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Chat Noir’s fighting differently tonight. He was as fast and fierce and fearless as always going up against the akuma, but he didn’t joke around so much and he didn’t stay still, not even for a second--not until Marinette literally ordered him to, alpha voice and all, and then he hadn’t so much as twitched an ear out of line.
That should’ve been her first clue, probably.
But they’d been in the middle of a fight, and people had been in danger, and the akuma had been coming up swinging and--
And.
And it’s just excuses.
A better alpha would’ve known.
“Pound it!” they declare as the akuma victim sits up woozily on the other side of the square and looks around in confusion. Marinette’s voice is proud and pleased; Chat Noir’s is a beat slower, a beat breathier, and he startles a little when their gloved knuckles collide, as if he somehow wasn’t expecting it. The contact’s softer than normal.
“You were as im-purr-essive as usual, my lady,” he coos as he leans forward on his baton, his usual smirk a little strange--tremulous, almost. Marinette has the irrational thought that he might be hurt, as if Miraculous Ladybug wouldn’t have taken care of it even if he had been. He’s still breathing hard from the fight and his eyes are bright, all glitter and gleam, and under the streetlight his face looks flushed.
She has an odd desire to . . . to do something. She can’t quite figure out what it is, though.
Chat’s smirk turns awkward in the silence, another tremble running through it, and Marinette’s eyes zero in on his mouth. It looks--wrong.
“Ladybug--” he starts, voice uncertain, and her earrings beep. She reaches for her yo-yo reflexively and his fingers tighten around his baton. “Ladybug,” he repeats, faint distress in his tone. The civilians are coming out of the woodwork, and she glimpses night-beat reporters hurrying towards them.
She grabs him around the waist and he yelps--not like he usually would, not like normal, but a breathless, shocky little sound--and wraps his arms around her neck. She swings them both up high to disappear into the rooftops, and they hit the ground running. Somewhere in there she gets a hand around his wrist, and she doesn’t let go even as they vault from roof to roof, even though it would be easier to.
Her earrings beep again. She doesn’t want to stop running.
But some part of her feels like she’s going the wrong way.
They stop tucked away in the shadow of a sprawling rooftop garden, sweet and fragrant in the night air, and Chat Noir breathes in deep and gets a strange look on his face. Marinette isn’t sure why she picked this specific roof to stop on--it has pretty good cover, she supposes--but she is sure she’s the one who picked it. Chat’s panting, still, but there’s a thrum in him that still hasn’t stopped. He would've kept running.
She might be feeling that too, she realizes. The adrenaline crash after a fight, or the moment before it when everything is still so urgent and sharp.
She takes a deep breath of her own and smells flowers and dirt and clear night air and the barest taste of something midnight-metallic on the back of her tongue.
“Ladybug,” Chat Noir says as she watches a funny little shiver go through him.
“Are you cold?” she asks unthinkingly, as if it weren’t spring-warm and sweet here. She should be leaving. Chat didn’t use Cataclysm--or, more accurately, he did, but he re-transformed before the fight was over and didn’t use it again--but her earrings have already beeped twice.
“N-no, my lady,” Chat Noir stutters, wrapping his arms around himself. Marinette feels the irrational urge to tuck him away someplace warm anyway, which is . . . not normal, for her. That’s something she feels about Adrien, and in that case the “someplace warm” is usually her den, where his sugar-cookie scent would fit in just--
“Chat,” she says, cutting her own thoughts off. He looks at her, but she doesn’t have anything to follow it with. He keeps looking, though.
“You really were amazing tonight,” he says in a rush. “You were so--you were really amazing.”
“We did good,” Marinette says, stepping in closer. She should still be leaving. Something is still holding her back. Maybe the moonlight; maybe the heady, sweet scent of the rooftop garden.
Maybe the way Chat Noir holds himself like he thinks he’s about to fall apart.
“You did good, kitty,” she tells him. His tail quivers, ears perking up alertly, and the reaction . . . she doesn’t know, it’s like it satisfies something in her. She feels like there’s something she should be doing. She feels like touching his ears.
“I tried to,” Chat says, turning away. Marinette sees the back of his neck and irresistible impulse overcomes her brief flash of confusion at his strange tone of voice and the next thing she knows she’s up on her tiptoes and has her nose buried in the soft strip of skin between his collar and his hairline.
She breathes in.
He smells like moonlight, like dark warm corners and safe hiding spots, like one of the dozen times she’s watched him dance across a star-lit rooftop as if he didn’t know she was there, as if he didn’t care who could see his silhouette from the street below. As if he wanted people to see him. As if he wanted her to be there, watching.
Maybe he did, something deep down inside her thinks. Maybe Chat was dancing for her, wanting her to look at him, to admire his unselfconscious grace and the silly way he turned every fall into another part of the dance, the easy and excited way he moved. Maybe he was--maybe he--
Marinette’s earrings beep.
Mortification overwhelms her, and she jerks back. Chat stares at her. His mouth is half-open. His face is red.
His face is so red.
She feels like she’s giving him a run for his money on those grounds, though, considering how hot her own feels. She also feels like if anyone else saw him like this, she’d throw them into the damn Seine.
A rush of panic goes through her at the ferocity of that thought and she tenses. Chat’s mouth moves, just barely--wordless, like he’s trying to speak but there’s something between them blocking the sound. Marinette’s spine prickles.
She takes a step back.
Chat’s whole face just . . . crumples.
