Disclaimer: I do not own Miraculous Ladybug or the Miraculous Ladybug characters
But I do own the dialogue/plot in this chapter and all the chapters afterwards unless otherwise specified.
CRASH
"Tikki, hide," Marinette hissed from where she was sat at her sewing desk. They'd just finished a long and arduous conversation about, well, about the person Marinette was fairly sure had just crash landed on her roof. She did hope that it wasn't her petunias the cat had knocked over and that he'd just clipped the begonias instead. Tikki was deeply disapproving of any type of deception except for when it was used to hide Marinette's superhero identity and had made that exceedingly clear. Several times. And while Marinette loved Tikki dearly, she could not be held accountable for her actions if Tikki kept on yapping about responsibility and unfair bargains.
"Princess, your knight in shining armour awaits," Chat called from the roof.
Taking care to ensure the macarons stayed on the plate they were precariously balanced on, Marinette rose inch by inch up the ladder, opened the trapdoor and consequently screamed, threw the macarons into the air and slipped and fell back down onto her bed. Chat's face loomed above her through the trap door and she shivered. His face had been far too close to hers for comfort.
"Sorry if I scared you," Chat apologised sheepishly, rubbing his hand against the back of his neck, " I hadn't realised you'd be coming up and um… well a pigeon flew past and it just looked so tasty and I mean I couldn't really help it and I just sort of started stalking it?" Marinette erupted into laughter. She just couldn't help it when he was looking so ashamed about admitting that he'd been stalking a pigeon.
"Hey! It wasn't that hissterical…" but Marinette knew Chat didn't mean it when he pouted and then broke out laughing as well. She climbed back up to the rooftop.
"So apart from stalking pigeons," Marinette muffled a few giggles with her jacket sleeve, "and chatting to civilians on rooftops, what do mighty superheroes such as yourself do for fun?"
Chat still looked slightly mock offended, but replied, "Well I'll have you know I'm an excellent model." And struck a pose so outrageous that Marinette nearly choked on one of the macarons she'd managed to salvage. "However, I also save damsels in distress in my free time." He looked far too smug.
"And let me guess? You go to clown school in the few precious hours you have in-between all these other hobbies," Marinette returned with a grin.
"I'm wounded Princess, absolutely devastated, your words cut me deeper than a knife! You have purrpetrated a terrible crime here tonight!" Marinette smiled at the dramatics. It was far too easy to bait Chat.
"Tell you what, I'll make it up to you with a macaron."
"Didn't you throw them here, there and everywhere when I startled you? Are these floor macarons you are offuring me?"
"Ew. No. Gross. These are the few remaining survivors that stayed on the plate," Marinette responded, pulling a face to let Chat know exactly how disgusting the idea of floor macarons was. It was startling how easily she and Chat had slipped into their customary banter even though as far as he knew, they had only met once or twice. It was nice, to be able to talk to him without worrying if anything she said would make him think she liked him or whether he would confess his love and make everything awkward. It was relaxing actually.
Chat leaned forward and stole one of the macarons off of the plate. "What do you do in your free time? When you aren't feeding strays?" Marinette's smile grew wider at the self-deprecating joke.
"Nothing nearly as exciting as modelling," she said, "but I do like designing the clothes that they wear."
"Oh, right, I can't believe I'd forgotten about that," Chat muttered.
"How could you have forgotten it? It's not like I mentioned it when we were fighting off the evillustrator…"
"Umm, well, er, I um saw that you'd won that Gabriel Agreste hat design competition," he mentioned, rubbing his hand behind his neck again. "You were really good."
"Thanks, but it was such a small scale competition! I'm sure it wasn't that good," Marinette laughed deprecatingly. Chat just looked at her askance.
"Suure." Sarcasm emanated from every pore in his body.
"Anyway, you wanted to pretend we were dating," she prompted.
"You say that as if I'm the only one in this relationship!" Chat responded, eyes wide in mock terror.
"Haha very funny. I think we should have some ground rules."
"What kind of rules could possibly be necessary? We go on dates and say we're each other's boyfriend or girlfriend. It's not furry complicated."
