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Science is right, and whoever discovered this deserves to find twenty euros on the ground: taking a nap next to someone you care about really is the best feeling.
Especially if that someone is your Capital B Boyfriend. Who you love, and who you’re in love with, and who you’re pretty sure loves you too, even though neither of you has said it out loud.
It’s a feeling Marinette’s gotten used to over the last few weeks, since most of her quality time with Luka has either been at her place or his. She’s had to be a little more careful than usual these days, ever since the grounding, and that means things like hushed phone calls in between rapid-fire texts and locking up her diary and promising, she means it, that she’ll call if she’s staying at the Couffaines for supper, and that she’ll always be home at dusk.
But it’s not so bad. They get to trudge through homework together, or work side-by-side on their crafts, or simply sprawl out on the floor or someone’s bed listening to Jagged Stone and whatever other rock and indie pop they find tasteful, staring up at the ceiling and telling funny stories and asking questions that are probably older than they are. And sometimes, on the weekends especially, Luka will lean over her with his chin in his hand and ask if she wants to sleep. Which never warrants or elicits a verbal answer, because nine times out of ten, Marinette will giggle and cling to him in response, and he’ll laugh and drape his arm over her waist, and they’ll stay locked like that for hours, drifting in and out of consciousness.
Sunday afternoon is like that, and Marinette wakes up first. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get over how tightly Luka holds her in his sleep, or how they always end up more tangled than they were when they were still awake, or how he manages to tuck her head under his chin because she’s just the right size for it. At least when he’s asleep, she can get away with pressing her ear to his chest just to listen to the slow drum of his heart, or to try as sneakily as possible to inhale the scent of his cologne in the crook of his neck. And sometimes, like today, Tikki will try to get away with lounging in his hair, a bright contrast of red and black against blue gradient.
“He’s lovely, Marinette,” she coos, as if to say she’s proud of her, and plants the sweetest little kiss on the top of his head. And if Tikki thinks he is, then there’s no arguing it.
“Yeah,” Marinette murmurs, gathering everything in her to lightly kiss his cheekbone, too. “I know it every day.”
Tikki perks up when Luka stirs, and by the time he opens his eyes she’s zipped out of sight and back into Marinette’s purse, hanging on the back of the desk chair downstairs. And one thing she’ll never get used to, she knows, is the way her heart jumps up into her throat whenever he rubs his eyes, and clears the fatigue from his throat, and says, “Hey,” with a groggy little grin.
“Hey,” she says back, a kind of flustered that she actually enjoys, and flicks a stray lock of hair out of his face. “You’ve got bedhead.”
He barely lifts his gaze, blows his bangs away even though they fall back into place, and shrugs. “‘S part of my look.”
“What look? Sleepy boyfriend”—even saying it out loud makes her fight back a giddy smile—“or ragtag rockstar?”
“Yes,” he sighs, and then shushes her, pulling her along as he rolls onto his back. That’s the other thing she loves about these times together: that they can be this close, and never feel the pressure of doing anything more. Even if she finds herself thinking about it more often than she should. Sometimes it’s just hard not to, because she’s young and curious and in love and gets to be mindful of all the ways a boy’s body sort of lines up with her own. Sometimes it’s just because he’s looking at her, or touching her hand or her shoulder, and she gets the feeling there’s more of her she wants to let him see.
It’s not that her thoughts stray that far. They just push gently on some limits. Which is all she ever does, anyway.
She certainly never brings it up.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, more to change the subject in her mind, running what she hopes is a modest hand down to his heart. “Everything okay in here?”
Luka hums, and sinks back, and laces her free hand in his. “All good in there.” He squeezes it, and kisses her palm, and it seems like it’s every day, whether he’s just waking up or walking her home from school, that he reminds her that love and all its elements are supposed to be about the comfort it brings. And that he doesn’t judge, even when the jitters are still there, buzzing in her veins.
“Hey,” he says again, toying with the ends of her hair. He’s had a habit of tugging out her elastics when they’re alone—says there’s something wild and unbridled and intimate about getting to see her with her hair down—and seems to find a rhythm in threading his fingers through it, root to tip. “Can I run something by you?”
“Yeah?” It comes out as a stammer, but it’s only because of the touch; if she were Chat Noir, she’d probably be purring by now.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while, I guess, but…” He looks pensive for a moment, and she’s almost afraid he might be thinking of something she doesn’t want to hear, and how to put it tactfully. But all he says is, “What if I got a new piercing?”
Marinette’s brow furrows. “Are you… asking my permission? Cause, you don’t need that from me. It’s, it’s your body, you know?”
He laughs; it sounds a lot deeper than usual, and she’s already screaming internally, or eternally, or both. “I know. And I appreciate that you know, too. It’s just that this one might actually involve you.”
“Me? How?”
“Come closer,” he says, and pulls her down to whisper in her ear.
“Okay, let me get this straight,” Alya says from the comfort of the chaise-longue. “You’re saying need to learn how to make out as soon as humanly possible?”
Leave it to Alya Césaire to say literally anything with as few inhibitions as anyone can summon. And privacy be damned, Marinette’s still hiding her face and willing it to stop feeling to warm. Even as she’s nodding over her homework, only half-defeated.
“Okay.” There’s a rustling of papers, the double zip of a backpack. “You’ve officially lost me.”
“Alya,” Marinette whines. “You’re like, the most un-lost person I can ask about this stuff.” And also the only person she trusts to confide this to without ceasing all function, or the fear that someone else might find out and tell the whole school. “You’ve gotta help me, please.”
