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Alya hasn’t come over in a while, and it’s nice to have her here. It feels like home, to have her here.
It’s not as though Marinette can blame her; all summer she’s been busy with the Ladyblog, and with babysitting while her sister’s out of town training for a new title and her parents are both working full-time, and… well… with Nino, of course. Besides, it would be hypocritical; Marinette’s been pretty busy herself with… well… everything. She’s not even sure she’d have the wherewithal to get it all down—or even the time, before another akuma attack, because they’re basically inevitable and have her on high alert all the time.
It’s kind of hilarious, in a sad way, how she has to be on high alert when she’s not even eighteen yet. Or even sixteen.
But she doesn’t have to worry about that now, not when they’re huddled up on Marinette’s couch with a queue of movies and a plate of sliced fruits. She’s halfway battling Alya’s teasing tone of voice when she says, “I still can’t believe you forgot about our movie marathon. You looked like you’d just woken up when you opened the door.”
Well… that might have been because she actually had just woken up. Trust Alya to be the perfect alarm clock, even after a late night of stress and conversations that probably shouldn’t have happened, but did anyway.
At least Alya doesn’t seem to mind it; in fact, she even scoots closer on the couch, taking Marinette’s sheepish smile in stride and offering herself up as a human pillow while she scrolls through the selection. “Up late again?”
Marinette laughs nervously. “Something like that.”
Alya rolls her eyes in good nature. “I won’t ask. So no horror, right?”
“Never horror. I love sleep, and only sleep.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Just know that I won’t be offended if you pass out on me. Like, literally pass out on me.” Alya laughs, and picks out what looks like a comedy. “But I don’t know what other plans you have today. If I didn’t have the Ladyblog, I’d probably end up being your personal assistant or something.”
“Nah, you’re better than my personal assistant,” Marinette mumbles, all but sliding down until her head plops comfortably onto Alya’s lap. She’s already halfway back to sleep, even though she wishes to God she weren’t. “You’re my best friend. Wouldn’t put all of me on you like that. Or, like, any of me.”
“Isn’t ‘shouldering some burdens’ in the Best Friend job description somewhere?”
Marinette’s only response is to blow a raspberry, and Alya’s only response is to hold her closer and stifle both their giggles. She… missed this. Deeply.
“Really,” Alya says, “what else is on your agenda today?”
With a yawn she barely hides, Marinette gropes for her phone on the coffee table, grumbling as her palms lands right on a bunch of grapes. Eventually, she snatches up her phone, and the grapes along with it, and does her best to squint at the screen. “I’m supposed to go hang out with Nathaniel and Marc,” she says. “They needed a Creation Day cause they’re almost done with the draft for their next issue…” She tries not to groan, but can’t help it when her phone falls flat on her face. “I can’t…”
“Okay,” Alya says. “Then you can’t.”
There’s still a part of Marinette that wants to jolt up and argue, the part whose knee-jerk reaction is to say, But… before the rest of her can even catch up. Instead, she manages to go tense enough to stop it—because Alya’s near death-grip and the reminder of a 300-meter drop are enough of an argument—and she yawns in defeat. She swipes the passcode to unlock her phone, handing it off, and mumbles, “Cancel all my meetings.”
It sounds like Alya’s already tapping something out at lightning speed with her thumb. Just her thumb. How the heck does she do that? “You got it, babe.”
“Nooo,” Marinette whines. “You can’t call me that, that’s a Luka Name Only.”
“Okay, okay! Sorry, I’m sorry…”
They both go quiet then, only the drone of the movie filling the room. Marinette can’t tell what the movie is, only that the music is punchy and it probably takes place in some big city with big dreams. It’s not as though she has plans to roll over any time soon; for now this is the only kind of comfortable she feels. “Hey… can I ask you something? Like an honest opinion thing?”
“Yeah.” Alya’s hand finds its way into her hair, and from the moment her fingers thread through it, Marinette relaxes into the touch. “Yeah, anything.”
Marinette pauses to gather her words; it’s hard to do when she’s still this exhausted, and when they’ve… never really talked about this before. “Have I gotten, like… weirdly boy-crazy, or fixated, since Luka and I started dating?” She can’t bear any silence thaat might follow after that, so she adds, “’Cause you know how people always talk about their best friends ditching them for their boyfriends or girlfriends or… date? People? When they start dating? Or, they just won’t shut up about the person they’re dating? Did I ever… do that to you?”
