Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hey, hey, you, you! I don’t like your girlfriend!”

Being the daughter of a world-renown fashion icon was hard, Marinette knew for a fact, and you had to take your alone time when you could get it.

That said, she was guiltily certain that if her mother ever found out about how her daughter chose to relax, Sabine would, delicately speaking, flip her shit.

Marinette had dug her Wii out of the very back of her closet, Super Mario Galaxy idling on her television screen. It was already an hour after noon, and she was still in her kiddie pajamas. Her skin regimen had been abandoned for the day, and her hair was a mess.

“No way, no way! I think you need a new one!”

She’d just really gotten into it, dancing around her room with her door locked to keep the maids out and her windows wide to let in the sunshine, singing into hairbrush at embarrassingly enthusiastic volumes, when she was interrupted:

She was spinning, lungs tight and cheeks hurting as she pointed out of her window like an anime idol, adding in a little finger gun motion and having the time of her life while quietly hoping the maids couldn’t hear her, singing, “Hey, hey, you, you! I could be your girlfriend!” when—

“…Marinette?”

Years and years of social training be damned, Marinette shrieked, staggering back and tripping over a controller wire and falling flat on her ass, one bunny slipper flying off her foot and sailing elegantly over her head.

It turned out that she hadn’t been pointing out of her window, but at Chat Blanc, who was crouched in the sill.

“Ch-Ch-Ch-Chat Blanc!” she squeaked, the ominous voice of her mother (if you can’t say it well, don’t say it at all) echoing through her head to no effect. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

Her normally cool and collected partner stared. “I… You… You’re in danger— is that Avril Lavigne?”

Avril launched into another riff. Marinette wondered if it was possible to die by blunt force blush trauma.

“Why didn’t you use the door?” she begged to know, scrambling for the scattered shreds of her legendary composure. “And what do you mean by ‘danger’?!”

“There’s an… akuma… Your mother rejected her, and… she’s after you,” Chat explained, somewhat disjointedly. He dropped down so he could stand tall in the middle of her intensely pink room. He was still staring. “And I… I didn’t think they’d let me in.”

Which was all very logical and rational, seeing as her mother had a wider reach than the average deity and they lived in a house roughly the size of the average mall, but Marinette was still in front of her crush in pajamas and bunny slippers.

Drawing on reserves of cool she didn’t know she had, she took a very deep breath and asked, almost steadily, “Is there an akuma here right now?”

Chat shook his head, still staring. Marinette tried not to notice it was her single slipper that he was staring at.

“Then can I meet you in the garden in ten minutes?”

Chat nodded.

And didn’t move an inch.

Marinette cleared her throat pointedly.

He flinched.

“Right! I’ll just…” He waved at the window without looking at it, tried to take a single step back, hit the wall, turned on his heel, hauled himself up, and veritably flung himself from her third story window.

Marinette winced even before she heard the splash — her home was surrounded by gardens that were ninety-percent water. She hoped he hadn’t scared any of the koi; fish were far more delicate than superheroes.

She took two very deep breaths before remembering she had less than ten minutes to make herself semi-presentable, and dove for her bathroom.

Chapter Text

France’s Sweetheart Finds a Sweetheart!

Marinette put down the gossip rag and raised her eyes to her mother’s, trying to communicate with a look alone just how unimpressed she was with all of this.

(Maybe throw in a hint of pleading, too. Sabine wouldn’t be swayed a centimeter, but making her displeasure known might make Marinette feel a little better.)

Sabine, oddly enough, just sighed. “Just until the spring debut, darling. Just until the spring debut.”

Marinette blinked, floored by the rare moment of sympathy, but her mother had moved on, already shouting at the photographers and lighting staff on the set.

Adrien took her place.

“So this is what a photo shoot looks like.”

Marinette was far too graceful and refined to snipe at people for simply speaking to her, but she was tempted. Oh, she was tempted.

“There are the cameras, there are the props, there’s the stage, and those are the lights,” Marinette said, flat and dry despite her best attempts. She’d rather attend society meetings every day for the next three months than do this. “Congratulations. You’ve been welcomed into the fold.”

