Hi!

So this was going to be a one-shot, but I decided to split what I've written into two parts. It's my first Ladybug fic. I honestly never thought I'd write one, but I found Truth to be so infuriating on so many levels and for so many reasons that I wanted to experiment a little (and maybe apply some sort of soothing balm to my rage in the form of a little writing...?). So here's some Lukanette headcanon with...something extra? Comments or criticisms are welcome. I've already mapped out and started writing the second part, but again - new to this. 3

Hope you enjoy!

ssg.x.

A LIFE RUN RED
PART I

The first thing it takes from you is your will.

The last thing it takes from you is your name.

At least that's how it was for Luka Couffaine.

What he wasn't expecting, though, was the gift it would eventually give him in return, if one could call it a gift. He wasn't talking about the superpowers. He had only the vaguest recollection of those. And he knew that voice – that voice that had hissed everything he thought he wanted at the time in his ear – would stay with him for a long while, like lingering shadows cast against the inner walls of his skull. For days after the Silencer incident, all the meditation in the world couldn't get that voice out of his head. He couldn't listen to music, he couldn't compose music and, most distressing of all, he could no longer hear Marinette's music – the song that had been stuck in his head since the moment he opened his eyes and found hers – beautiful, blue and bewildered - staring back. If he'd known there was even the slightest chance that Marinette's melody could be lost to him forever, he would have fought the akumatization with every fibre of his being.

He hadn't tried to fight it that day because he was angry. Irrepressibly angry. But outrage wasn't going to get anyone anywhere. Roth had threatened to make Kitty Section look like a bunch of talentless rip-off artists before they'd even gotten off the ground. He couldn't protect his sister, he couldn't protect Ivan or Rose, and he couldn't protect Marinette from having their labour of love stolen from them.

Hawkmoth was offering him power that would otherwise need to be forced on him. Bob Roth had made Luka Couffaine feel like a nobody, so when Hawkmoth offered him the chance to make Roth pay for his transgressions, Luka was happy to sell his soul for a song. He couldn't get Kitty Section's identity back, but he'd gladly given up his own in exchange for one that could.

Marinette had reluctantly given him a rundown of what had happened – what she knew, anyway. She insisted that it wasn't a big deal, tried to make him feel better by telling him that Silencer's focus seemed to be singularly trained on Roth. No one had gotten hurt, and Juleka, Rose and Ivan had been nowhere near them throughout the entire ordeal.

"And you?" he'd later asked softly as the two of them hung out on the deck of the houseboat he shared with his mother and sister. They hadn't properly been alone together all day, and while he was usually very comfortable around Marinette, this time things felt different. Well, they were different. He'd opened himself up to her in a way he'd wanted to for a long time, and the words had come to him so easily.

Oh – and she hadn't screamed and run away, which was encouraging.

But how could she possibly look at him the same way after everything that had happened? What if it had all been too much for her – the akumatizing, the confession…and whatever it was he might have said to her, or the way he may have treated her while he was Silencer? That was quite a lot to have to put up with in only a matter of a few hours.

Marinette looked across at Luka and smiled. Her warm cerulean eyes edged with long, dark lashes seemed to know his heart, though he wasn't entirely sure she was aware of it.

No, actually he was pretty sure she wasn't even a little aware of it. It had been hours since Kitty Section's first on-screen performance, and she still hadn't mentioned his confession. His mother had taken Juleka, Ivan and Rose out to celebrate, understanding that as laid back as Luka usually was, the day had left him pretty rattled. Marinette had stayed behind, and he was thankful for that, but he couldn't help but wonder if she was just doing it out of pity.

She's in love with Adrien Agreste.

Of course he knew this – everyone knew it, with the exception of Adrien - and one might have called Luka a glutton for punishment, but he didn't regret telling her how he felt. It seemed to make her happy, and that was the most he could ask for while the girl he'd written about a dozen songs for in his head was in love with someone else.

