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Marinette feels like she’s been waiting outside this office for hours.
Logically, she knows it’s only been something like twenty or thirty minutes, but the passage of time has always been funny that way. It makes the most enjoyable hours feel like mere seconds, the agonizing, anxious minutes of waiting like eternities. She doesn’t know how long she’s been bouncing her leg—not so long that it’s getting tiring, but not nearly long enough to get all the feelings out. It’s the only thing keeping her steady, no matter how much she must look like a living, breathing massage chair.
They’re not even her exam results that she’s waiting for, but they might as well be, with how her mind is swirling and stuck on one track, all at the same time. With how much she’s been thinking about them all day.
Maybe this wouldn’t be as embarrassing as it feels if she were alone, but Juleka’s been sitting across from her the whole time, staring at the floor, picking at her nails and her gloves and the holes in her leggings, so the pressure builds tenfold. She’s seen Juleka anxious before—short of breath, lost for words, fists clenching and loosening with the need to get out something, anything. She knows it, because she’s seen it in herself. But this is quieter than usual. More subdued. The kind that shows up when you’re trying to resign yourself after a long, shattering cry. When you’re trying to reassure yourself that everything will be okay no matter what happens, because it will have to be. It makes Marinette want to scoot closer to her, shift across the aisle so they’re side-by-side in their little fears, but maybe the distance makes more sense for them.
“He’ll be okay,” Marinette tries to reassure her. It comes out half-hearted, but not because she doesn’t believe herself. “He’s been studying really hard.”
“I know,” Juleka mumbles. It doesn’t stop the picking, but it seems like she’s doing it a little less. “He’s been real nervous.”
Marinette bites her lip and nods, because she’s seen it too. How much Luka tapped his toes before sitting in for the mock exams, how many times he went through index cards littered with essay prompts and dates and facts. How many formulas he must have crammed into his head these last few months. How often he’d pull up a photo of his mother on his phone, or go up to see her on the deck whenever she got home, and how he’d get this resolved smile on his face before he buried his face in the books again. How sometimes, he’d call her right after he took his medicine, just to hear her before it kicked in and he drifted off. Juleka must have seen all of that, too—maybe even ten times more.
“Hey,” she says, watching Juleka lift her head out of the corner of her eye. “Would you tell me if I’ve been stepping on any toes lately? Or, like, at all?”
Juleka’s brow furrows. “What d’you mean?”
“Well, I… I guess I’ve always been worried about things like… imposing. Taking him away from you, or something. I know how much he means to you, and I don’t want it to feel like… I dunno, some weird stepfamily thing.”
It must take a moment for the words to sink in, because Juleka’s slow nod is somewhat delayed. “You haven’t been,” she finally says. It comes out in that usual mumble of hers, but there’s something soft and earnest to it all the same. “You didn’t take him away. He’s been smiling way more these days.”
Marinette’s brow furrows. “But Luka’s almost always smiling.”
“Not this much. You didn’t see him this time last year. And it’s still a different kind.” There’s a pause, during which Juleka starts fidgeting with her hands again. “Whatever you did… or whatever you have been doing with him, well… it worked. Maybe you just brought him back.”
Marinette sheepishly rubs the back of her neck and smiles, more to herself; she wouldn’t mind if Juleka happened to catch it. “Hey…” she starts. “Could I ask you a favor?”
Juleka looks up.
“Next time I come over,” Marinette says, “can I bring some of the stuff I’ve been working on? I was hoping maybe you could model them for me again.”
Juleka’s eyes go wide, and her face starts to color. “You don’t have to do that out of pity or anything… or cause you feel like you have to because…”
“I want to. I think… I think it’d be fun.”
Juleka takes a moment to consider it, tapping her thumbs together in time with the ticking clock, and then a little faster. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
Marinette’s smile grows, so much that it’s starting to hurt her face, before the door behind her opens. Out steps Luka, clutching the doorknob, and if Marinette peeks inside the office she can see the Captain and Mr. Damocles still chatting at his desk. She scrambles to her feet instantly, and so does Juleka, and they both stare at him, at the placid expression that’s telling them… absolutely nothing. And he stares right back at them.
And then his face breaks into a satisfied grin. “I passed.”