He still doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t--
Marinette is terrified, suddenly. She’s not like this. She’s not this kind of alpha, to get her head turned by any pretty pheromones she trips over. She’s not--she’s not disloyal, she’s not inconstant. Chat smells like moonlight, like the sudden shock of night air and the terrifying rush of leaping out into the empty dark, like deserted city sidewalks and unfamiliar corners: something midnight-metallic, something strange, something wild. Nothing like Adrien. Not a single note in common.
She’s not like this. She’s not like this.
He smells--
He smells--
“Ladybug,” Chat croaks, still staring at her.
He smells stray.
“I shouldn’t have come out,” he whispers. His hips are canted oddly, and his tail is flicked to one side. Marinette . . . Marinette is oddly aware of that. She’s not sure why.
“I needed you,” she says. She means it as a reassurance, she thinks. She doesn’t think about how it sounds.
Chat fists his hands and locks his knees and trembles.
“Oh,” Marinette says, her eyes just barely widening as his stare straight into her, glitter-bright and ruined. “Oh--Chat.”
He’s in heat. Or so close to it that it doesn’t really matter either way. He’s in heat and he came out and fought like that? For Paris? For her?
He came out and fought like that, showed her what he could do, called her impressive and amazing, wrapped his arms around her neck--stood still for her putting her nose in his neck--
Marinette exhales shakily. Two minutes. Two minutes and an omega who isn’t Adrien. She needs to leave. She needs to leave right now.
Chat Noir smells like moonlight. Dark spaces and empty sidewalks. Strange and wild.
And stray.
Chat Noir smells stray.
“Can you get back to your pack like this?” she asks.
“Yes,” Chat chokes, and suddenly isn’t looking at her at all. “I. Yes. I can. I can get back.”
“. . . to your pack,” Marinette repeats slowly. His face twists.
She can’t help it. She puts alpha into her voice.
“Chat,” she says. “Can you get back to your pack?”
“No,” he sobs, immediately crumpling; curling in on himself and hiding his face behind his hands. Marinette’s fingers curl reflexively.
“I need to recharge,” she says. “If you can wait, I can take you to them.”
“That’s not the problem,” Chat croaks. Tears are slipping out between his fingers; she’d forgotten he could cry past the mask. He does it so rarely. “It’s not that I can’t get there. It’s that there’s no one there to get to. My father isn’t--and my mother’s--my mother--”
“Chat,” she says, horrified. He drops into a crouch in front of her, burying his face in his knees and wrapping his arms tight around himself, and she hits her knees reflexively in response. “What about your friends?” she asks urgently. “I can take you to--”
“I’m not allowed to spend heats with friends,” Chat replies dully.
“. . . not allowed,” Marinette repeats.
“It’s unseemly,” Chat says with a bitterness that makes it very clear just how much not his own opinion that is. “If anybody found out, I wouldn’t be allowed to see them again.”
“What, you’d get grounded?” Marinette asks incredulously. “Over that?”
“No,” Chat says, voice small. “I’d get taken out of school.”
Marinette stares at him.
She doesn’t mean to let the snarl out. It’s not directed at him, obviously. He starts crying again, though, and then she hates herself for it.
“Chat,” she says. “Chat, please don’t cry. I’m sorry. I just can’t--I don’t know what to do.”
What kind of alpha is she, to say that to an omega in distress? This is the most she’s ever let him tell her about his life. And it is the worst he’s ever told her about his life, too. She remembers a few of the things he was muttering to himself during the fight against the Bubbler. Why didn’t she ask then? Why didn’t she ever ask?
“Chat,” she tries again, and he lowers his hands and stares at her through his tearstained mask. “There’s gotta be--there must be somewhere I can take you. Try to think, okay?”
“I don’t want you to,” Chat says.
Marinette’s earrings beep. Her hand snaps to her yo-yo reflexively and then they both go still.
One minute.
“Chat,” she stresses. His mouth quivers.
“Ladybug,” he says; practically chokes out. “Please--please don’t--”
“I’ll come back,” she swears. “But right now I need to detransform. I’m out of time. You can wait for me, right?”
“No,” Chat moans helplessly, shaking his head with a frantic edge. Marinette’s afraid to get in close enough to scent him again, but she feels it’s probably safe to say the real heat is kicking in. “Don’t leave me, Ladybug, please, I’ll be good, I won’t look!”
Yes. It’s definitely safe to say his real heat is kicking in.
“Wait for me,” she says, taking a step back again. Chat cries out, an incoherent sound strung out somewhere between a yowl and a sob. “Chat--”
“You’re my friend,” he says, small and piteous. “Please don’t leave me.”
“. . . I’m your friend,” Marinette agrees lowly. Chat makes that same strange cry again, too loud and carrying too far across the rooftops, and she steps in and crouches in front of him to shush him. He cuts it off immediately, hunching in on himself and fisting his hands tight against his thighs.
It looks like it hurts.
He looks hurt.
“Close your eyes,” Marinette says, putting a hand over his mask.
“I’ll be good,” Chat rasps. “I won’t look.”
“I know you won’t, kitty,” Marinette says, the last urgent beep of her earrings already ringing in her ears. Something in her is still too afraid to move the hand, though; something’s still stopping her, still keeping--
Chat whimpers. It’s a very quiet sound, but its origin is unmistakeable.
He’s an omega in heat with an alpha who doesn’t trust him.
Marinette drops her hand immediately, and her transformation drops with it. Chat’s eyes are closed, screwed shut tight and tense, but the second her hand falls away they soften. His body goes softer too, a little of the tension seeping out of it, and for a moment the sparkling pink of her transformation’s collapse reflects across his face, making him look sweet and soft under its light.
But Chat’s looked that way to her before, hasn’t he, she realizes.
