Work Text:
“Air hockey doesn’t get us any tickets.” Ladybug faced down Chat, pushing him back by his nose as he was far too close to kissing her for her comfort. The flashing lights from the Dance Dance Revolution machine highlighted his eyes, the bright green swimming with mirth. “But you’re on.”
Chat’s grin was a bright, piercing thing in the darkness of the arcade; aside from the aforementioned DDR machine and some blacklights, there were very few lights in the venue. Ladybug had nearly tripped over power cables and she swore she’d stepped in something sticky, likely a spilled Coke from the attached bar.
That she and Chat were just a little too young to go get a Coke from, thank you very much.
“Glad to hear it, Bug.” Chat waved his massive amount of tickets around in his clenched fist. Their goal? Win as many tickets as possible to get prizes for each other. But after three hours of winning skill games, Chat wanted a break from the competition to play something… even more directly competitive. “Your quarters or mine?”
That was sort of a joke between them; this arcade’s owner had graciously closed down the venue to the public and had graciously opened up all the games to the two heroes in order to thank them for their service to the city.
After many weeks of Chat’s wheedling, Ladybug broke down and had agreed to “patrol” the arcade. She didn’t regret giving in. Not in the slightest. But she wasn’t about to give Chat the satisfaction of knowing he’d been right.
“Your quarters.”
Ladybug set her swath of tickets down on the floor, kicking them under the air hockey table. Chat did the same and turned the game on, retrieving the neon green puck. He bounced side to side for a moment, picking up his pusher, and then launched the puck towards her with so much force, her teeth rattled when she blocked the shot.
The puck screamed across the table’s surface, and Chat struck it, sending the green disc streaking back to her. They traded blows, the puck rocketing faster and faster across the space between them, until the little disc was almost faster than the eye could see.
Just as it reached her side, Chat blew a raspberry at Ladybug. She glanced up, distracted, and the puck rammed into her goal.
That… That punk! Ladybug grabbed the puck from her side and slammed her pusher into it, sending the disc flying towards Chat.
He blocked her shot with ease, sending it careering back to her. She gripped her mallet with a tight fist to make sure she didn’t lose it as the edge collided with the green disc.
Back, forth, back, forth, back forth--the puck bounced off the table’s walls, cracking furiously between them.
“Did you know,” Chat started, grinning so smarmily that Ladybug was almost overcome with the urge to punch him, “that a good air hockey game is all about physics?”
“Didn’t know that.” Ladybug grunted. “Don’t care.”
“Ooh,” Chat breathed, sounding on the edge of a giggle fit. His eyes were certainly dancing, though Ladybug couldn’t focus on his beautiful eyes for more than a second while the puck was in play. “Newton’s first law tells us that ‘an object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at a constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.’”
Ladybug grunted again, not paying any attention to the way his mouth was flapping. She had a game to win! “So?”
“In other words,” Chat said, applying more force to the puck than Ladybug thought was truly necessary, “the puck will move at a constant speed and direction due to the air flow coming out of the air holes until struck by one of the player’s paddles.”
Despite still playing the game perfectly while yakking his mouth off, sending the puck jetting straight into her goal, Chat didn’t appear winded at all. Their superhero endurance, Ladybug thought, was only really fair when it applied to her during a game.
“Newton’s second law,” Chat continued, undaunted by the dirty looks Ladybug was giving him as she retrieved the puck, “tells us that--oh, good shot.”
He fell silent for a blessed few moments as they traded shots, and Ladybug congratulated herself on shutting him up.
Until she scored a goal and practically crowed. “Nice job, Bug.” Chat smiled softly at her as he grabbed the puck from his side. He let it crawl across his fingers like a coin. “As I was saying, Newton’s second law tells us that ‘the acceleration of the object depends on the mass of the object and the amount of force applied.’”
Ladybug, watching the puck spin in his dextrous, clawed fingers and trying not to imagine those fingers on her skin, huffed in irritation. “Are we going to play?”
“In a second. Don’t be so hasty, Buginette.” Chat smirked with those stupid, kissable lips, and Ladybug was so done. “What the second law means is that the speed of the puck heading towards your goal depends on its weight, size, and how hard it was hit.”
With exaggerated slowness that ratcheted up Ladybug’s impatience even further, Chat placed the puck down on the table. “Watch out for this one, Bug.”