“Well, as cute and maybe fun as it would be to help you practice—”
“Alya!”
“I’m kidding.” Alya laughs behind her hands, in the kind of way that suggests that if neither of them had boyfriends, she might actually consider it. “I’m gonna need some context.” The screen on her school tablet goes black, and she sets it aside and rests her chin in her hands like she’s ready to cook up something devious. Which she’s already doing about seventy percent of the time, but hey, who’s counting? “So. Spill.”
The only reason Marinette’s able to, she comes to find, is because it’s just the two of them closed off in her room, and she can’t run the risk of her parents overhearing if they’re still running the bakery downstairs. “Okay,” she says, and spills with the first thing she can think of. The only thing that’s been ticking through her mind pretty much since the moment she heard it. “Luka’s thinking about getting his tongue pierced.”
The statement seems to ricochet off the walls of her room, all the way up the ladder to her bed and back down again. It seeps into the floorboards, even, and for a moment Marinette’s scared that her parents actually might hear it somehow.
No, the only person who really hears it is Alya, who blinks a couple of times in surprise. And then a slow grin spreads across her face, and she says, “Oh my,” like this one old actor they saw on a space TV show from what must have been her parents’ or her grandparents’ time, and Marinette isn’t really sure whether she regrets saying anything yet. “So you want to learn because it’s going to feel better that way?”
“W-well…” She’s not actually sure if that’ll be the case. Actually, she’s more inclined to think that it might get in the way sometimes, or clack against her teeth, and then there’s the mortal fear that one of the balls might come unscrewed and she might swallow it. “It’s not that, exactly.”
“Then what?”
“I—” Marinette awkwardly rubs the back of her neck. “He didn’t say exactly when he was gonna do it, but he did mention it’ll take a while for everything to heal up properly whenever he does. It’ll be swollen for a while, and then he has to super take care of it so nothing gets in. He’s gonna be stuck on applesauce and smoothies and mouthwash for like, a week at least.”
“Oof.” Alya scrunches up her lips in thought. “How long until it’s totally healed? Or, well, healed enough to…”
“A month? Maybe a little longer.”
“You don’t think it’ll be worth it to just wait? You know…” Alya’s grin is back in full force. “All that pent-up wanting or whatever, and finally letting it out—”
“I don’t want to wait,” Marinette blurts out, before Alya can say anything else to fluster her, but it seems like she’s done plenty of that herself already. She slumps back in her chair, hides behind her hands again and peeks through them, tries to huddle up in the most invisible ball possible—not that it works, but a girl can try. She might as well wait for whichever comes first: the teasing, or for the silence to go on long enough that she has to figure out how to explain herself to fill it.
She doesn’t know how Alya manages it, but her smile widens even more. “Oh,” she says, in that way that’s too quiet and too knowing all at once.
Marinette fidgets in her seat, unsure of exactly where in the room to look, but directly at Alya probably isn’t the right answer. “Can you just, tell me what I need to know so I don’t, like, make a total fool of myself? Or like, look too desperate or something?”
Alya cocks her head, still amused. If it were almost anyone else, it’d be annoying. “Marinette, you’ve kissed before.”
Well, yeah. She has. Luka countless times, even though it feels like she remembers every single one. Chat Noir, on a couple of occasions, if only because it was necessary. Even Adrien, once, on the cheek.
Even though they never talked about it. Even though, days later, she was relegated to the back of the classroom, and he was still pining after Ladybug, and she was still pining after him.
And now she isn’t.
Marinette brushes her lips, and looks away. “This is… different.”
“Okay,” Alya sighs after a beat of silence. “Well—”
“Without making me feel weird around you and Nino.”
Alya laughs again, and Marinette’s caught between hiding her face even more or laughing right along with her. “all right, all right. I won’t make it weird. It’s just…”
“Just what?” Without meaning to, Marinette’s sitting up a little straighter in her chair. If this is how she is just asking about it, she’s already mortified to think about what it’ll be like trying to get it to actually happen.
“I don’t know. Hard to describe.” Alya manages a one-shouldered shrug, and looks up to the skylight with a faint blush of her own. “It’s just something that kind of happens when you’re, you know. Comfortable. And alone. Which is kind of hard when you’ve got four siblings between the two of you.” She laughs faintly, and rubs the back of her neck, which is probably the most nervous Marinette’s seen her since her first day at collège. “It’s just… nice. And I guess it’s one of those things you kinda know how to do without knowing that you already know how to do it. You know what I mean?”
Marinette stares blankly. “No.”
Alya laughs again, but this time it sounds a little more easygoing. A little more like herself. “I’m just saying, don’t worry about it. It’ll happen the way it’s supposed to happen. Don’t force it.” She winks. “It’s more fun that way.”
That’s already more than enough to have Marinette whining and hiding in her arms again.
“What are you thinking about, Ma-Ma-Marinette?” Luka murmurs in Room 33, and Marinette’s not sure that she’d be able to answer him even if he weren’t leaning his body against hers.
He’s been stopping by the art room more often these days. Sometimes it’s just to mess around on his guitar for anyone who will listen, even if it’s only himself. Sometimes it’s to put set lists together with Rose for upcoming events, or to brainstorm ideas for a new song. Sometimes it’s to gravitate over to Nathaniel and Marc and inquire about their comic—for more reasons than to sneak peeks at what they’ve come up with for Viperion. No matter why he’s there, he always ends up beside Marinette in the end, a presence that feels welcome without intruding, and catches up on past assignments while his hand finds hers under the worktable.
