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Ladybug cleansed the akuma, watching it fly free with a smile on her face. It journeyed to a rooftop garden that ran wild with red and black roses.
Chat Noir emerged from the shadows and slid up to her, tail swaying lazily from side-to-side. He shot her a teasing smile. “Well, that was fast. We didn’t even get to use our powers.”
“We were lucky,” said Ladybug. She hooked her yoyo back onto her hip, her eyes scanning the evening horizon before lingering on the streak of light that was the Eiffel Tower. “I saw the akuma landing on the victim, so…”
“What a coincidence, so did I!” Chat leaned into her space, eyes lidding suggestively as he spoke in her ear. “I wonder just how close we were, my lady.”
Ladybug pinched his nose and gently shook his head.
“Too close for naughty kitties like you,” she quipped before pushing him back.
Chat blinked as he rocked back on his heels, as if he couldn’t believe that she could give back as good as she got. Then he broke into a grin, looking completely undeterred by her deflection.
“Nobody’s purrfect,” he said. “But you love me anyway.”
“Hmmm, do I?” asked Ladybug, tapping her chin in mock thought. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
Chat opened his mouth—no doubt delighted at the chance to list all his qualities that his lady must find lovable, surely—before his ears flicked up and to his left. His head followed, gaze landing on a tree bordering a park.
He smirked and ran to the edge of the rooftop, Ladybug quickly following his lead.
“Well,” he began, leaping to the next building. “I’m selfless. Here I am, with the precious opportunity to spend time with you, and I use it to save a cat stuck in a tree.”
“There’s a cat down there?” Ladybug asked. They landed in the park and headed towards the tree Chat eyed earlier.
“Yup, heard it crying from the roof.” Chat put a hand to his heart as they ran, looking distant even as he searched for the cat’s location in the tree’s branches. “I must be so generous and heroic to rescue this poor kitty.”
“Humble, too,” Ladybug said dryly, smiling when she heard Chat’s chuckle.
She stopped at the foot of the tree, watching as Chat Noir ran right up the trunk and into its shadowed canopy, arms stretched out behind him.
Ladybug rolled her eyes (A Naruto run? Really?) while Chat landed on the same branch as the cat.
It was a dirty stray, young and thin, but oddly trusting of Chat’s beckoning fingers.
“That’s it,” he murmured, taking the kitten in his arms. Chat scratched under its chin, just like Ladybug was prone to do to him.
He hopped down, a few loose leaves drifting around him as he landed. Grinning, he pressed his cheek against the kitten’s and turned to face Ladybug. “Another reason you love me: I’m practically twins in cuteness with this little guy.”
Ladybug shook her head, feeling another smile tug at her lips as she walked forward. She petted the kitten, making sure to scratch behind its ears.
“You two must be fraternal twins because you’re way more handsome,” she cooed to the kitten. “Aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
“Me-ouch,” said Chat. He pouted, ears flattening against his head. He looked like Manon whenever she was going home but didn’t want to leave.
Laughing, Ladybug reached up with her other hand and petted Chat’s cat ears. He leaned into her touch, eyes closing in bliss as he hummed his pleasure.
“Don’t worry, kitty. You’re still my favourite,” she teased.
When he opened his eyes, they took in cool moonlight and warm streetlight to reflect a soft, green glow, making his knowing smile all the more…
(Enchanting, Ladybug thought before quickly pretending she never did.)
Suddenly, the space between them felt both too close and too, too far.
“I’m your favourite because you love me,” said Chat.
No hesitation. No question in his voice.
Ladybug was hyperaware of her fingers tangled in the fluffy strands of his blond hair, of his leathery cat ear flicking against her palm. She let her hand lower, pushing back his hair to trace the shell of his human ear.
Somehow, it didn’t help her think.
“I…” Ladybug couldn’t turn away from his steady gaze, his sure smile. “Chat, that’s…”
Gently, still looking into her eyes (admiring her), he took one hand away from the kitten and wrapped an arm around her waist, tugging her closer.
Even though he telegraphed every movement, Ladybug still felt shaken, taking her hand away from the kitten to brace herself against his chest. Almost unwillingly, her other hand carded through his hair before gripping it, fingers curling as she swallowed dryly.