Okay, maybe she wasn’t above sniping.

Adrien, damn him, was unaffected. Her new boyfriend (ugh) just grinned. “So we…”

“We put on clothes and pose,” Marinette sighed, tossing the gossip rag onto a nearby table. She jerked her head to indicate he should follow her, and then led him around the back to the dressing rooms, talking as they went. “Sometimes we even smile. Didn’t your father tell you all this?”

“My father doesn’t tell me anything,” Adrien said, droll. He grinned his impish charmer grin, hair as artlessly mussed as ever. “Thank god I have you, right?”

Marinette made a grudgingly agreeing sort of noise and walked faster.

The really terrible thing about all of this, Marinette reflected, was that she could see exactly how he had their entire class eating out of his palms, even with his awfully maintained hair. He was kind, silly, likable; a consummate flatterer who was all the better for the fact that he actually meant his compliments and a consummate prankster who was all the better for the fact that his jokes hurt no one.

Marinette, on the other hand, commanded an unwavering sort of distant respect, one that only occasionally got her invited to class events and none of the personal ones. She was the winner of the best-dressed award for what felt like nothing, sometimes.

They were night and day, white and black, and Marinette didn’t know what their parents were thinking, making them pull a publicity stunt like this. There was no way they could pull this off.

Well, there were worse people she could be forced to spend time with, she supposed. At least she hadn’t been told to date Chloe.

She showed Adrien to his dressing room and left him to the stylists, thinking deep thoughts about what she wanted for lunch and how many more times she could slip out of going shopping with Chloe before she had to face the music for the sake of Maman’s rep.

Her makeup was halfway done when she heard a screech and a clatter.

“Leave my hair alone!”

Rapid foot falls echoed through the studio, and Marinette looked up just in time to see Adrien fleeing across the open space, shirtless with his hands clutched over his head and a stylist in hot pursuit.

Marinette very nearly buried her half made-up face in her hands.

Her stylist patted her shoulder in laughing sympathy and said, “He seems like the… vigorous sort.”

Marinette heard lucky girl as clearly as if the woman had said it aloud, and absolutely did not moan in pained embarrassment.

She changed her mind; she would much rather have been told to date Chloe.

Chapter Text

Pink Lady was a study in contradictions. She was awkward with her lines and smooth with her delivery. She was openly, irrepressibly flirtatious yet the most respectful and steadfast listener Chat had ever had the pleasure of speaking with. She was thoughtlessly graceful, steps gliding like royalty and gestures immaculate, right up until she started thinking about it, and then…

Thwunk.

“Hyek!”

Chat winced, grateful he hadn’t heard the crunch of bone with the speed his partner had been flying at that wall.

He’d like to have a word with whoever thought Pink Lady should swing through Paris on a yo-yo. See if they could get them to replace it with something safer. A tricycle, maybe.

Pink Lady sprung just sprung right back up, rubbing her nose before pulling back her yo-yo and (Chat winced harder) trying again.

It ended just as well as the first attempt.

“You know,” Chat put in hurriedly, before she could slam herself into the wall for a third time. “There’s a fire escape. Right there.”

You could climb it, he didn’t add. And save me from having years shaved off my life.

Pink Lady turned and looked, and Chat tried very hard not to sigh audibly in relief when she flashed him an embarrassed grin and set to climbing.

“Never walk, my love. Only stride.”

It was one of the clearest, most formative memories Marinette had. All it took was a throwaway line from her mother three days before her seventh birthday, and Marinette hadn’t walked a single step since.

But today, that streak was at severe risk.

Chin up, chin up, chin up, Marinette repeated to herself over and over and over again, trying not to do anything so obvious as blush. Keep your nose high and pray they won’t see—

Adrien appeared to her right, virtually out of thin air, something fragrant and brightly colored presented right under said nose, backed by a bright, warm grin.

She could almost recite her fake boyfriend’s line before he even opened his mouth.

“A pretty flower for a pretty la— oh.”

…Almost.

Adrien, to her utter humiliation, looked downright alarmed. “What happened? Are you okay?”