Alya’s hand pauses, still in her hair, and Marinette can’t tell if she should be worried or not. “You want my honest answer?”
Marinette braces herself. “Yeah… That’s what I asked for, right?”
She can feel Alya leaning back against the couch, and the volume of the movie lowers to background noise. “Well,” Alya says with a sigh that sounds thoughtful. “Since you started dating Luka, you’ve… actually been the calmest I’ve ever seen you.”
“Alya, I mean it.”
“I know. So do I.” Her hand starts up that rhythm again; if Marinette weren’t hanging onto her every word, she could probably fall asleep like this. “You’ve been more stable about your feelings than you were when you were all tongue-tied over Adrien.”
Marinette winces. “Ouch…”
“Hey. You asked for honesty.” Alya’s shrug is practically audible, but now she’s doing this thing where she’s stroking Marinette’s hairline with her thumb, and now Marinette’s at least seventy-five percent sure she’s going to fall asleep before either of them gets their thoughts in line. “Sure, you didn’t do a complete one-eighty, but I mean… it’d be weird if you didn’t talk about your boyfriend at least sometimes. Or want to spend time with him sometimes. I dunno, it just feels like…” She trails off for a moment, sighing as though that will help her figure out what she wants to say. “Like… you know I mean this in the best way possible, but it feels like he’s helped you become a better person. More stable. More than… Adrien, could’ve. And I think that’s a good thing.”
This time, Marinette’s heart doesn’t twinge. Nothing in her does. “You think so?”
When she looks up, Alya’s already found her eyes, is already smiling and and bending to hug her as best as she can. “Job description,” she says again. “Besides. All I wanted was for you to get back the energy you’ve been putting in. All I wanted was for you to get the kind of love you deserve. I think you’ve been getting it for a long time.” She brushes her knuckles against Marinette’s forehead, pushing her bangs out of her eyes, and nods toward her. “That’s how I know it’s the real love this time.”
Marinette’s brow furrows. “What do you mean by that?”
“You didn’t get all up in arms, or jump to defend either of them. You just kind of… accepted what I said.” Alya sits back again, shrugging faintly. “I’ve been waiting on that for a while.”
“How come you never said anything?”
“You wouldn’t have listened,” Alya murmurs, and the tinge of regret in her voice chills Marinette’s blood. “You fell hard, really hard, and I couldn’t be the one to tell you that… one day I noticed you were falling in the wrong direction. I didn’t want to make you feel like I was sabotaging you. So I guess… I enabled all those feelings instead, by not saying anything about them.” She sighs. “Maybe I should have, and I’m sorry that I didn’t, but… you got there. After a while, and by yourself, but you got there, and you let the other things go.”
Marinette falls quiet. She still has no idea what’s happening in the movie, but she’s pretty much given up on it. After a while of chewing her lip and wondering just how long Alya’s been sitting on all this, and why she felt the need to apologize at all, she mumbles, “I mean… I do still. Love Adrien, I mean.”
“I know you do,” Alya says, but it sounds validating instead of exasperated. “You still love him like how Nino still loves you.”
“He what?”
“Yeah. But it’s not the googly-eyed, shut-out-everyone-else, leave-secret-admirer-notes-in-your-locker type.” Alya still hasn’t stopped stroking her hair; at this point, Marinette hopes she never does. “You know the type, because you feel it, too.”
Little by little, Marinette lets her body relax again, her head feeling heavy in Alya’s lap. “Yeah,” she mumbles. “I feel it, too.”
A buzz by Alya’s thigh jolts their attention, and Marinette nearly falls off the couch, clutching her heart. Alya calms her down again, laughing behind her hand. “It’s fine,” she says. “It’s fine. Just Marc texting back.”
“Oh…” Marinette settles again, and her eyelids start to grow heavy, and she yawns in time with the movie changing scenes. “What’d he say?”
Alya’s hand finds its way into her hair again, and all she hears just before she falls asleep is, “He says you’re fine. He says you’re okay.”
Marc is right. Marinette’s okay.
Okay enough, even, for the Seine. She thinks.
How long has it been? She doesn’t want to ask. She doesn’t need an answer. She just wants to go.
It feels like smuggling, boarding the Liberty with the container weighing so heavy in her pocket. Of course it isn’t; the box was offered, was Marinette’s choice from the get-go. But she’s been turning it over and over in her hand, over and over in her head, for the last few days. And now that she’s making her way below deck, and ready to hand it off, she’s starting to feel a little dizzy. Starting to think, maybe, of all the ways this could go wrong. All the ways she might have to go back and fix it.