Marinette’s been up to her ears in events that her parents have had to cater before—grabbing extra ingredients from the shops downtown, waking up at the crack of dawn to help them bake several batches of croissants or pain au chocolat. She’s even had the honor of attending some of them herself: charity events at Le Grand Paris, concentrated company holiday parties, movie premieres, even a few weddings here and there. But she’s never been to a graduation party before—probably because she’s never heard of that even being a thing, even for university students. And she’s certainly never had to plan anything like it.
But it’s something the Captain’s been insisting on ever since they got the good news, in spite of Luka constantly telling her that they don’t need to go to all the trouble, that he’s just grateful to have passed and that he’s still got a bigger challenge ahead of him.
“The bac isn’t for another three years,” was the Captain’s only response the first time he said it, and every time after that. “Who’s to say we can’t do a bit of celebratin’ now? Who’s to say you don’t deserve that?”
Marinette gets the sense that maybe he’s anxious about having an entire event in his honor, centered on him, or that they all might be counting their chickens a little too early. And at first, he tries to reassure her that that’s not the case, that he really wouldn’t mind a party so long as it makes his mother happy, that he’s pretty sure she’s been waiting for a moment like this for the longest time. But it doesn’t take very long for him to slump forward, and for her to catch him, and for him to tell her, “Will you be there?”
“Of course I’ll be there,” Marinette tells him, all amused smiles and fingers carding through his hair. “I’m helping with it. And it’s for you. I oughta be there… I’d be a pretty lousy girlfriend if I wasn’t.”
The word still makes her mouth tingle.
“Okay,” he says with a sigh, pulling her closer to him and away from her planner, adamantly pressing his ear to her heart and letting out a shudder when her hand finds that gentle spot between his shoulder blades. “Then maybe it won’t be so bad.”
The only reason she reaches back, in that moment, is to make a note about a designated quiet space. She’s pretty sure she might need one, too.
True to her word, she makes sure to bring along a duffel bag of neatly folded clothes—her projects, her babies—so that Juleka can poke through them and decide for herself which ones she wants to model. Marinette’s had the sneaking suspicion that letting Juleka pick for herself might make the process a little easier, and it turns out she’s right. It’s worth it to see her step out from behind the screen, decked out in bold dark colors and an array of jewelry on, and work through the poses she’s probably seen on TV and in magazines. It’s worth it to see her start to think, Maybe I can do this after all.
Juleka repays her with three coats of matte dark red polish, the kind that made Luka stop in his tracks the first time he saw her wear it, and it does its job quite finely the second time around.
After all these weeks of carving out time around and after party planning, Juleka ends up making a pretty good model. No, actually, she makes an awesome model. The first time she ever laid her hands on Marinette’s clothes, she looked so uncertain of herself—looking around the room, trembling in front of the screen, seeming like all she wanted to do was tear herself out of them and run. Now, after weeks of shrugging in and out of blouses and pants, sweaters and skirts, she does it all almost effortlessly. Marinette doesn’t know if Juleka went off and did some research of her own, or watched some recent fashion shows, or even had the courage to ask around, but nowadays, she falls into simple stances that fit her, make her look like she’s actually wearing the clothes instead of posing in them.
She’s a natural. Her own kind of natural. Especially on her own, without the pressure of too many ring lights and too many people and too much of the need for everything to be Absolutely Perfect. Everything is allowed to be. Just the way she lives at home. In the end, Marinette can’t bring herself to delete any of the pictures, no matter how blurry or overly candid they come out. Because Juleka is in them. And Juleka’s learning to let herself look good.
In fact, in all this commotion of planning and modeling and taking photos, Marinette almost forgets that Lila’s barely talked to her for weeks. Almost. Not that she minds—what she wouldn’t give to never have to interact with her again, after the deception, and the slander, and that Goddamn place card. It’s just… strange. Unpredictable. And she can’t help feeling a little paranoid about it.
At least, she does until Adrien sidles up to her lunch table, taps her elbow with all the uncertainty she swore she used to have reserved for him, and says, “Can I borrow you for a sec?”
In that moment, and in the quiet time that passes as they search for a corner to call her own, Marinette goes stiff and wishes she hadn’t. Or that she didn’t have to. It didn’t matter how much dignity she carried with her, or how much of her mother’s confidence and grace she held. Ever since the incident with the polaroids, there’s always been a part of her—microscopic but so painfully present—that’s been looking over her shoulder all the time, wondering who might try to conspire against her or catch her in a lie. There’s a part of here that keeps wondering if Lila is just trying to bide her time in between attacks, or if she’s really, totally done.
