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Luka is halfway through restringing a guitar when he gets the call. He ignores it, at first, winding a new string onto its post and clipping off the excess. When his phone rings again seconds later, he glances down at the screen and sees Marinette’s contact. He tosses the string winder on his work table and picks up the phone, propping it between his cheek and shoulder. “Hel—”
“Luka!” Marinette’s harried voice cuts him off.
“Marinette,” he says, plucking the new string to check the tension. “What’s going on?”
“Please, please I need your help!”
Luka raises his eyebrows. “Okay,” he says slowly. His fingers move absently to his wrist. “Do you need a second chance, or—"
“No, no, nothing like that,” Marinette says and Luka can just make out the faint thump of her footsteps, pacing frantically around her flat. “It’s just…Adrien’s sick and I’m supposed to meet with my models at school today for their final fitting before my senior exhibition. The only other time everyone can meet is when I’m supposed to review the final hair and makeup choices with Ramona. Do you remember Ramona? Spanish girl with the purple hair? She’s still single, by the way. Anyway, I could reschedule everyone individually, sure, but if I do that —”
“Adrien’s sick?” Luka interrupts her.
“Right,” Marinette emphasizes. “Yes, that’s the problem. I have so much going on and I just can’t deal with him—this right now. Please, please can you come babysit him? Just for the afternoon? I’d ask my mom but the bakery’s slammed. It would just be for a couple of hours while I finish up everything at school,” she finally pauses to breathe. “So…would you mind?”
Luka is already at the door, putting on his shoes. “Of course not, I’ll be there in ten.”
“Oh my god, you’re a lifesaver,” Marinette exhales. “Seriously! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ll leave a key under the mat! I owe you big time!”
Luka opens his mouth to say, “no problem,” but the line goes dead before he gets the chance. He huffs and shakes his head. That’s Marinette: always looking ahead, blazing her path to success. The rest of them are just lucky to be caught up in her wake. He starts down the sidewalk and shoots her a text.
Luka: does he need anything? meds? food?
The reply comes quickly.
Marinette: Not sure!!!!!
Luka pauses at a crosswalk and sends a message to Adrien while he waits for the light to change.
Luka: be there soon. is there anything i can grab for you?
He hasn’t received a reply by the time he makes it to Marinette and Adrien’s shared flat. He tries not to let that bother him as he makes his way up the narrow, twisting stairwell and retrieves the key from under the mat. It’s a short walk, and it’s not like Marinette would leave Adrien if he was too sick to even answer a text. At least, Luka’s reasonably sure she wouldn’t.
“Adrien,” Luka calls when he lets himself in. There’s no answer. He toes off his high tops and kicks them next to the shoe rack by the door. “Adrien, you awake?”
He peers into the living room. It’s empty, save for a cluster of dress forms, draped in brightly-patterned fabrics and congregated in the corner like a clique of gossiping house guests. Luka walks in the rest of the way. There’s a window open. The cool late autumn breeze flutters through a collection of croquis drawings pinned to the opposite wall. He studies them with his arms crossed loosely over his stomach, smiling at Marinette’s fastidious notes—the confident way she strikes through undeveloped ideas and pencils in corrections.
He’s just about to text Marinette to ask if Adrien was asleep when she left when a wet, hacking cough sounds from the other side of the flat. Luka follows it through the bedroom into the bathroom and finds Adrien curled up against the side of the bathtub, his long legs folded to his chest and his forehead pressed to his knees.
Luka’s heart kicks into his throat. He rushes to his side and kneels down next to him. “Adrien,” he says, resting his hand on Adrien’s shoulder. “You okay?”
Adrien lifts his head. His face is bloodless and drawn, his normally vibrant eyes as dull as fogged glass. “Luka?” He asks, then winces and buries a coughing fit into his elbow. The sound is soggy and coarse like a tire turning over wet gravel. He presses his hand to his chest when it passes, drawing in a long, crackling breath. “What are you doing here?”
“Marinette asked me to keep you company while she takes care of some stuff at school,” Luka says, stroking his hand up and down Adrien’s bicep. “Didn’t she tell you?”
Adrien leans back against the wall and rakes his fingers through his tangled hair. His hand is shaking. “Don’t remember,” he slurs.
