11. Chapter 11

Adrien was frustrated, in every sense of the word.

From the moment Ladybug first pressed her lips into his, to her reckless freefall off Notre Dame, to the way she had just slipped away from him once they had found solitude from the crowd, he was frustrated.

Spinning listlessly in his office chair, Adrien stared unseeingly at his high ceiling, recalling the way Ladybug had immediately stiffened up when he took her by the hand, trying desperately to sort out just exactly where things stood between the two.

He had looked at her, she had stared at the ground.

“What does this make us?”

“I…don’t know.”

“You know how I feel about you.”

“I do.”

“And?”

Ladybug ran, as Ladybug does.

When she had shook her head at him, stepping backward before slipping down a side street, Chat wasn’t sure if it was a gesture of rejection or an attempt to clear her own thoughts. Either way, he was left standing alone, feeling a little piece of himself shatter at her every retreating footstep.

But hey, what’s new?

Adrien knew he sounded desperate and perhaps he was. Nearly 3 years he had spent with her, spent pining after her. From day one, Adrien had been drawn to her in an emotional way, one that went beyond boyhood crushes on girls in skin tight suits. And while the physical attraction was definitely there (more so now than ever before), he had fallen for Ladybug in every way one could imagine.

When the two of them fought the Bubbler, he fell for her passion and emotional maturity.

When they had faced off against Story Weather, he fell for her cunning and wit.

When she had battled his Copycat, he fell for her unwavering loyalty.

Each new experience with Ladybug brought out deeper and more complex feeling of attachment, and each day Adrien found more and more reasons to love her.

One of the best things about being Chat Noir was that he never had to try and filter his emotions. He could curse and flirt and pout and laugh in a way Adrien Agreste would never be allowed to. Everything about his alter ego was raw and genuine, intense in a way that sometimes surprised even the boy behind the mask himself. And it was no different when it came to his feelings towards Ladybug.

Through the entirety of their partnership, it had been no secret Chat Noir was head over heels for her. He obviously never made an attempt to keep it a secret, taking every opportunity he got to shower her with his affection.

 It was light and fun, their game of cat and mouse…

Cat and bug?

Anyway.

Chat would flirt and fawn, Ladybug would tease and sidestep. She never shut him down too hard, usually waving off his antics with an airy retort before getting back to business. 

Of course, there were those few rare and precious moments in which Chat would see just a glimmer of response. Whether it be a lingering look or an off-handed compliment, Ladybug had a way of giving off just enough of a reaction to feed the flames of his desire and keep him coming back for more.

Those were the unspoken rules of their game, the ones she had just thrown out the window.

 You see, as long as Chat knew his feelings weren’t returned by the object of his affection there was no need to really dissect it.

He was in love with Ladybug. He knew it. She knew it. Hell, all of Paris knew it!

Of course now things got difficult, as Chat’s one-sided infatuation suddenly wasn’t so one-sided.

‘Twice. Ladybug kissed me twice yesterday.’

Adrien stilled the motion of his chair, his mind suddenly doing enough spinning to last a lifetime.

He couldn’t tell you how many times he had imagined kissing Ladybug. It was practically a hobby at this point, Adrien’s fantasies only getting more drawn-out with each passing month. In some versions of their fictional kiss, she was the one to instigate it, other times he would.

Sometimes it was sweet and slow, usually followed by some sappy, un-Ladybuglike declaration of love. The kind of idle daydream Adrien would have in the middle of class or during a lull in a photoshoot.

Sometimes it was carnal and heated, filled with shivery moans and scraping fingernails. Those most often happened during their weekly patrols, when the often uneventful nights meant Chat had little else to focus on but the lean, athletic body moving its way under the moonlight ahead of him.

Sometimes the kisses weren’t on the lips, instead trailing their way to more exotic places. Adrien reserved these particular fantasies for nighttime, when he was fully able to enjoy the vivid mental picture and the imagined sensation of her mouth as he ground out his pent up heat into the palm of his hand.