“What makes you think I’m thinking about something?” she asks without looking up from her work; she only pulls back to turn down her music, so that they can hear each other over the earbuds they’re sharing, and then her fingers are sliding between his again, just for the feeling of it. Just for the calm and the safety and the normalcy.
“‘Cause you’ve got your Thinking Face on,” he says, a pencil caught between his fingers as he lifts his free hand to make air quotes, and then demonstrates: wrinkles in his brow, lips scrunched up, eyes narrowed. It almost looks like he’s trying to make a baby face, but it doesn’t fit him at all, and she can’t help giggling into her elbow to keep from making a scene.
“I don’t look like that when I’m thinking,” she insists.
“Okay, what are you not thinking about?”’
“Nothing,” she says, and flicks his nose. “Finish your physics. You said it's your worst subject.”
“Aha,” he hums, and the sound of it is laced with a grin. “So you are thinking about something, if you’re not thinking about nothing.”
Marinette huffs, and jabs a finger at his workbook. “Focus.”
“Okay, okay,” he says with a laugh, but the way he snakes an arm around her waist to pull her closer before he returns to his problem set isn’t lost on her. It’s as purposeful as the way he taps his eraser to the beat of the song they’re listening to. Almost as much as the way he kisses her temple on a whim, a light press against her hair, before he returns to his work—not like it didn’t mean anything, but that it meant everything so much that it could come to him so naturally.
Most kisses with Luka are like that. Soft and quick and full of feeling. A reminder of what’s humming in the backs of their minds and the backgrounds of their lives.
Most of the time, Marinette doesn’t mind.
In between songs, she bites, unraveling her hand from his and resting her chin in it. “What did the Captain say about the piercing?”
When she flicks her gaze over to him, there’s a smile curling at the corner of his lips. Like she’s been caught, but he won’t let her know she has been, in some weird layer of secrets. “She said yes. But the tattoo has to wait until I pass the brevet.” He wrinkles his nose. “And that it has to be small. Not because she cares or anything, but she wants me to at least make a good impression in high school.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Marinette says with a smile of her own, “considering she literally yelled at a cop and tore up a citation because you played a chord too loud.”
“Yeah, well.” He laughs. “She’s an adult. I’ve gotta keep my chaos in moderation for now, according to her.”
“Luka, I don’t think you have a chaotic bone in your body.”
He’s so close to her that his nose bumps against hers when he looks her way. “What do you take me for, babe?” he says, low and smooth and full of pride. “I’m a Couffaine.”
Don’t do it, she tells herself. Don’t look down, don’t look at his mouth.
Except she’s cursing whatever science is behind noticing every little thing, because he wets his lips, maybe on instinct, and her gaze drops immediately. And whether she regrets it or not in the end, on the inside, she’s screaming. As casually as she can manage, she turns back to her work and mashes her mouth against her palm, because maybe that will suppress the overwhelming urge to tell him what she’s thinking, or worse—act on it. “You’ve never called me that before,” she mumbles, and her face feels hot all the way to the tips of her ears and her nose.
Luka blinks a couple of times, the way he did when he teased her for stammering. These are her favorite kinds of moments: the ones where he’s just so slightly off-kilter, barely perceptible by anyone but her. “Do you not want me to call you that?”
“No! I mean—yes—I mean…” Marinette sighs, and closes her notebook; slowly but steadily, she’s been learning that multitasking is her enemy, especially when one of the tasks involved is talking. “I just wasn’t expecting it. But I do, um. I wouldn’t… be opposed? If you called me that?”
His face lights up just a little, and he gives her a slow, dopey smile, the kind that pulls one right out of her, too. “Okay,” he says, something closer to a whisper, and it makes her stomach feel as warm as her face.
Something catches his eye just past her, and she swivels around on her stool to find Juleka lingering in the doorway, clinging to the knob and not exactly fully inside the art room. She’s not exactly the type to hang out in classrooms after school, as far as Marinette knows; more often than not, anyone could find Juleka hiding under the courtyard stairs or out on the school steps, huddled with her knees to her chest and hardly talking to anyone.
“Hey, Jules,” Luka says, not so loud that it would attract any attention to her. “Ready to head out?”
Juleka only nods, brushing some hair out of her eyes with a gloved hand, only for it to fall mostly back into place. Her gaze flicks over to Rose, who’s happily scribbling away in her notepad with a pair of headphones clapped over her ears, and Luka has to laugh and playfully roll his eyes as he slides out of his chair and lifts one half up. “Let’s go, Pinky Pie.”
Rose chirps her agreement a little too loud, presumably over the whine of what must be ear-splitting rock music. As she’s packing up, Luka rounds the worktable where Marinette’s poring over her designs again, stuffs his assignments away in a pocket folder, and slings his guitar case on. It’s almost unfairly smooth, how he slides his hands into his pockets and bends to peck her lips. It’s fast enough that hardly anyone notices, but soft enough that Marinette can still feel it even in the seconds after he pulls back.
“Bye, babe,” he says with little more than his usual gentle smile. “Next Saturday. You should come with me when I get it done.”
Marinette’s not sure which is more flustering: the way he minds his own business and sees himself out; or the way Juleka’s eyes sparkle in her direction just before she takes Rose’s hand; or the way Marc and Nathaniel stare almost slack-jawed from across the room, and Nathaniel’s tapping Marc’s arm just a little too hard, saying, Quick, write that down, write. That. Down.