And he trusts her. He trusts her completely. Entirely. Faultlessly.
Marinette swallows, and slants her eyes towards Tikki, who is already settling on her shoulder and looking at her with big, serious eyes. She wants to beg for help. She wants an out. She wants things she’s scared of wanting, when it’s someone not Adrien, and some part of her wants things she’d be scared of wanting even with Adrien.
Marinette reaches down to her purse with her free hand and snaps it open; Tikki dives inside for her cellophane-wrapped emergency cookie stash. Chat sits very, very still, and doesn’t open his eyes even a sliver.
Marinette looks at him.
“Can I touch you?” she asks. The real question is supposed to be do you need me to touch you?, but somehow it doesn’t come out that way.
“Please,” Chat croaks.
“Then I’m going to touch your hair, if that’s okay,” Marinette tells him, so he won’t be startled while he can’t see her. He doesn’t protest, but when she lays a hand on his head and gently smooths it back over his hair he startles anyway. Her fingers catch against his ears, which flick flat and tremble under her touch. He looks like he might cry again. He looks like it’s taking everything in him not to push into the contact.
He so obviously wants to push into the contact.
“You’re doing good,” she tells him, stroking his hair again. He whimpers, then settles more heavily against the roof. “You’re doing so good, kitty. Does this help?”
“Yes,” he mumbles, screwing his eyes shut tighter. “Please--please don’t stop.”
“I won’t,” Marinette assures him, petting his hair a little harder. A few moments pass and then Chat makes an unhappy little noise; for a moment she thinks she was too rough for his over-sensitized skin, but then she realizes.
He wasn’t talking about the petting.
“You’re the best,” she tells him, and the tension instantly melts out of his shoulders. “The best partner I could ever ask for.”
“My--my lady,” he says, biting his lip. “I . . . tonight, please, could you . . . could you . . .”
“Could I?” Marinette prompts gently after it’s become apparent the words aren’t coming for him. Chat Noir swallows hard, shoulders hunching.
“Don’t call me your partner tonight,” he says, barely more than a guilty whisper. “Call me . . . call me . . . I know, I know it’s a lie, but please call me . . .”
Marinette is not stupid, and she is not an alpha for nothing.
“The best omega I could ever ask for,” she rumbles quietly, leaning in and wrapping her arms around him. Chat shivers all the way up his spine and then just melts into her.
And it’s--it’s too much, Marinette knows better, she knows she knows better, but--
“You’d be such a sweet mate,” she murmurs, stroking a hand through his hair again, holding him tighter. “Anyone would be lucky to have you give them pups. Sweet little kittens just like you.”
“Ladybug,” Chat Noir gasps out against her shoulder of her jacket. A vulnerable thing--his voice and her unarmored body both. He sounds like she’s hit him. He sounds like he’s about to cry.
He’s not even holding onto her in return.
“You’d be the best mama, too. Your pups would be just as lucky,” Marinette says, an irrational part of her picturing him curled up soft and warm in her den, half-buried beneath her blankets and scenting up the whole place like moonlit metal; like sitting outside on her balcony at night with a warm drink and something sweet and just being.
Something . . . something sweet. Like sugar cookies, fresh out of the oven.
Like . . . like if Chat Noir wasn’t curled up under that blanket alone. Like if . . . if . . .
“Anybody would be,” she says, trying not to think about it. Chat would be so flirty-sweet, nuzzling in close to Adrien, wanting Adrien to feel welcome because she wanted him there. And Adrien . . . Adrien’s so nice, and he treats people so gently. He’d probably just accept the attention and let Chat curl them into a pretty knot and be his own kind of sweet right back, just like Chat deserves.
“Anybody?” Chat repeats shakily, shivering in her arms again. He sounds--lovesick, almost. Marinette’s putting off too many pheromones. She’s putting off way too many pheromones. She needs to stop.
She doesn’t want to stop.
“Yes,” she says. What would the two of them smell like together, Chat Noir and Adrien? That moment of peace on her balcony? The first breath of night air after spending the sunset sitting in a sweet-smelling outdoor cafe? The graveyard shift at the bakery, fresh cookies on hot pans straight out of the oven, the back door left open to take the morning deliveries out through?
Anything but stray.
Tikki floats up into Marinette’s field of vision with those same big serious eyes as before and Marinette wants her armor, suddenly, she wants her armor like she has maybe never wanted it in her life--
She wants to be someplace soft and soothing for Chat Noir to lean into.
And part of her--some terrible, terrible, stupid part of her--wishes he’d used Cataclysm again.
Wishes his ring would beep.
“Transform me,” Marinette says, and Tikki flies into her Miraculous and the pink light that bursts into being around them makes Chat Noir look sweet and soft and like he belongs to her.
That thought hadn’t occurred to her, last time.
This time it’s all she can think about. She can’t even smell the garden anymore, not past his heat pheromones, so intense and so unlike what she would’ve expected. Don’t most omegas smell like--like sweet things, like flowers or food or candy? Chat’s never actually smelled like that, of course, not in all the time she’s known him, but . . .
She never really thought about what Chat smelled like before, and now it’s all she can think about. She wouldn’t have thought she’d like pheromones that smelled like his so much. She wouldn’t have thought she’d like his pheromones so much.
Marinette’s never liked anyone’s pheromones but Adrien’s.
But even his she didn’t like right away, she remembers distantly. Not before she knew him better. Not before she realized he wasn’t anything like she’d thought; not before he’d reached out to her with completely unanticipated kindness.
And she knows Chat much, much better than she’s ever known Adrien, doesn’t she.
