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clairelutraPreface
tell me what you want so we can do just what you like
Ladybug sort of knew Chat was an alpha the way she sort of knew space was infinite: it was just a thing she knew, something she took for granted, but also something she never really expected to have much impact on her life.
Which, all on its own, said quite a bit, really.
Alphas, in her experience, were pushy and charismatic and rude more often than not. They were the people who didn’t know how to take no for an answer, the people who looked at their glass-half-full and demanded a bigger, fuller one, the people who could look at the world and say, that’s mine, and have no one contradict them.
The ones who would look at an omega like her and fawn over her until she got too ambitious, and then fawn over her some more, because aww, wasn’t she just precious?
Chat… Chat was kind. Silly and loud and wild and snarky, it was true, but kind. Soft. Considerate and respectful. A good listener, an attentive friend, an enthusiastic team player.
Never once had she felt threatened by Chat’s presence, and she couldn’t even say that for her own alpha.
She hadn’t even fully realized he wasn’t a beta until he said it, and even then she’d had to subtly sniff him a few times to make sure she hadn’t just hallucinated that entire conversation. Even as her nose confirmed it (Tikki had mentioned something about the suits suppressing alignment-based signals, but she hadn’t realized just how strong that suppression was), a fairly large part of her remained in disbelief.
He was an alpha. She was an omega. He followed her without question.
Two plus two was equaling seven and she didn’t know where her math had gone wrong.
She was beta-like enough to fool most people who couldn’t smell her, but even if he’d mistaken her alignment (and he’d referred to her as an omega more than once), the concept of an alpha willingly obeying a beta was still pretty out there, at least to her history.
And he had a crush on her.
Technically, she had something he wanted, and technically she was dangling it right in front of his nose day in and day out. Everything she knew about alphas told her that he shouldn’t have let that stand — that he should be pushing and pressuring and courting her, or at least expressing some measure of frustration that she remained distant.
He didn’t.
He respected her boundaries, apologized when he crossed them without knowing, treated her well no matter how many times she pushed him away, and it baffled her each time she was forced to remember that he was an alpha.
So maybe, possibly, perhaps she could be forgiven for forgetting their difference in biology when he was so different from every other were- of his kind.
And what a great excuse that’d make, she thought, trudging along the near-endless corridor (created by the akuma of the day some time last week) with trembling legs and a hazy mind, feeling her heat take hold inch by inch, when she had to explain to her pack why she’d been knotted at the tender age of eighteen.
(Did you know that the rates of teenage pregnancies in omegas are astronomically high? their sex ed teacher had asked the class with his most severe look, and he had a truly massive catalogue of severe looks. Never knot before mating vows. Never.)
(Gee, M. Greenwood, Ladybug thought, all alone with a male alpha, as she had been for the duration of her pre-heat, and now would be during her actual heat as well. What great advice. Wish I could follow it.)
They needed to get out of the other side of this maze, though, so the swirling haze of sex hormones was going to have to wait for as long as it could.
“Holding up okay?” Chat wanted to know, the edge of his voice catching on a growl.
The growl had her knees folding before she could agree, and she pouted at the ground with what would have been frustration if she’d been capable of feeling anything besides arousal and fuzzy contentment. Even the thump of her knees against the ground had felt even more muted than it usually did.
(And there was another strange thing: she couldn’t remember any heat of hers that hadn’t been spent entirely in abject misery.
They said having an alpha nearby helped, but she’d always found the invasive smells to be kind of jarring, if not outright upsetting. More often than not she ended up snuggled against her mother’s hip while Sabine did her busywork on the living room couch.
Even when she had suppressants on hand, Ladybug really hated her heats.)
She blinked away her confusion and found a clawed hand proffered only inches away from her nose, and then had to fight the powerful temptation to push her face into it.
“Ladybug?”
…Hold onto it. She was supposed to hold onto it. With her hands.
She could do that.
And she did, reaching up to clasp the limb between both of her own.
Chat blinked down at her through the gloom, glowing green eyes flickering and free hand pinching his nose.
