See the Light
A Miraculous Ladybug fanfiction
By Mintaka14
Chapter Three – Living in a Blur
"No Rose or Juleka today?" Marinette asked as she stepped down into the galley of the Liberty with that effortless grace that Luka was coming to associate with the woman she'd become. She reached up to tuck back a lock of hair that had escaped from the braid over her shoulder, and Luka moved around the tiny kitchen, pulling out mugs, while the kettle whistled loudly in the background.
"No, they had a few things to organise today for the wedding. They said to say hi, though." He didn't mention the other things that Rose had had to say, or the broad, suggestive beams she given him before she dragged Juleka away on whatever mission she'd manufactured.
He handed Marinette the tea that he'd just made and shifted towards the couch in the living room, cradling his own coffee. Marinette sank into the armchair across from him. She blew on the mug and closed her eyes to inhale the steam.
"I still can't quite believe that Juleka and Rose are getting married. It feels like only yesterday we were all in collège." Marinette smiled, and sighed.
"They're incredibly lucky to be getting MDC original wedding dresses. That's one hell of a wedding present you're giving them."
"Juleka and Rose are covering the materials I'm just volunteering my time and a bit of sewing."
Luka's eyebrow rose sceptically. "One artist to another, I know it's not 'just' anything, Marinette. Your time and skill is a very generous gift, and don't forget, I've seen what you're putting together for them. Jules and Rose can't have been straightforward to design for."
Marinette laughed. "But they're giving me the chance to have fun," she insisted. "I spend all day every day dealing with clients with no individuality or imagination, trying to convince them to trust me, so it's a relief to get a chance to do something interesting for a change, with friends who are happy to indulge me."
Luka leaned back, all plans to rehearse forgotten, as he watched Marinette talk about the inspiration behind the wedding dresses and the creative possibilities in dressing certain clients, her face lighting up and her hands gesturing animatedly as she grew more impassioned about her theories of clothing as a reflection of self. He followed the movement of her hands and lost himself in the endless blue of her eyes.
"I really need to ask Juleka if she'd be willing to model for me sometime. She's always so compelling in whatever she wears, and so much fun to design for," she said eventually. He found her eyeing him speculatively. "I'd love to have the chance to dress you one day."
"You could at least buy me dinner first," he said without thinking.
There was a heartbeat, then Marinette burst out laughing.
"Smooth line, Couffaine. Does that work on all the girls?"
"I wouldn't know." He decided to lean into it, and grinned at her. "I've only ever tried it on you. Is it working?"
Marinette rolled her eyes. "How are you still single?" she asked.
"You're a hard act to follow," he said, and Marinette levelled a look at him.
"Luka, I was a fourteen year old clumsy mess who kept on flaking out on our dates. You can't tell me I'm the gold standard of your relationships."
Put like that, it was ridiculous, but it was true nonetheless. He'd had relationships, and they were sincere in the moment, but he'd drifted out of them as easily as he'd drifted into them, and they'd left him with little more than fond memories. None of them had left a mark like Marinette had. Over the years, he'd put it down to rose-coloured nostalgia, but then she'd walked into his life again, more Marinette than ever, and he'd fallen harder and faster than he had before.
He looked down at the mug of coffee in his hands.
"How about you? Anyone special in your life these days?" he asked the coffee with casual disinterest. She gave a soft snort.
"Hardly. It's not like anything's changed since we were going out." She seemed to catch herself, and froze as Luka's head came up to stare at her. "I just… mean, who's got time for a relationship, right? Life's too busy."
"Not since we were going out?" Luka echoed her, frowning. "Marinette, you were fourteen. You haven't dated anyone since then?"
She shrugged uncomfortably. "I dated. It just never lasts long. It's not that big a deal. And besides," she muttered, "I've learned my lesson, the universe doesn't want me to have a relationship."
She put her mug abruptly on the table and stood.
"Weren't we supposed to be practising?"
Luka got to his feet and reached for his guitar. Clearly this was a line of conversation that Marinette did not want to go down with him, and he dropped the subject to run through the song with her a few times, correcting her gently when her voice faltered.
He had to wonder, though, what the hell was wrong with the men in Marinette's life that had left her love life such a sore subject?
Luka stopped again to make a suggestion about phrasing and breath control.
"All that time, never even knowing just how blind I've been," Marinette tried again, sounding more confident with the slightly awkward vocal skips this time, and Luka gave her a smile.
"See?" he told her. "Fashion designer to the stars, artist, and now singer. You can add that to your résumé."
He'd finally coaxed a laugh out of her, and then Marinette's handbag buzzed. Luka watched the smile drop off her face. Her eyes flicked to the door. "I'm really sorry, I have to go. I have… a thing…"
She was gone before he could say anything further. For a moment, Luka sat there with his guitar silent in his lap, frowning thoughtfully. Apparently she was right – not much had changed in the ten years since they'd been kids together. There were still the abrupt excuses, the silences, the sudden disappearances.
Luka plucked out Now she's here, shining in the starlight, and he considered the empty space where she'd been. He was coming to suspect that whatever had been going on when they were kids, whatever she'd been keeping to herself when she broke it off with him, it was something bigger than he'd imagined.