Maybe she’s bad at multitasking, but Luka’s good at these casual combinations that make her mind blue-screen in moments.
So that was a mistake. And not for the reasons she would have expected. Because it doesn’t make her uncomfortable, and she doesn’t get shy or end up overanalyzing the people around him when he does it or adopts his usual affectionate habits.
It’s that she can’t stop thinking about it to the point that it’s practically inconvenient. And it’s hardly fair when it leaves her daydreaming more than the usual amount in Ms. Mendeleiev’s class, or when she nearly spouts the wrong history fact to Miss Bustier, or when Chloe practically outs her with a derisive laugh and, “Don’t mind Dupain-Cheng, she’s probably thinking about her punk boyfriend or something.” Which makes her face heat up in front of the whole class, and she wishes she could sink so deep into her chair that none of her classmates could see her, maybe ever again.
Especially when, during a break between classes, Adrien pipes up from the front row, “I think it’s great that Marinette has someone she cares about so much. Anybody would be lucky to have someone feel that way about them.”
That makes Marinette drop her forehead onto her desk and suppress a record-breaking scream.
And then, to make matters even weirder—not necessarily worse, but just more bizarre—she’s been spending the last few days curled up in bed as soon as her homework is done and her room is tidy. Just. Thinking. And it’s always about the same thing. It lives behind her eyes no matter how much she tries to press them away with the heels of her hands, no matter how many times she tells herself to take Alya’s advice, that it’ll happen when it happens, or that she should just tell him what she’s been thinking about.
It’s just that she chokes up and yanks the covers over her head every time she thinks about his breath on her lips, or the one slip of tongue that might send her over the edge.
Oh, God.
What if she accidentally bites it?
What if she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do with hers?
What the heck is she supposed to do with her hands?
The questions have her rolling onto her stomach, and squealing all her frustrations into her pillow and kicking her bed, because why can’t things just go easy for once?
The worst part is when there’s a knock at her skylight one evening, and it’s exactly what she suspected once she makes it to her balcony: Chat Noir is perched on one of the posts, grinning and waving. “How’s my favorite charge? Looks like your thumb is better, at least.”
Marinette sighs, and sinks onto her deck chair. She guesses she doesn’t mind having the loophole of having clandestine visitors when her parents are a little more wary of where she goes. Still, any other time she would have joked about how she’s apparently been upgraded from one of Chat’s favorites to Chat’s favorite, period, but now her shoulders go slack. “There are better days that you could ask that question.”
“Uh oh. Trouble in paradise?” He cocks his head, like he’s genuinely concerned. “C’mon. Tell old Chat what’s going on with you and your… Person of Interest?”
“Boyfriend,” Marinette corrects, and within seconds she’s already lost face and has to hide her face in her hands for a few seconds. Hasn’t it been long enough that saying the word out loud—getting to call him as such—shouldn’t affect her like this anymore? “And nothing’s going on, just. Stuff. And things.”
“Stuff and things. Right.” By the time she looks up again, he sitting casually on the balcony floor, tail curled just so. “Then, is it that other boy you said you love the other way?”
“No, it’s this one, it’s just—” It’s easier to look at him sideways, when she can huddle up into a ball like a beetle and pretend that, maybe, if she closes her eyes, he can’t see her. “You’d think it’s stupid stuff.”
“C’mon, Princess.” Chat Noir grins. “Have a little more faith in your knight.”
Marinette gives him a look. “Now I’m definitely not going to tell you.”
“Don’t be that way,” he wheedles. “Seriously. What’s on your mind?”
She fumbles. Rolls onto her side so her back is to him and the rest of the city. Mumbles the answer into her pillow. “Kissing.”
“What? I couldn’t hear you—”
“Kissing,” she says, more emphatically, and she’s pretty sure the next few moments are a silent competition of who’s more flustered between the two of them. Even if the times she’s seen him ruffled are few and far between. “I mean…” She folds her arms tight, her face hot against the cool cushion of the lounge chair. “I mean, like. Serious kissing. Okay? You can laugh now, or whatever.”
“Why would I laugh?” he asks, and apparently those words are enough to get her to roll back and look at him again—still balled up tight, but looking, at least.
“Because…” she fumbles for words. “Because it’s…”
His eyes dart to the floor in understanding, almost like he wants to give her the privacy of processing her thoughts herself. He hugs one of his knees to his chest, resting his chin on it as his cat ears twitch. “You really wanna know what I think?”
Does she?
At this point, what does she have to lose?
Slowly, Marinette lets her body unfurl, and she sits up, practically white-knuckling the edge of her chair. “Okay.”
Chat Noir takes a breath, drumming spindly fingers and sharp claws against his shin, and then speaks. “I think it’s the most intimate thing you can do with a person. Anything you do when you close your eyes is vulnerable, you know? Like sleeping, or trying to make your own tears go away. Kissing’s like that, except you’re vulnerable with an entire other person.” Then he laughs, without breath or joy. “It’s just funny, I think. When you hold something so precious to you, and it’s always out of your grasp. Just that little bit. I kissed the girl I love twice, you know? And I don’t even remember it.”
Marinette’s heart sinks, and her fingers brush against her lips. “Oh. I—I’m sorry.”
Partly, she’s sorry that she’s talked about even having someone to be that vulnerable with. Mostly, she’s sorry that she remembers one of the times.
And still another part of her is sorry that she hasn’t told Luka. That she can’t.
“It’s not your fault,” he says, even though it is, it all is, but she’s not about to tell him so. “But I think you should do it.”
