Chapter Text
“H-hey, Chat?”
“Yeah?”
“You’ve… you’ve kissed people before, right?”
It was such an odd question that Chat stopped and stared. “I mean… I guess so? Why?”
Ladybug puffed her cheeks at him, embarrassed, and tightened her grip on the string of her yo-yo where it was secured to the next rooftop. “Just curious.”
“Oh… ‘kay?”
He extended his staff and primed his next jump, but apparently Ladybug wasn’t quite done yet.
“Can…” Chat glanced over and was surprised to find her fidgeting. “Can I ask when your first kiss was?”
He shrugged, watching her wind and unwind the string around her fingers in not-quite-concern. “Sixteen?”
Instead of an explanation, he got an explosive sigh.
“Ooof course you were,” Ladybug grumbled, testing her anchor with a hefty yank. “Figures.”
Chat slowly lowered his staff, collapsing it with an idle thought and the tap of a button. “…Something eating at you, Buginette?”
“Not… really,” she sighed again, avoiding his gaze. “Just…”
“’Just’?”
She bit her lip. “Don’t you think it would be… kind of pathetic for someone who’s almost eighteen to have never kissed anyone before?”
“Nnnno?” Chat dragged out, eyebrows shooting up. “Everyone does this stuff at their own pace. It’s not like there’s a time limit on it or anything.”
Ladybug kicked the ledge in front of her. “I feel pathetic. I’m gonna be eighteen next week, and still…”
Seventeen, he filed away, heart thumping. Seventeen going on eighteen at the end of April. That made her only a few months younger than him, actually. Somehow, he would’ve guessed she’d be older.
…He needed to buy her a birthday gift — and also possibly one for each birthday he’d missed in his ignorance.
Ladybug sighed for the third time and folded her arms. “I mean, between school and the akuma and everything else, I just… didn’t think I had time? But if you’ve done it, then what’s my excuse?”
“Not being ready?” he offered, twirling his staff in his palm. “Not wanting to get into a relationship you didn’t have the time to devote yourself to? That one was a problem for me.”
She made a face. “More like lack of opportunity.”
Chat, the guy who’d been trying to convince her that she had the perfect opportunity with him for quite some time, just stared at her for a moment, and then looked away. “…Or that.”
“I’ve been trying to get my crush to notice me for, like, three years now,” Ladybug groaned, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes. “But I just… can’t.”
…Well, that was something Chat could sympathize with, at least.
He pushed aside the faint hurt with a sigh of his own. “Well, wanting your first kiss to be something special is worth waiting for, isn’t it? That’s not pathetic at all.”
She paused in her digging, but didn’t take her hands away from her eyes. “I… I think I’m done waiting for it to be special.”
A snort punched out of Chat, who was frantically pretending his insides hadn’t decided to start up a swing-dance club. “Frustrated?”
(He had a chance, he had a chance, he just might have a chance! It might not mean anything, and maybe he’d lost his chance for it to mean anything to her, but god oh god—
He had a chance.)
Ladybug pulled her face out of her hands and shot him a wry grin. “You have no idea.”
“Ready for it?” he teased, arms behind his head and stomach in knots.
Please say yes, please say yes, please say—
Hope, Chat was coming to find, was a terrible thing.
“And I say again,” Ladybug said, wry grin taking a turn for the droll as she set her hands on her hips and sighed. “You have no idea.”
Something about the way she said it put a whole slew of images in his head that, to an outside eye, would have been perfectly G-rated — even if the way they made him feel wasn’t particularly G-rated at all.
“Well, you’re in luck,” he said, too loud and much too cavalier as he bent and put his hands on his own hips, and oh god he thought he’d grown out of making a complete fool of himself in front of her.
“I am?” she asked, slanting him a sly little look that made him remember exactly why he used to make such a fool of himself in the first place.
“This cat? Totally down for all of your kissing needs,” he said with a hand over his heart, practically begging her to shut him up, to shoot him down, to do something, anything that would give him back the ability to just stop.
He knew that to this she would say, Oh my god, Chat.
