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The thirty-first of October means practically nothing in Paris, France, but for Luka specifically it means that there will be a black cat showing up in his room and burrowing into his bed. Without fail. Every year. At least, this is what he tells Marinette when she creaks open his door and gingerly makes her way over, cupping a broad shoulder in an attempt to rouse him awake.
Luka likes to wake up in patches whenever she does this, something about it reminding her of a bear. Large. Massive. His shoulders are solid and wide, an absolute mountain underneath the blanket when she gives him a bigger tug. His shaggy hair is all over his brows, sticking up like he’s catching FM radio, snagging on his lashes when he finally blinks awake. He looks exhausted— he always is— but the way he rubs at his face when he goes pawing for a shirt at the sight of her looks even more lethargic.
But his scent is warm.
Warm, safe, and real.
He smells like he always does, something full-bodied about it, scent spilling onto his pillows and sheets; it’s the smell of tea, warm and yellow-orange and melty like honey, and every time she takes a sniff of it, she’s reminded of a slow-spinning cylinder trying to rotate in a bowl of molasses. A honey dipper spinning keeping the honey within the wells of the spoon. With his scent, time moves slow, hurried thoughts degredate as if they have a ridiculously long half-life.
Calm.
Safe.
She could sink her face into his neck and sniff his glands like a loser until the fuzziness of her skin slowly creeps back down into a normal shape. Until she feels human again.
“What happened, Kitty?” he mumbles. His shirt is inside out.
“I watched a spooky video.” She’s giggling, wheezing, eeping, all three at once and nothing at all, because there’s no way she’s gonna stay on the couch in the empty living room of the Libertwo and manage to fall asleep. Not with this much cortisol inside of her. She may be an adrenaline junkie, but she’s buzzing like a battery, impossible to shake that lingering feeling that something’s looking right at her in the middle of his living room. Plus, that egg-shaped chair he has just next to the rack of DVDs looks so foreboding when there’s no light at all.
“You what?”
“On my phone. I watched a horror video game.”
He’s rubbing at his face again. She likes the way he looks when he’s sleepy. “Why?”
“I forgot I was supposed to fall asleep.” Duh. “Now I’m scared.”
“Do you pick every Halloween to do this? Or do you just like giving me a metaphorical black cat showing up on my bed on Halloween?”
“I don’t do it on purpose. But Americans love to post scary things on the internet that catch my attention. There’s this new video game out and lots of people are playing it online; the ones with a bunch of subscribers, in the millions, playing a game about ghost-hunting but the ghost hunts you if you’re not careful, and—”
“Now you’re scared because of ghosts,” he supplies, when she’s still bouncing on her toes, half on and half off the bed. He hasn’t said no to her joining him on the mattress, and he never will, but she’s more nervous because if she had her way, her nose would be right there on his pulse point. Which is not great. Boundaries are nice. Even when they’re with what should be her best friend. “Is that what happened?”
“Yeah,” she responds, lamely and loserish. “I’m… uh. Scared.”
“Of ghosts.”
“The Libertwo makes weird noises sometimes. We’re in a floating tin can. I feel like I’m about to get— what’s the word when you get infected by a demon?”
Miraculously, he’s doing well for a man who’s just woken up mere minutes ago. “‘Possessed’?”
“Exactly. A ghost is just going to snatch me right up and kill me.”
“Why do you spook yourself on purpose?”
“It’s… fun…?”
It is, it’s true, but that’s not the real reason. Luka’s known her since the two of them were still learning how to speak; he knows that she has issues regulating dopamine, because duh, so any amount of emotion is good. Generally speaking. Getting scared is as enriching as anything else for a bored, running mind, but sometimes she pushes it too far because she’s just so understimulated, and ends up in this exact position almost every time.
Crawling into his bed.
And it really, really doesn’t help that Halloween is when her feed is full of scary videos. She’s the dumb one clicking, it’s true, but who can blame her? The creator she watches is one of her favourites, and that man’s voice is so rich and smooth… it’s kinda like Luka’s.
She likes hearing his voice before bed time.
So when Luka barely makes the move to scoot over on his bed, she pounces and steals the covers off of him. Hogs the good pillow. Puts her cold feet on his sleep pants to warm herself up. Luka is left to spoon the cocooned, shivering caterpillar on his bed, just in order to recover any sense of sleep while she takes the opportunity to bask in her best friend’s scent.
Ah, it’s good to have an alpha in her life.