“Do what?”
“Kiss him.” He twitches a little. “And remember what it feels like.”
“Are…” Little by little, she slides to the floor, cross-legged. She keeps her distance still, but she watches him at eye level instead. “Are you telling me all this because you want me to keep your secrets, too?”
He smiles, and this time it’s not cheeky. It’s real, and it almost makes her want to crawl over and hug him. “It’s because you’re my friend,” he says, and means it. “Look, I—I’ve been thinking about what you said the last time, too. About letting my heart do what it needs to.” The smile fades, and his gaze flickers away. “And I think mine just needs to love her until it doesn’t anymore. I don’t know if it’ll make her mad, or if she’ll hate me for it.” There’s that laugh again, the kind that leaves hairline cracks in her heart. “I just love her. That’s that.”
“She knows,” Marinette says, and dares to scoot close enough that their knees are bumping together. “I’m sure she knows.”
Nighttime in Paris must see a lot of Chat Noir—prowling the dark alleyways, jumping from roof to roof or lamp to lamp, patrolling the streets with some air of grandeur. But until now, it’s never seen him hold her hands. And until now, it’s never seen her squeeze them back.
“What do you say to being my second best friend?” he murmurs before he goes.
Nighttime in Paris has seen a lot of her, too—thinking, wishing, hoping, dreaming. And until now, it’s never seen her smile at Chat Noir so tenderly. “I’d be okay with that,” she says, so softly she’s not even sure the rest of Paris could hear it if it tried, but she is sure she’s already committed the way his eyes light up and his tail stands straight, curled at the top, to memory.
“Aren’t they so pretty?” Alya’s beaming with pride, turning her hands this way and that and wiggling her fingers at the lunch table. They’re decorated with intricate patterns of flowers and leaves and criss-crossed lines, deep red-orange against her skin and jumping out of her palms and fingernails. She’s been excited about them since the moment she walked into homeroom, beaming with every compliment and staring at her palms more than her tablet or the board.
“What is it?” Rose asks; beside her, Juleka is cradling one of Alya’s hands in both of hers, admiring the rich color of her nails.
“It’s henna,” Alya says, tossing a glance two tables down. “Nino’s mom did it for me yesterday, ‘cause she needed someone to practice on, and Noël kept saying it was only for girls. I guess he wouldn’t have it when Ms. Lahiffe said he could use it when he grows a beard.”
“Oh, yeah,” Nino pipes up. “Cause that’d mean he’d have to deal with not being—”
“A big boy,” they say in unison, and Marinette chimes in too, and they all laugh.
“Anyway.” Alya’s back to wiggling her fingers and steepling them under her chin like some criminal mastermind. “It stays on for like, three weeks. Isn’t it cool? She even put glitter on it when she was done putting it on. Look, look—”
It’s as she’s poking through her phone for all the process photos that Luka taps his finger on the tabletop in front of Marinette to get her attention. “That reminds me,” he says, quiet enough that it won’t interrupt Alya’s excitement; in fact, he even peeks over her shoulder to tell her how nice the photos look. “Jules and I are redoing our nails after school. Want to join us?”
Marinette quirks her lips. “Are you sure? If it’s something the two of you do together, then I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“Actually…” He looks over to Juleka, and then to Rose, and the way their fingers lace under the table. “She said I should ask you. Since she asked Rose. But it’s cool if you have other stuff to do. Especially since I asked if you wanted to come with me tomorrow, anyway.”
Tomorrow.
Oh God.
His appointment is tomorrow.
She really only has hours left to take her plunge, and no time now to react to it. She hasn’t even begun to plan how she might go about it. She hasn’t even begun to plan planning it. All she’s done is agonized over it, with the covers over her head and delusions of party games and too-tense moments swimming in her brain, and it all has to come to a head today—
“I’ll come,” she says, maybe a little too fast, but if Luka’s surprised by it, he doesn’t show it. In fact, he looks excited, in that cool way he manages something like eighty percent of the time, and he says he’ll meet her in the courtyard after school. And this time, when he steals a kiss before the end-of-lunch bell rings, it feels more tender than usual, like he already misses her.
If this keeps up, he might actually be the death of her one day.
There isn’t much fanfare at the end of the day, when the four of them stumble up the Liberty’s gangplank and onto the high deck above. There’s only the flick of the stereo, and the clatter of little glass bottles as they spread across the table. Juleka and Rose are already at it with the nail polish remover, chatting among themselves and not at all subtle in how they bump and brush hands. It’d probably make Marinette blush if she didn’t already think it was so sweet.
And then Luka’s pulling her attention back to him, even as he rubs his fingers raw with a soaked cotton ball, and says, “Pick a color. I’ll do yours first. You can even pick one for me.”
“You’re not going to do black?”
He gives a little smile, and an even smaller shrug. “I could use a change.”
Something warm bubbles in her stomach, and after studying each of the little bottles, she picks out a shade of matte burgundy—the perfect blend of pink and red, a splash of danger against pale skin. Luka tells her she has good taste—which she knew, but it still makes her swell with pride and joy all the same—and then he gets to work, already singing along to the music under his breath.
He gets lost in these things so easily. Which is why she can get lost in him so easily, too.
Marinette’s no good at harmonizing, but she mouths the lyrics and sometimes hums along anyway, so softly she wonders if he can even hear her. He must, because he’s smiling wider with each passing second, and he gently presses his thumb against her knuckles as if to squeeze her hand while he works. And he does it pretty quickly—he must be used to it, with how often he does it for himself or Juleka, and it must be even easier to do on someone else’s hands. Still, he takes all the the care in the world, with precise, layered strokes, and narrowed eyes, and his lower lip sucked between his teeth in concentration.