His hand hovered by her shoulder, like he’d forgotten that touching was now a requirement between them, instead of forbidden.

Marinette sighed through her stinging nose and accepted the flower. “I’m… fine. I just… fell down the stairs.”

Not necessarily a lie, but falling down the stairs had produced bruises that were much easier to hide than the giant plaster stuck over the bridge of her nose at the moment.

His hand finally settled on her shoulder, and, for once, Marinette wasn’t even a little bit tempted to shake it off.

He winced sympathetically and squeezed her shoulder, eyes soft and sincere. “Do you want me to go find you an ice pack? Or medicine?”

Marinette’s heart did a little one-two step purely to spite her.

“I’m alright, I promise,” she said, looking down at the flower and praying her blush hadn’t deepened.

Adrien smiled, relieved, before a glint of mischief entered his expression. “Want me to kiss it better?”

Marinette was too well-trained to choke. “Nnnn…”

Wait. They were going out. He should be kissing her nose better.

“Well…” Hardly believing she was doing this, she recited a quick apology to Chat Blanc in her mind and tilted her head up expectantly.

Adrien didn’t move.

Marinette waited a good five seconds before she opened her eyes.

Adrien was staring at her, blank and confused.

“Well?” Marinette asked, a little breathless and trying not to let her voice shake. She’d never done this before, but she’d be damned if she let him know she was nervous. “What are you waiting for?”

It all came out far less demanding than she’d intended it to sound. Maybe a little dreamy, maybe a little flirty, definitely unsure, but not demanding. Her body was betraying her.

Adrien blinked once, twice, then jumped. “Oh!”

After a few more seconds of hesitation, he cupped her face first with his free hand, and then with the one that had been on her shoulder, and Marinette tried not to notice that his blush was probably a good five shades deeper than her own.

Slowly, he lowered his face to hers, warm breath washing over her cheeks, and brushed warm lips over the stinging bridge of her nose, sweet and soft and careful.

Marinette felt the glow of it from the core of her chest right down to her toes.

“There,” he whispered thickly, pulling back and letting his hands drop away from her hot, hot face. He cleared his throat. “All better.”

“Mmm…” Marinette smiled at him, and then pretended she’d meant to. “Thank you.”

The bell chose that moment to ring, breaking the spell and overriding the faint choking noise she thought she’d heard him emit.

She shook off the daze and elbowed his side. “C’mon, we’re going to be late.”

Adrien half-sighed, sounding almost drunk. “Be right there.”

Marinette didn’t wait up. What her mother would say if she was late was scarier than that, thanks.

Chapter Text

1.

In Chat’s opinion, there was nothing better than a long, quiet patrol. Nothing but him, the city lights, the night air, and…

“Soooo…” Pink Lady drawled, popping up next to him.

—one of his best friends.

“Yeah?”

She grinned. “You look like a hard worker…”

Chat blinked. Not what he was expecting her to open with, but he could roll with it. “…And?”

The grin went from cheerful to shit-eating. “I’ve got an opening you could fill.”

Solicitation for work was even stranger, but Chat was thinking about other things. He wanted to help out, and if it paid it would help his mom out, too, but between the cafe and patrol and school and the modeling and fencing and the akuma…

He winced. “I’m sorry, Pink. I don’t think I have the time. Is it urgent? Do you need me to help you find someone else?”

Pink Lady pouted, sighed, and mumbled, “No, never mind.”

“Are you sure? Because I can—”

She waved him off, pout in place, and indicated with a gesture they should get to patrolling before taking a running jump off the roof ridge.

Huh. That’d been odd.

2.

“You know….” Pink Lady purred cheerfully, perched on a ledge just above the excess of water the akuma had left in its wake. “That was pretty impressive.”

Chat shook off the water like a dog, dragging a hand through his sopping hair to resettle it, and beamed up at her, pride glowing in his chest. He’d just successfully pulled off a plan to launch the akuma off the top of the hotel, and it felt nice to have a job well done acknowledged.

Or, it did until Pink continued in a much darker purr.

“I practically had to swim up here, after that.”