“Watch out for--” The puck slammed into her goal before she even saw him hit it. “What!?”
Chat laughed, which was simultaneously the most beautiful and most annoying sound she’d ever heard. “Being in our suits, we can hit the puck really hard.”
Ladybug grumbled. The score was three to one, now, in Chat’s favor. She refused to lose.
With her newfound umbrage driving her forward, Ladybug scored five more goals, and Chat three. They were neck and neck: six to six, and game point was seven.
Chat snatched up the puck. “Newton’s third law tells us that ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction.’”
“Chat…”
“That means that when you hit the puck with the paddle, it’s going to speed off in the opposite direction from where you are standing.” Chat blew another raspberry, but Ladybug refused to be distracted this time. “Like this!”
Chat struck the puck hard, but Ladybug was prepared for his trick shot this time. The puck flew back and forth between them, clacking against their mallets with brute force. Ladybug’s fingers were starting to grow sore.
Then Chat left her an opening--or so she’d thought. She took the shot, sending the puck careening towards his open goal, but he blocked at the last moment.
Crack.
Chat blinked. Ladybug stared.
Due to the ferocity of his block, the puck had bounced off his paddle and embedded itself in the table’s wall right next to her goal. Tendrils of acrid smoke curled up from the neon green disk, and it was only then that Ladybug noticed the dark streaks all over the table’s surface.
Chat raised a hand, gulping. “I can pay for that.”
Ladybug’s jaw dropped. Right. They had to replace this. But Chat had offered to pay for it? “How can you afford to replace an air hockey table?”
“Trust me, Bug.” Chat rubbed the back of her neck in a gesture that looked entirely too familiar. “My allowance is… generous.”
Setting the paddle down, Ladybug raised a shaking hand to her lips. She struggled to hold back a smile. She didn’t know why the situation was funny; it just was.
Chat had no such compunction; he burst into awkward laughter, his wide eyes shining with amusement. When Ladybug joined in, biting on her knuckles to try to keep from giggling and failing miserably, he belly-laughed. His head flew back and his eyes fluttered closed, but only for a moment.
Ladybug couldn't stop cackling. She laughed so hard, tears springing to her eyes, blurring her vision so much she could barely see what Chat did next. Throwing his arms wide open, he crossed to her and wrapped them around her shoulders, nuzzling her cheek with his.
Ladybug didn't bother to shove him off, though she knew she should. He smelled too good, like leather and charcoal and the unique, delicious aroma of his sweat. She'd smelled that sweat before, though she couldn't exactly place where.
Droplets rested on his forehead and beaded on his upper lip, but Ladybug couldn't blame him. She'd worked up quite a sweat herself, though hers wasn't as fragrant as his.
As he guffawed into her shoulder, leaning his head on her collarbone and making her knees weak, she wondered if she smelled good to him, too.
But that was a stupid thought.
Ladybug placed both palms on his broad, well-muscled chest and gently pushed him away. She was always pushing him away and she knew he was just as sick of that as she was, but she couldn't do anything else. Chat Blanc still haunted her nightmares and for good reason.
Chat beamed at her, his eyes bright and oh! so beautiful. "Are you sweaty enough yet?"
So he had noticed. Ladybug wondered if she should surreptitiously sniff her armpit.
Chat waggled his brows at her. He was clearly planning something.
"What did you have in mind?"
Turns out, what Chat had in mind was several rousing rounds of Dance Dance Revolution. After she got the basics down, her and Chat's natural rhythm kicked in. They were so in sync, when she reached out for his hand, he took it and they played that way, their feet slamming into the arrows and lighting up the machine.
"I'm crying… buckets of tears!" the machine's announcer cried, the screen flashing "Perfect!" and "Marvelous!" every time they struck a step.
By the time "Dynamite Rave," their fifteenth song, finished, Ladybug was worn out. Even Tikki had her limits. Ladybug stepped off the machine and nearly-collapsed onto a nearby barstool.
Chat apparently wasn’t done. He winked at her and queued up “Butterfly,” tapping his foot. Ladybug watched his tail lash back and forth, the metal end clinking against the guardrails on the back of the machine, and realized he was anticipating something.
But what? Her reaction? To what? Ladybug thought, thoroughly puzzled.
Then he started dancing.
