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A frustrated groan slipped from Chat Noir’s lips as he squinted his eyes nearly shut, surveying the cityscape in the dark of nearly midnight.
“I’m guessing that means no luck on your end either?” Carapace’s voice came through the earpiece muffled and distorted. “Think we should call it a night?”
Chat Noir pondered his partner’s question for a beat, then pressed the small button on his receiver. “You go ahead, I think I can make some progress on my own. I’ll update you in the morning.”
Without waiting to hear a response, Chat muted all incoming transmissions. Carapace was an excellent hero - reliable, trustworthy, and a top-notch fighter - but he still hadn’t grown accustomed to Chat’s operative schedule. Black cats worked more efficiently at night, it was a fact of life. Under the cover of darkness, Chat could blend into his surroundings better. He could zero in on every slight shift of movement on the horizon or a rustle of a leaf from an impossible distance. He could avoid the side-eye and judgment of his fellow heroes when he made admittedly poor decisions, like he was about to do.
Carapace was truly a trustworthy hero, but Chat Noir was ashamed to trust anyone, even his partner, with the truth of the situation at hand. His patrol of Paris had turned up successful - he’d found exactly what he was looking for. Whether that was necessarily lucky depended entirely on the confrontation that would follow.
There, in the distance, precariously balanced atop a still-smoking chimney, was Chat’s target. She hadn’t bothered with subtlety. No, she wanted to be found, and even this far away, he could see the suggestive grin tugging at her lips, right below her red-dotted mask. She stared up at the night sky, pretending she couldn’t also see him.
Chat Noir groaned again, more ashamed of himself than anything. As if she could hear him, her smile widened. She always was amused by his frustration.
He should turn his communicator back on. He should drop his location right now and have Carapace and Rena Rouge and every hero in Paris gather to aid him in the capture of their target. He should, he should, he should. But his stubborn heart wouldn’t dare to let him.
Chat Noir wasn’t sure when he’d begun falling for Ladybug. But every day, he begged his brain to gain some semblance of sense. She’d been a subtle terror on the city for years, acting as an apprentice to Hawkmoth while keeping herself noticeably out of the public eye. Any time an akuma was wreaking havoc, she could be spotted nearby if one’s eye was keen enough - her sleek black suit spotted with red just barely blending into the shadows she loved to lurk in.
The first time Chat Noir had seen her, his world was thrown off kilter. His hopeful heart had questioned her sudden appearance - was she perhaps a new hero, eager to join in the efforts against Hawkmoth? She’d appeared like a mirage, so infrequently and surreptitiously that he’d almost thought he imagined her.
For a long time, she was a secret that he buried. Those suggestive bluebell eyes locking with his across a flaming battlefield weren’t meant to be shared. What felt like ages passed by without a single word uttered between the two of them, only winks and playfully stuck-out tongues that made Chat feel like he was playing, and losing, a child’s game. The most baffling part of it all was that no one else ever seemed to see her. Like she appeared only for him to see.
And, fool he was, he couldn’t help the blossoming heat that grew into a steady flame in her presence.
She was the very last person he should be growing any kind of attachment towards. Yet, what first began as innocuous curiosity had grown into Chat Noir’s most shameful secret. In the aftermath of one particular akuma attack months back, he’d caught her wrist before she could slink into the shadows and asked a singular question - “Who are you?”
In response, she’d raised his hand to her mouth and kissed it, adding fuel to the flames.
That’s how they’d been going back and forth for quite some time now. Stolen moments where the world around them vanished and all that remained was a conflicted hero staring into the eyes of a beautiful girl, trying to decipher her intentions.
He told himself over and over again that she was working with Hawkmoth, that she was up to no good, that he shouldn’t keep letting her escape. He was never known for being one to follow his own advice.
Chat Noir bound across the rooftops on his staff, boldly approaching Ladybug, knowing full well that they were alone and she had no reason to sneak back into the shadows as she usually did. Once he closed the distance between them enough, he offered both of his hands up as a sign of peace.
“Did you have a sweet phone call with your sidekick?” she offered as a greeting. Stubborn as always, she kept her eyes on the stars, refusing to give him the satisfaction of looking at him.
“I didn’t tell him you were here,” Chat muttered in response. Anyone could hear the clear guilt in his voice.
“Oh, I know. You’ve got to stop letting me off so easily, kitten,” Ladybug purred, finally locking eyes with him as the term of endearment slipped past her lips. “People are going to start catching on. Might think you’re doing it on purpose, like you’ve got a soft spot for me or something.”
Chat Noir swallowed hard, forcing down whatever comment was trying to escape his mouth. What could possibly be a good response to that? She’d already nailed down the truth, any other excuse would be flimsy at best.
An amused smile quirked at the corner of Ladybug’s lips. She stepped away from the chimney, encroaching on Chat’s personal space even more. He could reach out and touch her if he wanted to. The smallest graze of contact would satisfy the nagging urge in the back of his mind. But he had to have a semblance of self-control if this wasn’t going to end in disaster. Still, his fingertips twitched in anticipation as she idled dangerously close.