At that moment, Luka's own phone chimed with an akuma alert, and the timing of it was jarring. His hand dropped, as it always did, to touch his empty wrist. He looked down at it, his frown growing troubled as a new thought took hold.
He found himself thinking back over the timing of some of those disappearances, and odd excuses, and the times she'd had just a little more knowledge of Ladybug's movements than any random civilian ought to, but it had all sounded so plausible at the time. Seen through this new lens, those moments took on a new significance the more he turned them over in his mind.
Black pigtails, unmistakeable blue eyes. The same damn plain black earrings that Marinette, the consummate fashion designer, was still wearing ten years later.
How had he never put it together before?
Luka was still sitting there, his hands resting on his guitar and his gaze fixed on nothing, when Juleka and Rose came home.
"Where's Marinette?" Rose asked in obvious disappointment when she took in the quiet room.
"She had to leave," Luka replied absently.
"Luka! You just let her leave?"
Luka could see the tiny frown that he was feeling reflected in his sister's face, although he wasn't sure what had prompted it in Juleka's case.
"I'm not going to badger her into staying if she needs to go, Rose," he said mildly.
Rose threw up her hands. "And how is she supposed to know you want her to stay if you don't tell her? I don't get why you're both fighting this so hard. She's single, you're single, but both of you are too chicken to make the first move."
"Maybe that's a good thing," Juleka interjected, shooting a dark look at her brother. "Because I remember weeks and weeks of Taylor fucking Swift, and I do not want to go through that again."
"That was ten years ago! You cannot tell me that there's not something there!" Rose whirled and stabbed a finger at Luka. "You can't argue with the Sparkly Sense."
Luka was only half paying attention to the argument, and responded vaguely, "Marinette has more than enough going on in her life right now to worry about a relationship with anyone." Like saving the city, over and over and over again, holy shit, she was Ladybug.
Once seen, it was hard to understand how he could have missed it, and his mind briefly derailed to speculate that it must be some sort of kwami-induced magic that obscured her identity. Given how adamant Ladybug had been back in the day that the secret of the miraculous holders' identities had to be preserved, and how hard she had worked since then to maintain that secrecy, Luka had a bad feeling about how things would go if he told her that he knew.
He was about to become another crack in her armour, another worry dumped on her already overloaded shoulders. Although, what did he really know, when all was said and done? He had his suspicions, nothing more.
"Hopeless, the both of you," Rose complained, and glared at Juleka. "Don't you want your brother to live happily ever after?"
"I don't want to have to live through weeks of I Almost Do again, because my stupid brother hasn't got the sense he was born with, and you're just encouraging him."
Rose stomped away, muttering things under her breath, but Juleka stayed silent after that. His guitar still in his hand, Luka got to his feet and headed for his bedroom before Rose could come back and start again. He had too much else on his mind to deal with Rose's matchmaking.
Every time he thought Marinette couldn't get any more extraordinary, she surprised him all over again, but the music he played softly in the solitude of his room that night ached with all the burdens he'd seen in her eyes.
Some time later, he heard a soft knock on his door and it opened quietly. When he looked up, Juleka was leaning there, her hand on the door handle and a look of equal parts irritation and uneasiness on her face.
"Luka –"
"I'm fine," he cut her off before she could say what he knew she was going to say. "I know what I'm doing, and it's all good."
Juleka's mouth pinched. "Do you, though? Because from where I'm standing, we're heading for Taylor territory again."
Luka didn't answer, his focus on his hands and the fragments of melody that he'd come to think of as Marinette's song. Eventually he heard a sigh, and Juleka said, "I love you, you dumbass."
"I know," he said quietly.
The door shut behind her, and he was left alone with his thoughts and Marinette's secrets.
...
"You're playing with fire," warned the voice of responsibility in Marinette's handbag, and Marinette sighed. She shifted the bulky dress bags in her hands so that she could see the little round face peering up at her.
"It's just a dress fitting, Tikki. Can't I even have friends anymore?"
"It's Luka," the tiny kwami said primly. "Things never stay just friends with Luka, and I saw the way you've been looking at him. Remember what happened the last time you told someone?"
"That was ten years ago, and Luka is not Alya. Don't you think things have changed a bit since then?"
"It never ends well," Tikki insisted, and Marinette felt the weight of Ladybug closing in on her all over again. She looked up at the Liberty as she drew closer, and had never felt less free in her life.
"Don't worry, Luka's not even going to be there," she said wearily. "Juleka said he's got something tonight, so it'll just be her and Rose there. And anyway, there's no chance he'd ever be interested in me like that again." Because if there was a chance, then Marinette would have to walk away now before she could do any more damage, and she'd never get to see Luka again. She couldn't do that. She just couldn't.
"Luka was a wonderful holder for Sass," Tikki conceded, "but he's always been a little too perceptive for comfort. If he were to find out…"
"We're here," Marinette said, cutting off the rest of Tikki's dire predictions. The kwami vanished into the depths of her handbag, and Marinette manoeuvred the dress bags carefully as she climbed the gangplank onto the boat and called a greeting as she reached the empty deck.