She gets the feeling, sometimes, that Lila’s work is never truly done. That maybe it’s going to take another year of that deep red, angry patience to get her through the rest of collège, especially without Luka waiting so patiently for her in the courtyard. She just hopes it doesn’t follow her all the way through high school; she doesn’t know if she could bear it.
“I just wanted you to know,” Adrien says once they’ve found that corner of the cafeteria and gotten uncomfortably comfortable, “that I talked to Lila. About what she did.” He shifts from foot to foot, and it’s probably supposed to look casual, but to her it only looks agitated. And she doesn’t want to know what it looks like to everyone else, even if she shouldn’t care. “She shouldn’t bother you anymore. I just wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know that I… that you deserve to be stood up for, and have someone in your corner.”
There are maybe a million things Marinette wants to say in the moment. A million thoughts swirling in her mind, and no way to really grasp onto any of them. Thank you. I appreciate you. And I love you. And why now? Why not all the other times they knew she was lying? Is it because this time Lila finally tried to pull something that involved him? And does he love her? Does he really love her? What is this thing they have, and are they just going to say they love each other and be done with it, and is it going to change them come September? And why is it so hard to hold so much care without it being twisted into romance all the time? And why is she so… happy now? That this isn’t romance, or a sore attempt at it, anymore?
The only thing she can hope for, right away, is that her expression isn’t too obvious. That he can’t pick out any of the thoughts himself just yet, and that, for once, all her practice with stuffing things down can pay off, at least until she can get somewhere it doesn’t have to. Even with the buzz of conversations around them, and even eith everything in her head, the space between them feels deathly quiet. It’s never felt this way, and by all accounts it shouldn’t. Not with Adrien.
But eventually she feels her heart go soft anyway, because she’s Marinette, and she doesn’t quite know who she’d be if it didn’t do that around Adrien. Even out of friendship. Even out of… whatever this is. “Thank you,” she breathes, rubbing her hands together for lack of anything to really do with them—for wanting to holding his, and not. “But I’ve always had someone in my corner.”
Adrien’s eyes widen just slightly, and he must not be able to help how he looks over to her empty space at her lunch table, how Luka’s poking at his food and laughing at some story Alix is telling—probably another one about how lame she thinks her older brother is. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “He’s a pretty good person to have in your corner, huh.”
“Not him,” Marinette says, even as her stomach turns when Luka looks their way. “Me.”
Marinette doesn’t exactly have a point of reference, but she guesses the party was a hit. There weren’t many people there—just the two of them, the Captain, Kitty Section, Alya and Nino and Mylène and Alix, and Marc and Nathaniel, hand-in-hand—and that was probably perfect for Luka. It was definitely perfect for her. Almost as perfect as the moment she stumbled into that planned quiet space an hour or so into the festivities, found him picking an imaginary guitar to soothe himself, and coaxed herself into his lap until both their heartbeats slowed in spite of the music upstairs.
Other than that, the rest of the school year goes about as well as Marinette could expect. She goes through her final exams the way she goes through most things: she chips away at it a little every day, and panics the night before, worried that she must have forgotten everything and is doomed to fail despite Alya trying to knock some sense into her and despite Luka’s calm encouragement and destress suggestions. And then she walks into each exam room over the next few days, smiling and looking away when Adrien touches her shoulder or winks amicably in her direction, and flies through them all like she could have taken them with her eyes closed.
Still, Luka’s nice enough not to play the told you so card, even if Alya wasn’t, and the two of them spend the afternoon on the school steps, taking in the sun and the fresh air and the beginning of two free months.
“What does it feel like?” she asks him. “Graduating, I mean.”
Luka shrugs, cradling his guitar the way she always does, the way she knows him best. “I dunno. It feels like a regular school day, except… I’m just, not coming back again.”
“Well… what does it sound like?”
He smiles, the kind that tells her just how well she knows him, and plucks out a bittersweet tune. She doesn’t quite know what color it is, and doesn’t want to ask. Any color could be sad; she doesn’t want to risk the association. But she listens anyway, because she’d be doing them both a disservice if she didn’t, and she waits for the last notes to fade before she leans on him. There’s a safety in the feeling of her head on his shoulder. In how his arm slings around her waist to pull her close. Like he’s one of those quiet types who gets by on nothing but his guitar and his girl.
Marinette likes being the girl.
She likes it a lot.
