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Part 1 of it's in the little things
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2020-11-20
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2,061
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1/1
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fifteen days, two hours

Summary:

chat noir and marinette meet at the back of a building after fifteen days, two hours, and fifteen minutes.

Notes:

anonymous asked rosekasa

Hi, how are you? May we have no. 10 for Marichat, please? Thanks

from this prompt list

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

“...and that’s why we can’t let Ella and Etta have soda anymore.” Alya paused, then sighed. “Earth to Marinette?”

Marinette’s spoon fell out of her hand. It dropped into her half-finished cup, and sent a splatter of cold tea across the table.

She grimaced, reaching for a napkin. “Sorry, Alya.”

No matter her other responsibilities, their annual hunt for Paris’s Christmas lights usually would have always had Marinette enraptured. The great decorations strewn across the city, the hot drink burning her throat, the chill of winter brushing by her cheeks as she and Alya sat at an outdoor table of their usual cafe — Marinette would shrug off every upcoming deadline and every looming responsibility to jump head-first into the experience.

This year proved to be a little harder — what with Chat Noir lurking at the back of the building they were sitting at.

Alya shook her head and smiled. “Stayed up too late sewing again?”

Marinette swallowed, then looked up again. Not at Alya, however, but at the distraction a little ways away behind her head. 

“Yeah,” she said, wiping at the tea on her raincoat. “Something like that.”

Chat Noir, from the end of the street, bit back a grin and ducked into the alley way once more.

Marinette stood up. 

Alya raised an eyebrow. 

“Uh…” She struggled. “Bathroom? I probably shouldn’t have drank all that tea.”

“Alright,” she said. “But come back quick. We should try and catch the seven o’clock bus to see the lights near the Champs Elysées.”

“Sure, yeah,” Marinette said, already pulling her pigtails out of her coat collar and searching for Chat Noir once again. “Seven o’clock.”

She inched her way out of their table, and, after finding Alya’s head turned safely away from her and instead at her phone, Marinette scurried down the street. She had a hand clutched to her pink scarf and another on the back of her bobble hat, breaths misting in front of her as she neared the back of the building. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Alya herself, a few yards behind, may as well have been able to hear.

She skidded to a halt behind the building. 

Chat Noir, leaning against the wall, straightened. “Hey, My Lady.”

Marinette let out a deep, cloudy breath. “Hey.”

Cars passed by, as did pedestrians, but the street lights were too weak to reach the thin strip of an alleyway they were wedged in, and even if they did, nobody really cared to pay attention to whatever happened in places like that.

She took that breath back in, and held it. “You haven’t come to patrol for a while.”

Fifteen days, two hours, and fifteen minutes.  

(No, Marinette hadn’t been counting at all. Technically, the countdown app she had on her phone had done all the counting for her).

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “I should’ve told you. I had some… family stuff.”

The knot in Marinette’s chest loosened. Well, at least he hadn’t been avoiding her.

“I hope everything’s okay,” she said. Of course the sentiment was genuine, but there were other matters she wanted to discuss. Other questions she wanted to leap in and ask. Despite the mind-numbing winter and the mind-numbing boy, Marinette’s brain-to-mouth filter was somehow doing much better than she would’ve anticipated.

For example, she hadn’t confessed to the fact she’d thought about their kiss every millisecond of those fifteen days, two hours, and fifteen minutes. That was a success, wasn’t it?

“Oh, yeah, everything’s fine,” he said. “It was more like… family work stuff. You know?”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t know.

She didn’t know what ‘family work stuff’ was, she didn’t know what colour his eyes actually were, and she didn’t know whether he regretted that long and slow and impulsive kiss they had shared at the end of patrol fifteen days, two hours, and fifteen minutes ago.

Marinette stuffed her hands into her pockets and fiddled with her house keys.

“You’re not wearing gloves?” he said. “Your hands must be freezing.”

He'd noticed her hands. Had he seen them shaking before she put them in her pockets?”

“I mean, not really,” she said, and, without thinking, brought one out and held it up for him. “Feel.”

He took it. “They’re pretty cold.”

And perhaps neither of them were thinking much, that night, because Marinette was at least ninety-percent sure Chat Noir couldn’t feel her temperature through his suit.

She went to pull it away, but he held on. “No." He went as far as taking her other hand, too. "They’re cold.”

Her cheeks had been, too, before that.

Marinette stepped closer and he did, too, so their arms weren’t stretched out to meet each other. She hoped, from this proximity, that he couldn’t see the spots of flush burning on her face, but if she could see the jump of his throat as he swallowed, she had no chance at hiding from him.

Chat Noir cupped both of her hands in his, rose them to his mouth, and blew on them.

His lips brushed the jut of her thumb. They almost lingered, but didn't.

"I've been thinking about you," she said quietly. "Have you been thinking about me?"

Chat Noir's eyes flicked up to meet hers.

Marinette's hands shook hard. She couldn't even clench her fingers lest he noticed.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I have. A lot."

He continued blowing on her hands.

They had gone numb since they felt the touch of his lips (much like she had two weeks ago). Had they really warmed up that much since the start of his ministrations? Had they really been so cold in the first place?

His face was warm. Marinette could feel it. She could've cupped it in her hands and held him like that for a while. She had always been good at killing two birds with one stone — she would have been warm in her hands but also her heart.