On the last step she wobbles, some of the lightheadedness and the butterflies starting to get to her, and she steadies herself with the banister and squeezes her eyes shut until she stops rocking. Or maybe it’s just the boat. The only thing that brings her back to herself, after a moment, is the music drifting from a couple of rooms away.
Classical guitar.
With a renewed warmth under her skin, Marinette weaves her way through the clutter of the living room and the kitchen, tiptoeing all the while until she’s hanging in the doorway to the bedroom Luka and Juleka share. It’s not an unusual sight: Luka’s sitting on his half-made bed, playing out someone’s heart—maybe his own—with his eyes closed and the threat of happiness on his lips. But it’s him, in person, and it’s her—no mask, no suit, just her—and she can’t remember the last time it felt like this. Teetering on secure, on the feeling of, maybe we could make something of this.
As if sensing her presence, Luka plucks out a couple of notes and lets them fade into the walls, and he looks up at her just the way he did the day they met. Something in him says, I’ve been waiting for you. Have you been waiting for me, too?
He puts the guitar aside, against the wall, and he smiles at her, and he says, “Hey.”
That’s all it takes for Marinette’s stomach to flutter and her legs to turn to cement. She can’t help smiling back, and she takes, admittedly, a half-awkward seat at the foot of his bed. “Hey.”
Even with the distance, no matter how small it is, she can feel the hesitation in him when he scoots closer to her. When he says, “It’s… good to see you again.”
“I have something of yours,” she says, because she’s not sure how much longer she can go without saying it, and she’s not sure how much time she has left before Juleka comes home. Whatever time there is, she doesn’t give him enough of it to ask questions or even to look around for the quilt, which has, at least for now, become sort of a back-burner project until the late fall. Instead, she reaches into her purse—because she certainly can’t trust the pockets on these damn shorts to hold anything—and pulls out the small wooden container holding the bangle. “I was… told,” she adds, holding her breath, “that this is yours now.”
Luka’s eyes spark and go slightly wider as he eyes the box, then her, then the box again. “You… were told,” he breathes, looking almost afraid to take it from her even as she turns to face him. “What else were you told?”
Marinette chews her lip, her thumb pressing into the bright red pattern decorating the top of the box. “To trust you.”
She thinks, perhaps, this is the closest she’s ever gotten to feeling someone else’s heart the way he does, because she swears that all of him lights up. Carefully, he takes the box from her, and her heart jumps up to her throat when their fingers brush, like they’re on their first date all over again. He hesitates, again—she knows it, because she can feel it, too—before prying the box open and putting the bangle on, right next to the sailor bracelet. Right over the bird tattoos.
With a brief, startling flash of light, Sass swirls to life, hovering close to Luka’s hand and greeting him like an old friend. He nestles into Luka’s palm, seemingly ready for battle, and he looks toward Marinette, and she can see the faint shock breaking across his little face. He looks between the two of them, to Luka and to Marinette and back to Luka again, and he settles back in what looks like understanding.
“So,” he says, lingering on the s with teeth and tongue alike. “The cycle begins again.”
Marinette thinks back to Master Fu, and she gives Sass a grim smile and a short wave. “I guess you could say that.”
Luka looks like he only half-understands everything—which makes sense, all things considered. “Are you… mine, now?” he asks Sass. “Like… permanently?”
Sass gives him a solemn nod, and Marinette can feel herself nodding along with him. “It’s like I said,” she murmurs, opening her purse and coaxing Tikki into her hands. “I was told to trust you.”
It feels different this time around, when they’re in street clothes and hunkered down below the deck of a houseboat instead of behind masks and on top of the city, on top of the world. This time, it’s as though she’s taken off the earrings and transformed back right in front of him. It’s as though he can see right through her, in all the ways she never thought he could before. But there’s just enough confusion in his expression, as he looks between Tikki and Sass, for her to guesss that she’s never lost her transformation in front of him. That he’s never turned back time for her to forget it, and for him to remember it all. And maybe that’s even more scary.
Luka takes a breath and holds it, runs a hand through his hair while Sass finds a home on the display case of guitar picks. “We should… talk.”