Those are some funny places to emphasize a statement, Chat thought for a grand total of three seconds. Then it occurred to him that his plan may or may not have accidentally flooded the lower levels, and nearly had a heart attack. 

“Chat? What’s wr—”

He spat out a curse and launched himself down the stairs, praying the damage hadn’t been too bad. There’d been people down there!

“Chat?!”

3.

“I’ve always wondered…”

Chat looked up from where he was trying to dig his staff out of the crevice the akuma had knocked it into before fleeing.

Pink Lady was perched on a high wall, watching his backside and presumably making sure he didn’t fall in his attempts.

“Where do you get your pants?”

He wrinkled his nose at her, cocking his head. “My kwami suit…?”

“No, no,” she said, flapping a hand dismissively. “Your everyday stuff. You know, your—” Her gaze swept his lower half. “—jeans. Or shorts. Or slacks.”

“Oh.” He went back to straining for his lost weapon. “The thrift store, usually.”

“Because I was just going to say— wait, really?”

She sounded unduly surprised, and Chat paused in is attempts, feeling his shoulders tighten in defense. “Is that a problem?”

“Huh? No, of course not.” He heard a little huff and then, so soft he was certain he misheard it, “‘S cute.”

“…What?”

“Oh, ah, nothing!” The scrape of suit against stone, like she was changing positions. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that at my place, they’d be one hundred percent off.”

Chat had the strangest certainty that she’d just winked at him. Or at his behind. Unthinkingly, he said, “Oh. Thanks.”

Wait.

“How does that work, fiscally?” he said, abandoning his staff, to straighten back up and pivot on his heel. “How do you recoup your losses? Even if you made them all yourself, you still have material and labor costs, and…”

…And Pink Lady was giving him a very strange look.

“…What?”

She sighed deeply, pulling out her yo-yo and fetching his staff in one neat toss. “Never mind. We should go — the akuma’s escaping.”

(Chat never did figure out how she could afford to just give away pairs of pants.)

+1

“Do you ever wonder about our suits?” Pink Lady asked, spinning in the office chair he’d banned her to when he decided that dangerous chemicals were needed for the next step of the plan. It put a table between her and the locker, and Chat prayed that would be enough. “Like, how much do they change about us? Or our bodies?”

“I’ve flipped a bus, you know,” Chat said drolly, flicking through the chemical locker on a quest for potassium. “I don’t think our suits increasing our capabilities was ever in question.”

“But, I mean like—” She kicked off the stand, giving the chair a steady, stationary spin. “—how much do they change us? Like, if I can lift twenty kilos normally… And what exactly does it change?”

It was an interesting point.

“I’ve noticed— aha!” He found the potassium and set it aside, diving deeper for chlorine. “I’ve noticed strength, reflexes, balance, speed, flexibility…”

Pink Lady brought her chair to an abrupt halt, cat-like grin already in place, and placed an elbow on the armrest and an cheek on her fist. “Flexibility, you say.”

Chat snorted, thinking of all the very strange, nearly inhuman poses Pink had fallen into over the course of their disaster-prone partnership.

“Well, you could be right,” Pink said, too casual by far.

Chat looked up from his search, wary.

“I mean, I never really noticed,” she went on, sliding her upper half onto the table between them, chin in hands. “I can put my legs over my head even without it.”

Chat tried very hard not to imagine what that might look like. She was cute, sure, and a flirt, definitely, but he really doubted she meant it like that, and besides, she was the one friend whose respect he desperately wanted to keep. Not someone he wanted to have dirty thoughts about, especially when she wasn’t even two meters away.

“Oh,” he said instead, and cleared his throat when his voice cracked. “Neat. So can I.”

Dead silence.

“S-sorry?” Pink Lady finally asked, a few octaves too high.

“I can put my legs over my head,” Chat clarified, going over the exact formulas in his head one last time and absolutely not thinking about pretty girls who were also notably flexible. “Out of the suit. It’s not that hard, really.”

“…Oh,” said Pink faintly.

More silence.

Finally, Chat found all of his components.

“Would you mind sitting up?” he asked, turning around. “I need to mix…”

Pink Lady was currently doing her best impression of Red Lady.