Normally, she’s agnostic to the idea of omegas and alphas and things, but science is science. There’s a reason why she feels so much more peaceful when she’s covered in him, wrapped up, smothered with it like it’s a bagel-shop topping. Because it’s him. Because it’s an alpha. In that order. She’s an omega, though that hardly ever matters in real life… but it matters now, at two in the morning, where she’d spent the past forty minutes listening to people do their best not to scream bloody murder into her headphones about being chased by a crawling thing on the floor. The itchiness of her existence is slowly dissipating, all because she’s balming it over with the alluring scent of ginseng tea.
Luka, Luka, Luka.
Maybe it’s the alphaness kicking in, but he never, ever minds when she does this. What alpha doesn’t instinctually like an omega asking for help, after all?
He sighs in her ear.
“Ghosts aren’t violent,” he mumbles, because of course the man who believed there was a god inside of his air conditioning vent as a child believes in ghosts. “They’re people who want to move on.”
“I know. But they were definitely violent in this game. Tossing stuff, breaking items, chasing people around a house…”
Not to mention the noises. Some would cry depending on how ‘lucky’ the player was; some would laugh, loudly; some would sing gently and sweetly while chasing players around the map; some would just groan. Some would click. Oh, the clicking. It was awful.
“Hmmm. They certainly aren’t going to suddenly kill you or haunt you, just because you watched something spooky.”
“I know.”
“Why would they attack only after you watched something scary? That seems jokerish, doesn’t it? It’s psychological.”
“I know.” She attempts to wiggle in the blankets in order to get comfortable. That grip he has, with large arms and the pretty snake tattoo sleeves, right around her body makes her feel alive again. If only he would touch her glands— oh, oh, god, that would be great. A touch of his thumb to the area would be so nice and relaxing, but that’s just not something he does. Cuddling is fine, normal, but it’s never ever anything to do with the glands. Even though it itches and burns for his touch. “Doesn’t make my heart race any less, though.”
“Your heart rate is so fast right now. It feels like I’m holding a bunny down.”
She’d poke him, if she could get her hands out. “Get your animals straight!”
“A cat,” he laughs, soft and slow and sleepy. “Sorry.”
“Much better.”
The quietness settles like dust. No doubt he’s halfway asleep again, evening out his breath, because what does he have to fear? At his height, practically nothing is taller than him. At his size, ghosts would be worried about strangulation. His hand is bigger than her face. He makes her wrist look so snappable every time he grabs her at the elbow to cradle her watch to check the time. Ghosts probably look at him and run the other way. His teeth are normal sized for his mouth, but given he’s so large, they’re proportionately big. Huge. Hers are tiny, small, almost babyish because they need to fit in her mouth.
She could slice her thumb open, should she ever put her finger against that fang, but that would be only if she really tried. They’re not filed down, not like his mother’s, but they’re kind of sharp. Meat-eating sharpness, though funnily enough, her alpha is a vegetarian.
Sorry.
Not her alpha.
But whatever.
“Do you think ghosts know how to swim?” Luka hums, scaring her stiff.
“P-probably not.”
“Cause we’re on a boat,” he continues, probably unaware that she got spooked by his voice when she thought he was asleep again. “I know we’re docked, but the principal is the same. Boat.” His hand is smoothing up and down what is a combination of her arm and her ribs, given that she’s covered by a thick blanket and she’s more lumpy than an actual form underneath it. “Do you think they’ll drown if they try, even though they’re already dead?”
She’s laughing before she knows it. “Probably not? Maybe? I don’t know. A swimming ghost sounds like a species of jellyfish.”
It kind of sounds ethereal, actually.
He’s playing with a piece of her hair that’s escaped from the quilt. “I don’t think they’d be any good at it, you know? Like a wet trashbag floating in the Seine.”
“That sounds disgusting.”
“Ghosts can be pretty gross,” he agrees. “It’s good that they just mind their own business. You know, if you wanted to stay away from any ghosts, I’m not really sure why you came in here for protection. I think your best bet was to stay in the living room, since they avoid that spot.”
She laughs again. She laughs hard enough for it to hurt, clutching her sides inside of her cocoon, trying to bat Luka away but they’re spooning (sorta) and she’s facing the other way; not only that, but her hands are forcibly inside the blanket. Still, she laughs and wiggles, laughs even harder when Luka dares to ask in the most monotone voice: “what’s so funny?” and she just…
Yeah.
This is so much better.
“Luka, what’s a ghost’s favourite tea?”
“No idea.”
“Boolong.”
He huffs out a laugh. “I think you’re feeling better now, because god, that was horrible.”
Even with him blinking and nodding off into sleep, her smile stays on, thankful for the help.
His breath is right on her glands. So soothing and so relaxing.
“No, I think it was perfect,” she mumbles, cozying right up into him.