Ladybug managed to look at him for a few more seconds before giving into the urge to nuzzle. She brought his hand to her face and pressed her cheek into his palm, satisfied little noises sitting in the back of her throat when his fingers curled behind her jaw and thumbed her cheekbone.
“K-kicking in for real now, huh?”
Ladybug made in involuntary little hum of delight — his voice sounded like campfires and cats’ tongues and it made everything from her bellybutton to her knees prickle deliciously.
Chat sucked in a little breath through his teeth, and his scent spiked in the air straight through whatever his suit was doing to suppress it, musky and warm and tasting like want and oh…
“Right,” he said, strained. “Can you walk?”
It took her a minute to figure out the question, and then another to take stock of herself, but the conclusion was obvious.
She shook her head sheepishly. Heat hit hard.
“Okay,” said Chat, stilted, and let go of his nose to offer his other arm to her. Then he winced, wrinkled it, and resumed breathing through his mouth. “Do… I mean, should—… should I carry you?”
“…Yeah,” Ladybug conceded after a moment of thought — pleasure zipping down her spine as she considered the possibility of his hands on her body. “Please?”
Chat swallowed audibly.
“‘Course,” he said, even rougher and softer as his scent flooded her nose, and Ladybug was arching her back and spreading her thighs before she realized it.
She felt drenched, sticky, aching and empty, overheated and undertouched, and the way he smelled and the way he sounded was telling her hindbrain that he had everything she needed.
Chat just bent down and wrapped an arm around her waist, pressing his nose into the crook of her neck for as long as it took to pick her up.
Ladybug moaned, lightning shooting down her spine and every muscle going limp and pliant, instinct saying, yes, yes, this is it, smell me and take me take me take me—
He froze, holding her just off the ground for a good five seconds and then picking her all the way up, letting her wrap her legs around his waist and bury her face in his neck on turn.
He smelled so good. Like summer sun and the tang of metal and that musk that was indefinably, undeniably alpha, rough and warm, and her belly craved.
And then she realized he was supporting her with just a single arm under her thighs.
“Everything alright there, Bugaboo?”
No, everything was not okay — he wasn’t inside her, and it didn’t much look like he was intending to be any time soon.
“You’re… you’re really strong,” she said instead, dazed and half swooning over it.
The fact that he could support her entire body with a single arm was really, really, really hot, okay.
Chat tripped.
“O-oh, I-I mean.” She felt him swallow again just as much as she heard him, and had to resist the urge to find his pulse with her tongue. “S-superheroes, you know.”
“Mmm,” she agreed, shuddering, suddenly hyperaware of the way her breasts were flattened against his chest. She’d been so distracted by his scent she hadn’t noticed.
“Holy shit,” he mumbled, hand going to the wall as he stumbled again.
She nuzzled his neck. She couldn’t not.
“’Re you okay?” she asked on a fluttering sigh.
He swallowed a few more times before answering, a delectable shudder running through his own frame. “I… you… you know…”
He trailed off and inhaled, then pressed his face into the crook of her neck with a groan. “I’ve dreamed about being the one you choose to spend your heats with, you know.”
Ladybug’s breath hitched.
“And now I’m here,” he continued, pushing himself off the wall so he could hold her closer. “And I’m… it’s… God, I…”
She got a little hotter with every word he spoke, and the fact that she could only smell his want on her own skin was only making it worse.
He kept walking, falling silent as he chewed over the rest of his words.
Ladybug, contemplating the world through the heat-fog, filled the silence. “…Maybe I should’ve.”
“'Should’ve’?”
“Chosen you.”
He stumbled even harder that time.
“Everyone always says that heats are easier with an alpha nearby, you know?”
He stuttered a laugh that was half relief and half disappointment. “Am I the only alpha you know?”
She thought of Chloe, and how she’d stayed across the room and read magazines while Marinette had cried into her pillow, unable to escape the sharp, cloying smell. She thought of Grandfather’s stoic head-patting, and how she’d been too polite and too weak to try to explain that his presence didn’t help. She thought of her aunt, whose scent had nearly made her sick and who had refused to leave because ‘leaving an omega in distress went against her pride as an alpha.’