“…You okay?” 

“Y-yep! Fine! Peachy!” Pink assured him, shoving herself off the table so hard the chair flew into the wall behind it. “Ouch!”

“….Right,” said Chat, and got to measuring.

(If Pink Lady was oddly silent for the rest of the evening, Chat never figured that out, either.)

Chapter Text

“…And oh my god,” said Chloé, waving her brand new nail file for emphasis. “Did you see Pinky tripping over herself? What an idiot, right? I can’t believe Chat Blanc puts up with her.”

“You’ve said that three times already,” Marinette sighed under her breath, exasperation getting the better of her as she filled in homework answers with the ease of too many hours spent studying and not enough spent sleeping.

Chloé either ignored her or didn’t hear it; Marinette wouldn’t be particularly surprised at either.

Cons of being friends with Chloé: she was annoying, insulted Marinette’s alter ego daily, insulted everyone daily, was so honestly mean she was responsible for more akumizations than any other single source, had no boundaries, did not care for other people’s boundaries, was thoughtless, was petty, and had god-awful fashion sense.

Pros of being friends with Chloé: Maman was happy.

That was it.

If it weren’t for Maman…

“She’s just a useless fangirl. She should hand those powers over to someone who can actually use them,” Chloé sneered, and Marinette’s stylus froze a millimeter away from her screen. “Moi, for example.”

No.

No, Marinette’s head screamed as her chest seized, panic clamping her lungs vice-tight, fight-or-flight response telling her to get out get out get out, escape and don’t let anyone, anyone take your most precious possession away, don’t let them take Tikki away, don’t let them take your freedom away, don’t let them—

“Aw, c’mon Chloé,” a new voice interrupted, and Marinette took a stilted breath. She made her tense muscles relax, blinking and letting go of a careful, controlled exhaleand reminding herself of where she was as she listened to the emerging conversation with half an ear. “You’re just jealous you’re not nearly as cute.”

Well, that caught her attention. Cute?

And from Adrien, no less.

Marinette looked up from her homework, ignoring Chloé’s sputtering. “And here I thought she wasn’t your type.”

Adrien jumped under her attention, flushing sunburn-red. He still had a charming grin at the ready, as always. “Of course, she’s got nothing on you, my lady.”

She snorted, looking back down at her homework and feeling flattery and disappointment war in her gut. Of course Pink Lady could never measure up to Marinette Cheng. That was a given, wasn’t it?

(Useless, idiotic, clumsy Pink Lady — what is she even doing hanging around him? Why does he put up with her? He would be so much better off without—)

“Doesn’t mean she not completely badass in her own way, though.”

For the second time in as many minutes, Marinette’s stylus came to a halt over the answer she was about to select.

Chloé, predictably, wasn’t impressed. “Oh please. Only if you mean she has a completely bad ass. She cannot work skintight.”

“Can too,” Adrien shot back with all the collective maturity of a classroom of five-year-olds. Or, considering the subject matter, teenage boys. “And Chat Blanc would be sunk without her.”

“Yeah, right. Try, so much better off.”

And Marinette, from her position as eavesdropper, caught a funny flash of… — darkness? Anger? Fear? Something — flickering across Adrien’s face and then vanishing like a dream.

“Who else could make those crazy plans work?” he asked, so lightly Marinette dismissed the look in an instant. “Who else would watch his back half as well? Who else—…” He paused, then changed what he was going to say with a little huff. “Pink Lady is totally awesome, Chloé.”

Marinette found, to her utmost horror, that she was blushing.

Adrien was a dork. A prankster. A troublemaker. A hopeless admirer with more bad pickup lines than a joke book. An annoyance.

And yet...

He thought Pink Lady was awesome. Badass.

“Laaaaame,” drawled Chloé, cutting through the moment and going back to filing her nails. “Don’t you have lame nerd friends to run along to? My bestie and I need alone time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Adrien snorted, rolling his eyes as he slid out of the bench. He paused at the edge to wink at her, shoot her a little finger gun, and remind her, “Don’t worry, Marinette. You’ll always be my number one.”