One thing these imagined kisses all had in common however, was the fact he didn’t just stand there like an idiot as Ladybug smooched him silly.

Adrien let out another groan, one that quickly turned into more of an exasperated cry as he slumped further in his seat. If you gave him a journal, he could fill the pages (front and back!) with everything he wanted do to Ladybug. He could write paragraphs and poems and maybe even whole symphonies about every sinful act he had committed towards her in his own hormone-addled mind. Yet when the time had come to put his overactive imagination to use, what had Adrien done?

He froze.

Ladybug had kissed him and he couldn’t even will his hands to work, couldn’t force his mouth to move. For the first time in a long time, Adrien had felt less like a hero, and more like a boy in a ridiculous costume, Chat Noir’s usual charisma nowhere to be found.

And now, he could never show his face around her again.

Of course it was at that time his phone decided to chime, the noise rousing Adrien from his internal monologue and drawing his attention to the fact his room was gotten dark. ‘How long had he been out of it?’ Scoping the handheld up off the side table, Adrien unlocked it with a swish of his fingers. The screen said it was now 7:48 pm.

It also said there was a new message from Ladybug.

[ Patrol tomorrow night? ]

[ I need to see you. ]

[ Of course! ]

Adrien couldn’t wait.

Marinette woke long after her friend, as per usual. Stretching out in a bed so familiar it might as well be hers, she shook the lingering sleepiness from her eyes. The sounds of many small feet pattering their way around the hallway leaked from the crack under Alya’s door. It was the usual tune of the household, one that Marinette had grown to love throughout their years of friendship.

“Well, Good Afternoon sleeping beauty.” Alya said from her spot by the window, snapping her journal shut and wading her way through the clutter in a path to the bed.

“Yeah, yeah, like I’ve never heard that one before.” Marinette said, wincing as her much heavier, much more alert friend dove onto the mattress beside her with a grunt. The newly awakened girl shot a few inches in the air, landing with a grumble at the mischievous look in her companion’s eye. ‘God, it was too early for her antics.’

“So… you gunna tell me who C.N is and why they cant wait to see you tonight?”

Marinette almost swallowed her tongue.

“Did you go through my phone?!”

“Of course not!” Alya began, suspicion and elation weighing equally upon her features in the most dangerous way. “I just happened to be plugging in your phone this morning like the good friend I am when the text popped up on your lock screen.” She ended with an expectant, eye waggling look.

“He’s nobody.” Marinette deadpanned, burrowing back under the covers at the bold faced lie. Unfortunately, Chat wasn’t nobody, at least not until she got her hands on him again.

‘Not in that way of course…’

“Oh, so C.N is a he? How interesting! How very, very, very interesting. Spill the tea.”

“The teahouse is closed, come back later.” The reply was muffled through the blankets, Alya ripping them off in a righteous flurry before affixing Marinette with her best “investigative reporter” look.

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng, if I find out you’ve been running around with some guy behind my back and refuse to tell me all the nasty details, I will never speak to you again and I mean it!”

“He’s a friend.”

“Wrong answer, try again.”

“A colleague?”

“Marinette!”

The smaller girl heaved an exasperated sigh, realizing a half truth was better than Alya figuring the whole situation as she spoke in a tentative voice.

 “Alright, he’s just some guy I’ve been texting.”

The redhead’s eyes blew wide with glee, before she narrowed them again in a mock look of concentration.

“Some guy you’re meeting tonight, aka the night you swore you were busy too hang out on because you had ‘things’ to do…” Alya split a grin, elbowing Marinette conspiratorially. “Guess I know now who ‘things’ is now, you Minx!”

“You know what I miss?” Marinette sputtered suddenly, fighting to tame the blush that threatened to overtake her entire upper body. “Being asleep and not awake and not having this conversation!”

“Not so fast, I need some more details if you’re going to be out gallivanting the night away with a mystery boy!” Suddenly her notebook was open again, pencil ready to jot down anything of importance.

“Alya, I’m not-“

 “Name, Age, Height, Weight, Eye Color, School, Neighborhood, Dick Size.”