"Luka, I'm alright. It must be frustrating not to be able to remember anything while you were akumatized, but I can promise you that I was safe the entire time. You made sure of that, even as Silencer."

He cast his gaze to the ground. His guitar rested on his lap, and usually he'd strum it just to have something to do with his hands, but he didn't have it in him just then. He was too afraid of what Marinette might actually be thinking about.

Probably Adrien.

"I should have fought harder," he said under his breath.

"Against Hawkmoth? He's a supervillain who feeds off of negative emotions. And you were angry and frustrated. I was angry and frustrated. In that moment, I could just have easily been akumatized."

"Actually, I meant that I should have fought harder against…" his voice trailed off. He felt ashamed of himself.

"You mean Hawkroth?" Marinette grinned.

Luka chuckled sadly. "It's just…you expect supervillains to be villainous. You don't expect regular people to be so awful. I knew we were living in a world where power mainly comes from money and connections, but honesty and fairness…and truth. I always thought those things would at least leave a dent in that kind of power. But it all bounced off of Roth like it was nothing." He let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Marinette. I don't even know what I'm trying to say. My head is still a little foggy, I guess. I'm just sorry for everything that happened today."

Marinette moved closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder. Usually this was one of his favourite things – looking down and seeing the shimmer of Marinette's blueberry-coloured hair, feeling the weight of a head full of thoughts and ideas he wanted to hear all about, and mysteries he hoped she'd offer him the key to someday. But today he was so crippled with self-doubt that his entire body stiffened when she touched him. He glanced down at the hands in her lap, wanting nothing more than to lace his long fingers through her smaller, more delicate ones. But then he thought about his calloused fingertips and how much it would hurt him if Marinette pulled away from his touch, especially now when he was feeling so vulnerable.

He thought about how super models probably didn't have callouses, how Adrien probably didn't.

Marinette would probably never have the same feelings for Luka that she had for Adrien. He knew that. Still, he didn't care. As long as he could be near her, could hear the music that played on her lips whenever she spoke his name, it would be enough.

It would be enough.

It started off as unfocused pinpoint-sized flickers of light in his peripheral vision. The first few times he noticed it happening, he rubbed his eyes thinking maybe he just needed some sleep or had a headache coming on. The lights would temporarily vanish but eventually return. It didn't matter what time of day it was, or whether it was sunny or cloudy – the lights would appear and disappear at random. It wasn't really something that interfered with daily life, so he tried not to concern himself with it too much. The distraction of thinking about it was more of a bother than the lights themselves.

It wasn't until Kitty Section was practicing one day after school that it became a…well, a problem. Maybe.

They were practicing a new song that Luka had written the lyrics for himself. Usually he stuck to musical composition, but now he had a muse. So one evening he found himself going back and forth between jotting down words as they came to him, then chewing on the tip of his pen as he took up his guitar and experimented with different chords. He murmured the scribbled words back to himself, trying to form a melody. The lights he'd become so accustomed to glowed softly like fairylights dancing on the fringe of his eyeline. That night the lights were blue, which was new, but they still couldn't compete with his thoughts of Marinette. Her light was brighter.

Rose usually wrote the band's lyrics, but she was very enthusiastic about singing Luka's. Of course she was usually enthusiastic about pretty much everything – still, he was grateful for any bit of encouragement.

"The Beat That My Heart Skipped!" Rose read the song title to Juleka and Ivan with the excitement of someone announcing they'd just won the lottery.

He wondered if the band would realize the song was about Marinette. It was very obvious to him, and now that the song was about to go from words on a piece of paper to being belted into a microphone from their little makeshift stage where just about anyone walking by could hear it, he'd suddenly coming down with a severe case of timidity.

What if Marinette hates it when she hears it?

Juleka looked up from fidgeting with one of the tuning pegs on her bass, smiling at him from behind her long bangs.

Okay, so Juleka definitely knows the song is about Marinette.

"I like that that the word 'beat' is in the title," Ivan said.