She doesn’t know his name. She’s never seen him unmasked or unarmored. But his name is Chat Noir, and his mask is the same thing as his face, and he smells like moonlight and metal and wants to be in her arms.
Sometimes Marinette feels like she doesn’t know anything Adrien wants.
. . . a lot of the time.
“Ladybug,” Chat says. He still hasn’t opened his eyes. Marinette touches his cheek with a gloved hand, and his lashes just barely flutter.
“It’s alright, kitty,” she tells him. “You can open your eyes. I can take care of you now.”
“I wish,” Chat says with a little hiccuping sound. It’s not quite a sob. When he opens his eyes they’re still all brightness and glitter and gleam, but they’re watery too.
“I can,” Marinette insists, a little offended. She’s not insecure, but she has her pride as an alpha.
“No, I mean--” Chat stops himself; makes that hiccup-sob sound again and shakes his head. “I know you’ll take care of me, Ladybug. I know you’ll--you’d do that for anybody.”
“Then what’s the problem?” she asks. His mouth twists miserably.
“I wish you’d take care of me for real,” he says, his voice very small. “Not just--not just because I’m stupid and crying all over you and my pack’s not--not--”
She shouldn’t have asked, she realizes.
“Shhh,” Marinette hushes him, reaching to stroke his hair again. His ears go flat underneath her fingers. “You’re not stupid, kitty. You’re just sensitive because of--”
“I’m not sensitive!” Chat cries, jerking back from her touch. Marinette stares at him in alarm. “I mean--I am, but that’s not why! You don’t see--you just see your partner when you look at me. You don’t see me as an omega. You’ve never seen me as an omega. Not really.”
“. . . being an omega doesn’t make you any different from--” Marinette tries, slowly, but Chat Noir cuts her off with a furious shake of his head, fresh tears slipping down his mask.
“No,” he says. “You don’t see me as an omega. Not a real one.”
Marinette has no response. She does see him as an omega. She’s given plenty of biting comments to reporters asking why she “lets” Chat act the way he does; why she lets him fight and flirt and regularly ignore all sense of decorum and good manners, as if her opinion of his behavior matters at all. He’s too loud for a proper omega, they’re all saying; too cocky and flashy and clumsy and weird. He throws himself between her and danger, protects her--takes the role that should be her role for him, according to an awful lot of backward-minded people.
Chat Noir takes the hits so Ladybug can finish the job and fix everything. That’s how it is. That’s how they trust each other to work; that’s how Chat Noir and Ladybug are supposed to work. Marinette doesn’t always like it, necessarily, but she’s never thought Chat couldn’t hold up his end of the bargain just because of being an omega, and she’s been very aggressive with anyone who ever so much as implied that.
But that’s not what Chat actually means when he says she doesn’t see him as an omega, is it. And . . . and he isn’t wrong, really.
Except for tonight. Tonight it’s--tonight it’s different.
But that’s not what he wants either, she’s sure.
“Oh, Chat,” she says helplessly, pulling him closer. There’s nothing else she can think to do.
“Ladybug,” he says hoarsely, wrapping his arms tight around her neck and burying his face in her shoulder. Marinette shifts her grip on him to hook an arm under his knees and picks him up. Chat muffles a weak purr against her shoulder and she tries not to think very much about the fact that she decided carrying him bridal-style was the way to go about this.
Chat would probably wear black, if he were a bride. She wonders if he’d be open to something a little prettier. Maybe silver, or something red--her mother would like that, if--
Marinette cuts that line of thought off with brutal speed as she heads deeper into the rooftop garden, looking for someplace better for Chat to ride this out, and tries to pretend it didn’t just happen. She’s only ever thought about Adrien in a wedding dress, before; probably something pure white and as traditional as haute couture could allow for and that, if she was lucky, he’d let her make for him. She’s dreamed of that dress.
She’s never pictured Chat in one before. She can’t even picture his face. There’s a mask behind the veil in her mind, honeycomb black and feline green waiting where Adrien’s warm, summer-soft eyes have always been before.
“I could give you a pup, someday,” Chat murmurs against her ear as they pass under a row of heavy leaves split by starlight. His voice is very, very soft, and it makes something electric uncurl in Marinette’s gut and shoot lightning-bright up her spine. “When all this is over and Paris is safe, and we don’t--and we don’t have to keep secrets from each other anymore. You’ll let me tell you who I am then, right? And . . . and you could let me give you a pup, if you . . . if you wanted.”
She can’t promise that. She can’t even answer that. Not when he’s in heat. Not when he’s like this.
Not ever, some part of her thinks.
“I could,” Chat whispers, turning his face into her shoulder. He sounds so tired. Marinette wants to rip apart whatever hurt him, except the thing that hurt him is her--her inconstant heart, her disloyalty. He isn’t Adrien. She shouldn’t feel this way about him. Her pheromones shouldn’t be responding to his, encouraging his.
She shouldn’t have thought about him in her den when she knew she’d never let herself have it.
. . . but she could, couldn’t she. She could right now. She could take him home and let him make himself a nest out of her bed and run out their transformations together, let him ride out the rest of his heat curled up safe and warm in a proper alpha’s den. Tikki might never forgive her, but Chat himself--Chat would be so happy. There’s a power in that, Marinette thinks.
There’s a terror in it, too.
After all . . . she can make him sad just as easily, can’t she.
Easier, probably.
Marinette comes to the end of the row of plants and glimpses a small set of patio furniture tucked away in the corner. It’s not much, really, just a lounger, a chair, and a little end table. The frames are a bit rusted, but there are cushions on the lounger and chair and from here they look soft and . . . well, as clean as any furniture in a rooftop garden is going to be, which is a whole lot better than leaving Chat sitting on the roof was, as plans go.