“C.B, No, Tall, No, Green, No, No, and ALYA!”

“Hhhhmmm. Tall, green eyes, and a dick as big as I am…sounds like a winner to me.”

Marinette ground the palms of her hands in to her eye sockets with a groan, shoulders jerking at her friend’s next words.

“Are you sure you’re not talking about Adrien?”

“Of course not!” Marinette squawked, face flushing at the insinuation. “You think I kept his number after the whole voicemail fiasco?”

Her heartrate quickened as she remembered the plans they had to see Adrien on Friday, just 3 short days away. Marinette had tried to beg off from the concert, crying out to Alya that she just wasn’t ready, but her friend was having none of it. Alya had insisted she come, compromising by allowing Marinette some personal time over Wednesday to mentally prepare herself before the week-long sleepover resumed.

Marinette’s little freak out was halted by the next words out of her friend’s mouth.

“Well you definitely have a type…” Alya drawled out thoughtfully, still scrutinizing the girl before her.

Marinette’s mind ticked disjointedly in time with her heartbeat, Alya’s words rattling around uncomfortably.

Adrien was tall.

Chat was tall.

Adrien had blonde hair with green eyes and so did…

  ‘Holy shit, do I have a type!?’

 ‘That’s ridiculous’ Marinette reasoned, trying to think past the thumping against her ribs. ‘I have a crush on Adrien.’ She nodded resolutely. ‘Chat’s just my partner… my newly cut, leather-clad heartthrob of a partner whom I kiss on top of buildings sometimes.’

She so had a type.

Marinette recalled with a shiver the way Chat had looked at her once they had made it to a more private place. The way his eyes had pooled with longing when he asked what the kiss had meant, and the way his face had fallen as Ladybug had stepped away.

Unable to process her own feelings, Marinette had just ran.

“So. What kind of texting are we talking about here?”

Alya’s question snapped Marinette from her reprieve, allowing her the opportunity to abandon her frustrating line of thought.

“Oh, you know. I send him words, he sends words back, we communicate like normal people. What the hell kind of question was that?”

Alya quirked an eyebrow up, giving her friend a peculiar look that let Marinette know she was in for a hell of a conversation.

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Your big sis Alya here has texted many a boy in her time, and I know just as well as you do how quickly words turn to pictures turn to actions.”

“Ok, now you’ve really lost me.” Marinette said sincerely, not liking the way her friend’s features lit up wickedly at the response.

“I’m asking if Mister Green-Eyes has sent you any steamy pics yet. And if so, have you sent any back?”

“Absolutely not!” Marinette shrieked with a violent shake of her head, face heating up as her bestie roared with laughter beside her.

‘This wasn’t happening, they are not having the sexting talk.’

“Oh, we are so having the sexting talk!” Alya said as if reading her friend’s mind.

45 minutes, 6 separate crisis’ and countless extremely awkward screenshot examples later, Marinette was just about ready to melt through the floorboards and Alya was still talking.

“He’s just a friend.” She mumbled under the girl’s loud lecturing on proper goodbye etiquette. “Just a friend and yet here we are…”

“Oh don’t you pull that shit on me!” Alya broke off suddenly. “You’re going out tonight with a boy I’ve never heard of until just now! It’s obviously something, even if you won’t admit it to yourself.”

Something about the words made Marinette flinch.

‘It’s obviously something, even if you won’t admit it to yourself.’

“Now, of course, is when we move on to my patented ‘Nude Gospel’! The Ten Commandments of Slutty Pics if you will…”

“You know what? I think maybe I’ve learned enough new and…interesting things today.” Marinette raised her hands in pleading gesture. “How about we take a rain check on that ‘Nude Gospel’ and instead maybe get in some more video game time before I have to head home?”

Alya sighed, slinging her arm around the suddenly much wiser girl before her.

“Alright, you’re off the hook for now, but I expect full details when you get back here Thursday night!”

Accepting that that was the best offer she was bound to get, Marinette relented, allowing herself to be drawn down the stairs with a sigh.