“If you ever said ‘no’, I would have stopped flirting with you,” Chat told her. She could feel the rumble of his words in his chest, his belt tail curling loosely around her calf. She tried not to think about why she wasn’t moving away. “But you don’t say that. You say ‘later’ and ‘not right now’, and sometimes… sometimes you flirt back.”
Ladybug had already prepared answers for this, she knew.
(This was just their way of interacting, ever since Hawk Moth started terrorizing Paris and they needed to distract themselves from the fear, the panic, the weight of their responsibilities.)
(This was just a bit of fun and she knew Chat would stop, if she said the word.)
(This was just the mask and the feeling of boldness it gave her, like she was the type of person who would never allow the likes of Chloé Bourgeois push her around for years.)
(This was just Chat with a tiny crush, one he was content not to seriously pursue in a way that she, in his place, never could be.)
Her excuses were all true and all lies.
“…I like it,” Ladybug finally admitted. “No one’s ever treated me the way you do.”
Chat seemed satisfied with her answer. He leaned forward, and she really thought he would try to kiss her.
(Ladybug remembered a spell broken by tasting black lips, how she carefully forgot that it lasted longer than she meant it to.
She didn’t know what to do with wanting to kiss him back.)
Instead, Chat rested his forehead on hers, the hard bridge of his mask pressing against her nose.
“I’d treat you like a queen, if you let me love you,” he said. Ladybug sucked in a startled breath.
She’d been confessed to before…but not like this.
(Not by her partner.)
“Let me love you,” he repeated, his tone low and patient. The kitten wiggled free from Chat’s grip, dropping to the ground as Chat stepped closer. The space between their bodies disappeared and Chat cupped Ladybug’s nape, tilting her head up.
She could feel his breath on her face, washing over her skin. Her hand slid up from his chest to tangle itself in his hair.
The truth she kept denying for so long sprang from Chat’s mouth, the shape of the words brushing against her lips.
“You already love me,” he murmured, eyes hooded as Ladybug, heart pounding in her throat, stood on her toes and pulled him down.
Her kiss had barely landed, chaste and bright and sweet, when a loud crash sounded behind them. They pulled apart, letting go of each other to face—
A wide-eyed Chat Noir on the other side of the empty street, sprawled on the floor of an alley and covered in the trash from the garbage cans he tripped into.
Ladybug took a step back into the park, away from the street, away from the Chat she’d kissed and the Chat she didn’t, eyes darting between them.
“Are you an akuma?” she asked them both, her chest squeezing at the idea that her Chat’s confession (a faint dream she’d never admit to having) was a lie.
The Chat in the alley stood up, paying no mind to the banana peel that fell off his head. He took in a shuddering breath as he flexed his claws.
“He’s not,” said the alley Chat, voice hoarse. Suddenly, he ran forward. “CATACLYSM!!”
The last time Ladybug felt time slow down like this, Ivan and Mylène were both falling off the Eiffel Tower and Stoneheart’s akuma was flying away from her again.
Like then, her brain worked in overdrive as the bubbling darkness of destruction gathered around the alley Chat’s hand. A plan came together in her mind, one that would save her, her Chat, and the kitten hiding behind her legs in the few precious seconds left.
But she forgot to account for Chat Noir’s nature. Just as she scooped up the kitten in her arm and reached out to haul her Chat to safety…he pushed her away.
And the Cataclysm landed on him.
“NO!” Ladybug screamed, horror and fury and grief twisting her voice into something inhuman. The kitten jumped from her slackened grip as she rushed forward, punching the other Chat away and embracing her Chat.
She never witnessed Cataclysm’s effects on a person before. But now she knew in gruesome detail, in the worst possible way.
The spell ate away at her Chat, sucking the life from his body until everything he ever was turned to dust, ashy and black as it—he—Chat—slipped through her fingers.
Marinette woke with an earth-shattering scream.
(her chat, her kitty, her world was gone, gone, gone—)
She gasped as someone grabbed her shoulders, trying to steady her as she blinked away tears and…sand?
“Marinette, it’s okay! It was a dream! It was just a dream, please—” Chat pleaded—Chat!
Quick as the buzz of a ladybug’s wings, Marinette latched onto Chat, nearly pulling him into her bed as she hugged him and tried not to sob into his shoulder.
“You’re alive,” she whimpered.
Marinette felt his tense frame relax as he hugged her back, cheek nuzzling her temple.
“Yeah,” he breathed out. He tried not to press too much of his weight on her as he half-crouched over her covers. “Sorry I scared you.”
