To her credit, Marinette got all the way home before she screamed.
Tikki sprang free of the ring in a flash of pink light to congratulate her holder on the battle well fought—
"Well done, Marinette! You did such a good—"
—and was met with a worryingly pale teenager.
That was not the face of a superheroine victorious.
"Um... Marinette?" Tikki tried. She'd been expecting a little bit of a meltdown once the challenge Marinette had issued to Chat sank in, but this was looking dangerously like shock. Her chosen's complexion was edging towards green.
"I... I asked him to..." Marinette croaked.
Oh dear. Tikki had always suspected something would come of Ladybug and Chat Noir's partnership one day (it was common enough, and these two were made for each other), but... perhaps not as explosively as this.
"He said he..." Marinette scrubbed a hand through her hair, rendering her pigtails unrecognizable in seconds as she paced. "He— he said...!"
Tikki bobbed gently in the air and watched in silence, thinking it would be best to give Marinette a few moments to work through things on her own.
"A-a-and I said...!" Marinette gestured violently at the empty space before her (and, presumably, at her perceived sins). "Why?! Why did I say that?!"
Tikki had to hide a smile. She had her theories as to "why".
"And he just—! And I just—!" Marinette ran out of viable words to describe the situation and released a sharp burst of frustrated noise. Then, when that wasn't enough, she took three staggering steps to the right, keeled over onto her lounge, covered her face with a pillow, and screamed.
With a heavy sigh, Tikki waited out the scream, only to squeak and dive for cover when the girl's mother called up in concern from the base of the stairs.
Marinette took a momentary break from screaming to yell back an assurance, before letting loose another, quieter shout into her pillow.
Once it seemed the storm had passed, Tikki cautiously drifted close. "Better?" she ventured, sympathetic.
Marinette popped up like a spring daisy — if spring daisies had mottled flushes and panic-pinched eyes.
"He said he wanted to k-k-k— Tikki!" She whipped around, locks fluttering in the breeze and hair getting more dishevelled by the second. "I said 'make me want to!' What is wrong with me?!"
Now this she could answer!
Tikki took a breath to tell Marinette that there was nothing wrong with her, these things just happened sometimes, but Marinette cut her off.
"'Well, hey there, Ladybug!'" she mocked, an edge of hysteria creeping into her voice as she held up a hand and 'talking' with it. An imitation of Chat, most likely. "'I've actually been trying to get you to notice me for the past two years, you oblivious dumbass!'"
"Aw, Marinette," Tikki managed to interject. "I'm sure he doesn't think tha-"
"'Wow, Chat Noir!'" Marinette steamrollered on, yanking her other hand from under the pillow and using it to symbolize herself. "'I never would have guessed! Here—'" She brought her two talking hands together until the fingertips almost touched "'—let me get in your face and dare me to make me fall in love with you in a month! It's not like I'm wasting a ton of your time because I'm not actually interested in you or anything!'"
Tikki took in the flustered mess of a teenage girl and thought, I wonder.
Aloud, she said, "It's not so bad..."
Marinette gave her an exceptionally flat look and made more talking motions with her 'Ladybug' hand. "'By the way, let's meet up tomorrow for patrol. What's patrol? We don't know yet, but we'll figure it out! It's not like our enemies just show up wherever and whenever they want to and then announce their thieving intentions to the world or anything.'"
"Look on the bright side," Tikki suggested, ever the optimist. "It might be fun!"
(How much fun patrol would be, Tikki didn't know; but she knew these two, and she was sure they'd find a way to make it useful.)
(...It remained to be seen how much damage there'd be to clean up afterwards.)
Marinette sagged, letting her head fall back onto the pillow with a quiet fwump! Tikki thought she could make out something like I'm going to die from the ensuing moan.
She hovered by the fluffy, disheveled head of her holder in silent solidarity and idly wondered if Plagg's human was taking the arrangement any better.
"Patrol, patrol, patrol, patrol, patrol..." Adrien muttered feverishly, pacing the length of his room with the entire contents of his wardrobe laid out around him. "What should I wear to patrol?"
Plagg, cheese in hand (a bribe of silence the kwami had been perfectly happy to take), surveyed the damage.