Or, Still? I thought we went over this.
Or, Nice try, kitty.
Or—
“…You would?”
—what.
“Of course,” said Chat’s mouth while the rest of him just staggered. “Who do you think I am?”
‘Sly’ turned into warmly amused and a little shy, and fuck, that was even worse somehow.
“A terrible flirt and a good friend?” she offered, letting her yo-yo string sag as she moved towards him. The way her eyes crinkled at the corners was due to give him heart failure any second now, really. “Who…” She trailed off and glanced away, then back at him even more shyly. “Who might not mind if I’m a little… inexperienced?”
…Chat would very much like to meet the asshole who wouldn’t die for a chance like this, much less mind, so he could punch them in the face.
“And…” She nibbled her lip, now less than a meter away. She shot him another glance, sheepish and hopeful, and Chat pressed the hand already on his chest down a little harder, trying (futilely) to keep his heart where it was. “And who might not mind teaching me the ropes? O-only if you wanted to, of course!”
Being the first person to ever really kiss Ladybug would have been enough, but for her to ask for him to teach her how?
“‘C-course,” he stammered, feeling like he might need a wall to sag against at the very thought; Ladybug asking him how to angle her head and asking if she was doing alright and… “Who would mind?”
She swayed in a little closer, looking even more shy, and Chat sort of gave up on keeping his heart where it was, letting go of his chest so he could rest that hand on her shoulder. Her hands hovered in the space between them, undecided as to whether she wanted to hug herself or rest them on him.
“Not you?”
He cupped her cheek, hating his gloves for depriving him of the feel of her skin. “Definitely not.”
She smiled, soft and sweet and grateful, and if this was a dream, Chat really needed to wake up, because this was giving him terribly unrealistic expectations for reality.
She hummed low in her throat, and tilted her head back in explicit offer, and then, for as many times as he’d thought it in jest, there really was nothing to do but kiss her.
He was burning up where he stood at the first tentative brush of her lips, but he expected that. He was melting at her first happy little sigh, but he expected that too.
And if he was having trouble breathing at the innocence of her movements, at the thought of how much trust she was putting in him for this, well, he hadn’t expected it.
Because, really, who could have expected this?
Be gentle, be careful, keep it chaste and keep it easy, he recited to himself like a mantra, thumbing her cheek and sliding his hands to cup the back of her head, tilting it so he could reach a new angle.
The mantra nearly shattered over the tiny little mewl she made at the shift, restored in an instant at the touch of her hands, which she’d finally decided to rest on his shoulders with so much sweet hesitation the gesture nearly took him out at the knees.
How she’d never kissed anyone like this before was a mystery to him — especially that crush of hers. She was just so much; how he could have passed this up was far, far, far beyond Chat’s ability to comprehend.
She was clumsy and untried but every stroke made her a little more confident, a little more eager, and the noises he was pulling out of her throat were threatening to put him in an early grave. Every soft gasp, unthinking arch, wanting moan put him a little more out of it, made him float a little higher.
He pulled away when he finally couldn’t take any more, his arms twined around her waist and hers around his neck, pressing them together from shoulder-to-knee in a way that let him feel every panting breath, the way her thighs quivered and the way her heart was racing, and oh god he really needed that wall right about now.
“So,” he rasped, too low to even count as a whisper as her lips hovered only centimeters away. “What do you think?”
She blinked slow and heavy-lidded, a dazed little smile on her face that he was probably going to remember for the rest of his life. A moment of hesitation, and then a satisfied little purr and: “…If I said you’re really good at that, would you ever shut up about it?”
Well, seeing as ‘shutting up’ required him to start talking in the first place, Chat had his doubts — he was pretty sure that having air in one’s lungs was necessary for that,
His ego sure appreciated the sentiment, though.
“M-maybe not,” he croaked, shuddering when she traced the edge of one laid-back leather ear.
“Hmm…” She continued to regard him with that smile, and then gave the tip of his ear a sharp tug that went straight to his groin for no other reason than he was already that wound up. “Then is it too early to start asking for remedial lessons? I’m not sure I got all that.”