Chat’s claws caught on her night shirt, lightly scratching her sides, and it shocked Marinette back to reality. She quickly sniffed and pulled away, wiping at her tears as she avoided looking Chat in the eye.
“Wh-what… whatareyoudoinghere?” she asked in a rush, trying to slip into the role of oblivious, unattached citizen. The only time Chat had been in her bedroom was when the Puppeteer stole her dolls, so… “Is there an akuma?”
Chat’s cat ears flattened. Giving her space, he sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from her. His tail flicked out before curling up in his hand, settling there as he fidgeted with it, ignoring the beep that sounded out from his ring.
“…Yeah,” he finally said. “There’s an akuma named Hypnos that wants to put the whole world to sleep. He used his sand to cast a spell. It traps sleeping people in sweet dreams, so he can gather the energy he needs to make the spell bigger. It’s already covered most of Paris.”
Marinette looked down in thought, before blinking in surprise. Golden sand covered her blanket, glittering in the faint sunlight streaming through her balcony window.
“Everyone who was asleep when the spell hit is stuck that way,” Chat continued, rubbing the back of his neck. Then his lips stretched into a sheepish grin, crooked and honest, and it tangled a knot in Marinette’s stomach. “I, ah… I was awake when it happened, so it won’t work on me as long as I don’t go to sleep. And you too, now that you’re awake.”
“I was sleeping,” she said slowly. Her mouth felt dry and her hands itched to touch Chat, but there was an akuma. She needed to think. “How did you break the spell?”
(Because I feel like I’m still under one, she didn’t say as he turned his bright, mischievous eyes on her.)
“Well, princess,” Chat began with a sly quirk of his lips. “As your knight, I broke it with true—”
He faltered suddenly, words lost as the skin bordering his mask flushed red. He reached jerkily for his chest, tugging off a necklace Marinette hadn’t noticed before.
It was an amulet, with a chain made of bones and a pendent carved from ivory. Etched into the pendent was something that looked like a gate, surrounded by ancient Greek letters.
“I-I mean, I swiped this from Hypnos,” he said quickly. “It lets you walk in someone’s dream. The only way to break the spell without cleansing the akuma is to turn a sweet dream into a…nightmare.”
Turn fighting next to Chat, talking happily with Chat, Chat holding her, Chat finally confessing, her kissing Chat into…Chat destroyed by his own magic spell, dead and dust and gone.
“Oh,” said Marinette.
“Yeah,” said Chat, wincing. “Sorry again.”
She bit her lip, trying not to remember that awful scene (trying not to think about Chat being her sweet dream), when a thought occurred to her.
“W-wait, ‘walking in someone’s’…” Marinette paled before launching herself at Chat, gripping his shoulders with white knuckles. “CHAT, DID YOU SEE MY DREAM?!”
He leaned away, unable to look her in the eye as his blush spread down to his collar. He ignored the second beep from his ring. “Uh, well…”
This was it. This was how Marinette’s life ended.
“Oh my god,” she said, letting go of Chat to pull on her pigtails. “Oh my god!”
“Sorry,” he repeated, unhelpfully.
Marinette dropped her head in her hands and moaned. “The one time I don’t dream about Adrien, this happens.”
“…What?”
Nonononono. “I SAID WOW I GUESS YOU KNOW I’M LADYBUG NOW HAHAHAHA.”
Wait. Shit. Tikki was going to kill her.
“Actually,” Chat began, cutting through Marinette’s panic. He scratched his cheek. “I…already knew you were Ladybug before I came here.”
Marinette stared. Chat squirmed under her gaze, laughing nervously.
“I mean, I’ve known for a couple of days now…I was going to tell you!” he insisted. “I just…hadn’t thought of the best way to break the news.” He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “Surprise?”
Marinette’s fingers grasped at the air as she tried to find the right words through her shock. She finally settled on, “HOW?!”
“I just…put it together,” he said. “Don’t think anyone but I could have, to be honest.” His eyes softened as he looked back at her, the edges of his lips curling up into a smile. “No one knows you the way I do, buginette.”
Marinette stared back, wide-eyed and more flustered than she would have ever allowed herself to be before—
(you already love me)
—she sighed and rubbed at her temple. “You’ve been dying to call me that, haven’t you?”
