Work Text:
Ladybug was late, but Chat wasn’t worried. He would wait all night if he had to, because even fifteen minutes with her was far better than nothing.
…He was hoping for a little more than that, though.
“I'm here!”
He turned at the sound of her voice. She landed on the ledge of the rooftop, one hand on her yo-yo string and the other holding a small knit bag tucked up against her side. She hopped down and skidded, dropping the bag and scattering its contents over the rooftop.
“What’s all this?” he asked, crouching down onto his knees to chase one of the plastic tubes before it could roll out of reach. He pounced on it before it could escape and held it out to his Lady triumphantly.
“Thanks, Kitty.” She picked up a tube in each hand and regarded them both with a slight frown. “I was making lip balm and completely lost track of time.”
“That’s okay.” He spotted a third tube rolling towards an air conditioning vent and caught it just in time. Moonlight glinted off the shiny case as he held it up for a closer inspection. “You made these?”
She nodded and glanced around the rooftop, turning in a slow circle. “There should be a fourth somewhere…”
It was a split second too late when he spotted the little cylinder, which disappeared with a tinkling crunch under Ladybug’s heel. “Found it,” she muttered, flicking her foot to dislodge the sticky mess. “Now that’s just perfect.”
“This is probably going to sound incredibly naïve, but it never occurred to me that you could just make your own lip balm.”
Ladybug sat down and spread the various tubes out in front of her, studying them with an intensity that Chat didn’t really think the situation warranted. “Oh sure,” she said, distraction evident in her tone. “It’s just beeswax and oil and... oh, this is a disaster!”
Chat laughed. “It also never occurred to me that making lip balm was such serious business. Are you okay?”
“Everything needs to be perfect for tomorrow, Chat! I can’t just show up to the Gabriel charity ball wearing the wrong lip balm! What will happen to our children, and the hamster…”
“I’m not following.” As far as he knew, there were no children invited to his father’s gala. And there certainly wouldn’t be any hamsters. “You… you have kids?”
She groaned. “I just found out that I’ll be sitting next to Adrien Agreste at the ball. You’ve met him, right?”
“He’s fine, I guess.”
His partner turned to him with an incredulous stare. “Fine? He’s only the most beautiful human being on the planet!”
“After you,” he corrected automatically. Then her words hit him over the head with the force of a giant cartoon hammer. “Wait, what?”
“What flavor of lip gloss do you think he will like best?” She waved the tubes in front of Chat’s gobsmacked face like smelling salts in front of a hysterical fainting maiden, though it did little to clear his mind.
“Do you… do you think you’re going to find yourself in a situation where…” Chat tugged at his collar, causing his bell to jingle merrily. “You think Adrien Agreste is going to be in a position to know how your lip gloss tastes?” He could feel his voice shooting up at the end, but Ladybug seemed too distressed to notice.
“He’ll be able to see it, won’t he? And maybe smell it! And suppose I happen to choose his favorite flavor. Then he might… or suppose I chose his least favorite flavor, and he has to sit there with a clothespin on his nose all night so he can’t smell it! Or what if he’s allergic to apples, and I choose apple and I kiss him and he dies!?”
“He’s not allergic to apples,” Chat replied faintly.
“I know he’s not allergic to apples. That’s just one example of what could go wrong if I don’t plan for every eventuality. What do you think of this one?” She uncapped a tube and thrust it in his face. “Pretend you’re Adrien Agreste and I’m wearing it. What would you think?”
It took the span of several stuttering heartbeats before he could force his numb fingers into action, and even after he’d taken it from her hand, he couldn’t do more than stare dumbly at her offering, trapped in what felt like a dreamspace of bamboozling surreality. His brain had dissolved into shaken soda, and her impatient tutting had to cut through the fizzy carbonation to order him back to the task.
“Sorry,” he said finally. “I was just trying to get myself into the right headspace.” He pasted on a vapid smile and let his eyes go starry and blank. “I’m radiant,” he crooned. “Carefree. Some might even say…”
“Shut up. He does not sound like that.”
“Dreamy. I’m Adrien…the fragrance!”
She rolled her eyes, an unwilling smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Is that necessary?”
“I’m a method actor, milady. Don’t question the process.”
“Speaking of fragrance…” she motioned towards the lip balm in his hand. “What do you think?”
He gave it a cautious sniff, his expression carefully schooled. He didn’t want to offend her. She’d made it on her own, and that would have been enough to impress him, but it turns out he needn’t have worried. It smelled delicious.
“Fruity,” he said, dabbing a little on the fingertip of his glove and bringing it to his lips for a taste. “And sweet.”
“Not too sweet?” she asked with a slight pout, and for the first time that night he noticed the berry-red shine to her lips. He licked his own, wondering if they were currently tasting the same flavor. Based on the colors of the two remaining containers, it seemed likely.
That thought sent his brain right back to bubbling over.
“Adrien Agreste likes sweet things,” he said, the words wavering on their way out. He shook his head, his eyes darting down to the tube in his hand and safely away from her mouth. “I mean that’s…that’s what I’ve heard. Raspberry?”
“Yup,” she said, letting her lips pop on the end of the word. She tilted her head as she watched him, twisting a pigtail around her finger.
Chat blinked at her, incredulous that she could be so obliviously tempting without any effort. Because she couldn’t be doing it on purpose, and yet? She managed to be the most irresistible girl in Paris without even trying.
He forced his attention to the next flavor, which shimmered serpent green in its container.
“Apple,” he stated with certainty, but took a taste anyway, because that’s what you do when fruit is just dangling right in front of you. Of course, that was exactly the sort of thinking that messed things up for Adam and Eve. “It’s really good.”