“Um,” said Chat, the boy due to faint over that smile any second now.
“Pretty please, mon minou?” she whispered, touching kittenish kisses along the line of his jaw and down his throat, little detonations of sparks racing over his skin at every one.
“Um,” said Chat, the boy who didn’t know how to say no to her when she so much as batted her eyelashes, much less did… this.
“I’ll study hard, I promise,” she teased, giving his throat an experimental little lick where she’d made his breath hitch with a kiss.
“God, I’ve unleashed a monster,” Chat only half-moaned, because she chose that moment to suck the spot into her mouth and give it a little nip
Ladybug yanked back, flustered, and Chat couldn’t help the whine of protest that escaped him.
“W-well, you didn’t tell me to stop,” she pointed out, defensive, and Chat watched as a faint look of horror flicked across her expression. “You… you didn’t, right?”
“Now what kind of idiot would ask that?” he wondered, strangled and dazed, pressing a kiss to her forehead and feeling much too full of everything.
He was very firmly not thinking about the moment he’d have to let her go.
Ladybug huffed. “And you still call me a monster.”
He trailed his lips down her temple, unthinking and enchanted by the way she gasped and opened to it. “You’re the cat’s meow, my lady.”
“O-oh,” she fluttered, smoothing her palm over his shoulder and shivering into him. “Good.”
Years worth of suppressed desires were slipping out of him one by one, coaxed out by the fantasy she was painting for him in her soft, happy sighs and warm acceptance — indiscriminate nuzzling as he pulled her closer, closer, closer, kisses down the sides of her face, glancing over the corners of her laughing mouth, whispering you’re so amazing into the crook of her neck like the lovesick fool he was.
“Ch-Chat, I don’t… mmn… I don’t think this is the way… the way kisses normally go… oh…”
Chat’s mind flashed to the lucky bastard who’d spent three years ignoring her, and he tightened his hold. “Anyone who thinks that it isn’t doesn’t deserve you,”
She paused, and then, oddly flustered, whispered, “…Oh.”
She slid her fingers into the strands at his nape and gave them a gentle tug, shooting sparks of restless heat down his spine as she pulled him away from her neck, and then kissed him.
It didn’t last long — just barely long enough for her to prove that she had learned much, just long enough to make Chat’s toes curl in his boots — and then she was pulling away again, squirming out his hold with a blush high in her cheeks and a wrinkle in her brow.
Somehow, he wasn’t sure how, he managed to let her go, the slow removal of her touch feeling like the slow removal of a bandage.
“Th-thanks, Chat,” she said, grin as sheepish as it was heartstopping. “For… for the kiss. And the lessons. And the advice.”
Chat folded his arms in front of his chest, the whole front of him icy in her absence, and hitched up a passably cocky smirk. “Anything for you, my lady.”
She blinked at the much-too-honest note he couldn’t quite remove from his voice, and Chat coughed.
“But. like I said! Totally down for helping you out. Especially with kissing.”
He still sounded too honest, but at least here it just made him sound like a little bit of a perv, not two seconds from tossing his unasked-for heart at her feet.
“Uh-huh…” Ladybug drawled, picking up her yo-yo string again, amused and affectionate. “I’ll… keep that in mind.”
“That’s all I ask,” he said, placing his hand over his faltering heart (oh, that smile), and ducking into a half-bow (he didn’t trust his balance nearly enough to attempt a full one).
Ladybug giggled, light and lilting. “Dork.”
The endearment settled in his bones, and his heart gave a little lurch, like it wanted to throw itself at her feet, unasked for.
“Your dork,” he said, the words flowing out of him easier than they should have, and Ladybug snorted.
“I know.” She tested her line much more loosely than before, like he’d kissed the tension right out of her, and he was still distracted with that when she added, “Goodnight, Chat. Thank you.”
“Goodnight, my lady.”
He waited until she was out of sight to place a hand over his tingling mouth, to contemplate getting back while he felt like he did right then, to sigh, smitten, into the space she’d left behind.
This… this was going to stick with him for a long while, wasn’t it.