Rating: K+/soft T

16: Upside-Down Kiss

"Well, that was pointless."

Together, Ladybug and Chat Noir watched the circus pack up from the top of a nearby building, each nursing their dignity after finding out the true nature of the 'akuma' they'd pursued halfway across Paris.

"Not so pointless," Chat proposed, holding up a finger.

Ladybug cocked her head, curious.

"You're here, I'm here, and we've got the whole night ahead of us," he pointed out. He made a gesture with his Miraculous-hand (a full paw–neither of them had had need to use either of their signature moves), hopeful little grin lighting his eyes.

Ladybug's stomach fluttered.

"What are you suggesting?" she asked, going for 'casual' and achieving 'mildly annoyed.'

Oops.

(Why was her voice always the first thing to go around people she found attractive.)

(…and didn't it just bite that Chat, ridiculous, flirty, silly Chat, had been moved into that category.)

He grinned, completely unaffected. "Patrol!"

"Patrol." Ladybug actually meant to sound unimpressed that time. Patrol for what?

"Patrol for akuma!" he said, answering her unspoken question with a grandiose gesture as he turned and strutted to the edge of the roof.

"Patrol for akuma," she parroted flatly, following the shift of the muscles in his back almost unwillingly. (Almost being the key word there.)

"We need to keep the city safe, my lady," he reminded her, carefully careless, charming grin tossed over his shoulder like it was nothing.

She folded her arms against the traitorous thump of her heart. "And you think patrolling will help."

"Of course," he said, mock debonair, putting his hands on his hips. "How else will we find them?"

By listening for the screams, like they always did?

He wasn't even trying to convince her that akuma were his true reason.

He didn't give her a chance to voice either thought.

"Race you to the 'tower!" he called out gleefully, backing up and taking a running leap over the edge of the roof.

"Wha- hey!" she squawked, stamping her foot in pique. "Get back here! That's cheating!"

His laughter echoed back to her through the onset of dusk.

She charged after him after only the barest of hesitations, failing to convince herself that she was actually annoyed. Her face ached from smothering her own grin and her feet may as well have had wings for how light they were and her stomach bubbled warm like she'd drunk a glass of champagne, and, she couldn't lie, it all felt just a little like infatuation.

She saw the slip coming from a mile away.

Really, what did her kitty expect with his luck, walking on his hands along the narrow peak of the roof, showing off like that? He wasn't even pretending this was patrol anymore.

It was a good thing she saw it, too, because that way she was prepared with yo-yo in hand when he fell, snagging his bicep with a neat toss so she could guide his fall to the side of the roof rather than letting him snap his neck on the ridge.

He skidded backwards down the shingles, yelping.

She released his arm only when she was sure he'd stopped, head dangling over the edge but otherwise supported by the roof. Then, she secured her line on the spire of the roof perpendicular to them, and swung over to him, bracing her legs against the wall of the building below him.

She wrapped her line around her arm to take the stress off her hands, and leaned over him, eyes narrowed. "This is what you get for showing off, you know."

"Thanks for the save," he greeted her, grateful and sheepish, bringing her attention to the fact that their faces were only about a foot apart..

She leaned back and looked away, stomach twisting up in warm little knots. "Anytime, Chat."

He sighed peacefully and made no move to get up, wild energy apparently eaten by his near-death-experience.

She tipped her head back to join him in looking at the midnight sky.

"The stars are beautiful tonight," she noted, smiling at the ones she could see through Paris's light pollution.

"Not as beautiful as your eyes."

She glanced down in surprise, to find him looking up at her with something that looked dangerously like sincerity in his eyes.

Her stomach jolted pleasantly.

When had his flirtations started working? she wondered helplessly, hoping that the night was enough to hide her blush.

When had his bad puns become the only surefire way to cheer her up? When had his swagger gone from eyeroll-worthy to cute, attractive even? When had his proximity started to make her pulse race? When had she started wanting to kiss him? When had her heart surrendered?

But he wasn't serious was a fact that she had to remind herself of almost daily. He was never serious. He fired off lines like that to anyone he deemed even somewhat attractive. It wasn't anything special that he'd said it to her. It wasn't.

(She thought that maybe he'd been serious, once upon a time, but that time had come and gone and her heart gotten with the program what felt like only seconds too late.)

"Is that your way of asking for a kiss?" she teased, discreetly swallowing the lump in her throat.

He grinned a playful, upside-down grin at her. "My lady, I would never. That would be downright gauche."

She snorted and rolled her eyes. She could recall once or twice…

"However," he continued, raising his voice over the objection in her head. "If, and only if my lady so desires, I certainly wouldn't say no."

He topped it with a wink and tipped his head back to her, mouth offered.

She stared at the playful little smirk tucked into the corners of his mouth and wanted.

What was the worst that could happen? whispered her vices, her demons, her advocates.

The worst that could happen? she demanded of them. He could laugh at her. He could mock her. He could reject her utterly, ruining their friendship forever!

But even as she thought these things, she knew they weren't true. Chat wasn't the type. Truly the worst that would happen would be for her to end up spilling her heart and for him to, kindly but firmly, turn her down.

He wasn't serious, but he'd treat her seriously.

He wasn't serious, she realized suddenly, so maybe she didn't need to be either.

Just one kiss.

That's all she really wanted.

(That was a lie, but it was a nice one, so she let it be, and repeated it to herself a few times for good measure.)

She leaned in and pressed her mouth to his before she could lose her nerve.

He gasped, noise muffled by her lips, and it felt like a rush in her veins. She cupped the back of his head, pressed a little closer to kiss him a little better, a little deeper, needing this, needing him, just needing.

The shift in angle brought the top of his head to rest against her breasts, she noted distantly, fumbling around the mechanics of kissing upside-down. She wasn't very experienced in kissing in general, much less from an angle as odd as this.

His mouth moved slowly under hers, against hers, an automatic response or an intentional one, she didn't know, but it warmed and fizzed in the pit of her belly either way.

After an eternal moment, she broke the kiss.

She then had to wonder if she'd made a very large mistake. All she wanted to do now was kiss him again. And again. And again and again and again and…

"Careful, kitty," she breathed against his lips as she pulled away. "Tease like that and someone just might take you seriously one day."

And then you just might ruin them.

She let go of his head and swung herself up to land on the roof beside him in one smooth motion, not daring to look at his face, and sauntered to the edge that led to another rooftop close enough to jump.

"L-Ladybug?!"

She quickly stuffed any emotion that might have been showing on her face into a little box in her head entitled 'deal with later.' and turned to look at her partner.

He was bug-eyed with shock, scrambling to sit upright on his precarious perch, heedless of the danger. "Wh-what was…?"

Blushing. He was blushing. Her dork of a partner was blushing. Blushing hard enough to be seen in the low lamplight from the street below.

Ladybug felt something white-hot burst in her chest. Something that felt a lot like potential.

All of her bravado fled in an instant.

"A warning," she said, licking the corner of her lip with a wink and praying it hid her sudden panic. "Race you to the Louvre!"

And, with that, she took a running leap over the edge, latching her yo-yo line midair.

"Wha- hey!" he yelped after her. "Ge-get back here! That's cheating!"

Maybe she'd been lying to herself when she'd called this feeling infatuation, she thought, even as she laughed at his alley-cat yowl fading into the night behind her.