Luka frowns and brushes the back of his hand against Adrien’s cheek. The fever sizzles against his skin like summer rain on sun-scorched asphalt. “Have you taken your temperature recently?” Luka asks, scanning the bathroom counter for a thermometer, a glass of water, anything to indicate Adrien hasn’t been left here to fend for himself.
Adrien blinks slowly and shakes his head.
Luka draws in a fortifying breath. “Okay, well, first things first. Let’s get you off the floor and into bed. How does that sound?”
Adrien clamps his eyes shut and dips his chin to his chest. “Threw up on the bed,” he admits, swallowing roughly. He covers his face with his hand. “And the floor.”
Luka notes the damp t-shirt slung over the side of the tub and his chest pulses with pity. He wonders if it happened before or after Marinette left. He can’t decide which is worse: imagining Adrien waking up sick and alone or imagining him being left behind, vulnerable and delirious and quarantined to the bathroom like an unhousebroken pet. “Okay, that’s alright,” Luka reassures him, squeezing the back of his neck. “I’ll take care of it. How’s your stomach feeling now?”
“Those were our last clean sheets,” Adrien rasps. His eyes are wet now, his pale lips painfully chapped. “Marinette warned me she didn’t have time to do the laundry. She’s been so stressed, and I still—" His face crumples and he breaks off with a shuddering sob.
“Hey, hey, no, it’s okay,” Luka soothes. He directs Adrien’s face into his shoulder and rests his chin on the crown of his sweaty scalp. “You couldn’t help it.”
Adrien is crying in earnest now. The sound is horrible—gasping and watery like an engine trying to turn over. “She’s already behind on her schedule because of me,” he slurs, grinding the heel of his palm into his eye. “And now I’ve inconvenienced you, too.”
“Hey,” Luka says, loud enough to draw Adrien out of the twisting labyrinth in his head. He cradles his overheated cheek in his palm, waiting until Adrien meets his gaze. “You are not an inconvenience,” he says firmly, tracing the fair swoop of Adrien’s eyebrow with his thumb. “Nothing’s more important to me right now than making sure you’re okay.”
Adrien’s chest is heaving—the hollows of his breastbone made prominent in the stark bathroom light. Snot flows freely from one nostril. It would be gross if it was anyone else.
“But the sheets—” He wheezes—fixated despite Luka’s attempts to comfort him.
“I’ll take care of it,” Luka says, brushing back Adrien’s sweat-damp hair from his forehead. The fever is holding strong. Luka makes a mental note to ransack the cabinets for a thermometer as soon as Adrien is stable enough to be left on his own. “In the meantime, what do you say we get you set up on the couch?”
Adrien recoils from Luka’s grip. “I’m fine here,” he protests in a choked whisper—his face as taut as a newly strung guitar string.
Something about his reaction doesn’t sit right, but Luka lets it go. Right now, Adrien needs him. He can worry about the rest later.
+
Adrien refuses to leave the bathroom, so Luka cobbles together a pallet for him out of bath towels and a clean pillow from the bed. After a valiant search through the kitchen and the bathroom, he finds a thermometer stuffed in the back of a junk drawer and checks Adrien’s temperature—39—then coerces him into drinking half a glass of water before settling him down to sleep with a damp washcloth draped across the back of his neck.
It’s a tight fit with Adrien’s long limbs stretched into every corner of the room, but Luka lingers with him for a while, anyway. He sits cross-legged on the threshold, his fingers combing idly through Adrien’s hair while he googles when to worry about a fever and natural methods for alleviating nausea. When the smell from the adjoining bedroom becomes too overwhelming to ignore, he smooths his hand over Adrien’s forehead one last time and goes to inspect the damage.
It’s not a pretty sight, but after spending the first few years of his early twenties touring with his dad’s band, nowhere near the worst he’s seen. There’s a pool of vomit soaked into the duvet, another stream streaked down the side of the mattress and puddled halfway to the bathroom door. The sour smell hangs in the air like boiled fog over a stagnant pond. Luka doesn’t know how he missed it when he was passing through before.
