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Marinette usually doesn’t get a lot of sleep when Chat stays the night. For one thing, Chat’s an enthusiastic clamper[1], and it’s difficult to sleep when you’re being half-crushed by your not-boyfriend. For another thing, both of them like to sprawl, and more than once they’ve woken up with someone’s elbow in someone else’s gut or someone’s knee in someone else’s groin[2].
The rest of the time, it’s because of moments like this.
Marinette studies the angles of Chat’s face as the moonlight bathes it with soft luminescence. He’s always been a bit unhealthily thin, she thinks, but a few weeks of nightly feeding has rounded out his cheeks somewhat. The line of his jaw, though, won’t be fixed by that; that’s all puberty’s fault, hitting late but hitting like a truck[3].
She runs a finger absently down the fine stubble on his chin. Chat smiles at her touch. “Kitty’s getting some fur,” she murmurs.
“Planning on growing it out,” he replies, his smile gaining a hint of incisor. “I’m going to look all manly.”
“You’re going to look like someone who isn’t getting any kisses,” Marinette retorts.
“Extortion.”
“Damn straight,” Marinette says, leaning in and pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mask. Chat whines pitifully and bats gently at her shoulder.
“No, kitty,” she says, “no kisses until you shave. Your chin hair is scratchy.”
“My beard is scratchy,” he corrects.
“Your stubble.”
“My stubble,” he accepts. His tail winds around her waist as he pulls her close, a hand coming up to cradle her face, his thumb running over her jaw. “Fine, I’ll shave. But only because I love you.”
Marinette’s heart reacts like it always does whenever he says those words, in that way, with that casual conviction, that certainty; it turns cartwheels and starts trying to beat its way out of her chest.
Words fail her, like every other time he’s said those words. She settles for burying her face in his hair, and feeling his answering smile.