And Ivan definitely doesn't.

Rose sucked a deep breath into her deceptively massive lungs, and that's when it happened.

The moment the first note exploded from Rose's throat, dozens of pink fireflies swarmed his vision. Startled, he stumbled backwards a step or two. He inhaled sharply and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. He heard Juleka leap to his side. She planted a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Luka, are you alright?"

He gave his head a good shake. When he removed his hands from his eyes, he found Rose and Ivan standing on either side of his sister, looking concerned.

"Was I off key?" Rose asked, eyes wide with worry.

Luka turned in a full circle where he stood, searching frantically for the throng of lights that had almost completely blinded him only a moment ago. His bandmates jumped out of the way of his swinging guitar neck.

"Maybe you should sit down," Juleka suggested, lifting his guitar strap carefully up and over his head. Rose steadied him as he lowered himself down to sit on the edge of the stage.

"I'm okay. I think a bug flew into my eye," he replied.

Or a plague of locusts.

What was that?

"Maybe we should call it a day," Juleka suggested, handing Luka a bottle of water. He took a swig then poured a little on his hand and ran it across his face.

"No, really. I'm okay. We can keep going."

He really wanted to hear how the song sounded. He'd spent all night writing it, and he wanted it to be perfect when Marinette finally heard it. Juleka agreed to continuing the practice, but insisted they take a ten minute break first.

Rose started singing, and the lights returned, albeit nothing like the violent horde that had attacked his senses earlier. There were fewer of them this time - softer and executing what looked almost like a choreographed dance around Rose's head like a crown. He glanced over at Juleka and then at Ivan. No, Rose was the only one with those lights hovering around her.

Still a little worried, Juleka looked in his direction as she played. He smiled reassuringly and hoped the sound of his heart beating like a rabbit's wasn't pounding in everyone else's ears the way it was pounding in his.

"Maybe you should get some sleep, Luka. Staring at that laptop is only going to make your migraine worse."

Well, he couldn't very well tell his sister he was seeing things that weren't really there, could he?

Juleka sat at the foot of his bed probably texting with Rose while he googled his symptoms, very quickly finding himself tumbling down a rabbit hole of some pretty scary stuff – retinal damage, brain tumours, mini strokes, seizures…

Just when he was starting to think he might never be able to fall asleep again, he came across a series of medical articles about something called synesthesia. He did some digging, and it seemed like the best fit. There were different types of synesthesia, but the one that came the closest to whatever was happening to him was the ability to "see" sounds as different colours. That would certainly explain the pink lights around Rose's head, and the blue lights drifting in and out of his sight while he was writing his song for Marinette. But why didn't the lights show up when he was watching Juleka and Ivan playing?

Maybe it only works with voices.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Hm?" Juleka looked up from her phone. "Yeah?"

Luka knew she wasn't going to like this.

"Since you've been akumatized…"

Her shoulders tensed and she suddenly looked incredibly uncomfortable. He didn't like making her think about it, but he really needed to know if…

"…have you ever had any…I don't know…after-effects?"

She stared at him uneasily. "After-effects? Like what kind of after-effects?"

Luka closed his laptop and set it aside. He picked up his guitar pick from his bedside table and turned it over and over between his thumb and forefinger. "Like hearing things, or seeing things? Feeling things?"

"Well, let's see," she said quietly, her words laced with bitterness. "I hear things like 'It's already happened to her twice now – what if it happens again?' and I've seen things - like other kids at school dodging me in the halls. Oh, and I feel things, like how I can't blame them, and how ashamed I am that I let the same thing happen to me two times now."

He reached out and hugged her close. She put her head on his shoulder and sniffled.

"You know what's worse than feeling invisible?" she asked, struggling to suppress a sob, "Feeling like a monster."

Luka grimaced, silently cursing himself. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have asked. But you know it's not your fault, right?"

"You know what happened to you wasn't your fault either, right?" she replied. "I'll never see you as a monster, and neither will Marinette."