After a quick search for cleaning supplies—stored in a basket under the kitchen sink, considerably easier to find than the thermometer—he busies himself scrubbing the mattress and the floor. He tries not to think about Adrien waking up desperately ill, more concerned about the prospect of laundry than his own well-being. When the rancid odor of bile has been sufficiently overwhelmed by the throat-burning scent of astringent lemon, he bundles up the soiled linens and piles them all into the washing machine, heedless of load capacity. He eyeballs the detergent, knocks the door closed with his knee, and presses every button until the machine finally grumbles to life with a watery rush.
The flat in relative order again, he props himself against the open window and tucks a cigarette between his lips. Marinette would kill him for smoking near her sewing projects, but, he thinks as the paper catches and the first rush of nerve-blunting nicotine billows into his lungs, it’s a risk he’s willing to take. Luka leans against the wall—legs crossed at the ankle—and lets his eyes rove over the flat while he smokes.
Marinette’s presence pervades every corner of the apartment, from the pink brocade accent wall to the polka dot throw pillows. Luka’s not sure he would guess that Adrien lives here if he didn’t already know. Sometimes when they’re all hanging out together and Adrien is dressed in stiff, fashionable button-downs despite his preference for well-worn knits, or when he lets Marinette order for him at a restaurant so she doesn’t have to choose between two of her favorite meals, Luka’s memory pulls him back to the day his understanding of them both was irrevocably recontextualized. ‘When I was a kid I always wanted to be whatever my parents wanted me to be.’ The ghost of that wish lingers with Adrien even now, haunting him years after his father’s death. It echoes in the way he defers to others’ needs before his own—in all the careful ways he tries not to take up too much space.
The washing machine makes a disconcerting grinding noise and lurches to a stop, then surges back to life again with a mechanical purr. Luka stubs out his cigarette on the windowsill and heads back to the kitchen to ransack the cupboards for tea. He emerges triumphant with a box of chamomile. He had hoped for ginger, but Marinette isn’t answering her texts and Luka isn’t about to leave Adrien to go to the store.
When he returns to the bathroom—steaming mug in hand—Adrien is already awake. He’s hovering with his head over the toilet bowl, his trembling fingers hanging off the handle. He flushes and Luka sets the tea on the counter and kneels down next to him, resting a hand between his shoulder blades. “You should’ve called me,” he says, rubbing slow circles into Adrien’s back.
Adrien groans and shakes his head. A tear streaks down the bridge of his nose and drips into the swirling water. “Didn’t want to bother you,” he croaks. His voice sounds even worse than before. Tight and misted—more breath than anything.
“It’s not a bother,” Luka says and helps Adrien lean back against the wall. Adrien is lax under his hands—limbs as pliant as a doll’s. Then, suddenly, he goes rigid, curling his knees to his chest and coughing convulsively into his elbow. It’s a long fit—bone-rattling and painfully wet. When he looks up again, his eyes are bloodshot, his nose shiny with snot. Luka sits back on his heels and scans the counter for a box of tissues. When he can’t find one, he winds a ribbon of toilet paper around his hand and passes it to him, instead. Adrien takes it but doesn’t do anything with it. He just holds it in his lap, blinking sluggishly.
Luka has a bad feeling. Adrien is sickly pale—shivering so hard his teeth are clicking together. “Let’s check on that fever,” Luka says and squeezes his knee. Adrien nods, but then he closes his eyes and starts listing sideways.
Luka grabs him under the armpit and helps him down the rest of the way, his hand acting as a barrier between Adrien’s skull and the hard bathroom tile. “Adrien, you still with me?” He asks, stroking his arm like he’s a newborn kitten he can stimulate back to lucidity.
Adrien blinks heavily. He doesn’t pass out, not completely, but he’s not fully cognizant, either. “Don’t feel so good,” he slurs, and Luka thinks what a massive understatement that must be.
The pallet has been kicked into the far corner of the bathroom. If Luka had to guess, it probably ended up there in Adrien’s scramble for the toilet. He can’t reach it with his free hand so he stretches his leg out and extracts a towel from the pile with his foot. He bundles it under Adrien’s head, then finds the washcloth half-squashed under Adrien’s hip and re-wets it in the sink.
Adrien watches bleary-eyed from the floor. “Where’s Marinette?” He asks. The syllables crack like glass in the back of his throat.
Luka’s heart pulses in his fingertips. “At school, remember?” He says, wringing the washcloth out.