And it wasn’t the regular pounding of arrows, like she’d been doing; no, Chat’s dance was a freestyle romp through the song, shaking his hips and swinging his arms and slapping his feet with his hands. Ladybug was stunned with how good he looked; he possessed a supple, feline grace as he moved, rhythmically hitting every arrow. He went down on his knees to strike a few, bouncing back up and throwing his head back, exposing the perfect column of his throat. When he lowered his head again, his eyes, a green as gorgeous as spring rain, burned into hers.
Chat spun elegantly, but there was a sort of ungainly harshness to the lines of his body, and Ladybug knew she shouldn’t underestimate him ever again. But she didn’t care. Was she falling in love with a boy she hardly knew? Warmth radiated off him, hitting her in the face with the force of it and searing her cheeks.
Simply speaking, he took her breath away.
Slick sweat glided down his skin and his suit, making him shine in the bright, pink and blue lights of the machine. By the third song in the set, his eighteenth, each step made his breath ragged and short, his muscular chest heaving. He struck a final pose on the last note, his fingers spread above his head and his head tipped back. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and Ladybug’s heart chose then to pound behind her eyes.
Such a display demanded a response. Ladybug shot to her feet, applauding. “Whoo, go, Chat!” He smiled shakily at her, leaning on the guardrails for the machine. Sweat streamed down his temples. “That was amazing!”
“I could really use a drink of water,” he croaked, laughing abashedly. He rubbed the back of his neck again, and Ladybug knew she’d seen that gesture somewhere before. “Let’s go to the bar.”
“Chat!” Ladybug smacked his shoulder, her hand coming away sweaty. “We can’t go to a bar! We’re seventeen!”
“There’s no one here but us.” Chat stepped off the DDR machine and looped an arm around her shoulders, but as soon as he started steering her towards the bar, she extricated himself from his loose grip. “No one knows how old we are, Bug. And they’ll give us water if we ask.”
“Bzzzt, no way. I’m not going.”
Chat’s broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Suit yourself.”
Ladybug smacked his shoulder with the back of her hand. “Was that a pun?”
“You know it.” Chat shot her finger guns and started striding off. “Be right back. Keep the machines warm for me.”
“You’re really going.” Ladybug couldn’t believe it. Her partner was deserting her to go to a bar? Well, she wouldn’t stand for that. She had to follow him, if for nothing else than to keep him out of trouble. “Wait up.”
Chat didn’t say anything as she caught up to him. He didn’t have to; his smirk spoke volumes. He offered her his arm, and Ladybug reluctantly took it. Chat patted her fingers and led her to the bar, a mahogany counter that glowed under dim pendant lighting.
The bartender, wearing a crisp uniform with a white button down and a black vest, smiled at them. “Welcome, Heroes of Paris! What can I get you?”
“Just water for me, thanks,” Chat said, and then jerked his thumb at Ladybug. “And she’ll have some peanuts.” Then he turned to her, raising his brows. “Unless you have a nut allergy, my Lady?”
Ladybug placed her entire hand on Chat’s face and shoved him back. The nerve of him! “I’ll take water, too, please. Don’t pay any attention to Chuckles here.”
The bartender scooped ice into two highball glasses and filled them up with a water gun on tap. He placed two limes on the edges. Chat, eyes glittering, seized his water immediately and sucked it down. “Aahhh!” He sighed. “That hits the spot.”
Ladybug had fully intended to sip her water at a more sedate pace, but once she tasted the cool liquid, found herself sucking it down as fast as Chat, embarrassing herself. The bartender gave them a knowing look and refilled their glasses without comment.
After three glasses of water each, the two superheroes signed napkins for the bartender’s kids and bid him farewell. Chat wore a smug, smug look that Ladybug wanted to kiss off.
No, not kiss off. Punch off. What was she thinking? This boy had her all discombobulated.
“You don’t have to say it.” Ladybug told him as he steered her towards the Skee-Ball game. “I know you told me so.”
Chat sketched a bow, keeping his delighted, burning gaze on her eyes. “I wouldn’t dare, Bugaboo.”
Ladybug turned her rapidly-heating face away. Why did he have to be so cute? “Did we want to go back to winning tickets?”
“That’s why we’re here.” Chat glanced back at the air hockey table, reminding Ladybug that he’d beaten her there. “We’ll have to pick up those tickets later.”
“Sure.”