She had the feeling this wasn’t going to be her last confusing conversation of the day.

And she wasn’t wrong.

Hours later, as Marinette sat stiffly atop a brick chimney near their usual patrol point, she could practically feel the questions rolling of off Chat Noir’s body, the young hero planted firmly on the rooftop below her.

“You do realize I don’t bite unless asked to?” He questioned, eyeballing the feet of space Ladybug had put between them. The words were as stiff as his posture, like Chat was saying them out of necessity rather than in an attempt to get an actual reaction. She didn’t like the way they rolled off his tongue to drop like glass marbles to the ground.

"The distance is for my sake, as well as yours.” She replied, voice surprisingly even considering the way her stomach clenched as the implication of her words hit. Apparently, Chat hadn’t miss the meaning either, judging by the way his eyes snapped up to meet hers in heated flash. Ladybug suddenly had trouble remembering what she even wanted to talk to him about.

“Afraid you can’t keep your hands off of me?”  He said in a low, teasing voice, inching his way towards her perch without ever breaking eye contact. ‘There’s no logical reason he should this much power over me’ Marinette thought desperately, fingers digging in to the bricks beneath her as she swallowed the lump in her throat at his distracting approach.

“That’s right.” She began, pointedly ignoring the totally not at all attractive way his head cocked in interest, “Because when I do finally get my hands on you, you won’t be able to walk straight.”

‘Ooops, bad phrasing’ she realized a second too late, noticing the visible shiver that ran down Chat’s body.

“And by that of course,” Ladybug continued quickly, trying to stomp down a shudder of her own, “I mean your legs will be broken! By me! For using my number to send non-akuma related messages!” She was practically yelling at this point, hands gesticulating wildly in the dim glow of the moonlight. “I’ll have you know my extremely nosy best friend saw that message. And let me tell you, she was quiet eager to hear exactly what my relationship was with this ‘C.N’!”

A beat.

“What did you tell her?” Chat asked quietly, now standing directly below her as his claw scraped absently at the tall chimney. His face held a strange mix of hope and apprehension, chin tilted upwards as he awaited a response.

“I told her you were a guy…” Ladybug began tentatively, her own very conflicted feelings suddenly making it hard to form proper sentences.

“That I am.”

“I told her we had been texting”

“That we have.”

“I might have also told her we were on a date tonight.”

Chat’s lips quirked up a bit at that, just enough to ease the tension settling in Marinette’s chest.

“If I had known this was to be date, I would have worn something nicer. Maybe grabbed bouquet on the way over.” He purred out cautiously, trying on a smile that all but melted any anger she might have felt towards him. Ladybug gave a quick laugh.

“Flirt all you want, but you’re still in trouble.” She said in a mock serious tone, trying to reconstruct some semblance of authority before the situation spiraled out of her control. Of course Chat’s falsely guilty expression and his adorable (totally not adorable!) gesture of defeat only cemented the fact she had already forgiven him. ‘Stupid cat.’

A silence stretch between them, one that reminded Marinette of the real reason they were here right now.

“I-I didn’t mean to run.” Ladybug said in a voice hardly above a whisper, body flooding with shame as she recalled the way she had bolted like a coward at his question, a perfectly reasonable one after her sudden shift in behavior. After she had all but jumped him.

“It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have pressed you.” Chat responded instantly.

“Don’t say that!” She shot back stiffly before taking a second to measure her tone. Marinette’s stomach churned with guilt. She had been the one to kiss him and then run off, yet Chat was the one trying to take the blame. Even worse, she couldn’t even apologize without sounding like she was lecturing him.

Ladybug tried to keep her next words light, almost getting struck blind by their glaring truth.

“I didn’t run because I didn’t feel anything.”

 Chat gave a start at her reverent tone, hope flooding his eyes with a light Marinette found to be inexplicably addictive and most definitely dangerous. Words and feeling slid by each other in a frantic dance before getting caught on the edge of her teeth. Ladybug couldn’t keep eye contact with Chat, the look on his face just made her heart beat too fast and her palms sweat too much and if she didn’t glance away she might just collapse in on herself.