Adrien grimaces and curls his fingers around Luka’s ankle. “She’s mad at me.”
“She isn’t,” Luka says. He squats down next to him and smooths his fringe back, settling the damp washcloth over his forehead. “She just had some stuff to take care of. She’ll be home soon and she can tell you herself.”
“She is,” Adrien insists. His chest is heaving, his words stuttered and half-formed. “I don’t—” he swallows hard, winces—“deserve her.”
Luka smiles sadly down at him. He wishes Adrien would stop speaking. His voice sounds horrible—choked and breathless like this terrible flu has two hands clenched around his throat. “You deserve happiness,” he says diplomatically, petting him behind the ear.
Adrien turns his head to the side and presses a series of shoulder-shuddering coughs into his hand. Luka rubs his back, and when the coughs won’t stop coming, helps him sit up against the tub so his sinuses can drain. When the fit finally passes, Adrien pants and sweats like he’s just taken a spin around the city as Chat Noir. His head sags to the side like it’s too heavy to support. His skin is so pale, Luka can just make out a thick, blue vein snaking its way around his temple. It hurts to see him like this. Adrien who is normally so vibrant, who lights up every room he’s in, turned desaturated and frail like a paper cutout version of himself.
Luka hands him the lukewarm tea, but Adrien won’t drink. “I screw everything up,” he says, voice as brittle as chalk—barely there. More tears streak down his cheeks—more water he can’t afford to lose.
“You don’t,” Luka says even though he doesn’t think Adrien can hear him. He pets his knee and carefully guides the hand holding the quickly cooling tea to his lips.
“I’m always making her life harder,” Adrien continues, lost somewhere deep inside his own head. “That’s why she doesn’t—” he hiccups, a strained, gasping sound—“love me anymore.”
The words flood into Luka’s brain gradually—a trickle at first, then a thunderous deluge, uprooting everything he thought he knew about Adrien and Marinette and their fated romance, washing it away like it never existed. “That’s not true,” he says, taking the mug away and setting it on the floor behind him. Adrien tries to hide his face behind his hands, but Luka holds him gently by the wrists. “Adrien, sweetheart, no, that’s not true.” Adrien turns his head away and sobs raggedly.
Luka wraps his arm around his narrow shoulders and bundles him into his chest. It’s awkward. Adrien is as tall as him—taller maybe—and the bathroom is barely big enough for one of them, but he holds him between his legs, anyway, rocking him back and forth, whispering an endless stream of reassuring nonsense into his ear.
Adrien can’t be comforted. He cries and coughs his body into submission, and then he passes out with his head tucked under Luka’s chin, his overheated cheek pressed against Luka’s collarbone. Luka needs to hang the sheets to dry. He needs to warm up the tea and force Adrien to drink it. But the only thing he has the energy to do is hold Adrien there, his heart battering against his ribcage, angry at a world that would make a boy so sweet hate himself so much.
+
It’s already past midnight by the time Marinette arrives home. She peeks her head into the bedroom and gestures at Luka to follow her to the living room. Luka is with Adrien in the bed, sitting on Marinette’s side over the duvet and watching Gregorian chant-inspired pop covers on his phone. He takes his Airpods out and extracts his hand from Adrien’s hair.
“Sorry it’s so late,” Marinette whispers when Luka leaves the room and quietly shuts the door behind him. “Mme Dallaire got it in her head to take me to dinner and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“That’s okay,” Luka says, stretching his arms over his head. “Were you able to get everything taken care of?”
Marinette is already across the room, dragging a dress form away from the wall. “I did, yeah!” She says, dropping her portfolio on the floor and unwinding her tape measure from around the mannequin’s neck. “Seriously, I can’t thank you enough, Luka. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.’”
“Happy to help,” he says, watching her extract a notebook from her bag and flip through the pages. “Adrien fell asleep about an hour ago,” he offers when she doesn’t immediately ask. “I was able to get him to drink some tea, but you should get him some Powerade or something. He’s probably going to have a wicked headache in the morning, and he could really use the electrolytes.”
Marinette cocks her head and scribbles down something in her notebook. “Right,” she hums.
“His fever seems to be holding steady for now. I’m not sure when it started, but Google says to bring him to the doctor if it lasts longer than three days.”