“Hey,” she finally says. It doesn’t break the silence—just kind of pushes through it like it’s a fortune teller’s beaded curtain.
Luka doesn’t answer with words, only with a hum to let her know he’s listening.
“Captain owes you a trip to the parlor,” she goes on.
He grunts again, but this time there’s something even softer to it. Maybe he’s been thinking about the whole time, trying not to get too excited about it.
Marinette smiles, and buries her face in his chest. She doesn’t need whatever powers he has to know he’s buzzing on the inside. “And so do I.”
They set the date for a Friday afternoon in July, and Marinette is buzzing on the inside—and the outside—in all the days leading up to it. Even after Luka swings by to pick her up, his trusty guitar resting in the front basket, and especially when he kisses her hello. Even after he hands her a helmet, and helps her up onto his bicycle, and pedals them both all the way across town. She can’t tell what’s faster, or louder: the clicking of the wheels, or her heart in her chest.
Technically, she shouldn’t even be scared, considering she couldn’t have been more than a couple of years old the first time she got her ears pierced. And considering how, even though she let them close up and had to get them redone just a few years ago, she couldn’t even remember the pinprick of pain the came the second time around. Maybe the reason she’s so nervous the whole ride over is because the only time she’s ever actually been to a proper tattoo and piercing parlor is because she went to watch someone else get something done. Maybe it’s because she’s scared of how it’ll look—or how her parents will think it’ll look, even though she got their permission. Or maybe it’s just because the only times she’s ever had a needle actually stuck in her body are the times she’s accidentally pricked herself while sewing or embroidering by hand. Because yes, she’s only ever gotten her ears pierced with a gun. And yes, Luka’s chided her anout it every time it’s come up in conversation.
“Hey,” he calls behind him, as if he can read every one of her thoughts, as though he senses her fear. “At least you’re only getting two needles.”
Oh, God, that’s right. Two needles stuck in her body. And he’s the one getting the gun this time.
They get to the parlor—the same place as last time, with the lollipops and coffee machine and the giant checkerboard—before the Captain does, and Marinette asks the only thing she can think of to take her mind off herself. “You’re really sure about this?”
“I’m really sure about this,” Luka says. “It’s gonna be small anyway.”
“You decided what you’re getting?”
“Yeah.” He smiles, faintly, and gives the sailor bracelet a loving tug, rubbing the skin with his thumb. “You’ll see.”
It isn’t until the Captain arrives—by taxi, of course, because Luka’s joked time and again that she can’t be trusted to drive on land—that Marinette’s nerves kick into high gear again. They only worsen with the tinkle of the bell over the door, and by the time she gets to the register she’s stammering just as badly as the day she and Luka met. And maybe he thinks it’s a little funny, but at least he slips down to take her hand while the Captain does most of the talking and fills out the necessary forms.
She’s fought handfuls of monsters and classmates gone rogue, practically on a weekly basis . What’s a piercing doing getting her all jittery?
They end up calling her in first because the process goes more quickly. She regrets it partly because she’s entirely sure she’s not ready to have two needles shoved into her body, and partly because the music they’re playing overhead is pretty catchy and she’s enjoying watching Luka tap his heel and snap his fingers to the rhythm. At least the piercer ends up being the exact same one Luka came to see months ago—a mellow, friendly-looking person named Nour with a deep purple undercut, and the tiniest lock-and-key tattoos behind each ear, and a messenger bag with a button that says IEL/LEA in all capital letters.
(“It’s their pronouns,” Luka murmurs to her as she’s hopping up onto the medical seat. Marinette didn’t even know that gender-neutral pronouns in French were even a thing.)
She’s picked out a pretty simple pair of starters—little silver ball studs that complement the miraculous earrings quite nicely—and she all but zones out staring at them. And the needles wrapped up in plastic beside them. At least the needles don’t look too thick, and they’re tapered at the end, so she can only hope and hope and hope, while Nour’s checking on Luka’s tongue piercing, that it won’t hurt as much as she’s overthinking.
“Maybe we should’ve come during your exams week,” Luka says with a grin. “So I could distract you with review questions.”
This might be the place where she’s supposed to say something silly and flirtatious like, You’re already distracting me. But he’s the one who’s good at lines like that, and honestly she’s more distracted by Nour tugging on a pair of latex gloves and opening each package. Or maybe just by Nour, considering how delicately they clean off her ears and mark each point with some gel and a toothpick, how gentle they are when they take her chin in their hand to make sure the marks are symmetrical. Admittedly, they’re kind of… pretty? Handsome? She doesn’t know the word. But whatever the word is, she’s pretty sure Luka’s thinking it, too.