Which is, as far as she’s concerned, wholly unfair, because it distracts her from practically everything. Because she’s stuck thinking about kissing him again, even though she’s not supposed to be thinking about it, even though she really should be, all things considered, and she really could… just…
No. No! Not now!
It takes nearly all her concentration and willpower to tear her gaze away and glance down the table, where Juleka is decorating Rose’s nails with a glittery pink, and it’s as they’re drying that Rose leans over to kiss her cheek in thanks. Marinette gets the feeling she shouldn’t have watched, that maybe those little moments between them are too intimate for anyone else’s eyes. But when she turns back to Luka, he’s just finishing up her last little finger, and his bottom lip is swollen from biting it so long, and his Adam’s apple dips with a swallow that looks almost… nervous.
So, really, she’s not sure where she has permission to be looking.
She decides on proximity.
“Are you okay?” she asks Luka in between songs.
Wordlessly, and still holding her hands, Luka nods, and he turns… pink?
Is she seeing that right?
She must be, because before she can smile and ask what he’s thinking about so seriously, he lifts her hands with a precision that seems surgical, and takes to blowing cool, gentle air on her nails as his eyes flutter shut. There’s something so deeply intimate about it that whatever she was thinking of saying dies on her lips, and she holds her breath the whole time. Even when he opens his eyes just enough to toss a furtive glance to his right, and even when he presses his lips to her knuckles.
“Luka?” she says. She doesn’t know why it feels like he took all the breath from her.
“This color looks good on you,” he tells her—rasps, more like—and he lays her hands on the table again. “Give them a little more time.”
Luka isn’t usually one for hidden messages, so Marinette decide to take it literally.
It’s as she’s doing his in return—a deep teal, with his usual black in the middle—that Luka looks to his sister, and back to his hands, and murmurs, “I’ve always had the feeling my old man would hate that I did this, if he ever found out. If he were still around, I mean. He’d probably say it’s just for girls. Think I was from Satan or something.”
Marinette pauses with the brush pinched between her fingers, unsure whether to give him a pitying sort of look, or whether Juleka heard him, or why the music suddenly feels so loud. She tries to keep as blank and level as possible when she squeezes his hand as best she can without smudging the polish. “What… do you think you’d do if he did find out?”
He shrugs. “Does it matter?” he says, like he’s spent so many years telling himself he doesn’t have to be hurt, even when maybe he is. “He’s not around.”
“But if he were?” Marinette asks.
Luka takes a moment to think. Looks to his left hand, which is already painted and set to dry. Something sparks in his eyes, powerful and almost scheming. “Probably give him one of these,” he says, and she’s never seen such precision or care when he lifts his still-wet middle finger.
“Hey,” Marinette says before she goes, after their nails are dry, and she leans back against the counter below deck. She’s been admiring Luka’s handiwork since her nails began to dry, even thinks she did a decent job on his hands even if he had to guide her through more of the process than she would have expected. She’s just not ready to go yet. “I just wanted to say thanks.”
Luka’s at least trying to make the cabins looks decent, even if the Captain touts chaos over order more often than not. He looks up from what he’s doing, smiles, shakes his head. “For what? You know you don’t have to thank me.”
“I just…” She fumbles, tries not to wring her hands or drum her nails on anything because she’s pretty sure they’ll still be drying for a while. “I know this is kind of special for you and Juleka. And you didn’t have to invite me, but you did anyway. So I appreciate it.” She bows her head a little bit, just to shade her eyes and her growing blush with her hair. “I appreciate you.”
She can feel Luka’s smile radiating even from a couple of meters away. “You do a lot for Jules,” he says. “And I appreciate you for that. And for a lot of things.”
“Do you really want me to come with you tomorrow?” Marinette blurts out, then bites her lip hard, half-wishing she could take the words back.
Luka pauses, sets a pile of his belongings aside. “Only if you want to,” he says, gentle and careful. “I know needles aren’t everyone’s thing.”
“It’s not the needles—I mean, well, maybe it’s sort of the needles, cause it’s not like I want to see you get hurt or anything, I just—”
“Marinette,” Luka says, in that way that quiets her pleasantly every time he does it—even if, maybe, some part of her wishes he’d call her by some pet name again. “Breathe.”
She does, and he breathes with her like he needs to remind himself too, and then she’s whining, almost wanting to sink to her knees, because the only way she’s going to get away with anything is if she just… says it. And she doesn’t want to just say it, because just saying it takes away all the romance and the intrigue and the excitement. And as much as she’s learned to just be comfortable, don’t they deserve this too? These little spontaneous fires that they don’t have to worry about talking up to ignite, or putting out?
Luka tries again. “Marinette?”
“I wanted to kiss you,” she finally says, defeated and gripping the edge of the counter too tight, and she looks down at her shoes because anywhere else would seem self-destructive.
Still, she can hear the confusion in his voice. “You kiss me all the time. Or. Well. Not all the time. But lots of times.”
“No, I mean…” There’s a stupid lump forming in her throat, and stupid tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, and Luka notices them before she even has the chance to dry them. And he probably notices exactly what she means, too, and she can’t tell if it’s a blessing or a curse that she doesn’t have to say anything, that he knows her so well.