“Sure,” Marinette mumbles, tossing her notebook in an ivory velvet armchair. She kneels by her portfolio and pulls out a stack of paper sewing patterns.
“Marinette,” Luka say. “Are you listening?”
“Hm?” Marinette looks up from her pattern. “What? Of course, I am!”
Luka sighs and combs his fingers through his hair. “Maybe I should stay over tonight.”
“There’s no need,” Marinette argues, tossing the patterns in the armchair with her notebook. “I’ve got everything handled.”
“Are you sure?”
Marinette raises an eyebrow and tilts her head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know.” Luka casts his hand towards the bedroom door. “Just—why is Adrien scared to sleep on his own couch?”
“Seriously?” Marinette asks, a thread of amusement in her voice. “It’s vintage. I don’t even drink water on it.” She drapes her tape measure around her neck and goes to sit on the couch. She pats the spot next to her. “What’s up with you? Did Adrien say something?”
Luka opens his mouth to explain, then decides against it. He sits down next to her, elbows on his thighs, hands hanging between his knees. “It’s not my place to say.”
“Well, whatever it is, you don’t have to worry, okay? This is his home, too. We established the rules together.”
Luka stares at a framed picture of Adrien and his mom, hung over a shelf of video game cartridges on the opposite wall. “Maybe that’s the problem,” he says, weaving his fingers together. “He doesn’t need more rules. He’s had people telling him the right way to be or act his entire life. He just—” Luka sits up and meets Marinette’s eyes. “He needs you to tell him he’s enough as he is. That you love him even when he’s not his best self.”
Marinette’s mouth twitches and goes tight. “He knows I love him!” She protests. “I told him to get a flu shot weeks ago. If he had listened to me then we wouldn’t even be having this discussion right now.”
“I know it’s rotten timing, Marinette, but it’s not like he got sick on purpose. It’s not fair to withhold care just because you’re annoyed with him.”
“I haven’t—” she starts to argue. “I wouldn’t!”
Luka watches patiently, waiting for her to untie the tangle in her head—to see the truth beyond her emotional, knee-jerk reaction to it. “Can you really say that in all honesty?”
Marinette stares at him, then whips her head away. Her jaw is tight, her body as tense as a held breath, but then she exhales, unclenches her fists, relaxes. “Okay,” she says after a while, rolling her head from one shoulder to the other. “Fine. Maybe a little. Everything’s just been so stressful lately with school.” She slumps back into the couch so hard it squeaks against the floorboards. “And I know Adrien cares, but sometimes I can feel him needing me. And even when he tries to stay out of my way, it’s like this big, heavy thing dragging me down.” She breaks off. Shakes her head at the ceiling. “I guess I’m a pretty crappy girlfriend, huh?”
Luka hums. “It sounds like you’re busy and burned out,” he says and rests his hand over hers between them. “I’m sure Adrien would understand, but you have to talk to him. Not just try and avoid the issue."
“Right,” Marinette nods to herself. “Yeah, you’re right.” She leans over and hugs him. “Thanks, Luka. You always know what to say to make me feel better. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
He squeezes her shoulder when they pull apart. “It’s not a problem, Marinette.”
“Okay,” Marinette sighs and stands—reinvigorated. She looks to her pile of sewing patterns, then to the bedroom door, her bottom lip clenched between her teeth.
Luka watches warily, waiting for her to make her choice. “Do you need me to stay?” He asks when a few seconds tick by and she hasn’t moved.
Marinette wheels around, her eyes wide and beseeching. “Would you mind? It would help me so much if I could finish these alterations tonight. Then I’d have all day to take care of Adrien tomorrow.”
“No, but…check in with him first, okay? He had a really tough day. He needs to know you’re there for him.”
“Of course,” Marinette says, already moving towards the door.
“And Marinette?” Luka says. Marinette stops and turns to him, her hand poised on the door handle. “Watch out or someone might try to steal him from you one day.”
Marinette’s face breaks into a wide smile. She folds her arms over her chest and cocks her head to the side. “Is that a threat, Couffaine?” She teases.
Luka watches her slip into the bedroom to greet the precious, sick boy inside. ‘It’s a promise,’ he thinks.