“Deep breath in,” Nour murmurs, fully focused, once the needles are at her ear and her heart is pounding in her head. It’s on the exhales that she feels each prick. It’s just as bad as the sewing.
Luka’s grinning when she finally opens her eyes again. “Looking good,” he says, and for some reason it makes her feel as fluttery as she did on their first date. Maybe it’s because he’s staring a little longer than usual.
He helps her off the seat, keeps holding onto her hand all the way into the other section of the shop, where they suck on hard candies and wait for his name to be called. He must not have the same nerves that she did—he’s not clutching her like his life depends on it—but his fingers link with hers like he still wants to anchor her. Or like he wants her to do the same for him. The best part is that the Captain doesn’t mind it a bit; she’s engrossed in one of the magazines from a nearby shelf, probably for something to do than out of a genuine interest, but every so often she looks up at them and gives them the kind of smile that says that they deserve to go on adventures like these.
“Are you gonna tell me what you’re getting now?” she asks, hoping to herself that she’ll still get to hold his hand even after that door opens.
Luka only smiles, taps her on the nose and scrunches up his own; it distracts her a little from the soreness in her ears. “I said, you’ll see.”
At least she doesn’t have to wait too long to know, because within a few minutes, one of the artists opens the door to the next room, closing the sound of a harsh buzzing behind him. He’s also decorated with a few tattoos of his own, and he approaches Luka with a square of paper in his hand. On it are the silhouettes of two tiny birds, wings spread in flight. Marinette waits for them to finish their conversation and for the man to go into the back again before she turns to Luka with her brow furrowed. “That’s surprising,” she says around what’s left of her candy.
Luka cocks his head. “What’s surprising?”
“I dunno… I always figured that your first tattoo would have something to do with music. Like little notes or something, or the, um—the clefs, right?”
He beams, and his whole face looks warm. It makes her proud to know he’s taught her something that sticks, and sad to think that so few people around him cared to learn to speak his language. “I thought about it. But I decided to leave that for after the bac. You know, so I can save up and make something bigger out of it.” He gives her a nudge. “Something that important to me deserves a lot of real estate, don’t you think?”
Marinette laughs, just loud enough for the two of them, and leans on him. “Are you… scared?”
For a moment, Luka is quiet, and she can sort of feel him tense up under her touch. She’d like to hope it’s because they’re playing one of his favorite songs overhead—one of the ones that has her swaying in her seat and tapping her toes—but she’s pretty sure that’s not the case. “A little,” he admits. “I could be edgy and say I’ve gone through worse, but…”
He’s been rubbing his thumb against the inside of his wrist for a while now. She’s not sure if he’s bidding the empty skin farewell, or bracing himself for the pain it’s about to face, but all the same, she steps around his guitar and shifts into his lap with her back to him. She’s mostly glad no one is looking their way. Especially when she closes her eyes, and smiles to herself, and spreads her arms out wide despite the pounding in her chest coming back with a vengeance.
“I told you,” she says around the throbbing in her ears. “If Ladybug can’t do it, then I will.”
There’s a pause, one that sounds like Luka’s just stopped himself from speaking, and she feels him relax under her, just a touch. Then there are his hands, skimming the length of her arms, and his fingers curl into the spaces between her own. Slowly, he lowers her arms to the rests on either side of them, and he fits his pick between her thumb and index finger, and they stay like that—quiet and meditative, I’m going to be her and okay—until his name is called again.
At least the artist lets her hold Luka’s other hand. He must be pretty grateful for it, too.
It’s not as though she feels like he’s trying to one-up her when it comes to body modifications, but the whole time he’s in the chair she can’t help thinking about how willing he is to go through something this intense. How queasy it makes her if she looks at his skin or the tattooing gun for too long. For God’s sake, he’s getting a needle jabbed into his skin, maybe even into his bones, over and over and over. She can only imagine how much it must hurt him, no matter how pretty the ink is as it blossoms to life, spreads wings of its own.
It must be worth the pain, she thinks, if he spends the whole time smiling. Even if it does look a touch strained. Even if he looks like he has trouble relaxing, and plucks at the string in her heart that makes her want to protect him all over again. She has to settle for squeezing his hand every so often, and feeling him squeeze back, little blinks of tension living under his skin. She can only hope that’s enough for him.