As it happens, Chat was good at Skee-Ball, too. But not as good as Ladybug. She’d practiced as a kid, her parents filling the skill game with as many quarters as they could afford.
She took a good stance, bracing her foot of her throwing hand against the machine and her other foot behind her for good balance and support. When rolling the balls up the inclined plane, Ladybug crouched a little, targeting the 40 round point. Using good positioning, Ladybug easily scored over 400 points over nine balls, earning hundreds of tickets per round of play.
Tickets poured out of the machines, pooling on the floor around their feet. “One more game,” Chat demanded after his tenth loss. Ladybug was only too happy to oblige.
“What’s wrong, Kitty?” Ladybug purred in his feline ear, forcing pink to his cheeks under his mask. “Can’t stand to lose?”
“Just one more.”
That was Chat’s refrain until their arcade cabinets literally ran out of tickets, sputtering to a halt and clicking forlornly. Chat and Ladybug glanced at each other and then burst into clumsy fits of laughter.
“Okay.” Chat covered his mouth, giggles escaping through his fingers. “Maybe not one more game.”
“What’s next?” Feeling generous after her multiple wins, Ladybug allowed Chat to choose the next game. He chose Tower of Tickets; she chose Coin Pusher. They both agreed on Crossy Road and then Zombie Snatcher, running all those games out of tickets, too. The duo left them down on the floors near all the games, agreeing to collect them later.
Finally, Chat and Ladybug approached the claw machine. “I bet…” Chat nudged Ladybug, releasing her hand. “I bet I could win more of those prizes than you.”
Ladybug narrowed her eyes at him in light, competitive irritation. “You’re on.”
Chat’s turn was first. He maneuvered the joystick and snagged--what else?--a Ladybug plushie. The toy dropped into the chute, and Chat put his hand past the flap and picked up the plush. He gave it a hug and a purr, making Ladybug laugh and gently smack his shoulder.
They quickly captured stuffed toy after toy, failing sometimes but overall nabbing several of them in a row. Chat was slightly more skilled than her at this machine, but Ladybug made up for her lack with baldfaced determination.
Once they reached the last toy, a Rena Rouge plush, it was Ladybug’s turn to try first. She gripped the joystick in solid fingers, edging the claw to the left and watching the metallic prongs bounce in the lights of the machine. She positioned the claw over the machine and depressed the button, crowing in triumph as the claw lowered.
But much to her horror, she’d aimed slightly to the right. The claw bent slightly, slipping just around Rena’s toy head on the withdrawal.
“No!” Ladybug pounded a fist on the plexiglass once. “I need another try!”
Chat cackled, apparently taking pleasure in her misery. “You can have a try if I fail!” He waggled his brows, nudging her out of the way with his hip. “Which I won’t.”
Chat wiggled the joystick, wriggling his butt in anticipation, and shot her an infuriating grin before depressing the button.
The claw seemed to sink almost in slow motion. If Ladybug could bite her nails through the suit, she would. The prongs snapped open and closed around Rena’s head, dragging her up in the air.
Ladybug couldn’t stand it. She seized Chat’s shoulders and turned him around, pushing his back up against the plexiglass front of the machine. He bent around the joystick awkwardly, staring at her in total surprise, his eyes wide and his brows raised.
What did Ladybug want to do? Well, what she wanted to do--and she had no idea why--was to kiss him senseless. Sweat had plastered his normally-wild mane to his head, and he smelled mind-bogglingly good.
She leaned in close, lacing her fingers around the back of his neck and carding her fingers through the hair there. Chat parted his kissable lips, exhaling a soft, mint-scented breath to her nose, one she was so close to, she could taste the mouth-watering flavor.
Abruptly, she knew what she had to do.
Ladybug tugged his head down to her level and moved his hair aside, whispering into his human ear. “I didn’t see you win the plush. Did you actually win it if you didn’t see it?”
Chat’s deep, rumbling chuckle vibrated in her chest. Heat curled in her belly, tightening it, but she refused to let him go that easily. “If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around…”
She licked the shell of his ear, causing him to inhale sharply. “Let’s leave that one.”
His chest shuddered, much to her satisfaction. When he spoke, his voice sounded breathy and strained, exactly the way she wanted him. “Okay.” His next word came out as a squeak. “Ladybug?”
“Yeah?”