She really hopes whoever this garden belongs to isn’t very territorial, because hell if she can tell if they’re a beta or omega or alpha past Chat filling up all her senses, but come morning their pheromones are going to be everywhere.
She sets Chat down on the lounger. He makes a heartbroken sound.
Marinette isn’t a good enough alpha for this.
Marinette isn’t a good enough anything for this.
“Kitty,” she murmurs, smoothing his hair back off his face. He mews at her, flushed and wet-eyed. It’s--distressing. Very distressing. Her pheromones flare up protectively and Chat shivers at the scent of them.
She should have better control. She needs to have better control. Chat’s in heat; he can’t help what his pheromones do. Hers, however, are entirely her own responsibility.
Marinette steps back, pretending to ignore the weak little sound Chat lets out at the loss of her (pretending that the way he leans after her doesn’t wrench at her), and strips the chairs of their cushions and brings them back to him. It’s really not enough, not for any alpha to bring an omega, but it’s something, at least. She searches as much of the rooftop as she can without leaving his line of sight and finds very little else--a mostly-empty roll of some kind of netting that’s probably meant to keep bugs out, some empty canvas sacks that once held dirt, and . . . that’s it, really.
Chat Noir takes all of it from her as reverently as if she’s brought him Egyptian cotton and Mulberry silk.
Marinette feels even worse.
So many things about Chat are so easy. She could have him with a word and he would love her even more for it. But that’s a word she’ll never say, because it’s a cruel, unfair thing.
Marinette’s loved Adrien for so long now. She can’t just settle for Chat Noir because it’s easy. That’s nothing she wants, and nothing he deserves. Chat should have an alpha who loves him above all others; who loved him from the first glimpse. Someone whose first look at him left them struck. A hopelessly romantic dream for her hopeless romantic of a partner.
They can’t even be pack to each other.
She watches him make himself a nest out of the worthless, useless things she’s given him, his hands careful so his claws don’t snag anything and every piece and part arranged just so. She shouldn’t watch, because it’s something personal and private, something only that alpha who can give him more than some weak imitation of what he deserves should be watching.
She didn’t even ask Chat if she could watch, she realizes belatedly, and at that thought immediately tears her eyes away.
“I can check again,” she manages. “For something better, I mean.”
“Don’t leave me,” Chat Noir says. If she’s not looking at him, he almost sounds like--
Marinette wants to throw up. Just thinking that makes her want to throw up, because how dare she.
“I won’t,” she says roughly, fists clenching. “You’re my--you’re my--”
He asked to be lied to, she reminds herself. Reminds herself harshly. But Chat deserves better than a liar for an alpha; deserves someone true and true to him, and Marinette--Marinette apparently can’t even handle being true to Adrien, and Adrien’s just . . . Adrien’s just a dream.
Chat is real, and here, and she could have him with a word.
“Ladybug,” Chat says softly. Marinette looks at him again. He’s finished his nest.
He made it big enough for both of them.
The shudder that goes up Marinette’s spine is painful, and her fists clench so tight that she can feel her nails digging into her palms through the honeycomb-armor of her gloves. She doesn’t want to think about what her pheromones do, but the way Chat’s pupils dilate and his breathing picks up and his whole face flushes--
She can’t not think about what her pheromones are doing, seeing the effect they’re having on him.
“Please,” Chat says, backing up on the lounger; backing up deeper into his nest. Making room. He holds glitter-gleam eye contact with her the whole time, and his knees are--his knees are just that little bit spread. Like he might . . . like he might want her to push in between them, maybe. Like he might want--
That same shudder goes up Marinette’s spine again. It’s painful. It makes her want to be sick. It makes her want to run far, far away and hide under her blankets and not come out until the problem magically disappears in a swirl of bright light and shining ladybugs. She doesn’t think she’d be able to handle this even if--even if this were Adrien, or even if she could just stop thinking about him, she’s just--she’s just not--
She’s not ready for this.
What kind of alpha isn’t ready, when an omega needs them?
Chat needs her.
Marinette breathes through her mouth, but at this point it doesn’t help. She can taste his heat in the air. She can’t imagine what it feels like for him.
She puts a hand on his knee. His eyes are so wide.
“I like your nest, Chat,” she tells him quietly, then very carefully nudges his knees together so she can slip in against his side and lay down beside him. A shudder goes all the way through Chat, so deep she feels it in her own chest, and then--then he starts purring, and that she really feels. They fumble briefly with their positioning, but in the end they make themselves into a curled little mess of a knot in the center of the nest, his head on her chest and his chest pressed to her stomach and her stroking his hair and him purring, purring, purring so hard that it vibrates all the way through both of them.
Marinette tries not to think about how that makes her feel. She’s not ready for that yet. She isn’t even ready for that with Adrien, and she’s loved him since--
She has to stop thinking about him.
She has to stop.
It’s not fair. It’s not what Chat deserves, except what Chat deserves is to get what he wants and Marinette can’t give him that. She can’t just switch off her feelings. Even if she could, she wouldn’t want to, and even if she wanted to, Chat would still deserve better than someone who had to force it.
Nobody should have to force this kind of thing. Especially not for Chat. Chat’s so brave, so devoted, so--
Maybe, Marinette thinks as she does her damnedest to stifle her pheromones while Chat muffles a breathy little sound against her breastbone, she just needs to stop thinking altogether.
