Marinette was finally able to remove the string from his feet, moving upwards to gather the string from around his thigh. Thankfully, the string was not as taunt there so all she needed to do was a bit of pulling and it was free.
She moved up to his stomach and wrists.
“Ladybug is my partner and one of my closest friends. Always has been and always will be,” Chat admitted. “And I think I will always love her in a way, but... When I saw my future with her, it was always this... I don’t wanna call it a delusion, but it wasn’t realistic. I was always imagining what she was like outside of being Ladybug and assuming every day would be an adventure of some sort.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Marinette asked. There was a knot around his left wrist and she pulled his hand closer to her in order to get a better look at it. She more she focused on the knot, the less of a reason she had to look Chat directly in the face as he spoke. She hoped it would be enough to quell the blush on her face.
“Nothing’s wrong with it, per se. It’s what I wanted out of life. I wanted adventure and freedom, and Ladybug is a huge part of that for me. We’ll always be friends and I don’t know if I’ll ever be completely over her, but when I think about the future now... it’s a lot calmer, but still happy,” the boy said, trying to explain. The knot over his wrist loosened and Marinette was able to take the string away. From there, she moved to the top of his chest and his chin, where he had somehow looped the string around him several times.
“So... you’re trying to say you’re ‘settling’ for me?” she asked, trying to keep the lump out of her throat. How could she have been so silly as to think—
“Princess, no.”
Chat’s hand took a hold of hers, halting her actions momentarily. She kept staring at the yarn around his neck, loose and ready to be tidied up and away.
“Marinette...” he whispered. Try as she might, she could not stop the tremor that went down her spine at that. “Please look at me...”
Now, Marinette was a strong woman. She had very few weaknesses. When he asked her like that in such a soft and caring voice... well, that was most definitely a weakness. She let her eyes wander up to his face.
His eyebrows were furrowed to give his eyes that sad kitten look. His mouth was curled in the slightest frown. He looked as though the very wind had been knocked out of him.
“I wouldn’t do that to you. I respect and care for you too much to even consider ‘settling’ for you,” he said. “But when I think about a future where we’re not having random conversations at three in the morning, or running around Paris because there’s something we just have to see, or us watching a movie and you messing with my hair because I’m such a cat, or me watching you work on your designs because you’re so passionate about it... It’s cold. You infuse warmth and light into everything you do and if I ever had to be away from that, be away from you. Marinette, please believe me when I say I would literally rather die.”
She inhaled sharply, a flash of panic crossing her heart. “Don’t—” she choked. “Don’t say that.”
“Mari—”
“No, Chat, you don’t get it,” she whispered, allowing her head to fall forward slightly. Her eyes fell back to the blue string she still had yet to remove. “You’re my best friend and I have literally spent the past few weeks working through the fact that when I look into my future, I don’t see a prince charming who’s gonna whisk me off into the sunset anymore. I had all these dreams of having three kids and a hamster—which I still want, but now it’s all sort of secondary. It’s not the main dream anymore...
“What I want is to wake up every morning and have my best friend beside me, the same one who tries his best and is really dependable and gets under my skin and makes the most awful cat puns. The same one who’s there for me day in and day out when I need him and I know he’ll let me be there for him, too. I want afternoons of laughing and talking and just being. Being myself and letting him be himself and being okay with all of that. I want to be with the same person who drags me across Paris because of something cool that he saw or came over because he just needed someone to be there for him because he trusted me that much.
“Chat, if you die that future dies, too. So please... just don’t.”
When had her tears began? She had no clue. Was she ashamed that it was Chat seeing them? No. A little embarrassed that she had started to cry, perhaps, but never ashamed. Not in front of Chat.
“Princess...”
“Chat, I love you, but I am terrified that I’m going to lose you.”