Chapter Text
It wasn't a patrol night.
Chat Noire was out anyways, leaping over rooftops and testing the limits of her physical abilities. Double backflips, front handsprings, split leaps - her miraculous let her do moves she didn't even know the names of.
She finished with a floor routine that would make an Olympic gymnast jealous. Hands in the air, cool wind playing with her braid, the sound of clapping off to the side.
She turned sharply, relaxing when she spotted Wonder Bug. He continued clapping from where he sat, on a raised ledge at the edge of the roof, laughing when she bowed exaggeratedly.
"Excellent performance," he praised as she approached. "A ten from the French judge."
Chat chuckled as she plopped down next to him. "Sounds like the gold medal is mine."
"I got a notification from the WonderBlog that you were spotted out and about," he said, leaning back on his hands. "If you're doing gymnastics, I'm guessing there's no emergency?"
"Nope," she said, popping the 'p'. "I just needed to get out for a bit."
"Mmm. I get that."
She studied him for a minute. Her partner seemed so relaxed most of the time - where she overthought everything, he jumped straight into battle. Where she planned out the timing and delivery of her attacks, he dodged akumas like a child playing a game with his friends. He could be serious, even angry at times, but most of the time he seemed so easygoing and carefree. There were thousands of pictures of him on the Wonderblog, confidently posing in front of his fans, in a crowd of reporters, or in the middle of a battle. With his wild blond hair, bright green eyes, and black-and-red paneled suit, he was like the poster child for super-heroism.
"You get...restless in your civilian life?" she asked. He tilted his head to one side, and she rushed to clarify: "Normally when I'm stressed, I have a creative outlet that helps me work out all of my anxious energy. But sometimes there's a kind of restlessness that doesn't go away until I put on the suit, you know?"
He nodded all through her explanation. "Absolutely."
Chat bumped her shoulder into his. "You never seem anxious, Bug. Between the two of us, I'm definitely the nervous wreck."
He snorted. "I'm good at repressing things. Good at - good at masks, I guess." Chat frowned, but before she could say anything, he continued: "But it's not anxiety that drives me to transform most of the time. It's more like..." he grappled with the words for a moment. "I can feel trapped in my civilian life, and being Wonder Bug reminds me that I'm free."
Chat took in his words, tucking them away in her mind. "That makes sense. I never see you out when I'm running around, so I assumed this was just another cat thing I've picked up."
"Well, my schedule is pretty - wait. Another cat thing?" Wonder Bug sat straight up, eyes bright, a smile creeping onto his face. "You have cat things?"
"Ugh." Chat Noire put her head in her hands. "I have some cat tendencies because of the miraculous. Forget I said anything."
"No way," he said, leaning towards her. "I want to know everything. Do you take naps in sunbeams? Catch mice? Drink milk from a saucer?"
She laughed and shoved him away. "Yes, Bug, I sometimes fall asleep in sunny spots. I've never caught a mouse, but I do drink more milk than I used to. I keep destroying all my yarn, and I get the urge to-" She fell silent.
He looked over at her, brows furrowed. "You get the urge to what?"
Her face flushed. "Nothing. Never mind."
"Kit-Kat." He drew out the nickname.
"It's embarrassing!"
"I'll trade you," Wonder Bug offered. "One embarrassing fact for another. Here's mine: I've been sneaking out of my house to find aphids in my neighbor's garden."
"That's not-"
"To eat, Kit-Kat. I eat aphids now."
Chat burst out laughing. "Okay, that's funny."
He gave her an exaggerated pout. "It's not funny, it's gross. I'm embarrassed now, and the only way to make me feel better is to tell me something embarrassing about you." He spread his hands in front of him. "Solidarity."
"Fine," she said, rolling her eyes. "I get the urge to - to scent mark people."
"No fair! That's not embarrassing." He pouted again. "It's just a territorial thing, right?"
She nodded, but couldn't meet his gaze.
Wonder Bug seemed to pick up on her embarrassment. He nudged her shoulder. "It's not weird to want to claim your friends or your family."
Chat took a deep breath. "It's not them I want to claim. It's just - it's just you." She finally met his eyes, and they were blown wide as he stared at her, mouth slightly open. "Sorry, I know that's weird," she said quickly, "that I have this compulsion to mark you as mine, because you're my partner - you can just forget I said anything." She pulled her knees up to her chest, burying her head in them.
