By the time she reached the roof of Notre Dame, spotting her partner vaulting atop the roof, she had an idea in mind.

Much as it pained her.

Puns.

Chat Noir was an absolute sucker for puns. Good puns, bad puns. Playing on every sort of word in his surprisingly expansive vocabulary. He dropped them at nearly every opportunity, and his face lit up whenever she'd bantered right back.

It was a guaranteed success.

Marinette dropped down onto her bed with a flomp, letting Tikki come up to cuddle her face as her transformation faded in a wash of pink.

Her hand dropped over her face dramatically.

Tikki exhaled, watching the range of emotions play out over her chosen's features. "Marinette. Don't you think you're making too much of this?"

The girl grumbled. "How can I not? This should have been easy..."

And yet, she had failed. Utterly.

Somehow, she managed to avoid to find a pun that didn't make her want to plant her own face into the nearest light pole - of which where were a surprising number within the City.

They'd managed to go through well over half of the patrol in relative silence before she'd even had the slightest bit of a reasonable idea.

Ladybug had to admit her clever kitten had a knack for clever wordplay, but darn it if wasn't hard to come up with something clever on the spot, especially where there was so much riding on it.

He'd grown anxious, breaking through the silence himself. "Something on your mind, Bugaboo?"

She had snorted, letting the momentum and muscle memory carry through the rest of her swing. "Just a little too much of a good swing."

"Ah!" Did you just pun?" Chat's eyes widened, his too bright teeth fairly glimmering in the dark. "That's puntastic!"

He fairly danced around her, dropping down from the pole to alight onto the next roof. His excitement was almost puppyish in how little he could contain it.

"Now tell me. How did I finally convert you?" His eyebrows waggled. "Did you finally manage to fall for my charms after all?"

With a sigh, she dropped onto the roof as her yo-yo dropped it's hold, the string magically spiralling back into the red base. All of this and he still wasn't laughing. "Ah. Swing and a miss, Chaton."

He dropped down beside her, glowing green eyes full of unasked questions and concern.

She smiled a little too brightly. "Don't worry, Chaton. It's not your vault."

Chat Noir smirked at that, shaking his head dolefully. "I really do have so much to teach you."

"Au contraire, mon chaton," Ladybug pushed him away by the nose, wincing slightly as the chirp of her earrings let her know that Tikki was ready to turn in for the night. "I think you might be the one with quite a bit to learn."

The barest hint of a frown crossed over his face, before he tipped his fingers to his head in mock salute. "I look forward to it, my Lady."

Scrambled to the other end of the roof to head home, Ladybug had dared to peer back, catching his brazen wink.

That cat just thought he was sooo clever.

Marinette grumbled, tugging her covers up over in head as if that would block out her own embarrassment.

Her eyes narrowed as she stared up at the shade of the covers. This is what came out of poor planning.

She would be better prepared next time.

Author's Notes:

Little by little, I'm getting back into the swing of things. ;)

I'm not even going to guess how many chapters this one might end up being since I was so wrong on the Crime prompt. :D