“You never mentioned what the birds are for,” she says, massaging his free hand to keep him calm.
Luka grins, flicks his gaze first to the birds and then to the door. “Jules,” he says, his eyes fluttering shut. “And Ma. So now I’ve got my three favorite people with me all the time.”
Marinette blinks. “But there are only two birds…” And then her eyes drift down to the sailor bracelet in his lap, and she trails off, and her stomach starts to turn.
Thankfully the rest of the session doesn’t take very long; Luka takes the whole thing like a champion, only sometimes wincing. He even asks, jokingly, if she’d ever want one of her own one day. For now, she’s pretty sure the answer is a no, but maybe, with time and perhaps another piercing or two, she’ll change her mind. He says there’s this “itch” you get after you’ve gotten a piercing. An unspoken, inexplicable need to get more of them. And from the way she keeps pulling out her phone to look at her ears in the front-facing camera—because Luka keeps giving her a look every time she gets the urge to touch them—she’s getting the sense that she’s starting to feel it, too.
The only really tedious part is wrapping it up in the same plastic her parents use to freeze dough at the bakery, but Luka tucks the sailor bracelet in the back pocket of his jeans. He seems a little disappointed when the artist tells him he’ll have to wait a couple of weeks, until all the scabbing falls off, to wear anything on his wrist. But he’s at least happy to know that it shouldn’t take a toll on his playing, and he’s happy to sling his guitar back on as they meet up with the Captain again and head out of the shop.
“So,” teases the Captain, “which one is mine?”
Marinette ends up going back to the houseboat with them, holding her breath the whole time because she didn’t bring anything for Juleka, and then mildly relieved to find out that Juleka is over at Rose’s place for the day. Luka, in the meantime, takes it upon himself to teach her how to properly soak her ears because, again, she only ever knew to use rubbing alcohol and, again, Luka clutched his chest like he’d been personally attacked the first time she told him. It makes her think that he’d probably take up an apprenticeship in body modifications if he weren’t so attached to his music. Even as he’s helping her out, he keeps stealing glances toward at least one of his guitars. Like he misses them. Like he wants nothing more than to go to them, and at least have the honor of holding them close.
“Hey,” she murmurs, because she can take a hint. “Want to go back out?”
“And do what?”
She smiles. “I’ve got a couple of ideas.”
Marinette’s never gotten ice cream with Luka, together, from André’s cart, but there’s a first time for everything. He says, somewhere along the way, that he doesn’t believe in the stuff: “No, of course I believe in ice cream, I just don’t believe in everyone having only one soulmate for the rest of their lives. Or in ice cream being able to, you know, predict that.”
“If you can believe in hearing the songs that live in literally anyone’s heart,” she shoots back, gently tugging him along, “I think you can humor an ice cream man for like, twenty seconds.”
She finds André not too far from the houseboat; he’s on the bridge just by the Seine, the one with all the padlocks hooked in the chain links. No matter where he’s posted up, whether it’s along the river or by the Louvre or just outside the park, he never seems to be particularly busy with customers whenever she runs into him. But he seems pretty jovial all the same, waving her down and greeting her by name the moment his eyes meet hers. For some reason, she feels an odd swell of pride when she approaches him, and she gives Luka’s hand a gentle squeeze.
“A fine day for a treat, isn’t it?” André says. “Come for anything special this time?”
Marinette taps her chin in thought; he’s always had such interesting flavors in that cart of his. Individual ones that surprise her, combinations that she hadn’t even thought of, but that taste delicious all the same. Eventually, she smiles wide and says, “Surprise me, would you?”
She doesn’t know how he’s able to speak in rhymes so easily, or where they come from; she always has to agonize over finding just the right words for half-hours at a time. But he strings together some of the same words she’s heard from him once before—and then adds a scoop of something greenish-blue to the top before garnishing it with a cherry.
She narrows her eyes, examining it from all angles. “What’s this?”
André smiles wide, waves the ice cream scoop in her direction. “Peach pink for his lips, and mint like his eyes, but a dash of sea salt would not be unwise.“ He winks. “Makes everything taste all the sweeter, don’t you know.”
Marinette finds herself looking between the ice cream and Luka, who’s waiting for her at a nearby bench. His whole body is sprawled out there, as if to beckon her over with as little effort as possible—especially when he meets her eyes. Her face grows hot, and she all but shoves her money at André and tells him to keep the change, nearly snapping the stem of her cone as she scurries over to Luka.