“Yeah.” Marinette heaves a breath of her own, shuffles over to Juleka’s desk and picks out two bottles of nail polish: black, and dark red. “We should talk.”
They set up in the living room, seated across each other at the low coffee table because, according to the captain, the bartop is for eatin’, and the drums are for playin’. It’s amusing, how that’s one of the few things she keeps order about. Luka reaches for Marinette’s hands first, while Tikki and Sass hover nearby on an upside-down bucket, and when he takes one of them in both of his her chest goes pleasantly tight. Just the way it’s supposed to. Just the way she likes. He uses the most precise care with her hands, like he worships every bit of them from knuckle to nail, and goes so far as to clip back his bangs with a couple of Juleka’s rarely-used barrettes. It makes Marinette laugh, if a bit uncertainly—is she allowed to laugh at these things again? But the smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth says yes, of course, and he sets to work with the dark red first.
“When did you know?” she asks—soft, careful, so as not to startle him. “Who I was. How long…?”
Luka doesn’t answer for a while, too focused on getting the strokes of polish just right; it’s evident from the way the ball of his tongue stud pokes out between his lips. It isn’t until he’s capped the bottle and blowing the first coat dry on all but her ring finger, that he answers her. “D’you remember…” he says, “that time you told me you wanted to protect me? When you said it was okay for me to just, break down? Because if Ladybug couldn’t keep me safe, then you would?”
Marinette’s stomach lurches and drops, all at once. How could she forget failing him like that? “Yeah…?”
He pauses, still holding her hand in his, and presses his thumb between her knuckles before he goes for the black. “When you stood in front of me like that. I heard Ladybug. I didn’t realize it until then, that when I heard her, I was hearing you, too. Or… maybe it was the other way around.”
She doesn’t know what to say, can’t find the words, while he paints her ring finger and then makes for her other hand. Of course. Of course he would have known it from her heart. Why didn’t she think of it any sooner? “Why didn’t you tell me?” she finally asks. “That you knew.”
Luka purses his lips, and it’s hard to tell if it’s because he doesn’t know what to say, or because he’s so focused on getting her nails right. “I figured I wasn’t supposed to know,” he murmurs. “I didn’t want you to feel like I was lording some information over you, or like I had a reason to… blackmail you, I guess. I panicked about it for days, when I first figured it out. About what might happen if you found out that I knew. And… I didn’t want anything to put you in danger. So I figured, if I kept my mouth shut, everything would be okay.” He barely looks at her now, just takes her dry hand in his and squeezes it tight—like he wants to kiss it, perhaps, but doesn’t know if he should. If he’s allowed to just yet. “What I said that day was an accident, and I’m so sorry for making you worry about all this so much. And I’m sorry I couldn’t think of a solution.”
If he weren’t so busy applying a second coat, Marinette might take his face in her hands and hold it to hers until she got tired of it. (Which would be impractical, because of course she’d never get tired of it.) “You don’t have to be sorry for that,” she murmurs. “Thinking of solutions is my job.”
“I know. I was just hoping it could be someone else’s for once.” Luka finishes the second coat on one hand, gets back to tending the other. It’s so methodical, mesmerizing, how easily and precisely he handles her. He must have watched Juleka do it enough times. Or maybe he just loves her hands that much. “Can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“Why did you give me this in the first place?” He nods subtly toward the bangle, pausing to run his fingers over it and push it out of the way of his tattoos. “Not now that you’re letting me keep it, I mean… why did you give it to me at all? Was it because of Jules? Or because… you knew what scared me the most, and you wanted to give me some of the power to fight it?”
There’s a faint tremble in Luka’s hands as he caps the bottle and starts to blow her nails dry, and maybe it’s now more than ever that Marinette feels like this is a part of him—of too many people—that she’ll never understand. That being akumatized and everything that comes after it are one of those things that warrants experience to be fully understood, no matter how much power or comfort she tries to give, no matter how many solutions she tries to come up with. It leaves a mark somewhere, indelible fingerprints on the heart, that might take more than several months and a piece of jewelry and herself to undo.
“Something like that,” she says after swallowing hard and suppressing, against her will, the urge to hold his hands tight for both their sakes. “I just… thought you deserved to feel like you didn’t have to be so scared of yourself anymore.”