And then he scampered.

Then Chloé slid an arm around her shoulders with plans to drag her on yet another shopping trip and Marinette was mercifully kept from thinking about why it felt so good to be Adrien’s number two, too.

Chapter Text

1.

The nice thing about magic yo-yo string was that it was mildly sentient and very devoted to not letting you die, or, at least, that was the case for Pink Lady’s.

It meant that when she got distracted by the slow, unknowingly seductive sway of Chat’s hips as he lined up his shots and tipped over the edge of the bridge, the string tangled with her flailing limbs and hung her neatly from an outcropping and didn’t even garotte her in the process.

Pink needed to buy Tikki many cookies for this boon, she decided as she tried (and failed) to fight her way out of the makeshift net. It was embarrassing, but she hadn’t died yet, and for that she was very grateful.

“You look a little…. tied up.”

“Who, me?” Pink quipped, spreading her limbs as far as they would go and grunting when she relaxed and the knots snapped her into what could only be described as an inverse fetal position.

A warm chuckle and cool hands investigating the tangled thread strung across her back. “Looks like you’ve outdone yourself this time.”

Let me introduce you to shibari sometime.

I know what I’d rather be tangled up in….

What about you? Think you can outdo this?

“What can I say?” Pink Lady grinned over her shoulder and shivered when he smoothed over her back with those kind, strong, cool hands. “I just got all wrapped up in your love.”

He paused, then laughed, mild and amused, as he started fiddling with the knots. “I… don’t think my love is a yo-yo string.”

“That’s what you think,” she shot back, but it was breathless and quiet because his knuckles had just brushed her abdomen as he removed loops of string from her person, hot on the tail of his laughter.

(It was a long, wet drop down, but the trust she held in her partner was implicit and visceral. It made his snarl-by-snarl removal of her safety net… ironically soothing, all things considered.)

“Yup, that is what I think,” he said, reaching down to sling a forearm under her stomach and plucking her out of the worst of the tangle. He then set her on her feet and her compact in her hand, then brushed away the rest of the strings. Pink Lady soaked up the gentle touch like a sponge. “C’mon, the akuma’s on the move.”

“Coming,” she sighed (or swooned, really), skin tingling where his hands had been, and barely remembered to rewind her miraculously untangled line before following.

(So many cookies for Tikki.)

2.

“Okay, but what is your pla—”

Pink Lady pressed a finger to her grinning lips and then pointed to the sky.

Chat, confused and doubting, followed her finger.

3… 2… 1… Boom.

Pink Lady was treated to the sight of Chat’s confusion and doubt slip right off his face, leaving behind blank shock.

After that, the fireworks kind of paled in comparison.

They did their job, though; the akuma’s destructive searchlights were rendered useless by the interfering light source, with the added bonus of addling its head with the explosions in its airspace.

It might have been just a hunch, but Pink was pretty damn proud of her hunches, and tonight was an excellent example of why.

“…You’re crazy,” Chat breathed, awed laughter lurking under the shock and so much unrestrained admiration in his voice that her heart tripped all over itself, dropping its drinks and ruining its dress, leaving it a flustered, fluttering mess.

“Just crazy for you,” she breathed right back, the confession slipping out of her too fast and too honest, straight from her heart to her mouth with no input from her brain whatsoever.

“No,” he said, now grinning for real and it was tying her in knots, fuck his love not being a yo-yo line. He turned those luminescent green eyes to her and her chest contracted fast and hard. “You’re just crazy awesome.”

“O-oh,” she stammered weakly, sinking back against the stone wall behind her, steam leaking out of her ears and her knees weak. She spared a moment to be grateful that the flashing lights obscured her glowing face just as well as they blocked the akuma.

“There! It’s down!” Chat yelped, scrambling up and launching himself from their perch. “C’mon, Pink!”

Pink Lady barely heard him.

Crazy awesome.

Her toes curled.

He thought she was crazy awesome.

“Pink!”

3.

“Playing cards,” Chat murmured, picking up one such card from the litter on the floor. “It’s turning people into playing cards.”