Luka smiled. "Thanks for saying that."

She wiped her eyes and looked up at him. "Luka, why did you ask? Does it have anything to do with what happened to you during practice?"

"It's nothing to worry about," he said lightly, patting her on the back. "I've just been getting a lot of headaches lately. I just need to take it easy for a bit. I'll be fine."

Juleka eyed him carefully. "If you're sure."

Luka gave her the same reassuring smile he gave her earlier. He hoped she wouldn't notice the tension behind it. For all the eye contact his sister usually made a point of avoiding, she was still very observant.

"I'm good. I promise. You should get to bed. You've got school in the morning."

"Like you don't," she replied sardonically, sliding off the foot of his bed and heading in the direction of her bedroom. "Try not to stay up talking too long."

Luka arched an eyebrow at her. "Talking too long?"

The phone on his bedside table buzzed with a text notification. He picked up the phone and narrowed his eyes at the screen. His vision was still a little fuzzy.

Juleka told me what happened! Are you okay?

Marinette.

He looked up just in time to catch Juleka grinning as she slipped out the door. He chuckled and shook his head, turning his attention back to his phone.

I'm alright, Marinette. It was nothing.

Are you sure? Juleka doesn't scare easily.

On the one hand, he didn't like that Juleka had worried her over nothing. On the other hand, he sort of liked that Marinette was worried about him. He didn't know whether to thank his sister or mess with the pegs on her bass before their next practice session the second her back was turned. Maybe both?

Suddenly something occurred to him.

I know it's late and no worries if you can't, but would you mind if we maybe did a quick video chat? I have something I need to talk to ask you.

There was a long pause during which he started to worry that maybe he'd overstepped his boundaries. They'd never done a video chat before. It was late. Maybe she was in her pyjamas. Maybe she was in bed.

What is wrong with you? Don't think about her in bed. Don't think about her in bed.

His phone started to vibrate and he almost dropped it. He ran a suddenly very clammy hand through his hair and held the phone out almost at arm's length before answering it. In a second, he was looking right into Marinette's wide, worried eyes.

His heart leapt at the sight of her.

Her hair is down. I've never seen her with her hair down before.

"Is everything okay?" she squeaked.

"Everything's fine, Marinette. Don't worry," he said gently.

She closed her eyes and sighed, her shoulders relaxing and settling out of sight. "Well, that's a relief. I was afraid you might be sick, but you look really good." Her eyes grew to the size of dinnerplates, and she blushed. "I mean healthy! You look healthy! You always look goo—er, healthy! Because you are healthy! You take good care of yourself, after all! All that meditating and…other…healthy stuff you do…"

Now he was blushing, too.

It wasn't like he didn't know she liked him. He knew that it was just her way – she got clumsy and tongue-tied around boys she liked, and he didn't have to hear that from Juleka (though of course he heard it from her anyways). When it came to boys Marinette loved, however, the stumbling and stammering increased to hurricane-level force, and the eye of that hurricane was Adrien Agreste.

"So…uh…what happened?" Marinette asked after taking a moment to compose herself.

"A bug or something flew into my eye and I tripped is all," he replied. "I'm sure Juleka made it sound like a bigger deal than it was."

She smiled a wicked little smile. "You tripped? Maybe my clumsiness is catching."

If his feelings for Marinette made him as clumsy as her feelings for Adrien made her, he'd have broken every single bone in his body by now. He couldn't help but notice that she was sitting out on her balcony, probably to spare him from having to see her room's wall-to-wall shrine devoted to all things Adrien. Despite what it said about his romantic prospects, he smiled to himself. She was happy. That was all that mattered.

"You're not clumsy. You're…a magical being who can bring inanimate objects to life. They end up leaping in front of you and tripping you up. You just need to learn how to control your powers."

Marinette laughed and the sound was like glass windchimes. That's when he saw them – the lights, this time red and pulsing like hearts, hovering around his phone as though drawn to the sound of her voice the same way he was.