For a moment, it looks like Luka’s trying to suppress something, too. Like he’d crawl right over the table and kiss her if she let him. If he let himself. Instead, he waits until they’re both sure her hands are dry, and he presses his lips to the pads of her ring fingers. And then her palms. And then her wrists. And then he comes around the coffee table, and he coaxes her into his lap, and he holds her like that, with his fingers laced at the small of her back and his forehead pressed to hers. And for some reason, it feels like the top of the Eiffel Tower all over again. And for some reason, with their eyes closed and their bodies still, it feels like the day she met him, too. When words didn’t make sense, or couldn’t come out right, and something more meaningful had to fill the empty spaces.
“I missed this,” he confesses into the crook of her neck. “I missed you.”
The words tickle, but Marinette only holds him closer. “I missed you, too.”
She doesn’t know how long they stay like that, simply holding each other and refusing to speak and semi-meditating. However long it is, Tikki and Sass are clearly electing not to make fun of them, and she’s grateful for it. It takes the wide sweep of his hand over her back to tell her they should probably move or do something else, and reluctantly she unwinds herself from him. “Let me do yours, too,” she murmurs, thumbing his nails and the chips of polish still on them.
“Okay,” he whispers back, and this time he really does steal a kiss. It’s so quick that she almost has to question whether it happened at all, but it’s hard to deny when he gives her a smile and a half-apologetic chuckle.
She’ll be the first to admit that she’s still not as good at this stuff as he is, and maybe she never will be. But she tries, and she knows that’s what he’s always appreciated. He hums to her while she works, all too focused on each stroke of black, and before long she finds herself humming along with him, cautious and sweet, the notes buzzing and fluttering in her chest. It’s hard to fight the smile that creeps across her face then, mostly because doesn’t want to. It’s hard not to want this moment, and all the ways that the little pieces of them come together and say, we aren’t fixed yet, but we will be. We will be.
“Hey,” Marinette says once the song dies down and she sets one of his hands aside. “I think I’m ready to practice.”
Luka tilts his head. “Practice what? Sewing?”
“No.” She gives his other hand a squeeze. “Singing.”
Luka comes over more often in those last few weeks of August freedom. The first time, he all but bursts into his room, beaming and vibrating with his phone in his hand. “I got another one,” he says. “I got another gig.”
Every single time after that, he brings the classical guitar with him. He insists that it’s a courtesy he’s paying to Marinette’s parents, because bringing the electric guitar would mean bringing the amp, and for all the middle fingers he’s thrown up at the police in the past, he’s pretty sure neither her parents nor their customers would appreciate that kind of noise.
Marinette’s decided, over time, that she enjoys the classical much more anyway. She knows where his preferences and his loyalties lie, why the electric feels more alive to him and how he loves his instruments in different ways. But she feels the same way she did months ago—that when he plucks at those strings over the whir of her sewing machine or the folding of fabric, he’s playing at something inside her heart, too.
Sometimes, if the music seizes her just right, she finds herself humming along, or even singing. It’s in those moments that Luka seems to look for the perfect song. One that accompanies her, instead of the other way around. He cycles through a few each visit, sometimes playing one or two more than once as if trying to gauge some kind of energy between the three of them—him, her, and the music. He never indicates whether he’s found that perfect song just yet, but sometimes, if she turns around in her chair, she finds a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
On the days he visits, there are a few things Marinette has come to love. The way he teaches her how to harmonize with him, or harmonizes with her himself so that maybe she can come close to hearing colors and chemistry the way he can. How he’ll coax her away from her work with a simple, Come over here, and hold her on the chaise-longue until she inevitably falls asleep. The evenings he agrees to stay for dinner, and offers to help her parents despite their reminding him that he’s a guest. The way he keeps easy conversation with them, and even joins in on her mother’s meditation sessions when it seems like they both need it. How some nights he’d probably stay long enough to sing her to sleep if he could. How some nights he does, through a video call, because Marinette, I don’t know how to go to bed without saying good night to you anymore. How some nights, he lets her sing him to sleep instead.
“Come on stage with me,” he says over a video call one night, his voice and his eyes heavy. “Just for one song.”
“Okay,” she says, and by some miracle manages not to drop her phone on her face. “Just for one song.”
The gig rolls around just a few days before the beginning of the school year, and perhaps at any other time Marinette might have made an outfit herself—something just for the occasion. But between the stresses of Luka finding her out, and reconciling with him and Viperion and Master Fu, it wasn’t in the stars. Besides, Luka told her on multiple occasions that he liked her style no matter what she wore. And she definitely liked her style no matter what she wore. So she decides on a simple, billowing summer dress, fastens the guitar pick choker around her neck, and heads off with a text to her parents about her curfew. If she looks behind her out her way out, she thinks… she thinks she might see a flicker of black on her balcony, but it’s probably the light and the night playing tricks on her again.