She leaned against his shoulder and he obligingly flipped the card over, showing her the caricature of a jack of spades that was so obviously Kim it was a little unnerving.

“Ooh,” Pink Lady marveled. She tugged the card from his fingers and studied it in the halogen lighting. “I wonder how we get them out.”

“Mm…” said Chat, ducking down to collect the rest. “What do you wanna bet they’ll come to life and attack us with the worst timing ever?”

Pink snorted and added Kim to the stack he held. “No bet.”

“Thought so,” Chat murmured, shuffling the cards. “Guess we should be careful about getting hit. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to know what’ll happen to our Miraculous if that happens.”

“Aww, I wanted to know what we’d be,” she mourned, following him out of the recording studio. Well, except… She bit her lip, scenting opportunity. “At least we know what you’d be.“

His hands paused in their constant shuffling, and he cocked his head curiously.

Pink grinned, coy and sly, and winked. “I mean, you’re a shoo-in for the king of hearts.”

He barked a surprised laugh, shoulders jerking with it, mirth and affection lurking in his eyes as he stole a sidelong glance at her.

She lived for that sound.

“Only if you’re the queen.”

Pink Lady came to an abrupt halt.

…What.

Her heart leaped from her chest to her mouth.

“H-huh?”

He hadn’t said what she thought he’d said, had he? He couldn’t have—

“What kind of ruler would I be without you?” he tossed over his shoulder, casual as you please, and she felt her insides invert. “You’re my partner, right?”

…Pink Lady need a fainting couch. Stat.

+1

Out of everything contributing to the atmosphere of the evening — the blaring klaxons, the heavy rain, the distant sound of terror-quick footfalls and angry, panicked shouting, the faint, inescapable smell of gasoline and smoke — nothing was quite as scary as the look on Chat’s face.

Because Chat was cool. Chat was confident. Chat knew what to do in any situation.

And now, Chat was panicking.

It wasn’t immediately obvious if you didn’t know him; he was staring out at the roiling masses, searching them for nothing with a tiny furrow in his brow as he mouthed the starts of words, little snatches of numbers and dismissals reaching her ears over the rush of rain. He had a claw caught in his teeth and tugged it a little harder after each dismissal, other arm curled protectively around his stomach and shoulders tense.

It looked like worry, not panic.

Pink Lady’s chest felt unbearably tight.

They’d lost a little ground to this akuma at exactly the wrong moment, and now they were losing more ground faster and faster all the time, and Chat didn’t know how to put a stop to it.

That alone didn’t bother her too much (between the two of them and her lucky charm, there wasn’t anything they couldn’t fix), but Chat…

But Chat.

A tiny tch drew her attention back to him, and the shadows in his eyes felt like a punch to the gut.

She was reaching out to him before she knew what she was doing.

“Hey.”

It was a small miracle her voice didn’t crack.

He turned his head, looking at her without really seeing her, and she touched his wrist, sliding her fingertips up to where his claws were digging deep into his palm.

“Breathe.”

He blinked once, twice, then inhaled a shuddering gasp and let it out on a sigh.

Her chest contracted painfully.

“We’ll figure it out,” she said, low and sure. Carefully, she pressed her fingers against the seam between his claws and palm.

It took her a few seconds to coax him into unclenching his fist and then slip her hand between his claws and abused flesh, but something deep in her relaxed once she’d managed.

If he wanted to cause himself pain, he’d have to go through her first.

“I’m here, remember?” she went on, sliding her fingers into the spaces between his and giving them a reassuring little squeeze. “You’re not alone. If you can’t come up with a plan, that’s okay. We’ll figure it out together.”

She didn’t have a name for the look on his face as he listened to her, but it made her insides reel, made her stomach flip and her heart trip.

It stuck in his eyes even when the rest of his face broke into a smile, the combination as heartbroken as it was heartbreaking, and Pink Lady hated that look — mostly because she knew she wasn’t allowed to try to kiss it away.

He opened his mouth to speak, breathed, and shut it again, words failing him like she’d never known them to before, and then tugged her towards him as he leaned in.

For one wild, dream-like moment, despite every one of her convictions that he’d never think of her like that, she thought he was going to kiss her.