Oh…

"Marinette, I need to ask you something. But if it upsets you, you don't have to answer."

She sobered up fast, the smile disappearing from her face. The lights stayed where they were, though, hanging in the air like stars in the sky. "What is it?" she asked, looking concerned.

"Um…when I was Silencer," he began, not liking the way she started gnawing on her bottom lip – or liking it, but for entirely different, less appropriate reasons, "Remember I told you I don't know what happened? I don't know what I said or what I did…"

"I remember," she replied carefully. "Did something come back to you?"

"Well, no. And I'd like to forget it ever happened – all of it. But I need to know exactly what Silencer…well, what I did exactly."

Marinette looked relieved at that, which he confused him a little, but not enough to distract him from awaiting her answer with bated breath.

"Well, Silencer stole voices." She made a point of putting emphasis on that name to be sure he knew he wasn't the villain Hawkmoth had turned him into. He was not Silencer. Silencer was a dark, angry thing the akuma had found and coaxed out of him.

"And you saw him do this?" Luka asked. The red lights were practically throbbing now. He wished he could just wave them away like snowflakes, but it seemed like the harder he tried to focus on what Marinette was saying, the brighter they glowed.

"Just when he stole that creep XY's voice," she said, "After that, Silencer left to find Roth."

"Did anything…strange happen? Well…stranger, I mean." How could he put this without freaking her out or sounding like he was out of his mind? "Like, could you see anything?"

"See anything? Um…well, I mean I saw XY's voice before it disappeared into Silencer's helmet."

"You saw his voice?" he asked. "Did it look like anything? Lights maybe?"

"I saw it, but it…well, it's going to sound crazy, but it kind of looked like a jellyfish."

Luka's eyebrows knitted together. "A jellyfish?"

"Yeah. Swimming in the air like it would if it were underwater."

"Was it…did it have a colour?"

"Oh! It did, actually," Marinette said, sounding pleased that he was finding all of this helpful, even if she didn't know how or in what way. "I only saw it for a few seconds before it disappeared, but it was kind of purply. And it was glowing."

Luka frowned. He and Silencer weren't quite the separate entities Marinette thought they were. If she could see XY's voice, that meant he would have been able to, as well. But, evidently, he was still seeing voices. It only made sense – Silencer was born from something deep inside him, after all. He wasn't created from nothing.

"Luka, what's this all about?" she asked, the corners of her mouth dropping. "You don't seem like yourself."

I don't, do I? Or maybe I'm more myself now than ever.

He gave Marinette a sad smile. "It's just…not remembering what happened to me when I was Silencer...it's like part of me is keeping a secret from myself." He shrugged his shoulders resignedly. "I'm not making any sense right now, am I?"

"Keeping secrets from yourself? You mean like you feel like you're two different people?"

"Something like that, I guess."

"I know how that feels. Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough halves of myself to go around." She scrunched up her nose and frowned. "That's just bad math, isn't it? What I mean to say is that I know how it feels to have to be one thing for one person, and then something completely different for another."

His eyes softened. It wasn't what he meant at all, but he loved that she was speaking so candidly. She was sharing a piece of herself with him, something intimate. It wasn't often he had her undivided attention this way. For a few moments, it felt like they were the only two people in the world. The red lights burned brighter, each one swelling and splitting into two, and then four. It happened, over, and over again, until every corner of his room was filled with their scarlet glow. He hardly noticed, though. Just then, all he could see was the blue of her eyes, the pink of her lips.

Marinette spoke again, snapping him out of his trance. "But Luka – you're not Silencer. You know that, right? Silencer isn't a someone. Silencer was a something, and that something is gone now. You're you. You're always going to be you."

He smiled sadly. "You think so, huh?"

"I know it," she replied softly, "You could be akumatized a thousand times, and it won't change a thing. You'll always be Luka to me."

His breath caught in his throat and his cheeks flushed as though he'd suddenly come down with a fever.