“Like, tolerably good? Or like fall in love with me on the spot, good?”
“Oh yeah,” he agreed, recapping the apple balm and handing it back to her. “If I were Adrien Agreste, one taste and I’d be absolutely crazy about you.”
She clapped her hands and hopped in excitement. “Perfect! Just what I was going for!”
“I’m serious,” he continued. “If I were Adrien Agreste right now, I would be this close to falling on my knees and begging for you. I would–”
“Can you be serious, please? Try the third one.”
“My apologies,” he said archly, uncapping the final lip balm. “I forgot this was a super serious scientific study in seduction.”
“Chat–”
“I’m sorry, I know. Your children and your hamster and your idyllic garden wedding are all on the line.”
“I didn’t say I wanted a garden wedding.”
“You do though. You want to get married while the cherry trees are blooming, and you want an off-the-shoulder dress and a leaning tower of strawberry macarons.” A sweet cocoa smell wafted from the final tube as soon as he uncapped it, and he smiled, forming his final guess as he dabbed it on his lips. “Chocolate?” He squinted at the tube in the darkness, trying to make out the shade. “Maybe dark chocolate?”
She didn’t answer right away, and he thought perhaps she hadn’t heard him. He glanced up to repeat his question, but the inquiry died on the tip of his tongue next to the rich bittersweetness of chocolate.
She was staring at him in a way that made the world feel unsteady. The butterflies in his stomach always marched at her command, but some new softness in her eyes sent them spiraling out of formation, up into his heart and his throat and all the way to the tips of his fingers, which twitched self-consciously at his sides.
“Yes,” she said finally. “It was chocolate.” She paced a few steps away, fidgeting with her hands and scuffing her feet on the ground. “How did you know all that stuff, anyway?” She tossed the words back at him casually, as though they were an afterthought far less pressing than the speck of lint she was suddenly desperately trying to pick off the sleeve of her suit.
“Oh, probably the same way you know that Adrien Agreste isn’t allergic to apples.”
Her fidgeting stilled. He waited, watching her back, knowing by the tilt of her head and the set of her shoulders that she was making a plan. The only thing he didn’t know was what that plan meant for him. This must be what it felt like to be an akuma–to be completely at the mercy of that big, beautiful brain of hers.
She turned back to him quite suddenly, her face clear of any telling clues. “Did you pick a favorite?”
“Excuse me?”
“Flavor. Did you pick a favorite flavor?”
“Oh. I wasn’t–”
“Because my favorite was the fourth one, but…” She shrugged, glancing at the shimmery mess of lip balm that had been crushed on the rooftop.
He stared at her, equal parts disappointed and relieved by her complete redirection of the conversation. “That’s too bad. I forgot about number four.”
“I… I put it on before I left the house. Because it was my favorite.” Her tongue peeked out from between her lips to taste the red-stained shimmer there, and his eyes zeroed in on the movement.
“You…”
“I’m wearing it. Right now.”
She watched him like she was waiting for something, her eyes wide and expectant. He had an idea, because, well… it was naturally where his brain went to suggest he just…kiss it off her. And, in a world where up was down and down was up, that might actually be what she was suggesting. But he knew that couldn’t be it, the same way he knew she wanted to carry gardenias when she walked down the aisle.
“You want me to…” he leaned forward, frowning in concentration, and she nodded. “Lick it off the roof?”
She nodded again, and then froze. “Wait… no!”
“Then what…?”
“Come on, Chat. Just…” She tapped her lips with a fingertip impatiently. “It’s for science.”
“But… are you serious?”
“I am getting less serious by the second.”
“I…”
She looked up at him, her face shining in that beautiful pinch of exasperation she reserved especially for him, and all his arguments fizzled away like raindrops on a hot summer sidewalk. Up was down and down was up, apparently. Ladybug was asking for a kiss.
“A quick taste,” she clarified, as though she could read his thoughts. She probably could—he had lost all control and was likely broadcasting them all over his face. “If you think you can handle it.”
It was the challenge in her voice that finally snapped him out of it. “Oh, I can handle it,” he lied. “Can you?”
“Please.”
His stomach flipped over, his heart pounding at the bars of its cage. Please, she’d said, and she had probably meant it to sound like a scoff, but the thing was… it didn’t. It just sounded like… please.
She opened her mouth to clarify at the same moment his lips landed on hers, and the accidental flick of her tongue nearly sent him to the ground. A soft sound of surprise gasped out of her, and she pulled back.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to—”
“My fault,” she said, her voice breathy with… he didn’t know. He didn’t know anything anymore. “Did you get it?”
Right. There had been a purpose to this little exercise. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I forgot to, um…taste? I got distracted.”
“Right,” she said, her eyes on his lips. “Better try again, I guess.”
“Better…what?”
She tilted up on her tiptoes, grabbed his shoulders, and tugged him down. Their lips met again, this time with thoughtful deliberation. He could feel the brush of her nose on his, hear the soft exhale of her breath. And he could taste…
He parted his lips gently to let his tongue brush against her lips, slow and careful. He wouldn’t mess up this time. He would be very thorough.
She hummed in apparent approval of his plan, her fingers clenching into the muscles of his shoulders. For scientific purposes unknown, he supposed.
“Cherry?” he finally whispered against her lips.
“Yup,” she said, and this time when she popped her lips on the end of the word, he got to feel it.
He pulled away when she didn’t, not wanting to press his luck. He was a black cat, after all.
“Number four.” He grinned down at her, knowing his face would tell her how much she’d completely undone him, and wanting her to know. “Number four is definitely my favorite. That is,” he finished with a breathless laugh, “if I were Adrien Agreste.”