By the time she gets to the café, it feels like the place is nearly packed. Friends and couples chat under the dim light, spoons clatter on tables and against ceramic cups, and the smell of coffee and baked goods is more than overwhelming. It takes her a moment to find the tables her friends are huddled around—Alya and Nino, practically in each other’s laps; Juleka, Rose, Ivan, and Myléne, watching the stage with heated gazes; Marc and Nathaniel with their notebooks and knees bumping together under the table, and maybe their hands, too. And Adrien and Kagami, locked in quiet discussion, their fingers flitting together and apart on the tabletop.
Maybe they really are on a date. And maybe Marinette’s heart still twitches the wrong way because of it.
But then Luka hoists himself up onto the stage, pacing around and fumbling with the zipper of his gig bag in the corner like he’s nervous. He meets her eyes, all the way up there, in all that heated, heavy light, and he grins at her like she’s the only one in the room. It looks like his whole body goes slack—like all he needed was to see her to know he was up there for a reason—and maybe she can feel hers go the same way. Whatever he’s feeling, he shakes it off and straps the electric guitar on. And whatever she’s feeling, she shakes it off, too, and wedges herself right between Nino and Marc.
“Sorry,” she chirps, her face hurting from the smile she barely realized was there. “Am I late?”
“Wouldn’t put it past you,” Alya says with a playful roll of her eyes, sliding an iced drink her way. “But you’re just in time.”
Just in time, it seems, for Luka to slide up onto the wooden stool onstage, pick out a scale, and then lean into the mic. “Hey, thanks for having me back,” he says, low and smooth; it’s like he’s a different person now, once his voice booms and bleeds into the walls and into everyone’s skin. “How are we doing tonight?”
Conversation melts into whoops and cheers and scattered applause, and Marinette can’t help staring half-dumbstruck at the stage. She also can’t help bouncing her leg under the table at double-time, fast enough for Nino to ask if she’s okay. When Luka looks her way and nods toward her, she stops, just for a second, and so does her leg, and she has to bite down a nervous giggle like some kind of groupie when the strangers nearby turn her way.
God. She’s really stupid for him. For what they’ve become.
“All right,” he says, flicking his hair away, his nails bold and black and the silver bangle glinting and the ripped threads in his jeans near-tangible under the stage lights. “Now I’m good to go.”
When Luka announces that he wants to end the night with a duet and looks at her again, all blue-green confidence and high off the red-orange music of her heart—when he says, “Come on stage with me, just for one song,” in front of all those people—Marinette chokes. Sure, it’s the moment she’s been anticipating all night, and sure, she’s been practicing for it, but it’s different when the moment is here, when everything is dark and someone’s bringing out another stool and another microphone and everyone seems to be looking at her.
Mechanically, and trying not to be too overwhelmed by Alya’s sudden whooping, Marinette gets to her feet, stumbles and weaves through the audience. Luka’s already at the edge of the stage, helping her up onto it and leading her to the spare stool while he straps on the classical guitar again. “You still wanna do this?” he breathes, out of the audience’s earshot. His eyes flit toward the crowd, and so do Marinette’s, and for a flash of a moment, she wishes she were back in her seat, squeezing Marc’s hand under the table and avoiding Adrien’s eyes.
But only for a flash.
Marinette smooths out her skirt with slightly shaky hands. “Yeah,” she whispers back, swallowing down her heart and the butterflies in her stomach. “Let’s do this.”
Luka grins, and turns back to the audience. “If you like how I sound,” he says, jerking a thumb her way, “get a load of her.”
At first it isn’t perfect—she can barely hear him playing over the pounding of her heart in her head, and she nearly drops the microphone as she wrestles it from the stand. But all she has to do, it seems, is close her eyes. And it’s no longer a concert for dozens, no longer something she might imagine on one of those televised singing competitions. With her eyes closed and her nerves slowing down and Luka beside her, it’s just the two of them, in her bedroom, with her work in her hands and his life in his, crooning away the rest of the summer and basking in its little comforts. Her voice stops trembling. Her legs stop swinging. Her friends fade into the background. She can almost hear the sewing machine—or maybe that’s simply Luka’s voice, dipping down to lift hers up. Color and chemistry, all over again.