Instead, he snaked his free arm around her waist and buried his nose in the crook of her neck in a tight, brief hug, his hair prickling the hollow beneath her ear and shuddering sigh warming the suit against her skin.

He let her go before she could react, and drew back with an embarrassed flush and a shy, warm smile. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” she said, storing away every last detail of the embrace, of Chat’s relaxing shoulders and the crinkles in his mask at the corners of his eyes. “That’s what partners are for.”

(In the moment before he’d hugged her, she could have sworn she’d seen his eyes flick to her mouth for a fraction of a second, but dismissed it as wishful thinking in the end.)

(There was no way, right?)

Chapter Text

The city was burning.

The city was burning, and he didn’t know how to fix it.

The city was burning, and if he didn’t figure out how to fix it soon, there would be no going back.

The thoughts circled him, getting heavier and heavier with each circuit — the city was burning, the city was burning, the city was burning, and he didn’t know how to fix it.

His mother was somewhere out there, sheltering refugees or a victim herself, and if he didn’t fix it soon…

He could think of six new plans off the top of his head — six sets of actions, six sets of possible outcomes, six sets of possible deviations, six sets of probability statistics for all of the above — and none of them, none of them, had much, if any chance of working.

He dismissed them all with a disgusted noise, throat tight and breath coming shorter every second, panic pushing, clawing its way up through his innards.

The city was burning.

His mother was out there in this burning city.

His classmates were in this burning city.

His family, his home, his life was in this burning city.

“Hey.”

Pink Lady was in this burning city.

And he couldn’t fix it.

Small, warm, gentle fingers touched his wrist. They flattened, applying brands of heat to his chilly flesh, and his pulse stirred — faintly, just a little backstep in the midst of its frantic, brutal pace, but it was something. A little tug against the tailspin he was stuck in.

The brands turned to trails, trailing up, up, up until they were laid over his fist (…fist?), and that soft voice continued, “Breathe.”

…Breathe?

Chat refilled his lungs, manually drawing in air until they hit capacity, and then letting it all out again.

Slowly, the room stopped spinning.

“We’ll figure it out,” murmured Pink, enviably, astoundingly, groundingly sure. She pressed those warm fingers against his palm, running over the seam between it and his fingers back and forth, again and again, until he got the message and relaxed his cramping hand.

She slipped her own into the space created, fitting like it had always been there and wasn’t ever meant to leave.

Her eyes were awfully blue.

Some tiny part of his brain clung to the thought, circled around it, held it close — the part that would be gibbering in terror without it. The rest of him just started to sag in relief, hanging onto her words and letting them wash away everything else.

“I’m here, remember?”

She was.

“You’re not alone.”

He wasn’t.

“If you can’t come up with a plan, that’s okay.”

It was?

“We’ll figure it out together.”

…Oh.

She kept smiling, sweet enough to make him crave, reassuring enough to terrify him, soft enough to crack his heart on.

We’ll figure it out together.

Oh.

He smiled back, or tried to, anyway. His face felt strange, painful and prickly and numb.

Together.

There weren’t words in any language that could encompass how grateful he was.

He tried, tried to vocalize just what it meant to him to hear that, what it meant to him that she was here to say it and willing, but he didn’t get any farther than opening his mouth before he realized the words wouldn’t be thank you.

They would be I love you.

He shut his mouth and swallowed them back down — now was not the time or the place — and breathed before leaning in.

She watched him with bright blue eyes and softly parted lips and so much understanding it hurt.

Almost too late (too soon) he realized he was leaning in to kiss her.

He switched tracks in a hurry, burying his nose in the crook of her neck and smelling sweat and smoke and a teasing, lilting perfume.

He let the breath out on a sigh, trying to get the scent out of his system before it could do irrevocable damage, and drew back, feeling his face prickle in embarrassment. “Thank you.”

Being so grateful you could just kiss someone was supposed to be an expression, not a reality.

“Of course,” she said, like it was a given. “That’s what partners are for.”

An expression, he reminded himself, swallowing the tide of emotion the words brought on with difficulty. Not a reality.