"That," Marinette pointed at him with a biro she'd had tucked behind her ear, "just shows that you have not watched enough rom-coms. There always need to be rules when you start fake dating." She adjusted the emergency notepad/sketchbook she'd pulled out of her purse.
"Rule 1: You can't flirt with Ladybug during akuma attacks."
"Rule 2: You have to make an attempt to talk purroperly to the guy you like." Chat grabbed the notepad and biro and wrote it down in his awful scrawly handwriting. It honestly looked like dead spiders pressed on a page.
"What! That's not fair! It's not like I can control it!"
"The rules are the rules," he responded smoothly.
"Well then Rule 3 is that… umm…"
"Rule 3 is that you can't, whatever you do, fall in love with me," Chat declared.
"That won't be a problem!" Marinette spluttered. "Ahah! Rule 4: You have to let me pay for at least half of the dates!" She would have tried to pay for all of them, but she knew her kitty would never let that stand.
"What! No no no, that's not fair! Purrincess," he whined.
"The rules are the rules," she said, mimicking Chat's earlier smug remark. He sat sulking and pouting with his tail wrapped round his body.
"Rule 5: I get to meet your parents. I feel awkward sneaking up here without them knowing."
"That is the worst idea in the history of ideas. Nope, nope, no. They are so embarrassing."
"Don't be a scaredy-cat!"
"Um well. Rule 6: No erm.. inappropriate touching.." Marinette felt blood rush to cheeks despite her best efforts and Chat's face lit up fire engine red too. He fell backwards over his tail in his haste to be a few steps away from her. Neither of then looked at each other for a full ten seconds.
"That wasn't going to be a problem." Chat finally said, a little icily.
"I know you're a gentleman! I wasn't doubting your honour or anything!" Marinette cried out hurriedly, "I'm just not… I don't want to have to kiss in the name of the fake relationship." This was one of the things she hadn't even thought about till Tikki had brought it up in a vain attempt to stop Marinette's 'latest crazy plan' (Tikki's phrasing not Marinette's). Marinette had nearly resolved to call the whole thing off, when she realised that Chat would never do anything like that unless she was fine with it. He was a perfect gentleman through and through. She just wanted to … clarify … that there would not be anything like that happening. Just so they were on the same page.
"Ok. Yeah. How are we going to be a convincing couple? If we exclude PDA and I erm.. agree with you that we shouldn't because I'm not quite comfortable with that either." Marinette honestly wanted to curl up into a hole and die. Chat's words were forced and stilted and they could still barely look each other in the eye. At least she knew the answer to his question. She'd done a bit of planning last night after Tikki had finished lecturing her (Tikki had given many different lectures).
"I thought we could use pet names. Like you call me princess."
"That isn't a pet name!" Chat responded, incredulous.
"Noo, but it could be. I just have to figure out what to call you. Any ideas?"
"Handsomest boyfriend ever?" Chat replied, flexing his - admittedly well-toned – muscles.
"Nooo. I want something I can actually say without throwing up." Marinette stuck her tongue out, glad that they were no longer being awkward.
"Honeypie? Cutie? Sweetcheeks?" Chat suggested.
"Oh god no," Marinette shuddered, "never in a million years. I'd rather call you alley cat or moggy."
"I'm offended. I will have you know that I am a most respectable and well bred cat. Pedigree if you will!"
"Okayyyy. I'll call you kitty instead. Mon chaton." Marinette decided.
"That… is disgustingly sweet."
"Ok. With that settled, we can move on to creating a backstory, so that if we get asked about how we started dating we have a response."
"Do you have notes on what we need to cover? Because there's organised and then there's micro-managing. And I didn't take you to be particularly organised considering the state of your room."
"That was an unnecessary remark and yes I do have notes thank you very much."