Romance novels had been taken down from the upper shelves of Adrien's collection and scattered around the room, mostly piled on and around the bed. Clothing was strewn haphazardly over and between the books, over the couch, and on arcade machines — and included everything from dress shirts to parachute pants. Magazines (ordered online only hours earlier) lay only half-unpacked from the industrial sized boxes they'd been delivered in, adding to the chaos of the mess.
Plagg tossed the cheese up and devoured it in one gulp — if there was no bribe, there was no need for silence; let it never be said that Plagg was a dishonorable cat — then floated down to his holder's eye level, dodging a flying Vogue centerfold spread on his way down.
"Listen, kid," Plagg said, trying to get the kid's attention before he said anything important. Witticisms always lost their shine on the second or third repetition. "I'm not sure what you're planning to wear to patrol, but..."
Adrien looked over his shoulder, holding a Hawaiian polo in one hand and a truly horrendous gold-sequined body-sock in the other. Both had last been seen at the bottom of Adrien's costume trunk, and Plagg wished they'd stayed there and spared the room the reminder of their existence.
"I don't think either of those are gonna help you leap buildings."
The mania that had gripped his charge since they'd gotten back finally seemed to ease. Adrien blinked like he was waking up, then down at the... garments in his hands, then back at Plagg with something like embarrassment.
"...Fine feathers?" he tried, holding up the body-sock.
To his great disgust, Plagg was forced to acknowledge that the purpose of the garish sequins was to outline two cartoony 'angel wings.'
He wasn't, however, forced to deign the excuse with a response, so he didn't.
"It's just a patrol," he said instead, because, seriously, patrols were one of the most boring things in existence, right after daytime television. "What are you gonna do? Show off your amazing staying-awake skills?"
The glint of mania reentered Adrien's eye.
"Which was a joke, by the way," Plagg tacked on smoothly. "Seriously, kid. Chill."
Adrien sighed heavily, tossing the outfits aside and sitting on the only uncovered corner of his bed.
"I don't have time to chill," he groaned, scrubbing his scalp. "I have a month. And I don't have a clue."
Plagg snorted. "You got that right."
"Are you going to help or not?" Adrien snapped, apparently having reached the end of his rope.
Plagg took pity on the kid. He was a good kid who had good morals: he hadn't attempted murder even once thus far in his run as Chat Noir, incidents of possession aside. He even worked together with Ladybug and everything! Most importantly, he was both willing and able to cater to Plagg's cheese cravings. Plagg could spare a little sympathy.
Fishing around in his memory, he suggested, "Buy her flowers or something. Ladybugs love flowers."
The kid, Bast help him, just looked confused. "Don't you mean girls love flowers?"
"No."
(He had never once met a Ladybug that didn't like flowers, and whether that was intentional on the chooser's parts or simple luck, it was a constant that had held true since Mesopotamia — Ladybugs loved flowers.)
When no further elaboration appeared to be forthcoming, Adrien let it go with a quiet sigh. Then, worryingly, he began to grin.
"Plagg, you're a genius!" With that, he leaped to his feet and dove for his phone. Literally dove, as his foot landed on a stray issue of Cosmopolitan, sending both himself and the magazine flying.
Plagg winced.
The kid hit the floor bouncing, like any good cat, but kept moving, snatching up the gadget and swiping impatiently at the screen before he'd even righted himself.
Plagg sighed inwardly. So much left to teach this kitten about grace and poise. And here he'd thought he wouldn't have those problems with a model. This one was nearly as bad as Heracles.
Still, he watched the proceedings with amusement, trepidation, and affected disinterest.
At the very least, this month was going to be good blackmail material.
Ladybug arrived to their arranged meeting place exactly five minutes early to find that Chat was already there.
She swallowed her nerves (shit, what have I gotten him into), steadied her voice, and greeted him with a cheery, "Hello! Waiting long?"
He whipped around and are those flowers-
"Hello, my lady!" chirped Chat. He attempted to hide the (massive) bouquet behind his back and ended up resembling a peacock instead. She didn't know how it had taken her so long to notice the thing. "Looking radiant, as always."