“As much as I don’t want you to…” She could hear him swallow. “Can you let go of me now? My back hurts.”
Ladybug shot away from him, raising her hands in the air, her cheeks burning. Her chest was tight and she didn’t know why, but then she realized: that was too close. She’d been too close to leaping on her partner--her friend--and slamming her mouth on his.
And judging from his curious, expectant look, he knew it, too.
What was wrong with her? When had she started to feel this way?
Was she in love with Chat?
Ladybug scrubbed a gloved hand over her face, embarrassment forcing her to hide behind her fingers. “Anyway. I think we’ve run all the games out of tickets, sooo…”
“Yeah. Yeah.” Chat’s Adam’s apple was too goshdarn distracting. It kept bobbing and kept bobbing, and the way he was gulping down oxygen looked like he hadn’t been breathing for a while.
Did she have that effect on him?
Could she have that effect again?
Ladybug felt a heady rush of power, making her dizzy. If she could discombobulate Chat just as much as he discombobulated her by simply existing, well, then…
Chat gulped again. He was such a dork, she thought affectionately. “Should we go claim our prizes?”
“Let’s collect our tickets first.”
Chat didn’t offer his arm to her, and Ladybug didn’t take it. Every inch of her was on fire; his very proximity made her tingle. As they collected their tickets, they kept drawing closer to each other and spinning away, like twin stars in an awkward orbit. Ladybug knew that if they ever bumped into each other, the crash would be glorious.
She also knew she wouldn’t be able to keep her hands off him if she touched him again.
They approached the counter together, their arms full of tickets, some of which dragged behind them on the ground. Keeping her careful distance from him, Ladybug allowed the counter’s employee to feed Chat’s tickets into the machine first.
The employee’s eyes bulged as the machine’s numbers kept ticking up and up, until it spat out a final number: 26,073.
“What,” the employee said, giving each of them a searching look, “the heck?”
Chat scanned the prizes in the glass case below them. “That’s a lot of Jolly Ranchers.”
“Chat.” Ladybug gripped the edge of the case to keep her fingers from trailing up his irresistible arms. “What do you say to combining our tickets?”
Chat glanced at her, and then looked at all the prizes again. He started counting off invisible numbers on his fingers, screwing his face up in an expression of concentration so cute, Ladybug wanted to take his face in her hands and squish his cheeks. Or kiss him. One of the two.
Then he brightened with a grin so bright, it nearly bowled her over. “Yeah! If you double my number, Bug, we can win all the prizes!”
The employee staggered, leaning on the counter. “All of them? Every single one?”
“Yep.” Chat winked at the employee, and then gave Ladybug a shy smile that made her knees wobble. “If I’ve done my math right.”
“You’re smart, Kitty,” she purred, not meaning to but purring anyway. What was wrong with her? “I know you’ve counted right.”
Chat’s chest puffed out, and it was all Ladybug could do to keep herself from feeling him up.
The employee shook his head and started feeding the tickets into the machine. Chat was right: the Heroes of Paris had enough to empty the prize counter. They won candy necklaces, parachute men, stuffed toys (including the ones they’d won from the claw machine, sans Rena), action figures and dolls, travel games, helicopters, shot glasses, Frizbees, a multitude of small basketballs, and a Nintendo Wii.
“So what are we going to do with all these prizes?” Ladybug asked Chat, leaning on the counter while the employee bagged them.
Chat scratched his cheek under his mask. “What about delivering them to Necker?”
Ladybug blinked at him, stunned by the generosity of her partner. “The children’s hospital?” Why didn’t she think of that?
Chat shot her finger guns again, and the plan was in place. They showed up that night at Necker Hospital with hundreds of dollars in arcade prizes, delighting the kids and getting a good laugh out of the situation.
After that incident, the owner banned them from the arcade, but Ladybug didn’t care. What she’d learned about her partner--he was dextrous, generous, compassionate, smart, and very, very hot--was totally worth getting kicked out of one of the hottest venues in Paris.
“Hey, Chat,” Ladybug said years later, leaning her head on her husband’s shoulder while they sat on the Eiffel Tower’s second-level maintenance platform after patrol. “Remember that time we were banned from the arcade?”
“Yeah.” Chat chuckled, turning his head to place a kiss on her forehead. “What about it?”
“Did I ever tell you that that night was the night I fell in love with you?”