#purrposeful

Watching Tikki drift away, earrings like cookies in her palm, too big and heavy and unnatural in her paws, felt like being shaken out of a fever dream. The magic of Tikki’s suit was the same in every physicality, molded to Felix’s body the same as his usual cat-suit, but it felt... tighter. Stronger in its grip, more forceful, aggressive in a way he didn’t expect to feel from a magic whose weapon was a yo-yo. There was something wrong with the taste of Ladybug’s magic, and suddenly the shading of his partner’s eyes made sense in a way he hadn’t put together before. 

It was exhausting to keep battling the driven, pointed rage of being a Ladybug, to clash wit against chaos and create sense from anarchy. Felix didn’t understand how she did it. Felix didn’t think he ever would, and reached gratefully for his ring, shivering. 

Patrol was quiet that night, without his endless stream of jokes and flirting and puns to fill the silence, without her eye rolls and groans and muffled laughter. The tension grew and simmered like bubbles coalescing until they settled on a rooftop, feet swinging off the edge, and she started to talk. 

“It was really fun to be Chat today. I know I can’t do it again... but I wish I could. I didn’t know the magic could feel like that, feel so... made for me. Like I could have the whole world and take it by storm.” She bumps into his shoulder and grins a tired, resigned, barely-there-resentment kind of grin. “That’s why you’re always whooping and hollering and joking around, huh? I get it. I’d do it too.” 

“I won’t,” Felix bursts on the words, interrupting her in his anxious desperation. She’s shocked, absolutely taken aback. She jerks backwards and gapes, and somehow it’s still an attractive look on her. 

“I... what? Why? Isn’t that what makes you...” She trails off, doesn’t finish her sentence, but he knows what she wants to say. It’s what Chat Noir is. 

Not anymore. 

“I can’t... do that, to you, knowing what you’re doing every fight. It was never fair, and it shouldn’t have taken this for me to realize, but... god, ma coccinelle, I nearly strangled you the way you were messing around today! And that was a fraction of what I do, but I couldn’t focus and it was so hard even when you were helping that--” He cuts himself off with a strangled yowl, then backtracks onto what he meant to be saying in the first place. “I think I’ve gotta be there for you in a way that matters, more. Jokes are for patrol and after the fight is won, not for when you’re scrambling to save one of my nine lives.” 

She smiles weakly, like she’s exhausted herself keeping herself upright and hasn’t allowed herself to stop until just now and it’s hitting her all at once. 

“I don’t... want you to stop. It’s fun, y’know? It’s better than the constant anxiety in my head, or it-- It’s like, not-- I want you to get to be yourself. It’s-- I know that-- You don’t get to be... yourself in the way you want to be in your civilian life. I don’t want to be the reason that gets taken away from you.” She pauses and then looks away. “I don’t want both of us to be hurting in this magic.” 

“I won’t be. I don’t-- Maybe it’s not clear, but I want to do this. And I’ve been... thinking I need to find a balance either way. I can’t just be... nothing as a civilian and everything as Chat Noir, I can’t function long term like that. I need to learn... for myself, how to do this. And I’m-- If it opens up space for you to shoulder less of the burden, if I can figure out how cataclysm works in your plan on my own instead of making you do it... I’ve been moving in this direction for a while, I think. Now it’ll just be purposeful, y’know?” 

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. 

“Purrposeful.” 

Her eyes are bright and playful and way too pleased with herself, and it’s so precious that he almost misses what she said in the first place. When it hits him, he shoves her off the rooftop and revels in the way her laugh carries on the wind of her swing back up.

“I thought that was my job!” 

“Well, while we’re on the topic of sharing...” 

Felix waits for her to finish that statement. Instead, she looks into his eyes just long enough for his heart to start racing, and then sticks her tongue out and races away.