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This is not the first time today Luka has felt like punching through a wall, and it is not even the first time his partner has been the cause of it, but the frequency of the feeling as of late worries him. The timing of it as well.
“She’ll be here,” Serafu1 says as he oscillates between A♭ Minor and F# Minor, Kagami’s eyes glinting with understanding behind the mask. “Regardless of the argument you had, she wouldn’t miss the opportunity to play hero.”
No, Luka wants to say, she’s not playing at it anymore. Hasn’t been for a year now. But he can see Kagami’s challenge in her eyes, and he realises that is the point.
What an odd pair they make, sitting on top of Dupont’s rooftop, scouting out the school for its third akuma of the month in the barely-disturbed quiet of the late afternoon. The second-choice boy who got picked out first for one of the most important (Fu–and everyone else’s–words, not his) Miraculous. The first-place daughter who never got second chances. He gave her Sass because he thought it would help her. She’s never thanked him, but he likes to think it has.
A figure landing on the other side of the roof makes him snap his head, but he relaxes as soon as he spots a familiar orange-and-white suit. He signals to Orionard2 to send an illusion in, and startles with him when a figure in black lands to his left. After it says something to him, Adrien raises the flute to his lips and changes the illusion to one looking like Catlady, and then all three of them go into the building.
Luka feels a headache coming on, so he closes his eyes for a moment. He’d thought, since it’s a Sunday and there is nobody in the school, that they could gather intelligence this time before marching straight into battle, especially since Hawkmoth’s akuma have been getting stronger, and even more especially since they don’t have the Turtle.
(Really, he’d have liked to have Marinette around regardless to commiserate, but–)
“We need to go in.”
Kagami follows him silently, and he is grateful.
Catlady disappears as soon as the battle is over, and Luka is left staring at Orionard’s apologetic expression instead.
“I’ll talk to her. Jean-Yves won’t try to stop me from going in.”
“It’s not your responsibility to.”
Kagami’s eyes are trained on the wave of oncoming journalists when she says: “We can’t afford conflict between Catlady and Chancinnel. Especially not now.”
“And you know how evasive she can be,” Adrien adds, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. “I don’t know what happened, and I won’t pry; I’ll just convince her to talk to you.”
Luka doesn’t have much time to figure anything else out, so he nods.
“Go. I’ll take care of them.”
As his friends launch off towards separate parts of Paris, he turns around and faces the cameras, his coy-if-you-want-to-read-it-that-way smile already in place.
That night, there’s a knock on his window, but he doesn’t get a chance to respond before a shadow sneaks into his room with a soft (courtesy, he knows) ‘thump’ on his bed.
Luka stands up from his desk chair to put his guitar away. The realisation that the reason he has just been pulling strings since dinner is because he’s been waiting for her is… uncomfortable.
“You could have texted. It’s not safe to sneak into each other’s houses like this, not after Optigami.”
She snorts. “Please. Optigami couldn’t track me even when I wasn’t aware of it potentially being there, and Hawkmoth still thinks Chloe Bourgeois stopped being a Miraculous wielder after the Style Queen fiasco.”
“Chloe, the risk–”
“Damn you and your risks!” she says, springing from the bed. She’s in his space in moments, finger pressed against his chest. “We took too many risks when we revealed everybody’s identities to each other after Optigami. We took too many risks when you revealed your identity to me after Desperada. We need to act, Luka!”
He grabs her hand from her chest and squeezes it into his – not enough to cause her pain, but enough to get her to take a step back. He is still very much angry, and not entirely certain she isn’t riling him up on purpose (even if she’s always B Major, the key was practically invented for her), but–
“–Chloe, getting akumatised on purpose is as unlikely to solve anything as any other plan we’ve come up with so far.”
“I already broke his control once, and so have others. I can–”
“No.” It’s getting hard to keep his voice down, but she doesn’t flinch. “We still don’t know how far his mind-reading capabilities extend. He could learn everything from you.”
“He won’t.”
She looks around for a second before her eyes lock on a little space on his bookshelf, where he once told her a casually-thrown beanie usually hid a snug nook.
“Tikki. Could he read all of my mind?”
“No,” Tikki says, emerging from her space. She flutters close to Chloe, expression both stern and sad. “Luka is still right, though. The risk is too great.”
Chloe glares at her. Tikki’s antennas droop even lower, and she says:
“Let me talk with Plagg, please.”
Chloe mutters her detransformation phrase and a black blob appears next to her shoulder. Plagg gives Luka the same look he gave him when Luka nearly took Chloe’s miraculous away the second time, and zips off with Tikki into another part of the ship. If they reconvene with Roarr as well, Juleka will know Chloe’s here. Luka doesn’t know why that bothers him.
“I know you’re tired,” he says, and those, of all words, make her flinch. “I am, too. Our best shot is still drawing Shadowmoth out.”
“His akuma are getting stronger. As long as we don’t know what’s coming, he has the advantage.”
He can’t stand looking at her face anymore. She looks like she’s about to cry from anger; his eyes keep shifting to the wall with guitar feathers behind her.
“As long as he doesn’t know who we are, we have the advantage.”
“Telling the others our identities was a mistake.”