She thought of Adrien, who was kind and distant and whose father would never allow it, and how she feared that her reaction to him might be so negative he’d refuse to speak to her again.
And she thought of Chat, and how she’d never once felt threatened by his presence.
“No,” she admitted, letting her eyes fall shut. “Just the only one I like.”
Chat made a noise like she’d gutted him.
“I-I’m,” he choked, staggering but still moving on, claws digging into her thigh as he walked. “I might— I’m… you know I’m not safe. I might… I might… Do something. Something you wouldn’t— wouldn’t like. You don’t… want me… like that, remember?”
Ladybug was finding it very, very hard to think of anything he could do that she wouldn’t like at the moment — or any part of him she didn’t want.
“You’d be gentle with me,” Ladybug whispered, sure of this if nothing else, and Chat flooded the room with the smell of bittersweet desire, the signals settling into her spine as reassurance and fuel both.
“I’d worship you,” he promised, low and heated and intense, and then choked when she flooded him right back.
What had he expected, really?
Her stomach was curled tight, heat settling deep and implacable in her bones, restless and wanting, a moan sitting in the back of her throat, unvoiced, as she thought about what ‘worship’ might entail.
Her on her back, careful, gentle fingers removing her clothing and kissing her skin, suckling her breasts and marking her up with matebites and lovebites alike; her on her stomach with his hands tracing, caressing her sides, counting her freckles and moles and whispering sweet encouragements as she arched for his hands and purred; Chat on his back, steadying her as she used him for her own pleasure, letting her stroke and squeeze and clench around him until he knotted in her.
She didn’t realize what her thinking about it that would smell like to him until he staggered to a halt so he could slump against the wall.
“Mercy,” he wheezed, holding her so tight she almost couldn’t feel him shake. “Mercy, please. This is too many of my fantasies already.”
The tone was half-joking, drenched in stunned laughter, laced with desperation and so heated she actually tried to slide down his body and grind on his bulge, stopped only by the grip he had on her thighs and waist.
It was her turn to swallow. “I’m… I’m in your fantasies?”
“You are my fantasies,” he said, too fast and too sure and too honest. “All of them.”
“Oh.”
Oh.
(Courting gifts on mate holidays, little things she’d loved but hadn’t been able to appreciate at the time; him dreaming of being the one she chose; the fact that his response to her heat hadn’t been to take her against the nearest wall, but to hold her close and make sure she was alright—)
She bit her lip until it bled, because otherwise she was going to try licking his scent right off his skin.
He laughed again, perfectly, completely, utterly wrecked, and continued from his previous line of thought, “What, are you going to beg for my knot next?”
She paused, considered, and opened her mouth.
“If you were, don’t,” Chat added, even faster, the words coming out clumsy in their haste. “That… I can’t…”
Ladybug shut her mouth again.
Another pause and then, faintly: “Oh god. Were you?”
Ladybug sucked her sore lip and shyly confessed, “I was thinking about it.”
Chat slid down the wall with a bitten-off whimper.
(Her body wanted it desperately. Intellectually she knew why it would be a bad idea, but reason was hard to remember when every bit of her had flared white-hot at the mere suggestion.
Even the thought of carrying his pups (an inevitability after any unprotected heat-knotting between opposite sexes) wasn’t much of a deterrent — she had both the means and the support for it, even if she wasn’t quite ready to be a mother herself.
She’d been fairly sure that was where this was going as soon as she realized she’d completely forgotten about her heat week anyway — before Chat had started to prove that he was above and beyond every one of her expectations.)
“The heat talking,” Chat was babbling against her collarbone, smelling of absolutely nothing but desperate want. “That’s the heat talking, that has to be the heat talking.”
“K-kind of,” Ladybug admitted, because that was what heats did, but it didn’t stop her hips from chasing his now that he wasn’t keeping her from it.
“Stop,” Chat ordered — or maybe begged, she couldn’t tell. “Ladybug, Ladybug, you can’t.”
He couldn’t know how much she hated those two words, but in her current state, the alpha tone was enough to make her obey anyway.