“Is this okay?” she asks. She knows it’s not. All she has for him is subpar nesting materials on some stranger’s rooftop; of course it’s not okay. Except--
“Yes,” Chat says immediately, without so much as a breath of hesitation or doubt.
She wishes he were lying.
“I’m glad, kitty,” Marinette says quietly, because she can’t say that. She keeps stroking his hair. He pushes into the contact and keeps purring. She’s never heard him do it so much before.
She’s going to keep feeling terrible about that for a while, she thinks.
He’s so happy with her like this. He’s so defenseless like this. He’s still transformed, still armed and fully-armored, still Chat Noir, but “defenseless” is still all that Marinette can think. He’s emotionally and physically compromised and the way his heat pheromones are pleading for a strong, competent alpha to come take care of him isn’t helping her see him the way she knows he really is. Omegas don’t get violent or rowdy when they’re in heat--not like alphas do in rut--but Marinette would sooner fight any two akuma than have to deal with one that felt threatened in said heat, much less one as fierce and strong as Chat.
It might be better if Chat felt a little less safe with her, though.
“You should be able to do this with your friends,” she says.
“You’re my friend,” Chat mumbles into her chest. Marinette breathes, and tries not to taste his pheromones in the process. It does not work even slightly. She’s going to have to de-transform outside the bakery and sneak back in. She doesn’t trust herself not to try and rub some of his pheromones off onto--onto some fabric or a pillow or something, otherwise. Something she’d have to explain, later, because there’s no way her parents would miss the scent of an omega in heat in her bedroom.
She doesn’t even trust herself not to do that accidentally, with how strong his scent is on her right now.
“Your other friends,” she manages. “Somebody who can get you real nesting stuff and who you don’t have to be transformed with. This can’t feel good when you’re all armored up.”
“You’re here, my lady,” Chat says, moving just enough to stare up at her with glitter, glitter, gleam in his eyes. Marinette instinctively dreads the next words out of his mouth, and he immediately proves that dread right. “I’ve never felt this good during a heat.”
She wants to tell him how bad that is. How horrible that is. How it’s one of the worst things she’s ever, ever heard.
But she can’t do it when he’s looking at her like that.
Marinette isn’t sure what happened to Chat’s parents or why he doesn’t have a pack but still has to answer to someone with the authority to pull him out of school just for seeking comfort when he needs it, but god, does she want to hurt someone over it. Maybe several someones. Maybe just everyone.
“Why is it ‘unseemly’?” she asks instead, carefully.
“I’m too young to get mated,” Chat mumbles, his shoulders just barely hunching.
“. . . so am I?” Marinette replies in bemusement, her confusion enough to counteract the reflexive need to pet that tension out of him. “It’s not like you have to mate somebody just because you spend a heat with them.”
“Mnn,” Chat says, his eyes slanting away guiltily. “If Fa--if my guardian knew I spent a heat with an alpha, he’d make us get mated.”
“That is not normal,” Marinette says, more than a little appalled. Also, what the hell kind of person even thinks like that anymore? Like, in actual real life, not some messed up romance novel or TV show?
“Heats are--heats are m-mate stuff,” Chat mumbles, hiding his face against her chest and hunching in small on himself. Marinette tries not to think very much about the fact that Chat doesn’t necessarily sound like he disagrees with the rule and exactly what that means for the fact that he pleaded for her to stay with him instead of helping him get home. “And alphas are--alphas, I guess he thinks.”
Meaning, Marinette assumes, Chat’s guardian thinks an alpha wouldn’t be able to keep their hands off him. Meaning Chat Noir, the biggest flirt in all of Paris, is being raised by someone who expects him to wait for marriage.
Marinette is not sure how she is going to process tonight, when it all comes down to it. Maybe she just won’t. Ever.
“Why not a beta or omega, then?” she asks finally, for lack of literally any other reasonable response.
“For what?” Chat asks in confusion, peeking up at her again. She wishes his eyes would stop looking like that, mostly because she also wishes his eyes would never stop looking like that.
“For heats,” she says. “He can’t think they wouldn’t be able to control themselves. Or do you only have alpha friends?”
“No, I . . . people do that?” Chat asks, blinking slowly. “Like . . . really?”
“Wh--of course they do, kitty. Tons of them,” Marinette says, unable to repress the baffled expression as she leans back to get a better look at his face. The uptight guardian situation aside, Chat not knowing something like that is an occasion for bafflement, okay? What, did his guardian raise him in a nunnery?
Chat’s own expression is . . . weird.
“So if you . . . if an omega were in a pack with other omegas, and they liked having them around for, for . . . for reasons . . .” he starts slowly, not quite looking at her. “The other omegas might--like that too? Maybe? And it would . . . it would maybe make their heat not so bad, even though the other omegas aren’t alphas?”
“. . . maybe,” Marinette replies just as slowly. Oh, god. She hates Chat’s guardian. She doesn’t care who the man is; she hates him. “Yes.”
“Oh,” Chat says, very quietly.
That weird expression he’s wearing isn’t changing. Marinette is trying very hard not to stare at the way he’s biting his lip. She’s seen him do it the exact same way a hundred different times, she swears, but never while he smelled and looked like this. Never while she was curled up with him in a nest he’d made with the deliberate intention of inviting her inside or while talking about how he’s never shared a heat with anyone in any way before, how he’s never even had someone there to hold his hand.
Never while he was talking about maybe wanting another omega in his nest.
And if Chat might like having another omega in his nest . . . if that . . .
Marinette forces those thoughts out of her head and wraps her arms tighter around him around, pulling his face into the crook of her neck and then stroking the back of his. Chat goes soft and pliant and breathes in her pheromones with no trace of hesitation or embarrassment. Marinette is plenty embarrassed, but she’ll live.