But his lips were tranquillisers, and even if she wanted to, Marinette couldn't move her hands away.

"Did it mean something to you?" she asked. "The… you know…"

Chat Noir stopped. Not as abruptly as it felt (the warm suddenly replaced with cold, the tranquilisation of her hands falling away at a shocking rate) but he stopped, nonetheless.

"Isn't that my line?" he asked.

She gulped. "Is it?"

He didn’t let go of her hands, but he did lift his head. The look he gave her made something flutter in the pit of her stomach. It was all too similar to the way he had looked at her on that rooftop fifteen days, two hours, and fifteen minutes ago, when her heart had clenched with the certainty that he had been about to kiss her.

Now, his eyes flicked over her, and, self-consciously, Marinette broke one hand away from him and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her raincoat. 

“Will you kiss me again?” she breathed. 

His eyebrows shot up. They lowered again, slowly, and Chat Noir smiled.

Just like a breath, the words had left her without any real thought. But then she registered them, processed what the milky-white mist had carried over to him, and a scalding blush shot through her cold face.

“Oh my God I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to say that out loud—”

“I really hope you don’t take me for the kind of guy that’d drag you behind a building to make ou—”

They both stopped.

Marinette’s heart pounded in her ears.

Behind a building make out the parted-mouth, flickering gaze look he was giving her.

With a shaky hand, she touched her cheek. “Can we pretend that didn’t happen?”

“You wanted me to kiss you?” He sounded dazed.

She sighed. “So we’re not gonna pretend that didn’t happen.”

There was a pause. Then, he laughed.

“This is weird,” he confessed. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you again. I missed you.”

The tightness in Marinette’s chest alleviated.

“I missed you, too,” she said, curling her fingers around his hand. “I was worried you regretted it.”

Another pause ensued, but the silence was loaded. Chat Noir held her gaze. She felt his intensity all through her, like one of those computer wires she had in her room that always got too hot if she kept the switch on the plug socket on for too long.

“You clearly don’t know me as well as I thought you did,” he said.

Marinette took in a sharp breath. “Well, you're the one who knows my identity. Technically you know me better than I know you." She hesitated, then said, "but you don't regret it, right?"

He shook his head at her. "Marinette…"

"What?" Embarrassed, she averted her eyes. "I just want to know."

"No, My Lady, I didn't regret it, and I’ve been wanting to do it again for fifteen days straight.”

She broke out into a smile. “You’ve been keeping count, too?”

He grinned at her, taking one of her chilled hands and placing it on his warm, rosy cheek.

“Fifteen days, two hours, and thirty minutes,” he said.

“Wait, thirty minutes?”

Chat Noir blinked at her. “Yeah, thirty minutes.”

Marinette’s brow furrowed. “Chat Noir, what time is it?”

He fumbled for a second, then produced his baton. Throughout it all, he kept her hand firmly clasped to his cheek. Marinette felt her own cheeks ache with a dopey grin,

“Six fifty-five,” he said casually.

All the lovesick warmth inside of her vanished as reality emerged amongst the haze in her mind. 

“Oh my God.” She jumped back, snatching up her phone from the pocket of her raincoat. “Alya wanted to catch the seven o’clock bus. I have to go.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, I’ll see you later?”

Marinette looked up at him. 

Yes, she had to go, but…

The clouds above them parted, and the premature moonlight glazed his eyes.

But she really wanted to kiss him again. And if what he had said was true (which it always was, because her kitty would never lie to her), then she had all the more reason to go for it.

She closed the distance she had put between them — hesitant, a little footstep at a time. He seemed to realise and put his baton away, then opened his arms out to her as she drew nearer.

“I’m not going in for a hug,” she clarified, setting her hands — one of them still holding her phone — on his chest.

“Neither was I,” he said, nonetheless wrapping his arms around her. “I just wanted to hold you.”

A wave of lightheadedness overcame Marinette. All that she could comprehend of her thoughts was the cold wind lying flat against her face and Chat Noir’s mouth right in front of hers. 

The kiss was sweet. Unlike the last time, it wasn’t dizzying. It was gentle, slow, and planned. Expected. Her brain was not a jumble of oh my God what am I doing what is he doing what are we doing , unlike the last time they had done this. His arms around her tightened, pulling the material of her raincoat around her waist, and she tracked every sensation with a serene kind of attentiveness.

He broke away first, pressing his forehead to hers. “Your nose feels like a little ice cube.” He rubbed his nose against hers, then kissed it, making her giggle. 

This time, she did go in for a hug. She wasn’t sure why she did, and her lips tingled with the wish of another kiss, but when he sighed happily into her hair and hugged her back, she was glad she had done it.

Her phone buzzed against Chat Noir’s shoulder.

“Akuma?” he asked, stepping back.

Marinette laughed, glancing down at Alya’s caller ID. “Maybe, if I don’t get going soon.”

Chat Noir made an unhappy sound, and tugged her back into his arms. “You don’t think the Christmas lights would look prettier if I tagged along? I’m sure Alya wouldn’t mind.”

“You’re such a stalker. How do you know that’s what we’re doing?”

He kissed her temple, beginning a journey across her brow and cheek. She had to keep a hand at the back of her bobble hat to stop it from falling.

“I have my ways, Bugaboo,” he said.

Fondly, Marinette rolled her eyes, pecked him once more on the lips, then answered the phone.

Notes:

tumblr: rosekasa

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