“Looks good,” he hums, inclining his head her way. “Mind if I have a taste?”
Still at a loss for words, she nods, then shakes her head just as quickly, and then comes to the near-miserable conclusion, as she’s digging in, that she only took one spoon.
Luka seems to read her mind and raises a brow. “Babe,” he says, amused as always. “You’ve had my tongue in your mouth several times. I think we can share a utensil.”
It takes a few moments of stammering and sputtering for her to go quiet—she’s almost totally convinced she’ll never not be flustered when he says stuff like that—but by then Luka’s already closed his grin around the spoon. He considers the taste for a moment, and then his eyes sparkle.
“Huh,” he says. “Sea salt.”
“Is it bad?”
“No. Just sweeter than I expected.” He nudges her ribs with his elbow, grins when she squeals that she’s ticklish. “Maybe that one’s your flavor.”
Marinette finds herself looking between them again, and she smiles faintly and takes a taste of her own. He’s right, and to her surprise, so is André. “No,” she murmurs. “I know whose this is.”
They sit in relative comfort for all that time, passing the cone back and forth, never too far apart. Occasionally, she leans against him, just to feel his body there, and steals glances at his wrist, still wrapped in plastic. The only things that break their silence are the lap of the Seine against the bank and André’s almost musical sales pitches as couples pass him by. If anything, it only makes her feel more at ease, and she naturally nestles herself against Luka, who wraps an arm around her waist and lets her hand find his. Lets her be the girl.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asks once the quiet’s settled for too long. She’s learned on more than one occasion that it doesn’t exactly work wonders for their peace of mind. That talking like this, no matter how often they do it, is the perfect way to keep them off the edge. “About the soulmate thing. You don’t believe in them?”
Luka’s hand is cold, but it feels just right to hold anyway. She doesn’t think there will ever be a time when the callus on his thumb doesn’t feel like it belongs in the spaces between her knuckles. “Do you?”
Marinette doesn’t answer right away. Doesn’t even feel like she needs to. She only sits with her thoughts for a moment, chilled by the wayward drops of ice cream that trickle down her fingers, and waits for it to be over before she says, “I thought I did. I guess I always thought certain people were… made for each other.”
He taps his heels on the cobblestone, one, two, three times, then scuffs them. It feels like he’s doing it just for the sound, and it soothes her as much as it must do for him. Makes her feel a little less foolish for saying her thoughts out loud. “I don’t think that’s wrong,” he says. “I guess I think that, too. Sort of.”
“Then? What’s the ‘sort of?’”
Luka takes the cone from her and drains it. He wrinkles his nose, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s at the weird combination of peach and mint and salt or whether it’s because of this whole conversation. “Well,” he says, the way he tends to do when he needs a little more time to say things the way he means for them to sound. “Why should there only be one person made for you? Why is there only one kind of love that counts?” He scuffs his shoes, again and again, and his thumb finds a home in the band of his ring this time. “You were made for lots of people, Marinette. Your parents, and your friends. Manon, your teachers. Even Adrien—not always in that, like, ‘what could have been’ way, but there’s something there that’s never going to go away. A string that’ll never snap. That’s what soulmates have, to me.”
“Does that upset you?” she asks, thinking back to the cafeteria, the comics, the poem. “About him and me.”
“Course not. I’ve known it was there from the moment I met you.”
Marinette closes her eyes, in spite of the way her insides freeze and then melt and then freeze up again, because… technically, he has a point. And because, stupidly, she misses the touch of his hand no matter how many times she’s felt it. And because, frighteningly, she’s starting to wonder if maybe some of her notes aren’t actually hers. If all her notes just might be what she collects from everyone else, and nothing more. “What about you…?” she asks before she can think about it for too long. “Who’re you made for?”
He shrugs. “Ma, Jules… past loves that went nowhere…”
“Do you think…” She fidgets beside him. “Do you think you were made for me?”
He pauses, only laughs to himself—a barely audible little thing—and gives her arm a squeeze. “I dunno how to answer that without it sounding creepy or possessive. Or like I don’t love you as much as I actually do.” He turns to her, fingers running along her hairline, and nudges her face toward his. “That’s the last thing I want you to feel, is disposable. Or like you can’t… walk away from this, ever.”