“You felt something?” It was phrased like a question but rang out like a prayer. Ladybug could only nod, unable to draw her gaze up from the hands folded in her lap.

“You’re saying you felt something…feel something… towards me?” Chat tried to clarify in a carefully measured tone.

Another nod.

“Then what’s the problem?” He said, as if it were the most simple thing in the world.

Ladybug’s head snapped up at that, taking in the barely contained joy etched across her partner’s features. ‘What was the problem?’ she wondered briefly, brow furrowing as Chat continued on in a casual tone.

“So you feel something towards me?” He chuckled in wonder, glancing up with a shrug. “You should know by now that I’m not exactly frigid towards you, myself. Did you seriously think I would turn you down? Me? The guy who’s been throwing himself at you for the last 3 or so years?”

‘Well he had a point there’ Marinette pondered, eventually realizing the fault in the situation.

“Its not that I thought you'd reject me.” She began slowly, mind working as she slid off the chimney to pace the roof below. She gathered up all the thoughts that had been swirling around her mind over the last few days and tried to boil them down. “I think the problem is, I’m not sure if whatever I feel towards you matches the...intensity?...of what you feel for me.”

To her surprise, Chat responded with a giddy laugh as he threw his arms in the air grandly.

“Who cares?” He practically sang, face split apart with that wild grin that made her stomach do all kind of acrobatics. “I’ve been trying to win your affection for years! Do you really think I mind if you don’t fall immediately head over heels for me?!”

Ladybug made noise somewhere between a shriek and snort as Chat suddenly scooped her up, twirling her in some cliché Disney move before planting her once again upon the ground. The two stared at each other for a beat.

“You feel something…” He began wondrously, gesturing to her now slightly-flushed face before letting his hands flutter in the space between them. “…and however small that something is, it works for me.”

Marinette couldn’t help but giggle at his awe-struck expression, feeling the tight knot of anxiety slowly unravel from behind her ribs.’ He wasn’t mad....Hell, he was practically jumping with joy at the mere insinuation that Ladybug’s feeling towards him went beyond that of partners!’

“So you’re ok with not labeling this?” She asked tentatively, gauging his reaction.

“This?” Chat asked in a falsely oblivious tone. He was still smiling.

“Us.” Marinette clarified, enjoying the way his ears perked up at the word (almost as much as she enjoyed letting it slip off her tongue.)

“As long as there’s an ‘us’, I’ll be the happiest cat in all of Paris!”

“You aren’t all that hard to please, are you?” Ladybug said slyly, poking a finger to the center of Chat’s chest.

“Not at all,” he responded, still grinning, “Especially if it’s my Lady doing the pleasing.”

“Oh shut up!” She scoffed, flushing despite herself.

“You could make me…”

“You’re right, I could. It’s mighty hard to talk with a broken jaw!”

“See, I had other ways in mind.”

“You couldn’t possibly be suggesting I cut out your tongue?”

“Well, you were close on the tongue part…” Chat sent her a suggestive wink, one Ladybug quickly fanned away with a roll of her eyes.

“Enough! When I said we were going to patrol tonight, I wasn’t kidding.” She said, unhooking her yo-yo with a content smile.

“Of course, duty calls!” Chat responded, bowing with a grand gesture to the adjacent rooftop before straightening suddenly. "But first, I thought you might like this." 

Ladybug watched in trepidation as he burrowed around in his front pocket, suspicion bursting into happiness at the sight of the tiny, foil-wrapped treasure he extracted between two gloved fingers. Chat laughed at what must have been her dopey expression, extending the chocolate to her with a flourish.

"How did you know?" Marinette questioned him, quickly unwrapping her treat before popping it excitedly in her mouth. Just as amazing as she remembered.

"It's the 5th isnt it?" Chat said simply, shrugging his shoulder with a smile before leaping his way across to the next building over.

A little stunned at his sensitivity, Ladybug stood rooted in place, taking a moment to finish chewing before following Chat's shadow along their regular route, a large smile plastered across her face.