That impossible, heart-palpitating smile gave way to the biggest shit-eating grin she’d seen out of Chat yet.
“Ladybug, Marinette—I can’t believe I managed to hit on the perfect pun on your name before I even knew it!” he crowed. Chat leaned forward on his hands, getting uncomfortably close to Marinette as he boasted, “We really are meant to—to…”
His breath fanned her face again, intimate and warm. But, unlike in her dream, Marinette saw Chat’s nervous gulp, felt sweat gathering on her palms. Here, in reality, his eyes told her that he was just as afraid as she was.
Still, still, it didn’t stop them from wanting more, from edging closer—
The third beep from Chat’s Miraculous snapped them to attention. Marinette scrambled away, nearly falling off her bed, while Chat straightened up and…finger-gunned her.
“T-to, uh, save your kwami! From the akuma! Is definitely what I meant to say!” Chat squeaked, his blush returning with a vengeance.
Marinette glanced over at Tikki, still sleeping peacefully on the head of her cat pillow. Golden sand floated around Tikki’s head, forming indistinct shapes before settling back into a slow-moving cloud.
A good superhero thought with her head. Shoving down the messy emotions and revelations this morning brought her, Marinette gently picked Tikki up and cradled her kwami in her hands.
“Is she going to be okay?” Marinette asked. She tried not to start when Chat laid a hand on her shoulder.
“She will be, as soon as I can break the spell,” he told her. “Which means I’ll have to go inside her dream.”
Marinette glanced sharply at Chat. “Don’t you mean ‘we’?”
“No, me,” he said, shaking his head. “As long as your kwami is asleep, she can’t hear you. And if she can’t hear you, you can’t transform.”
Squaring her shoulders, Marinette glared. “Even without powers, I can still help.”
“I know, but—”
“Tikki is my kwami, and I’m going to help her whether you like it or not!”
Chat held up his hands in surrender.
“Okay, okay. We’ll go together,” he said. His ring beeped for the fourth time. “Rrrright after I feed my kwami.”
Marinette sighed and pointed to the hatch that lead to the rest of the house. “The kitchen is downstairs. I’ll stay up here until you’re ready to go.”
Pausing in the middle of getting up, Chat turned back to look at her with surprise.
“Aren’t you going to come too?” he asked, looking bewildered.
Marinette bit the inside of her cheek and glanced down at his ring. There were no toe beans left on the paw print. They didn’t have time for this.
“No, Chat,” she said.
Falling back to sit on the bed, Chat reached out to take her hand. “But—Marinette, I thought—now that I know, we could…I could—”
She closed her other hand around his, squeezing it between them, intensely aware of how little time he had left, but still reluctant to let go.
“Your safety is more important to me than learning who are behind your mask,” she told him honestly. Then gulped.
Chat seemed…exposed, suddenly. He looked at her like she held his heart instead of his hand.
(But wasn’t it the other way around?)
“No matter how much I want to know,” Marinette finished. She gave his hand one last squeeze before releasing and gently pushing him away. “So, get going already.”
He nodded slowly and stood up, glancing back as he walked down to the hatch, yelping when his ring gave its final beep. He raced ahead with a flash of green light and Marinette lay back on her bed, sighing at the ceiling.
Chat Noir, unmasked, was raiding her kitchen while her kwami, her parents, and probably most of Paris were dead to the world.
And she was in love with him.
Picking up a pillow, Marinette shoved it into her face and screamed long and hard before dramatically throwing it away.
No time to deal with her fickle heart now. She had to use her reliable, not-at-all-traitorous-and-baffling brain. And it told her that, to save Tikki, she needed proper footwear.
Marinette spent an agonizingly long time in front of her dresser, contemplating what to wear. She kept drifting towards the prettier, more flattering pieces before she finally pinched herself and pulled out her normal outfit and shoes.
This wasn’t a date, this was a rescue mission, and she needed to pull herself together.
So intent on repeating this to herself as she pulled off her pyjama shirt, Marinette didn’t notice her hatch door opening until it was too late.
“Buginette~! Thanks for—”
They both froze as Chat’s slit eyes met Marinette’s, her shirt still tangled around her forearms.
Then the hatch slammed shut and Marinette belatedly covered her chest, mortified beyond belief.
“S-SORRY!” Chat’s muffled voice shouted through the hatch. “SORRY, I SHOULD HAVE KNOCKED, SORRY, I’M SO SORRY!!”