"So… you were saying we needed a hisstory…" Marinette chose not to remark on the pun. Taking a deep breath, she replied:
"Yes exactly that, and I'm stumped as to how a civilian and a superhero could start dating, especially considering I don't know your civilian identity." She looked at her kitty from the corner of her eye. The civilian identity was going to be a sensitive topic, and she didn't want to tell people she knew his identity because they'd try to pressure her into telling them, Alya in particular, and this was going to be stressful enough as it was. And she wouldn't go out with someone without knowing who they were. She just wouldn't. This would be totally out of character for her. It was one of the reasons she had refused Chat again and again, because it was too dangerous to reveal their identities and what type of a relationship could they have if they didn't even know what the other looked like without a mask?
"I hadn't thought of that. We could just say I met you through the bakery, because I do tend to frequent it. Oh! And we could have a coffee shop style story where you were the one who served me and I slowly fell in love with your quick wit and you were charmed by my never-ending ocean of cat puns."
"How much fanfiction do you read?"
"Uh, well I don't tell many people this, but I'm actually a bit of a nerd. I want to be a purrfessor when I grow up and everything."
"Chat Noir. Can I just tell you that your nerd vibes are visible from the moon? Because no one who isn't a massive nerd can litter their speech effortlessly with puns."
"Don't think I didn't spot what you did there! Does this make you a massive nerd too?" he teased, a relentless grin spreading across his face in the distinct expression he had that Marinette had chosen to name 'someone-else-just-made-a-pun-I'm-not-the-only-nerd-here'. It was a distinctly adorable expression, she had to admit.
"Yes, yes, I am a nerd too. A massive nerd, but you are a massiv-er one!" she giggled.
"So where are we going for our first date? Somewhere in the middle of the public eye so that it gets back to Ladybug?"
"Uhuh, umm sure. Let me check something quickly." Marinette disappeared into her bedroom. Once she had made sure that Chat couldn't see her, she unwound Adrien's schedule from her ceiling and started making a list of the times he would be available and would be around to see her and Chat on a date. There was a promising slot after his fencing on Friday that was free, so she scribbled a star next to it. There was a beautiful coffee shop there that they could have a date in and as a plus it had lovely large windows or an option to sit outside if it was sunny weather.
When she reappeared, Chat had taken to cloud gazing and was humming something under his breath.
"Are you free on Friday at 4:45? There's a quaint coffee shop – if you're so insistent on a coffee shop au style romance – with big windows just by Collège Françoise Dupont. It's called le bec absurde, do you know it?" Marinette inquired.
"Uh yeah! That sounds brilliant. I might be a bit late because I have an … appointment that ends at 4: 40, but it's really nearby so I should be fine."
"It's a date." Marinette announced, dissolving into helpless giggles, "and after that date, you are coming here and we are watching a fake dating rom-com, because you have clearly not watched enough."
"I don't think I get a choice in this, do I?"
"Nope."
"Purrfect," Chat said, rolling both his 'r's and his eyes, "I will see you for coffee on Friday and don't say a word to anyone beforehand. Unless you want to tell your best friend that you're going on a date, that way it's more believable, right?"
"No, because we're pretending we've been keeping it a secret for a while now. It wouldn't make any sense. And I am nowhere near prepared for the interrogation I'll be sure to receive when I tell Alya about this. I'll be putting that off for as long as possible. I'll see you on Friday then."
"Ok, well, bye."
"Bye."
"I'll see you soon then."
"Oh my word, just go already you silly kitty! I know you have an appointment you've got to get to. You mentioned it earlier remember? Said you couldn't stay long? Goooo. Shooo. Or I won't feed any strays that crash land into my flowers next time they come."
"I'm going, I'm going!" but the silly kitten still looked back over his shoulder before he bounced away through Paris, back to wherever he was meant to be. Marinette smiled softly to herself. Her chaton was too cute for words. When she finally went back to her bedroom, Tikki was already asleep, despite it not even being time for dinner yet. There was no hope to make up after last night's argument yet. Tikki was only looking out for Marinette, she knew that, but it didn't change the fact that this was a good thing. Tikki just couldn't see it.
A/N:
And they start planning… and Tikki gets more and more ammunition for that inevitable 'I told you so' although I like to think she'll keep it to herself. (She probably won't). And next time on "A Story of Questionable Decisions" we have their first date, a double helping of oblivious Adrien and a suspicious Alya (And also kind of suspicious Nino)!