“You’re so good, kitty,” she says. She doesn’t think about Adrien. She doesn’t think about how Chat might flirt with him or Adrien might smile or blush in response. She doesn’t. “I can’t believe you came out to fight tonight. You always have my back.”
“I had to,” Chat says.
“You didn’t,” Marinette says, although she’s not going to deny it would’ve been a much, much harder fight for her without him there. Cataclysm isn’t mandatory, though; purifying the akuma is. “But it was really brave of you to.”
“No,” Chat says, shaking his head--gently, so he doesn’t dislodge her hands. She takes it as an excuse to rub behind his ears and get another little purr out of him. He leans into the contact, eyes fluttering shut, and she remembers how soft and sweet he looked bathed in the light of her transformation.
(she thinks, in some deep and traitorous part of herself, about a warm nest somewhere indoors, big enough for three and lit with lamps draped in sheer pink scarves to cast that same soft-sweet light.)
“I never have to be brave when I’m with you, my lady,” Chat murmurs. “When you’re around, I’m not scared at all.”
Marinette wishes she didn’t know what he was talking about. This would be so much easier if she didn’t.
Only for her, though. So no, she doesn’t really wish that at all.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs. “I’m a little scared right now. And I’m a little more scared because I’m scared. I want to--I don’t want you to feel bad because of me. I don’t wanna mess anything up.”
“No way,” Chat says emphatically, shaking his head. “You stayed with me. You’re here. That’s all I’ll ever need, my lady. There’s nothing to mess up.”
Marinette remembers very keenly the feeling of wanting to run, and presses her lips together tight.
“There’s always something to mess up,” she says. “Chat, you need--you should have something better. Somewhere safe to go.”
“I’m safe with you,” Chat says.
“Yes,” Marinette agrees instantly, because yes. But . . . “But what if there hadn’t been an akuma attack? Or what if I hadn’t been able to stay? Would you have been safe then?”
“. . . yes,” Chat says.
There is nothing convincing about the way he says it.
“Chat,” she says, touching his face. He looks away.
“I would’ve been safe,” he says. “In my den. I have--it’s a big den. It’s nice. It’s got everything I could ever need.”
“Chat,” she says.
“I would’ve,” he insists, finally looking back to her as his hands fist tightly in on themselves between them. “I’m safe.”
“You’re alone,” Marinette says, hating herself for never realizing it before. For never noticing. How could she not have? How could she have missed something like that?
He even smells stray, for god’s sake.
She just never realized that was what she was smelling.
“I’m not,” Chat says, his ears going flat and eyes widening in--fear? It looks like fear. His shoulders hunch. Marinette’s fingers tighten in his hair. “You’re--even if we can’t be--there’s you.”
“But there’s not,” Marinette says helplessly. She shouldn’t. She knows she shouldn’t.
But they can’t be pack. Any scent that gets on Ladybug disappears when her transformation breaks, and she’s sure it’s the same for Chat Noir. Even if it didn’t, the risk would be too much. They’d have to explain each other’s scents to people. They might recognize each other’s scents, without the magic in the way. Might find each other, someday.
Chat is all pulled in on himself and still staring at her. Marinette wants to drape a pink scarf over the moon and roll him over.
“I just . . . even if you never want me as an omega,” Chat says, sounding just as helpless as she thinks she did. “Even if you never . . . I still want to be--friends.”
“Friends,” Marinette repeats. Chat’s mouth twists. The lie was already obvious enough, though. Obviously.
“I want us to be pack,” Chat whispers into the small warm space between them, his head ducking low against her chest. “I want that more than anything.”
“It’s not safe,” Marinette says, because she can’t just play it off when he’s like this. She strokes his hair. He hides his face.
“I don’t--I don’t have to be your mate,” he stutters. He sounds like he might cry. Marinette hates everything heat’s ever done to any omega, and everything that’s ever done anything specifically to Chat. “I’d be happy just being with you. If I . . . if I could be in your pack, someday. I’d still give you a pup, if you wanted one from me. And--and I could tell you my name.”
“You might not want to,” Marinette says, resting her cheek against his hair. “I’m different under here, you know.”
“That doesn’t make you not the same,” Chat says, burying his face in her chest again.
“That’s sort of the definition of what it makes me, actually,” Marinette points out wryly, tightening her grip on him a little and skimming a hand across the back of his shoulders. She thinks she might cry too, actually. At least, it’s sounding like a better and better idea.
“No way,” Chat says, shaking his head emphatically. “No matter who else you are, you’re my partner too. Nothing could change that.”
“Even if I were Chloe?” she teases halfheartedly, blinking a little too fast. Chat pulls his head back and frowns at her.
“Yes,” he says. “I mean, I’d be worried about you, but--”
“You’d still like me if I were Chloe,” Marinette repeats incredulously, raising her eyebrows at him.
“I’d still love you,” Chat corrects automatically, then seems to realize what he just said and turns bright red, immediately hiding his face again. Marinette tells herself it’s just his heat. It doesn’t help. “I mean! I mean even if you had problems like that or needed to be different in your normal life, you’d still be . . . you’d still have done all the rest of it. You’d still be--you’d still be here right now.”
“Even if I were a bad person,” she says slowly, trying very hard not to think about the way he’d said the word “love”. It’s making it hard to control her pheromones.
It’s making it hard to control herself.
“People aren’t just bad,” Chat murmurs into her chest. “They do bad things. It’s different. And you do good things, Ladybug. That’s not gonna change even if sometimes you do bad ones instead.”