What have I gotten myself into?
"...Thank you."
Ladybug eyed the bright yellow column flower that was drooping squarely between Chat's ears and made the executive decision to ignore the bouquet until he brought it up.
"A-anyway!" Chat stuttered (...stuttered?), shifting his weight and avoiding her eye. "I was wondering..."
He trailed off, falling silent and leaving Ladybug to fill in the blanks.
...'Wondering?' What would Chat be wondering about? The bet? No, they'd sorted that out last time.
But they hadn't sorted out patrol.
"Right," Ladybug said, mystery solved. "I was wondering about patrol too, actually."
"...Uh."
"I mean, what times should we patrol? How often?" Ladybug warmed up to the concept immediately. She helped out whenever she saw citizens in need, but it put her in a crunch on busier days. Having time set aside purely to get out and help would be nice. "Every day might be a bit much, but once a week doesn't sound like enough..."
"...Right, patrol," Chat sighed under his breath. Then, in a normal voice, he said, "What about twice a week? Or three times a week?"
"Three times a week might be hard to swing, once we're back in school," she pointed out, idly wondering why Chat perked up at that. "Two is good."
There was a brief but spirited debate on which days to patrol, after which they tentatively settled on Monday and Thursday evenings — the weekends were no good because of her parents and the bakery, Chat was booked for things just about every day except (oddly) Thursdays, she didn't want to overbook her Fridays but patrol might be just the thing to unwind after Monday stress, et cetera.
"So..." Chat started as Ladybug happily inserted the times into her mental calendar and wondered what she was missing. "About tomorrow—"
"Routes!" Ladybug yelped, accidentally cutting Chat off. "We haven't figured out where we're going to go patrol... Sorry, were you saying something?"
"...Nothing important," he sighed, looking rueful. He shifted his weight again and the bouquet wrapping crinkled. "I think we should try to check up on the banks at the times we're patrolling."
Ladybug tore her eyes away from the gargantuan floral arrangement (it was like three Chats across, how had he even gotten it here?) and dragged him into another debate, this time on their patrolling goals and how best (and where best) to achieve them.
The sun had sunk well below the horizon before they managed to sort any of it out, and they'd been forced to move to the golden light of a nearby open-air café.
Ladybug slammed her third cup of hot chocolate down and sighed. "Maybe we should just... agree to disagree."
"We could do alternating days? Your route Monday and my route Thursday?" Chat offered, and gulped down the rest of his mocha. It was his first mocha but his fifth drink — and every drink had been different, except for the single constant of being very caffeinated. Ladybug had long since given up wondering where it all went. "Or we could just wander around the city until we figure it out."
The bouquet sat in the third seat like a royal guest of honor, or maybe sagged like an exhausted third wheel. Ladybug could empathize.
More out of resignation than because she thought it was a good idea, Ladybug conceded with, "Yeah, wandering sounds good."
Chat beamed, horribly chipper. His ears were only now beginning to twitch with the sheer volume of stimulants he'd ingested.
Ladybug harrumphed.
She was confident they'd come to the same conclusion eventually (they usually did), but in the meantime...
"Pat-rollll," Chat cooed, stretching his arms above is head and rocking his chair back to an heart-stopping angle.
Ladybug hooked her ankle around the bottom rung and slammed him back down before he could fall and crack his head open or something.
"Careful!" she hissed.
Chat looked horribly unrebuked. He used the momentum she'd given him to slide forward on his elbows, squishing up his grinning face with his knuckles and just... beaming at her.
Against her will, Ladybug felt her heart pitter-patter.
"Don't give me that look," she sniped, readjusting her tenuous grip on her annoyance.
"Hello," he singsonged through the grin, stretched half across the table and not budging an inch.
"...Hi," said Ladybug at her flattest.
"You're cute," he continued, not sarcastic or insincere in the least, and folded his arms on the table to look up at her through pale eyelashes with his most charming grin.
She choked on her tongue.
Cute?
"Wh-wha...?" she squeaked, feeling heat crawl up the back of her neck. Nonononono, don't blush at this idiot. "Chat!"
"Will you go on a date with me?"