“Babe…” he says, in that poor thing way. Maybe it’s supposed to make her laugh at herself, at how silly she’s being. Instead, it makes her feel so vulnerable, so… dumb, that her vision starts swimming, and the tears start coming faster than she can rub them away. And then he’s brushing them off himself, with his knuckles, and bending just so to meet her at eye level. “Did I pressure you into something? I’m so sorry—”
“No! No, no—” Here it comes. The halting ticker tape talk. “You said your appointment was tomorrow. And that means you can’t do anything with it for, a while, so I thought I had to—I have to—” God, she’s pathetic, hiccuping and sniffling the more she talks. What is she, a kindergartener?
“You’re okay,” Luka says, soothing her with his hand in her hair. “Keep talking.”
“I…” Marinette takes a long pause, scorning the leftover tears that drip down and land on her shoes with a plop. “I didn’t want to have to wait. I wanted you to… I wanted, to be able to…”
Luka’s fingers skim her hairline and down her cheek until they curl under her chin, lifting it so she can meet his eyes. He looks soft, caring and careful and maybe exactly the opposite of what she expected after saying all that. He smiles, and tilts his head just so. “Hey,” he says. “You can just tell me the things you’re thinking about, or the things you want. And then we can talk about them.”
She’s probably looking at him like he grew an extra head. She kind of feels like he grew an extra head. “But—but then it’s not…”
“Fun? Like the movies?”
Marinette can feel all the color and heat in her face, and she nods, nudging his hand away.
“I think it could still be fun, whenever it happens. It doesn’t have to go so fast, and we don’t… have to do all these things, just because we think we’re supposed to do them. We’re still sort of… feeling everything out, you know? I don’t totally know how to read you yet, and you don’t totally know how to do that for me. Maybe one day we’ll get better at it, where we don’t have to say everything all the time, or ask about everything all the time. But we’re just… learning. A lot of things. Everything. And I like learning about you. I want to keep doing it, slowly. If you’ll let me.” Luka gives her another little smile.
It’s… nice, how much better he’s getting at saying things. Even if, maybe, he still feels like he’s not so good at it. And it’s nice how maybe she can learn to do the same, right alongside him. How she can learn, at all, and not have it be the worst, most embarrassing thing in the world.
“Can I tell you something else?” he says to pull her back in; he tries again to thumb away the tears still clinging to her lashes.
She nods, again, and Luka rests his hands on the counter, one on either side of her, dark teal nails beside deep red. Almost like his body could swallow hers up. He could press a little closer, but he doesn’t.
“I don’t want it to be like the movies,” he murmurs. “I want it to be like us.”
“What does that mean?” she asks.
“We’ll find out. We’ve got time.” He moves a little closer, and a creaking above them and distant chatter tells them that Rose and Juleka are still up above, still out of sight and earshot. “Are you feeling okay now?”
She gives him a smile that feels wobbly, and waves her hand in a so-so motion. “Kind of, yeah.”
He hums in understanding, and drums his nails on the countertop. “Do you still want me to kiss you? Before you go?”
This time, she feels a little more steady, and even giggles, too quiet for anyone else but the two of them to hear. “Kind of, yeah.”
The last thing she says before he does—since they’re in the habit of just telling each other things—is, “I like that you ask.”
The last thing he says is, “I just like to be sure.”
He makes it count; he keeps her caged in so she only needs to worry about herself and him, and she can feel how gently he presses his mouth to hers, how quiet and mellow everything is, up to her scalp and down to the tips of her fingers. He smiles against her lips just before he pulls back, and even then he isn’t far; if he spoke, she could feel every word herself.
And Marinette holds her breath and Luka holds his, lips just barely parted and so so close, and when he kisses her a second time it toes the line of tender and heated, and it gives and gives and gives. And just before the second ends she’s fumbling up onto the counter, and he’s helping her along, and by the time the third comes along she’s comfortably seated, and he’s standing just between her knees, and he’s still holding her by the waist with all the request for permission in his touch. Even the slightest shift has him resting his hands on the counter instead, even when she holds his face to keep him close.
He doesn’t do anything with his tongue, but he doesn’t have to, because even just this is…
It’s amazing.
So when he pulls away and asks a second time if she’s okay, she tells him. Just like he said. Even if she says it less like, It’s amazing, and more like a half-dazed, You kiss like a Disney prince.
And when she tells him, he beams. And when he leans in one last time, she shivers—first when he presses his mouth to the corner of her jaw, and again when he tips his head up to whisper, “Wait for me.”
The piercing hurts Marinette, and she’s not even the one getting it done. Even when the Captain offers to pay for her seconds, if she wants them. That’s all it takes for her to know that empathy pain actually exists, even if Luka insists, as they’re walking out of the parlor with the Captain just up ahead, that it really wasn’t so bad.
Which she hardly believes, for two reasons. First, because he spent most of the waiting time bouncing his leg way too fast while they played oversized checkers, and because he squeezed her fingers so tightly through the whole thing that her knuckles went white. And second, because when he swings by the bakery to walk with her and Alya to school on Monday, his tongue is already swollen, and he winces a bit any time he talks, and he smells so strongly like mint mouthwash and the aftertaste of ibuprofen. So now it’s his turn to be the poor thing, which she doesn’t mind, because it means she gets to pout and coo in sympathy, and check in on him the way he checks in on her, and shush him when he speaks.