When Luka strums out the last chord and Marinette opens her eyes again, her knuckles are nearly white from gripping the microphone so tightly. Luka’s grinning at her with stars in his eyes as he leans in and says, “Thank you,” and the audience nearly erupts in applause and coos as he pulls his guitar off his shoulders and comes around to wrap her up in a swaying hug.
“Look,” he murmurs. He rests his hand on her shoulder, presses his cheek to hers and turns her toward the people as they stand. “You did that.”
She’s not sure what to make of it, even when her eyes land on her friends, their fists pumping and their hands cupped around their mouths. All she can do is clutch her chest and struggle to put the microphone back and shake her heaad dumbly. “No,” she whispers back. “You did that.”
Luka unravels himself from her, and as public as this whole thing has been she can’t help wishing he didn’t. “How about we say we both did,” he says, “and call it even.” His hand finds hers as he helps her off the stage, and he only gives her enough time to agree before he parts from her with a wink and a soft, “Wait for me.”
Which she’s pretty sure is illegal.
She’s pretty sure he’s illegal.
It takes Marinette at least half an hour to pry her friends off of her, between the hugs and exclamations of, “I didn’t know you could sing like that!” and Rose’s incessant swooning over how romantic it all was. Even with Marc next to her, somehow grounding her more than anyone else, the shop starts to feel a little suffocating, and she excuses herself for a drink and some air outside. No sooner does the August heat hit her than a car horn honks nearby, and both Adrien and Kagami slip out after her, their little fingers linked and Kagami’s hand worming her way into Adrien’s. It’s… kind of cute, how she must be looking for something to ground her, too.
“Hey, Marinette,” Adrien says with a wave. “Nice job up there. I never knew you could sing.”
To her own surprise, Marinette manages little more than a breathless laugh, awkwardly rubbing the back of her neck. “Learn something new every day, I guess…”
“Yeah, guess so… Well, that’s our ride.” He gives her a lopsided smile. “See you at school?”
“Yeah. See you at school.” She sends them both off with a weak wave of her own, and she swears that when she and Kagami lock eyes before the car door closes, the words that hang between them are, Good for you.
It isn’t long after they drive away before Luka stumbles out of the café, one guitar strapped to his back and the other in its trusty case. “Jesus,” he says, nearly out of breath. “It’s a madhouse in there, huh?” He accepts a sip or two of her iced water, runs his hand through his hair. “So…? What’d you think?”
Marinette lets him have the rest. “It was fun. I always like watching you play…” She stands on the sides of her feet, hands hiding in the folds of her dress. “But I think I’ll save the singing for the shower. Or when it’s just us.”
“Just us…” Luka breathes the words to himself, scrunches up his lips like he’s rolling them over in his mouth. “Hey… Marinette.”
“Yeah?”
It’s strange, but she loves these little moments when he fumbles. When the cool facade cracks and parts. Whatever words he has, he stumbles over them, then decides to drain the cup and toss it away. “Look I… I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this for months. I wanted to find the perfect time, the perfect place, but I…” He shakes his head quickly, jamming his hand in his pocket. “Guess this is as good a time as any.”
Before Marinette can ask what he’s talking about, he steps closer, until they’re toe-to-toe, foreheads pressed together. He sets his guitar down and pulls out a small black box, and she can practically feel his heart pounding as he lays it in her hands.
“Take it,” he rasps. “Please.”
It’s so much harder to breathe like this than it was inside the café, but this feels so much more pleasant. Stomach turning, she pries the box open to find a small silver ring, a design of two hearts woven together, topped with a crown. A single ruby sits where the hearts meet, surrounded by a small leaf on each side. “Luka…?” She swallows, hard, surprised she can say anything. “What is this?”
“It’s a Luckenbooth,” he says, words slurring together; in spite of the anxiety attacks she’s been privy to, this might be the most nervous she’s ever seen him. “My ma, her side of the family’s Scottish, you know? We use this symbol for brooches and jewelry and…” Gently, he pulls the ring out of the box. “The hearts are for love,” he says. “And, the crown is for loyalty, and the ruby is, well—you know—and your birthday’s in July, so I figured—”
“Luka,” she says again. “What is this?”