“You know how they say curiosity killed the cat,” Ladybug murmured. “At this point, all of Paris can see that you’ve got a death wish.”
“That’s a bold claim,” Chat prayed she couldn’t hear the shakiness in his voice. “You’ve been hiding in the dark for so long, I was starting to think no one in Paris even knew what you were up to.”
Ladybug raised an eyebrow at him as she stepped closer, which Chat didn’t think was possible. With every word, he could feel her warm breath ghost across his face, sending a familiar shiver down his body. Her satisfied smirk only made his heart thud even harder, but there was no use in hiding his reaction. It was clear as day - she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Wanted me to be your little secret, huh? That’s sweet, but I think we’re both smarter than that. Your little hero friends are catching on.” She pondered for a moment, then continued, “I think one of them may have even started to notice me. That pretty red dragon, what was her name again?”
Chat Noir held back his biting comment. Ever the observant girl she was, it shouldn’t have come as a shock that she was keeping tabs on the other heroes. It was safe to assume she knew a lot more than she was letting on. A villain never revealed all of their secrets.
And two could play at this cat and mouse game.
Chat reached out and clasped her hand in his, gripping just slightly too hard for the gesture to be mistaken for affection. “We aren’t doing anything wrong, are we?”
“Not at all,” Ladybugs voice dropped to the faintest whisper, just barely audible over the chirp of crickets. “I figured we should take the next step in this interesting little relationship,” she teased. “Sorry, were you not ready to tell your friends about me? Honestly, kitten, I’m hurt.”
“As long as you aren’t telling your friends about me, I think we’re even,” the threat in his voice was clear. Nothing was worth risking his team’s safety or letting anyone fall into Hawkmoth’s clutches. And while any sensible man would deduce that this clandestine meeting was an obvious trap, something in the back of Chat Noir’s mind told him that the two of them had come to a silent agreement - they weren’t here to talk heroes and villains.
The only thing on both of their minds was the person standing directly in front of them.
Ladybug squeezed his hand in return, her eyes refusing to stray from his. “Never. I wouldn’t want this game of ours to end.”
Chat’s hopeful, reckless heart stuttered. His grip on her hand slackened. Every reasonable, sensible thought dashed from his mind, leaving behind only the vexing idea of closing the distance between them and satisfying that same curiosity she so chided him for.
“We shouldn’t be playing this game to begin with,” Chat breathed. “It isn’t going to have a happy ending.”
“Who said a good story has to end happily?” Ladybug lifted up on to her tiptoes, placing a teasing kiss at Chat Noir’s temple. “I’m a bit of a sucker for tragedy myself,” she moved to his other side, leaving an identical searing mark.
Chat took a deep breath, begging his brain to stop scrambling. “And what about our allies? Our friends? Our enemies? Are you worried about what all of Paris may think of this?”
Ladybug centered herself, perfectly in position to throw caution to the wind with the slightest tilt of her head.
“I say…” she began, “to hell with what they may think.”
With that, something inside of Chat Noir snapped. His hands acted of their own accord - one clawed glove holding tight at Ladybug’s waist while the other caressed her jaw - and he kissed her hard. Their lips crashed together like weapons in battle, painfully aware of the damage they were both causing. Flame erupted in the pit of his stomach as she deepened the kiss, pulling him flush against her.
All of his thoughts vanished into the air like Hawkmoth’s white butterflies as his hands wandered and grabbed blindly, desperate to hold on to her as tightly as he could. He silently cursed the leather and claws that prevented him from feeling the slope of her shoulders, the flexing muscles in her arms, the dip in her lower back. Ladybug’s hands had made their way into his messy hair, her back against the chimney, as they kissed with reckless abandon. Anyone on the streets could look up and spot Paris’s strongest hero entirely tangled up with who should have been one of his greatest enemies.
A little secret. A forbidden dalliance. A dangerous game.
One that, evidently, neither of them cared if they were caught playing.
Chat wrenched himself away from her lips, touching his forehead to hers as he caught his breath. Ladybug, ever the frustrating foe, only looked the slightest bit disheveled. She stared into his eyes, her signature smirk still lingering on her lipstick-smeared face.
“Had enough, kitten?” she murmured.
“Not quite,” Chat Noir took a step back and reached for his staff. “But it’s getting awfully late, don’t you think?”
There it was - the slightest hint of a frown on Ladybug’s face, a break in her facade. Chat’s decision to pull away first was careful, calculated. He couldn’t let her have all the fun of being chased.
If it was a game she wanted, then a game she was going to get.
With a playful salute serving as his only goodbye, Chat extended his staff and took off into the night, only glancing back momentarily to see the shocked expression on Ladybug’s face.
He refused to turn back or stop, willing himself to ignore the pounding of his heart until he landed back safely inside of his own window. Alone, in the solitude of his own room. Adrenaline fading, he leaned back against the glass, sinking to the floor and lifting a shaking hand to his lips.
Whether he’d just made a wonderful decision or a terrible one, he couldn’t decide. But no matter.
It was Ladybug’s turn to pick up the chase now.