“List-listen,” he panted. “I know— I know you’re not— I’m not— fuck — if-if I get you off, will that h-elp— Oh god — will that help?”
“'Help’?” Ladybug echoed, already opening herself up in anticipation, feeling her pulse in her breasts, belly, between her legs and in the roof of her mouth.
“Will it— god —will it help you th-think or walk or— shit —we-we need to get out of here.”
He was knocking his nose against the underside of her jaw, mouthing the words hot across the curve of her throat, and Ladybug found she didn’t much care about their content so long as he touched her, but he wasn’t done talking yet.
“If we get out, I can, I can find you a den, and we— you— we can, we can wait it out, but—”
“Yes,” Ladybug whimpered, only understanding half of what he said but getting the gist of 'can I touch you’ and 'den later’ and clenching hard around nothing. “Please, oh, please—”
Chat whimpered too, clumsy hands squeezing her thighs and then sliding up in a motion that felt like fire.
“T-tell me,” he panted as he cupped her. “Tell me if I’m… doing-doing it wr-wrong.”
She was too busy moaning long and loud at the touch to hear, rutting into the heel of his hand and feeling stars explode behind her eyelids.
His soft pleas of, what do I do, what do you want me to do? fell on nearly deaf ears, Ladybug trying to kiss every part of his face she could reach and paying exactly no attention to what he might be saying.
She grabbed his wrist, angling his hand so she could grind against his knuckles and then doing so, hissing as awareness and electric pleasure raced up her spine.
“R-rub—” was all she managed when his questions finally made it through the heavy haze of lust.
And he did, panting hard into her neck and drawing the most amazing tight little circles around her clit, and Ladybug slumped against him like her strings were cut.
“Chat, Chat,” she whined, his name turning into a prayer on her lips, and felt him bite down her shoulder.
“…Shit, shit, sorry, fuck,” he groaned, and belatedly she realized that his teeth were elongated.
Oh, he’d tried to matebite her.
Ladybug was arching again before she could think about it, dropping her head to the side and lowering her shoulder and whimpering, “Please, please, please…”
He pressed his nose into where she’d opened herself up, muffling his groan in her neck, and it went straight to her clit.
He didn’t try to matebite her again, but it wasn’t very long before she was gasping on every exhale and squirming because she couldn’t not and a matebite would send her over the edge but she was already so close it might not have mattered.
While getting up to the point of orgasm turned out to be a quiet affair for Ladybug — soft hums, small gasps, fluttering sighs — having someone push her past it turned out to be no such thing.
Chat rocked back, ground his knuckles against her sensitive entrance, and she screamed.
Her voice echoed off the walls, down the corridor, and Chat grabbed her face with his free hand and kissed her until she trailed off into half-sobs, and then continued until those turned into muted panting, and then she was the one kissing him to muffle his noises.
She was still shivering with clenching aftershocks when she took his hand away, mumbling her appreciation insensibly against his mouth, and she followed his hand with her own, seeking out contact wherever she could.
His hand went straight to his own groin.
They both gasped when her fingers brushed his bulge, then she eagerly wrapped her hand around it and squeezed gently and her gasp turned into a purely feminine sound of appreciation, while his turned into a heartfelt groan.
“Ladybug—”
She switched the angle of her wrist so she could stroke him from base to tip with the heel of her hand, and her core clenched, flaring hot and wanting at what she found, and then it was Chat’s turn to arch his back, panting hard.
“Holy shit, Ladybug—”
The afterglow was clearing some of her haze, taking her enough out of the chemically-induced submission to smirk.
And she did so, with great joy.
Making sure he saw it before leaning over, she dropped down and purred in his ear, “Is it too late to beg for that knot, mon amour?”
A squeak ran into a word ran into a growl ran into a helpless moan, and all of them stuttered out of Chat at once on a strangled gasp, his cock twitching in her grasp.
“Pretty please, Alpha, my alpha, I need you,” Ladybug half-begged, half-purred, and Chat started to writhe, hands anywhere but on her, and she shouldn’t have found that so hot, but it was.
He was that determined to respect her.
It made her want to push him, put pressure on that resistance and see how far she could get before he snapped.