“It’s a promise ring,” he blurts out, and he freezes, like he wants to catch the words and take them back. He sighs deeply, shuts his eyes tight. “You know I’m no good with words when I need them, I just… wanted you to have this. So I’m with you when I’m not, so you know how much… I care about you, and trust you. I know you already know, but I…” He fidgets with the ring in his hand, like he wants to hold her close but doesn’t know if he can. “I love you, Marinette. And I want to be one of your people. And I want to feel like home to you, too.”
Honestly, Marinette isn’t even sure she heard anything past the I love you. She should have known Luka would be the type to indulge in small, deeply meaningful moments. To figure out the ways she loves and echo it back to her when it means the most. Before she knows it, she’s sniffling, and her vision goes blurry with the tears she tries and fails to blink back. She throws her arms around him in a tight hug, refusing to let go, and only cries harder when he reaches up to cradle the back of her head, when he leans down to kiss the top of it and sway with her to calm her down. He gives, and he gives, and he lets her let it consume her from head to toe.
“That bad, huh?” he jokes, softly.
With another sniffle, Marinette wipes her eyes and gives him her hand. “Put it on.”
He does, taking his sweet time and admiring how well it matches her nails, and he lifts her hand to his lips and kisses the ring, right on the ruby. And before he lets go, she catches him by the wrist and kisses it in return. The birds. The sailor bracelet. The bangle.
“Should we…?” she murmurs, lingering, casting a glance behind her at the city falling asleep. Patrol?
Luka only smiles, and shakes his head, and takes both hands in his. “Let them rest,” he says. “Let them rest.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go back to sleep?” Luka’s voice crackles through the phone. “You’ve still got, like, a couple of hours before you have to be at school. Hell, even Jules is still asleep.”
“I’m sure.” Marinette yawns, rubs at her eyes as she stumbles and paces her bedroom floor, but she’s sure all the same. “I wanted to be here for you, cause you said your classses start earlier than mine.”
“Never gonna get used to that…” On her screen, though, he’s a whirlwind, a blur of half-undress and bedhead and a curse when he stubs his toe, but in the background one of his guitars still stands tall and proud beside his bed. Sass hovers just above it, as if sitting upon it, and rolls his big yellow eyes. Humans, it seems he wants to hiss. “ I would’ve been fine, y’know. It’s just the first day of school.”
“First day of high school,” she corrects him. “You worked too hard to get there to not have some support through it.” Another yawn, and she collapses and curls up on the chaise longue, struggling to keep her eyes open. Tikki nestles into the crook of her neck; Marinette’s sure that if the phone camera could capture her, Luka would wave to her, too. “I even wanted to take the metro with you there, or come to the school after your classes were over, but… that probably would’ve been lame, some middle school girl coming and waiting for you.”
Luka pauses his frenzy long enough to stare into the camera and fold his arms; he’s still shirtless, and Marinette doesn’t know if she should make a show of looking away, or making a show of staring. “Be nice,” he scolds her gently, leaning in. “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.”
Staring. Definitely staring.
“Besides,” he goes on, pulling on a shirt to her disappointment, “it’s your first day of school, too. Why don’t you worry about yourself a little?”
“’Cause I’m busy worrying about you?” Marinette yawns again. “Besides, I’m still going to the same school. What do I have to worry about, anyway?”
Luka gives her a look, and they both fall silent, as if already knowing the answer. And it’s not the brevet.
“Well…” She frowns. “Lila and I probably won’t be in the same class again. And… Adrien already said he’d talked to her. Honestly, I’m more worried for Kagami’s sake than I am for mine, but—” She giggles faintly. “I think she can hold her own. You know. With a sword and everything.”
Luka smiles. It’s lazy, but bright enough to wake her up a little more. “You two should talk more,” he says. “I think you’d be good friends.” His eyes flick away from the screen for a moment, and his voice drops to a whisper; behind him, Sass flits away into the pocket of his gig bag. “Sorry—I think Jules is waking up. I gotta go. I’ll tell you everything after school.”
“Will you be okay?”
“Sure I will.” He tilts his head and raises his wrist to show off the birds, the bracelet, and the bangle. “I’ve got everything I need right here.”
She grins, pressing a hand to her stomach to quell the sudden butterflies there, and blows him a kiss good luck before hanging up. Tikki’s still there—she can feel her—and she curls up in her hair, whispering into her ear. “Hey,” she says. “Are you ready?”
Marinette yawns, and shakes her head, and closes her eyes. “Let me rest,” she mumbles. “Let me rest.”