"Now listen here, Luka Couffaine," Marinette said authoritatively, holding her phone out with one hand to point a finger at him with the other, "it's time for bed. Rockstars need their sleep. And the next time you practice, make sure you wear sunglasses."

"Sunglasses?"

"To keep the bugs out."

Luka laughed and gave her a thumbs up. "Sunglasses. Got it."

"Goodnight, Luka," she said, holding the phone with one hand to wave gently with the other.

"Goodnight, Marinette. And thank you."

She gave him one last beaming smile and then she was gone. The red lights, though, like the echo of her voice, lingered until he fell asleep, then followed him into his dreams.

"I think we're dating?"

"Try saying it again without the question mark at the end. And maybe leave out the 'I think' bit."

Luka leaned in the doorway of Juleka's bedroom, turning one of his bracelets around and around his wrist. He gazed at Juleka and Rose sitting with their foreheads practically pressed together. Juleka was absently plucking the strings of her bass, almost wholly engrossed in watching Rose as she wrote, crossed out, then rewrote what he assumed were going to eventually become the lyrics for Kitty Section's next magnum opus. His sister was looking at her with such warmth and admiration that he almost "awwed" them out loud.

"That would be a lie. I don't know if we're dating. She keeps telling me she and Adrien are just friends now, but we both know better."

"What's up with the self-doubt all of a sudden? That's my thing, remember? You're supposed to be the cool, confident Couffaine."

"I don't want to make any assumptions, that's all. I already told her that I'd be happy for her if things ended up working out with Adrien. I'm going to be there for her regardless. I'm perfectly fine just being her friend if friendship is all she wants from me."

"You're as perfectly fine just being Marinette's friend as Marinette is just being Adrien's friend," Rose said, not looking up from her pad of paper.

Luka laughed, "The defense rests."

Juleka rolled her eyes, "Marinette likes you, Luka. She really does. Yeah, she's hung up on Adrien, and it's really sweet and all, but she can barely function around him. It's different with you, though – you make her laugh, and you give her confidence. She's not afraid to be silly around you."

"She shows you all of her designs," Rose added, "and your opinion is always the first one she wants whenever she makes changes to the website."

"That's all band stuff, though. She's our image consultant."

"And you're the one who called her our 'image consultant'." Juleka nudged Rose's shoulder, "Remember the look on her face when he called her that for the first time?"

"Of course I remember! She turned red as a beet and did that thing where she buries her face in her hands and shakes her head really, really fast!"

"You mean that thing she does whenever Adrien compliments her?" Luka smirked, purposely being difficult just to tease them.

"Ugh. You make it so hard to be a Lukanette shipper sometimes," Juleka snorted.

"Lukanette?"

"That's what Rose calls you two."

Rose raised the feathered tip of her pen in the air, waving it around like a cheerleader pompom. "Go, Lukanette!"

"Yeah. Team Lukanette," Juleka said flatly, but with a sparkle in her eye. "Now are you going to meet Marinette or not? Cause you're not gonna win any points by keeping her waiting."

Luka blinked. "Keep her waiting for what?"

"Your date, dummy," his sister huffed. "To go see Crocodile Heart, remember?"

"I already left and came back."

Juleka and Rose exchanged puzzled looks before both turned in unison to stare at Luka. He continued to fidget with his bracelet and wristbands. He didn't want to tell them that their ship was sinking.

"What do you mean you left and came back?" Juleka asked, looking apprehensive. "It's not even two o'clock."

"I mean I rode over to Marinette's place to pick her up and she wasn't there, so I came back. Her mom said she yelled something about a design project emergency before she rushed out the door."

Luka had tried to sort out what would constitute a design project emergency, but came up with nothing. Surprise fabric sale? Broken sewing machine thingy? Not that it mattered. Things like this had been happening since they started…whatever it was they were doing. It's why he couldn't tell Juleka that he and Marinette were dating. They'd need to actually get through an entire date first.