There was a moment of silence, punctured by Wonder Bug's low voice. "You can do it, if you want."
Her head snapped up. "What?"
He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes darting around. "You can scent mark me, if you want. I don't-" He finally looked at her, cheeks pink. "I don't mind."
If it had been anything else, Chat would have protested, would have stubbornly refused to do something that strange. But the temptation to mark him was so strong that she found herself nodding. "If you're sure."
Chat got to her feet and stood in front of him. When they were standing side-by-side, he was nearly a full head taller than her; sitting in front of her now, he was a few inches shorter.
In the distance were cars and people and music, but Chat couldn't hear any of it. Wonder Bug was uncharacteristically quiet and still, hands clasped in his lap, eyes wide and full of some emotion she couldn't quite read. She reached forward tentatively, resting her fingers on his shoulders.
As Chat leaned forward, she saw Bug's eyes flutter closed, and for a second she was overwhelmed with a very different impulse - to press her lips against his. She scolded herself instantly; that was not what he gave her permission to do.
Slowly, she rubbed her cheek against his.
It took all of Wonder Bug's self-control to stay still. His partner's hands feather-light on his shoulders, her body so close as she stood between his legs, her skin warm and soft as she smushed her cheek into his face. Every instinct told him to reach out to her, but he caught his hands before they could find her hips.
This moment felt so intimate, so sacred, that he hardly dared to breathe.
Instead he sat there, eyes closed, as she moved to rub the side of her face into his hair. Her grip on his shoulders tightened, and he had to physically stop himself from pulling her closer. She moved to his other cheek, letting out a contented little hum, one of her hands moving to hold his chin in place as she rubbed her cheek against his.
And then she was gone, leaving the air cold and his face tingling.
Wonder Bug forced his eyes open, a little hazy and unfocused, to see that Chat had retreated to her original seat beside him. She stared across the roof, face flushed. Wonder Bug raised a hand to his cheek. He wasn't sure why, but he very nearly started crying.
Before he knew what he was doing, he said, "Thank you."
She looked at him, confusion written all over her face. "What?"
"I don't-" His brain was still too fuzzy from her ministrations. "In my civilian life, I don't always feel..." He thought of dinners alone in his giant dining room, of Nathalie's kind but distant demeanor, of his father and the word no, and it came out before he even thought it: "...wanted."
Her eyes went soft. She moved closer to him, close enough that their shoulders brushed. "Well, you've been claimed now," she said, a note of teasing in her voice.
Claimed. Warmth flooded through him. He liked being claimed - he liked being hers. "Now all the other cats know," he teased back, "I'm yours."
Chat turned away, but he could see her smile.
"I almost thought you were purring there, at the end," he said, because his filter still had not caught up with him. "Can you purr?"
She tilted her head to one side, considering. "I don't know."
"Can I - ?" He reached towards her, slowly enough that she could tell him to back off or smack his hand away, but she didn't do either of those things. She let him rest his hand in her inky black hair, and he wished he could feel how soft it was without the suit in the way.
He scratched at the top of her head. Her radioactive-blue eyes closed and she hummed in pleasure again, but it wasn't quite a purr. So he added his other hand, scratching near the base of her skull. Chat melted against his side, a low rumbling sound in her chest.
He kept scratching her head, completely ruining her braid. Neither of them cared. She wriggled closer, tucking herself under his arm, slinging her legs over his lap. Her purr got louder and louder as he scratched behind her ears. Soon her whole body was slumped against him, arms loosely wrapped around his torso.
Wonder Bug decided that if his appetite for aphids was the price he had to pay for this moment, it was definitely worth it.
They stayed like that for a while, him carding his fingers through her hair and her purring loudly against his chest. He hadn't felt that warm in a long, long time.
"Kit-Kat?" he asked, and she hummed in acknowledgement. "What do I smell like to you?"
She rubbed her face against him again, eyes still closed. "You smell like me."
It was dark when they separated. Based on how relaxed and content Chat was, Wonder Bug knew it wouldn't be difficult to convince her to do that again sometime. If cuddling was a part of her cat tendencies, he was happy to oblige.
And the next day, when he was sitting by himself eating breakfast, he didn't feel so alone.