“That’d depend on how bad the bad things were, wouldn’t it,” Marinette replies distractedly, stroking his hair again. It’s not nearly that simple.
She wants to do a bad thing right now.
She really, really does.
Instead she pets Chat Noir’s hair and shoulder blades in long, slow strokes, and doesn’t touch the back of his neck. He shivers against her and another purr rumbles through him, and she keeps their hips apart and pretends it doesn’t affect her. Pretends she doesn’t still want to roll him over, to ask him to drop his transformation and hide his face so she could just--so she could--
Marinette breathes out. She does not imagine that familiar, well-muscled back without honeycomb armor in the way. She does not imagine it bathed in soft pink light. She does not imagine anything.
Then she breathes back in and tastes Chat, moonlit metal and night air and dark spaces and strange and wild and stray.
“Oh,” she manages. Chat makes a soft, cracked little noise against her chest. Her breast. Her fingers curl in his hair and on his back and his knees squeeze one of her thighs.
“Alpha,” he croaks.
“Shhh,” Marinette tries to say, but the sound comes out too strangled to be understandable. Oh, oh, the way he smells . . .
“Alpha,” Chat repeats, burrowing into her, pressing in much too close, and Marinette just tries not to breathe at all, god. “Alpha, alpha, alpha--”
“I’m here,” she manages, digging her nails in. It’s an involuntary reaction. The way Chat presses into them might be too.
She thinks that, anyway, until he squirms up just enough to put his nose against her cheek and give the corner of her jaw the tiniest little kitten lick.
Marinette’s brain shorts out. The alpha in her lunges forward and slams Chat onto his back hard enough to shake the whole nest. Her body lands between his thighs, her hands crushing the cuffs of his gloves tight to his wrists, and their hips--their hips--
Their faces are inches away from each other. Chat’s breath is warm and coming in soft pheromone-sweetened pants, and his pupils are needle-thin.
Their hips.
“You don’t need to do that,” she manages. “We don’t need to--”
She’s the one who moved them. She’s the one who put them in this position. She’s the one thinking about him unarmored and exposed and . . .
Chat’s tongue is rough, when he’s transformed.
She wants to know what it feels like when he isn’t. She wants him to hide his face and drop the transformation and let her--just let her touch him. Pet him and soothe him and--and--and just make him feel better. Comfort him any way she can.
She wants to do bad, bad things.
“You can do anything you want, my lady,” Chat breathes, heat-addled and dreamy. His eyes are half-lidded glitter-gleam, his pupils still needle-thin; his body pliant and soft underneath hers. He smells so good. He smells better than anything Marinette’s ever smelled, up to and including that one time she tripped into Adrien when he was in pre-heat while he was wearing her scarf. And that--that was a pretty hard scent to live up to.
Marinette didn’t think anything had ever been going to, actually.
“I’m not ready,” she manages to get out anyway. It’s not a very alpha thing to say, but it’s a true one, so . . . so.
Chat’s ears wilt. His shoulders hunch. Everything in Marinette screams to--to do something for him.
To him.
“I’m not ready,” Marinette says again, even though putting that look on his face hurt. She shifts, then adjusts herself so their hips aren’t quite so--quite--and lets go of his wrists to cup his face in her hands instead. “I don’t--are you? Really?”
“I--” Chat starts, his eyes flicking away nervously. He doesn’t finish.
“It’s okay,” Marinette says, trying to sound tender. Trying to be tender. She rubs her thumbs along the length of his cheekbones under the mask and he bites his lip in a very distracting way. Marinette forces herself to stay focused. “It doesn’t matter that we can’t be--like other people. You’re still mine. I’m still yours. We’re pack. And someday--someday we can be pack like other people do it, too. But that doesn’t mean we’re not pack now.”
Chat stares up at her, eyes even brighter than ever, and then lets out a small, ugly sound as his face scrunches up, cheeks reddening. It takes Marinette a moment to recognize it as a sob.
“You mean it?” he chokes, blinking wetly up at her. “Really?”
“Yes,” Marinette says tightly, just shy of gritting her teeth. It’s true. They’ve pretended like it wasn’t, and look where that got them. “We’re pack. No matter who else we are.”
“Even if I’m Chloe?” Chat asks with a weak laugh as she brushes fresh tears off his mask.
“You’re way too cute to be Chloe,” Marinette tells him. Chat laughs again, but also sobs again.
“I love you,” he says. Marinette brushes the tears away again, but they keep coming, and he smiles up at her with a cracked, adoring expression.
He’s not Adrien, but if this makes some part of her disloyal . . . it if does . . .
Chat’s more important than her pride as an alpha. More important than a maybe-dream. Chat is here and now and real and he needs her.
She can’t give him what she wishes she could. She can’t promise him a pup or a mating bite or the kind of hopeless-romantic romance he deserves; the kind of alpha he deserves.
But she knows her pack when it’s in her arms, and she won’t pretend otherwise just to protect herself.
“I love you too, packmate,” she tells him softly, pressing them both deeper into the subpar nesting materials that were all she could give him as he wraps his arms around her and his pheromones fill her senses all over again.
One day she’ll really give him Egyptian cotton and Mulberry silk. One day she’ll be able to take him back to her den and let him stay as long as he needs to. One day everyone who meets them will be able to smell them on each other, and know that they belong with each other. Maybe one day she’ll even be able to drape a scarf over a lamp and see him in that soft pink light for as long as she wants. And maybe Adrien will be there too, and maybe he won’t, but that doesn’t matter right now.
For now, they both just hold on tight, and she does the best she can for him.