“I need you inside me, oh, please, my alpha…”
Chat’s desire was slowly starting to overpower the smell of her climax in the hall, and she was suddenly glad that the whole structure would probably disappear with the akuma, because she was pretty sure no one was getting the smell of omega-in-heat off the walls.
“Knot me, knot me, knot me,” she chanted breathily, lips brushing the shell of his ear, and Chat bucked into her hand, hips stuttering and every muscle she could feel locked up tight and shaking but still not putting his hands on her. “Oh Alpha, oh Chat, I’ll do anything…”
Chat came fast and hard, crumpling into her and wheezing a choked noise against her chest, hands still fisted on the ground beside him as his cock pulsed in her grip.
Ladybug stroked his hair with her free hand, staring at his fists with something not unlike awe.
That… had been impressive, she’d admit.
And…
She’d never once felt threatened by his presence, and tonight he’d proved just how well-founded that trust was.
She swallowed, kissing the crown of his head as he came down from his high shaking and laughing.
“Holy shit,” he wheezed, kissing her shoulder in indiscriminate affection as every muscle went slack.
“Mmm,” she agreed, blinking hard now that his hands had left the ground, feeling them tremble as they traced her hips and gently nudged her up.
She went, legs weak but functional enough to support her weight, and took a deep breath.
And sneezed.
She really hoped the structure vanished with the akuma, because the thick, heavy smell of sex really wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
She took stock of their surroundings, the blank, dark walls and the upcoming bend, and resisted the urge to take another deep breath. Not worth it, LB, not worth it.
Instead, she offered her partner a hand up.
She was barely strong enough to haul him up, but he only got about halfway before he was leaning against the wall for support, still panting.
She waited, now trying to breathe through her mouth as he had earlier, because the smell was going to be gross until it very much wasn’t, and that was when they were going to be stuck again.
“O-okay, I’m… I’m ready, I think,” Chat said, coughing a little as the smell hit him. Then he shot her a shaky grin, avoiding her eye and laughing as he added, “But god. Next time, could you not try so hard to sound like you meant all that?”
“Well,” said Ladybug, because she wasn’t quite done with testing the edges of his control yet. “I guess I could try not to mean it next time.”
It had the advantage of being true, even.
Chat doubled over with a sound that might’ve been a laugh but sounded more like a whine, and she tried to brush her words off with laughter herself, but the it sat heavy in her lungs and, when it hit the air, sounded less like a denouncement and more like an affirmation.
She swallowed and tried again. “Next time, can I have a matebite?”
That didn’t sound much like a joke, either.
Chat just looked up and stared at her for a good five seconds, and then shoved off the wall.
“Tell you what,” he said, waving an exhausted hand and then resting it on her shoulder. “Ask me again in two weeks, when you can think for real again, and we’ll see.”
Ladybug looked from his clawed hand resting idly on her shoulder (he’d let go if she tried to shake him off), to the tired acceptance overwhelming the longing in his face (he wanted it, but he wanted her to mean it more), to the way he was standing half-facing her, waiting for her direction (peaceful camaraderie, just as capable as she was and he knew it, and he wasn’t afraid to let her know he knew it), and thought…
Thought…
Maybe she would.
(Never once had she felt threatened by Chat’s presence, and she couldn’t even say that for her own alpha.
She could… She could do worse than someone who put her consent above his own wants even in the thick of a heat-haze.)
“Okay,” she finally agreed, after a long moment of silence.
Chat blinked at her, going pink around the edges of his mask, and cleared his throat. “Right. Okay.”
Unthinking, Ladybug inhaled through her nose, then trailed off into coughs as the overpowering smell of sex hit her.
“Right,” she sputtered, picking a direction and walking, more desperate to get out of the cloud than anything else. “Then let’s get moving before it kicks back in.”
“Right behind you, my lady.”
Ladybug registered the words, closed her eyes, and led.
(She’d never thought much about it before, but…
Being Chat’s pack…
Being Chat’s mate…)
Her fingers closed into a fist on the wall beside her.
(That didn’t sound so bad at all.)