It looks like it pains him to say that. On instinct, Marinette catches his hand and keeps it pressed to her cheek, mildly hoping it isn’t too much for any onlookers to see and mildly failing to care. “Do you think,” she tries again, “that you were made for me? And I was made for you?”
Luka looks taken aback, in spite of how naturally he strokes her cheek with his thumb, like he’s been programmed to do it. He softens into a smile she knows so well, and even though she’s seen it time and time again, it gives her that same first-time feeling from the boat, from the courtyard, from the Seine. “I think so,” he says. “I don’t know yet, if you’re my person. But you’re one of my people. I know that. I just hope I’m one of yours, too.”
“I think so.” She reaches for his free hand, breath catching when she finds the warmth of it. “I think you’re one of mine.”
Another squeeze, another smile. It just might split his face clean in two, send her heart careening right out of her chest. Are these feelings supposed to be so… gruesome? So visceral? “You love me?” he asks.
She really needs to stop nodding so hard that her head might fall off; it’s getting dangerously close to happening. Or at least, she’s getting dangerously close to bruising Luka’s nose. “Yeah,” she chokes out. “I love you.”
Marinette can’t remember the last time she said so. Or the last time he did. This time last year, she probably would have been an anxious mess about it, wondering if he really did care about her, if they really were in love. But he’s said it without saying it, with flowers and guitar strings, kisses and naps, lent security and the touch of his leathered fingertips. He’s said it with you’re human, and he’s said it with I’m not going anywhere, and he’s said it with it’s okay if you need to cry in front of me. And maybe, when she mends the holes in his seams, when she follows the melodies he plays and asks him what color they are, when she chases after his lips because she’s not done kissing him yet, she’s saying it right back.
Luka’s fitting one of his headphones into her ear now, all too carefully, and his arm finds its place around her again. “I didn’t mention this before,” he murmurs, flicking through his phone for some music, “but I’m liking this new look of yours.”
She looks down at herself—plain t-shirt, black denim shorts, a button-down tied around the waist, a pair of skater sneakers she found in the back of her closet—and shyly swings her legs. “I might’ve been… influenced.”
He hums as if to tell her he approves, finally picks a song, and stuffs his phone in his pocket. It’s one of the ones they heard in the parlor and a hundred times before, a metallic, pop rock sort of thing that already has him fingering the notes down her arm, has her bouncing from side to side. Before she knows it, she’s scooting closer to him, tapping out the rhythm on the sidewalk with her heel, and singing along under her breath.
This is a string that doesn’t snap. This is saying without saying.
“Hey,” he says in between songs. “I didn’t know you could sing that well.”
Marinette blinks across the river, eyes going wide, and stops swaying. “Neither did I.”
Ladybug feels like Chat Noir’s been watching her for hours.
He supposed to be watching the city. They’ve been over this—she doesn’t mind the occasional glance in her direction, as long as he’s paying attention to what really matters: the people. But the glances feel more like stares, with shorter and shorter gaps in between. She doesn’t even have to look out of the corner of her eye to know his gaze is there, burning into her.
She sighs, deeply. She’ll bite. “What is it, Chat?”
A quick flick of her eyes tells her that he’s squinting. Moving ever closer. “Something about you looks different tonight,” he murmurs, thoughtful and soft. It’s… kind of sweet, how he’s mellowed out with his emotions as of late, but as much as he still cracks his jokes and makes time for play, she’s not so used to this unassuming warmth that creeps out from time to time, more and more. Like how, as she studies the city lights in the distance and tries to clear her mind, he takes her chin in his hand, claws just grazing her jaw.
Ladybug shuts her eyes. “Chat—”
“I know,” he says. “I know,” and he turns her head toward his anyway. The night may as well be his element, but he barely moves in it. He only watches her, eyes gleaming green in the space between them, and for a flicker of a moment, Ladybug thinks that if he’d treated her this tender way from the start, and if it weren’t so dangerous for them to really know each other, she might have slipped and fallen a little for him, too.
Might have.
“Did you find it?” she asks, still in his grip. “What you were looking for.”
Chat Noir’s lips quirk, and his eyes spark, and he manages a smile that’s not nearly catlike enough, and yet not nearly as unsettling as it could have been. “Nice earrings,” he finally says.
Ladybug’s eyes narrow. “You’ve seen them before. All the time. You know they’re my—”
“Not those,” he says. “The other ones.”