Luka grits his teeth. He nearly–he nearly says –
“Come on, say it,” she says, because of course she does; she reads his mind during battle all the time, and then acts in a way she knows he’ll disagree with anyway. “It was a mistake telling me yours. Well, Couffaine, you’re right. It was. Who knows what temper tantrum I’ll fly into next! Who I’ll tell when Shadowmoth inevitably akumatises me anyway, just like he did the last three times before I somehow managed to snap out–”
“Chloe, I know you wouldn’t–”
“Then let me end this,” she says, tears already rolling down her face. “The sooner it ends, the sooner nobody will be in danger anymore, and if I’m ready for it I’ll be sure to overcome it, and once it’s all said and done–”
“–I’ll still be guardian, and who knows what will come after Shadowmoth, and besides–”
She laughs in pure D♭ Major. It’s the most terrifying and most beautiful thing he’s heard.
“What? The UN calling in on us to solve climate change? NATO demanding we intervene in the Middle East? Who’ll tell them who the guardian is, your friends?”
Luka takes a moment to look at her. She is more than ugly in this moment. He feels that if he doesn’t hold her now, he might not have another chance.
He stays still, fists clenched at his side. “I thought you wanted to clear your name in public once all of this is over. I thought you wanted to keep Plagg.”
“I can clear my name without Catlady. I won’t be keeping Plagg once all of this is over. I’ll renounce him as soon as it ends.”
If she’d punched him in the stomach, it might have hurt less. “Why?”
The word echoes off of the walls for a bit. He didn’t say it particularly loudly, but the tune has changed already; it feels like D Minor, but Luka wouldn’t bet on it being something else.
Finally, Chloe’s face slackens. All the anger goes out of it like a candle in the wind, and when she next speaks, her voice is much lower than before.
“Put two and two together. The public might yet figure out who Catlady is – or will have been, as it were. Chloe Bourgeois and Luka Couffaine aren’t friends. If they suddenly become buddy-buddy after Hawkmoth gets defeated, how long until somebody puts all the pieces together?”
There is something not quite right in what she’s saying. Not because she keeps twisting and turning in her arguments, either.
Luka takes a leap on a question he knows the answer to. “Is that what’s been stopping us from being friends so far?”
Chloe doesn’t answer. She swallows quite visibly, then pulls a pack of handkerchiefs and starts dabbing away at her face. There is no mirror in the room, so it’s quite a difficult task. Luka’s hands reach out on their own to take the packet from her hands, and after a quick look she lets his fingers touch her face, and then it’s him rubbing her runny mascara away.
He feels as if he’s fallen into some liminal space he can’t define right now. Somewhere in the way she’s not looking at him from under her lashes is the truth, though. Somewhere in the way he’s trying not to have the paper drag too harshly against her skin.
It sounds like C Minor.
“I know Adrien and Sabrina are exceptions for you,” he starts, and he’s treading very, very carefully, because he can be angry and sardonic with her in ways he never is with others, but he doesn’t want that now, “and I know Mari took a while to warm up to you and you’re still trying with Nino and Alya and Kagami–”
–he doesn’t say Zoe’s always been there as well. That’s a conversation for another night–
“–but I’m in your corner, Chloe. It wasn’t voluntary, at first, but it’s not involuntary now. And I… I’d like to think you’re in mine as well.”
The silence carries them on for a while, and then she nods without looking at him, saying:
“For how long, though?”
And suddenly, Luka realises what the problem is.
She continues:
“Chloe Bourgeois couldn’t give three fucks if Luka Couffaine forgot her, but I–you– you–”
She chokes on it, and Luka wraps her in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he says. It doesn’t mean anything, he knows. It means everything it ever could. “There isn’t any other way. I–” he chokes on it as well, because he hasn’t thought about it, hasn’t allowed himself to think about it, “I don’t know what will happen, either. I don’t know what I’ll do. But if we get lucky, that will be a problem for a long while from now. And we’re always lucky.”
That makes her laugh, and for a moment, the B Major is an F# Major, and he hopes–
“I’ll stay, Chloe. I’ll stay if you do. For as long as we can.”
She inhales sharply at his words, but finally, finally, she wraps her arms around him as well.
“Okay.”
Tikki and Plagg take a while to come back. When they do, Chloe withdraws from his side slowly, hesitantly, as if expecting him to disappear at any moment. He’s been mindlessly playing tunes for the past half an hour in an effort to calm her down – he can’t settle between B Minor and E♭ Major – and stopping is like coming out of a trance. Plagg plops himself on her head and, after a moment, says:
“It’s time to go, kitten. Your folks will be waiting on you for dinner.”
Chloe exhales, says her transformation phrase, and then it’s Catlady giving him a parting hug again. He returns it in earnest.
“You can come again later, if you’d like. Come at any time at all, really.”
He can feel her smile into his shirt. “Has nobody ever warned you about adopting strays, Couffaine?”
“I’m sure that if they had, you’d tell them I was the stray and you the kind person who’s taken me in and reinvented my style.”
She laughs at that, and he knows he’ll lose a night or two to replicate the sound. “Now that you mention it, I should get onto that as well.”
“Get onto dinner first.”
She pulls away from him, and there are tears in her eyes again, but this time it doesn’t sadden him.
“Thank you. I’ll see you soon.”
“Good night, Chloe.”
“Good night,” and with that, there’s a brief flutter of lips on his cheek, and then the room is empty.
Luka stands there for a second, trying to process what happened, and Tikki chuckles next to him. He ignores her.
He has more important sounds to think about.