Ladybug blinked. Nervous giggles bubbled up in her throat, more surprised than amused.
Chat's ears drooped, and her gut clenched. He started to withdraw, glancing around as if for escape. "S-sorry, I've just been trying to ask all day, and I thought, because of the bet..."
The bet.
She'd forgotten about the bet.
She narrowly avoided smacking the heel of her palm against her forehead.
How could she have forgotten about the bet?
"Of course," she said, interrupting the stream of babble and leaning forward to mirror his position. She couldn't quite bring herself to tap his nose, though she wanted to, and just gave him a little grin instead. "It... it sounds like fun."
Hearing Chat's sharp intake of breath made her realize that she was close enough to hear it, and she jerked back, feeling her cheeks and forehead grow as hot as her neck.
She was still able to hear him swallow.
"G-great!" Chat exhaled shakily, grinning bright and relieved, and Ladybug's stomach clenched.
Nope, nope, nope, not doing this now, nope-
"So!" she said, a tad too loud. She pushed through her embarrassment and continued in a much more normal tone, "What's with the flowers?"
Inwardly, she started banging her head against the nearest hard surface. Of all the subject changes in the world...
Chat - and there was no other word for it, really - bounced up, approaching the third member of their party with a motion that was more up-and-down than horizontal momentum.
Ladybug eyed the selection of empty cups scattered across the table and wondered if she should've stopped him at two.
Gathering up the bundle of flora, he took two steps and knelt at her feet, presenting her with the bouquet as he did so. From somewhere behind the monstrous arrangement, Chat cleared his throat.
"This is a poor tribute to your beauty, my lady, but I offer it with... with an open—"
"Pffft!"
"...My lady?"
Ladybug scooped the flowers up, battling giggles as she did so. "I love it. Thank you."
Chat had to help her, and she had to hold it at an awkward angle over her shoulder if she wanted to see around it, but finally she officially received her gift.
"...Maybe a smaller one next time..." Chat mused, touching a slightly wilted bloom with a small wince.
('Next time,' her brain happily echoed, dancing around the thought and making her ears flush too, to her distress.
She'd expected him to ask her out! She'd expected him to get her flowers! Why, oh why did she keep blushing?!)
"So, date!" And wow she continued to pick just the best changes of subject! "Does tomorrow work for you?"
And why on earth did she pick tomorrow? There was no way she'd be prepared by tomorrow! In any way!
Chat looked a little caught off guard (welcome to the party, partner — we have drinks and a weighty sense of impending doom), but rallied admirably. He dropped a little bow. "But of course! Dinner at eight?"
"That sounds lovely," said Ladybug's mouth. Her limbs forced her into a jerky bow around the bouquet. "Meet at the Eiffel Tower?"
It was laughable just how much easier this was than sorting out patrol. Sort of like pushing a car that wouldn't start uphill, and then letting it roll downhill only to realize it didn't have any brakes and there was a mother with a stroller crossing the street right in front of it.
"I'll see you there," he assured her with one of his ridiculous bows, this one even more flourished than they normally were.
Oh god, this is ridiculous.
Off in the distance, church bells rang.
Ladybug veritably pounced on the excuse. "And with that, I'd better get these flowers home."
Chat sprang out of his bow, looking a little put out. "But, patrol...?"
She shot a meaningful glance at the excess of plant matter in her arms, and he looked sheepish.
"R-right."
She took pity.
"Maybe no more flowers on patrol," she suggested wryly, smiling, and she swore Chat blushed.
Right, nope, didn't need to think about that.
Three hasty steps backward and a "So, I'll see you tomorrow!" just earned her another smile (ugh) and a wave.
"Tomorrow," Chat promised, warm and bright and happy and Ladybug needed to leave right now, immediately.
So, after stumbling another five steps back and lassoing a nearby parapet, she did.
(She stopped halfway home to properly examine the gorgeous flowers, burying her face in the delicate petals and breathing in the intoxicating perfume to try to distract herself from her racing thoughts.
The only thing it did was bring Chat's hope, Chat's feelings, Chat's smile to the forefront of her mind.
Really, what had she gotten them into?)