Marinette wanted to tell him that it was okay, but the words kept coming out as a strangled moan of horror, so she busied herself with changing as quickly as possible.
She spent another much needed minute to scream into another pillow before marching over to the hatch and opening it.
Chat was sitting on the steps, face in his hands and cat ears drooping. He looked up as the hatch opened, face and neck completely red.
“Um,” he started to say, but Marinette did not want to go into detail about how Chat Noir, her partner and second-but-equal-love-of-her-oh-god-why-was-this-her-life, had definitely, with 100 percent certainty, seen her shirtless. She grabbed onto one of his cat ears and pulled him into her room, ignoring his yelp.
“W-we’ll talk about your bad manners later!” she said, wincing at how shrill she sounded. “Right now, Tikki is more important!”
“Right, of course,” Chat echoed before pulling the amulet out of his pocket. “Can you grab her?”
Marinette raced up the steps to her bed, gingerly picked up Tikki, then raced back down…and tripped over her own feet.
But instead of falling flat on her face and possibly injuring Tikki, Chat caught her by her shoulders. His grip on her was firm, steady. When she slowly looked up, he seemed just as surprised as her. He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing.
Hastily standing up, Marinette laughed and tried not to cringe at the embarrassment singularity that was her existence.
She wanted to say ‘Thank you’ and ‘Nice catch’, but the two phrases stumbled over each other, coming out as, “Nice you.”
Chat blinked in confusion and Marinette burned.
“I mean you’re nice!” she blurted out before actually cringing. “No, I mean! I mean—” It’s just Chat, not Adrien, get it together!! “Thanks. For catching me.”
There was an odd little half-smile on Chat’s slightly less red face and a fondness in his eyes that did awful, awful things to her heart.
“No problem, Marinette,” he said, letting her go. He placed the necklace around his neck, the amulet hanging down around his ribs. He tilted his head. “Uh. There’s only one amulet, so I guess we’ll have to…share.”
It made sense. The chain was long enough to loop around both their heads at the same time.
But it wasn’t long enough for them to avoid standing very, very close.
Looking down at Tikki, Marinette gathered her courage and stepped into Chat’s personal space until she was pressed up against him. When he looped the chain over her head, claws brushing against her hair, she realized she forgot to put them in pigtails.
But all that paled to how Chat looked at her, soft and vulnerable in a way that had her squirming.
He took the amulet, pendant clutched firmly in his hand.
“Ready, my lady?” he asked.
Despite the awkwardness and the feelings swirling in her gut, Marinette smiled and nodded.
“Always, kitty,” she said.
Chat smiled back before touching the amulet to Tikki’s forehead.
The world washed out around them, Tikki disappearing from her hands. Marinette steadied herself against Chat just as it snapped back into focus, showing an entirely different picture.
Under an endless blue sky, a golden desert stretched out, the heat from the sun pressing down on them. They were in front of the unmistakeable pyramids of Giza, in better shape than any photo Marinette remembered seeing.
“I don’t think you’re dressed for this,” she said, eyeing Chat’s completely black supersuit. Not that it didn’t look good on him, but—
Marinette shook her head to clear the very unappreciated thought, blinking as her gaze landed on the amulet. It was split in two, one half hanging from a chain around each of their necks.
“It’s not a literal cheese wonderland, so I’m okay with that,” said Chat. Ignoring his own odd comment, he knelt down, offering his back for her to cling to. “Your chariot awaits, mademoiselle.”
…Just how many times would he wrap his kindness in the cheesiest lines imaginable?
Giggling, Marinette clambered onto his back, her heart leaping into her throat as he easily rose up. His hands firmly gripped the undersides of her knees, claws resting gently over her pants, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
Chat turned his head slightly, his cheek brushing against hers, and Marinette wondered if she would ever get used to this.
“Hang on!” he shouted, before sprinting for the pyramids. Marinette struggled not to whoop in excitement, opting to rest her chin on Chat’s shoulder and smile.
His pace was strong and steady and fast, like the way her heart beat now when he was with her.
“I’m glad you have my back,” she whispered, warmly. Chat stumbled, slipping on sand before regaining his speed. From her angle, she could see how quickly his ears turned red.
“I-I’m less glad when you’re on mine,” he shot back, and Marinette ruffled his hair in retaliation, delighted beyond words.