"Geez, Luka. I'm sorry," she said quietly, "But if it's any consolation, she forgets when we have plans all the time, and she runs off to take care of stuff a lot."

"Yes," Rose agreed, "A lot."

"We've just come to expect it. We decided a long time ago not to take it personally. It hasn't stopped us from staying friends."

Except it's supposed to be personal. He thought that Marinette had finally decided they were more than just -

"Friends, huh?" he said quietly, dim blue dots spilling into his line of vision.

Juleka bit her lip, gazing at him sympathetically. Rose looked away, trying to hide the frown on her face behind her feather pen.

He appreciated their efforts to temper his disappointment, but his chest ached a little. He raised his hand to tap unconsciously at his heart.

"We're really sorry, Luka," Rose said, her voice uncharacteristically downbeat. Juleka put her arm around her, and Rose leaned her head on her shoulder.

"It's okay. Honestly. I got a text from Marinette on the way home. We're going to give the movie another shot tomorrow."

Rose made a fist and punched the air, startling Juleka. "Well, okay then! Go, Lukanette!"

Juleka threw her fist up in zealous solidarity despite the look of doubt etched on her face. "Team Lukanette!" Whether or not she could see through the front he was putting up, he wasn't sure, but when she tried to change the subject, he thought about how lucky he was to have a sister like Juleka. "Want to see what Ivan's up to? Maybe we can do some practicing."

"I've got new lyrics for you to play around with," Rose piped in cheerfully.

Luka shook his head. "No, thanks. I'm not really up to it." He needed to get out of there before the easygoing smile he was trying to keep on his face for the girls' sake cracked. "Listen, if Mom asks, tell her I just went out for a walk. I'll see you guys later."

Luka reached his destination, the underpassing walkway of one of the many bridges that criss-crossed the canal. He sat down, letting his long legs dangle over the edge. Leaning back on his hands and closing his eyes, he listened to the sound of the water running below and its echoing above. His focus deepened when he found its melody, and the darkness was suddenly filled with hundreds of pinpricks of golden light. He breathed in and out, long and slow.

It had taken a little time, but Luka now had a decent handle on the coloured lights thing. He still wasn't sure what it was, and maybe this condition of his should have worried him more than it did. But for the time being, he was okay with it. It was still a little distressing that some part of Silencer had bled into him the same way some of himself had bled into Silencer. It was the only thing that could explain why he had still tried to assure Marinette she would be safe despite his akumatization, and it was the only thing that could explain this weird new ability of his.

He had figured out that the coloured lights would appear when he picked out a single sound amongst many, and really trained his ear on it. Whenever he concentrated on the lyrics to his song for Marinette, he'd quietly sing the words to himself, and the lights would appear, blue and bright as her eyes. Whenever Kitty Section would practice the song, his focus would be on the way his lyrics sounded as sung by Rose, and the lights would materialize, this time in pink.

And Marinette…

Well, at first he would see the red lights just about every time she spoke to him, but now he was able to keep the lights at bay…or at least able to keep them from applying a crimson Instagram filter to entire conversations. Sometimes, though, she'd say something so sweet that his heart would wrench, or she'd speak excitedly about a project or a topic she was super passionate about, and he just couldn't stop the lights from overwhelming him. Though when that happened, he wasn't terribly interested in stopping it. From the moment he met Marinette, her melody had been playing in his head. He heard it constantly, and now he could see it, too.

Red.

Not just any of a thousand of shades of red. A very distinct red.

Marinette Red.

He wasn't sure exactly when she'd decided it was time for them to go from being friends to being…this. He might have been willing to wager a guess, though.

She had bought him an ice cream. He had tried to pay for it, but André told him it had already been taken care of. He thought at first that maybe André had decided to give them both an ice cream on the house, but when he looked at Marinette, she had a funny little smile on her face.

"You prepaid for ice cream?" he asked, chuckling and shaking his head.