A month takes a long time to go by—more like two months, because Luka wants to be extra cautious. But they find loopholes, ways to pass the time. Ways to learn, to read. Sometimes it involves handing notes back and forth, in the courtyard or throughout the school day or in the art room, with little X’s and O’s or a doodle at the bottom. Sometimes it’s the silly little things, like celebrating the day he can stop having just applesauce and smoothies, or sticking out his tongue at Marc and Nathaniel for minutes on end, for what they call “research purposes.”
Sometimes, when they’re at each other’s houses, it’s doing homework or sketching or playing while they’re pressed together at the sides, or simply cuddling to try and nap the leftover pain away. Sometimes, when they can manage it as subtly as possible, it’s Marinette blowing him a kiss in the hallway or across the art room, and Luka catching it and stuffing it in his pocket. And when they don’t have to be subtle, it’s Marinette pressing her fingers first to her lips, and then to his. Just the way he played her way back when.
What she notices, and doesn’t tell him, is that in the week or so that her dark red nails are intact, he looks considerably more flustered when she does the last of these.
At least while he’s healing, he can still call her “babe.” And cuddle her. And nap with her. And play out their feelings. He even takes to something slow in the art room, an alluring kind of melody she hasn’t quite heard from him before. She doesn’t know what color it must be, because he never tells her, but it’s warm, and it pulls her in and weirdly makes her tingle from head to toe, and by the end of the session she’s biting her lip more often than not. Like something about it is possessing her, bewitching her. He must know, too, because whenever she curiously looks up at him, he’s got his usual cool smile on, and he’s sticking out his tongue just far enough to show off the deep blue stud embedded in it.
It only takes until the end of the first month for Marinette to sidle up beside him with her sketchbook and casually ask, “What are you playing?”
Luka’s fingers slide up the fretboard so smoothly that it makes her throat go dry. “Something red,” he murmurs. “Dark, dark red.”
“Is that how you feel?”
“Yeah.”
“Then… what do you feel?”
It takes barely a turn of his head for him to look at her, and his gaze drops down to her lips. And in the few seconds he’s looking at them she keeps her promise to Chat Noir. She remembers what it feels like, and she swallows hard.
“Patience,” he says, low and just for her, and she doesn’t know if that’s what he actually feels, or what he’s telling himself to feel. Or what he’s asking of her, if the note he once gave her that said, I’m not ready yet either, is any indication.
Either way, the word makes her dizzy.
Eventually, she comes clean and tells Alya—somewhere in the midst of Best Friend Wailing that miraculously doesn’t come off as annoying to either of them—that she never actually went through with her plan. Which Alya claims to know, because apparently if Marinette had gone through with it, she would have been flustered about it for at least a week. (Which… isn’t wrong. She just didn’t think she was that readable.) Still, all Alya tells her in the end is, “I’m glad you didn’t.” And maybe a year or so ago, Alya wouldn’t have said so, or Marinette would have been confused or even upset about it. But now, it kind of makes sense. It makes sense not to be indulged.
Still, the end of the second month comes and goes, and he’s back to carefully eating solid food and rinsing his mouth once or twice a day. He develops a habit of sometimes, when he’s particularly thoughtful, letting the ball of his stud poke out between his lips. And neither of them pounces when they get a moment or two alone. Even if the tension is so palpable they could claw through it just to get to each other. They look at each other countless times, and they’re both thinking about it, she knows, and the same word catches in her throat, over and over.
Patience.
They read it, they learn it, they let it go to a day when the sun sets dark red in Paris. When they’re lit up by string lights and sitting on the floor of her balcony and talking about everything except patience, and Marinette thinks she can see a sleek black shadow on a rooftop nearby. The kind that she hopes is encouraging, though in the flicker of time that she sees it, it stands stock still before it leaps away.
(Eventually, she’ll tell Chat Noir that she can make good on her word. Like any best friend would.)
They let it go to this time when they feel so at ease that touch feels like background noise, when Luka says, “I should get going,” but doesn’t move.
When they stare and stare, and Marinette decides they’ve done their waiting and leans forward to curl her fist in the front of Luka’s T-shirt, and he meets her halfway under the canopy, burning and slow and with his fingers already winding into the hair at the base of her neck. It’s a little clumsy, and a little messy, but Alya was right about the happening of it, and the knowing what to do before even doing it. And as much as Marinette loves them, Alya and Chat Noir don’t exactly make the list of Things to Think About When a Tongue Stud Clicks Against Your Teeth.
What is on the list, though, is the weird sound she makes at how pleasantly foreign the feeling is, and the way Luka seems to pull her closer on instinct, and the mutual full-body shudder before he pulls back, half-disoriented and too careful and with cheeks that match the sky. Awkwardly, he rubs the back of his neck and says, “Sorry, I didn’t think… it was gonna. Um. Do that.”
She still has his spit on her lips. It’s only a little bit weird, but she doesn’t wipe her mouth because she doesn’t want him to think she didn’t like it. Because she really, really liked it. “I didn’t think I was gonna do that,” she admits quietly. She’s talking about the noise, mostly, but she guesses she really means everything.
“Well, uh.” He laughs, something soft between them, and looks up at her through his bangs. “Now I’m kind of hoping you’ll do it again sometime?”
She pauses, a little surprised, and then drops her head onto his shoulder and laughs with him, still halfway in his lap.
“Hey,” Luka says, slumped back against the wall and still not moving. “Was it like the movies?”
Marinette presses her hands to her cheeks—either the first are too cold, or the second are too hot—and her nails dig into her skin, and in the slivers of string lights and daylight that still remains, she catches him blushing. “Better than the movies. Definitely better than the movies.”
She thinks she’s starting to get it now. What Luka means by us.