"I knew you wouldn't let me pay for it, and if it came down to a race to see who could give their money to André first, I'd probably end up tripping and accidentally dropping my wallet into the canal. So I gave him the money yesterday on my way home from Alya's."

"So you prepaid for ice cream."

"Yes," she grinned. "You have been outwitted, Monsieur Couffaine. And now that ice cream will taste like sweet, sweet victory – mine!"

Then she tried to laugh maniacally like some kind of supervillain, but it was too adorable. Before he knew what he was doing, his eyes fluttered closed, and he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek just as she'd done to him almost a dozen times. However, not anticipating the small display of affection, she turned her head, tilting her chin up to speak. And that's how, for approximately three seconds, his lips ended up pressed against Marinette Dupain-Cheng's. When he opened his eyes, feeling like he was waking from some sort of dream, it was just in time to see that her eyes were closed. Melted ice cream was dripping all over the place but neither he nor Marinette seemed to notice. Once they emerged from the haze of what they'd just done, they practically leapt back in opposite directions as though lightning had struck the ground between them. Standing straight and stiff as arrows, they stared at each other, blushing furiously.

"I'm so sorry," they blurted at the same time. A whirlwind of blue and red lights combined rushed around them like lightning bugs, vanishing into the awkward silence that followed. He could hear his heart thrumming in his ears. Marinette's hands flew to her very pink cheeks. He had no way of knowing what she was thinking. All he knew was that when his lips unintentionally met hers, she didn't push him away – she closed her eyes. She stayed.

He hadn't been able to muster up the courage to try to kiss her since. But he was sure that, in the sum of those few moments, Luka Couffaine had become Marinette Dupain-Cheng's boyfriend.

He had accepted that he would probably never have her heart – it was clear that Marinette had given that to Adrien. She was just waiting for him to take it from her. But he'd meant what he told Rose and Juleka. He loved being near her. He would settle for friendship if that was all she could offer him. He just wanted to be there in whatever shape or form the relationship was meant to take. He'd support her dreams, he'd encourage her to achieve her goals, he'd help her pick herself up and dust herself off when she fell (both literally and figuratively). So long as he was able to stand in her light, he would be happy.

Right now they were sort of walking across a wobbly tightrope between friendship and this undefined, maybe-girlfriend-boyfriend thing. She wouldn't verbally commit either way, and he wasn't about to pressure her to. It just wasn't in his nature. If Adrien wasn't dating Kagami, Marinette would still be pursuing him. And if Adrien suddenly decided he wanted to date Marinette, Luka would lose her that very instant. But he knew going into this that both of those scenarios would probably always be looming over them, and he knew Marinette was lying to herself whenever she insisted to him that they weren't.

Luka could handle her indecision. He could handle the fact that she'd occasionally call him Adrien, sometimes not even realizing it until he or one of their friends pointed it out. He was even able to handle finding out she had a bottle of Adrien's signature cologne under her bed that she sprayed on her pillow before going to sleep (he'd had the misfortune of overhearing Alya making a joke about it the last time she and the other girls hung out together at his place). If he was being completely honest with himself, he didn't know how he was handling it, but he was.

He opened his eyes and the gold lights dissipated as his thoughts shifted. He swung his legs back onto solid ground and stood up, straightening his jeans around his hips and smoothing out his rumpled t-shirt. He knew only disappointment awaited him but, out of habit, he still checked his phone to see if Marinette had texted him again since they'd rescheduled their movie date.

Nope.

The constant emergencies, the forgetfulness, the disappearing acts, and the excuses - they concerned him. It was frustrating, but he found he was more worried than annoyed. They saw each other more often when they were just friends. Something had happened between then and now, but she wouldn't tell him what that thing was. More than once, she'd sought comfort from him, and he would oblige without question, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. Oftentimes she would be crying. Something ongoing and very wrong was happening behind the scenes, and he wished for nothing more than to be able to be there for her, to be her confidant. He wanted her to let him help.

He wanted her to trust him.