In spite of her mood after Tikki's lecture, she felt a tiny smile curl her lips as Rose's answering shriek echoed up from below deck, and she followed the sound down into the depths of the boat.
"Marinette!" Rose scolded reproachfully as Marinette descended carefully into the galley with the two dress bags in her hand and moved through into the living room. "You didn't even say goodbye last time! We got back and you were just gone."
Marinette held the dresses clear as Rose engulfed her in a whirlwind hug, and turned to meet Juleka's more sedate greeting. The dark-haired girl gave her a nod and a quirk of a smile that turned to a frown when Rose gave her girlfriend a smug look.
Rose turned towards the bedrooms, and bellowed, "Luka! Look who's here!"
"What's up?" she heard Luka's voice, and felt her heart stutter. Oh, that wasn't good. Luka swung around the edge of the door, leaning against the frame behind his sister as he directed a slow, sweet smile at Marinette.
"Hey, you," he said, and Marinette couldn't help but smile back at him. Juleka rolled her eyes and slugged her brother in the arm.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"Juleka!" Rose scolded.
"Weren't you going out? Rose said you had a thing tonight," Juleka said, and Luka frowned at her.
"Not for another hour. The band we were going to check out isn't on til later."
"Did I say eight?" Rose said innocently to the ceiling. "I meant nine. Oops."
Marinette found herself standing there awkwardly holding the dress bags, her eyes shifting between the three of them.
"You don't want to keep the guys waiting if you said you'd be there," Juleka pushed.
"I only said I might," Luka said, shooting his sister an annoyed look.
"Besides, he can catch them another time," Rose insisted, staring at her girlfriend with a pointed message that Juleka ignored for once. "They won't mind, and Marinette's here now."
Luka elbowed Juleka aside none too gently and came into the room. "I'm getting a coffee. Did you want anything, Mari?"
"I'd like a coffee," Juleka said in a saccharine voice, fluttering her eyelashes at him.
"I didn't ask you, monster child."
"You don't have to stay on my account," Marinette told Luka. "I'm only here to do the final dress fitting."
"Oh no!" Rose protested. "You have to stay for dinner. It's the least we can do after everything you've done with the wedding dresses."
"You haven't even seen the finished thing yet," Marinette pointed out, and felt a flush rising at the smile that Luka was giving her.
"We don't need to see them to know they're going to be incredible," he said. "And it wasn't important. I was only half thinking of going out anyway."
The noise Juleka made was not polite, and Luka made a rude gesture back without looking at his sister.
"Well," said Rose brightly. "How about we leave them to it? They're going to be doing this for a while."
In Juleka's bedroom, Marinette didn't have to ask Rose if she was happy with her wedding dress once she'd settled the clouds of soft pink organza around her and done up the miles of tiny buttons. Rose was making a noise like a tea kettle on the boil that rose to a squeal of happiness as she spun around in front of Juleka's bedroom mirror. Hand beaded organza flowers spilled down in glittering trails across the skirts as she turned, and Rose raised a hand to touch the flowers that clustered all over her bodice.
"It's perfect!" she breathed. She made a move as if she was going to throw her arms around Marinette, but Marinette fended her off with a laugh.
"Hug me when we get you out of the dress," she smiled. "How does it feel? Nothing slipping, or too tight?"
"It's perfect," Rose repeated, her voice turning a little wobbly with emotion.
When Marinette finally got Rose to stop twirling around for long enough to take the gown off again, they headed back to the living room to find the Couffaine siblings glaring at each other. Luka looked away as they came in, his mouth pressed in a tight line, and Juleka spun on her heel, stalking towards the bedroom without a word, leaving Marinette to follow.
She carefully removed Juleka's wedding dress from its hanger while her friend stripped down to her underwear and slipped her formal shoes on, and then Marinette started easing Juleka into the gown.
"Mari, what's really going on with you and Luka?" Juleka asked, her voice a little muffled by the softly glittering black fabric over her head. Marinette slid the dress down and settled it into place. "I love you, but he's my brother and I'm worried about him."
"We're just friends," Marinette said, and suppressed a flinch at the words. Juleka rolled her eyes.
"You were never just friends even when you were just friends. And the last time I thought you were just friends it turned out you'd been dating my idiot brother. So excuse me if I'm not buying it."
Marinette swallowed at that, stung but unable to argue the point.
"Believe me, Juleka, I'm well aware of how badly I fucked up back then, and the last thing I want to do is hurt Luka like that again," she said, insistent in the face of Juleka's scepticism.
"You won't mean to, but Luka gets stupid when you're involved."
"That was ten years ago," Marinette protested.
"That was two minutes ago."
Juleka's exasperated words provoked a cold wash of dismay. Juleka had to be mistaken. Luka was long over her, he had to be. Somewhere deep down, though, Marinette felt a tiny fireworks explosion of something that she didn't dare acknowledge.
"The moment you turn up, he drops everything without a second thought," Juleka muttered as Marinette eased the hidden zip up. Marinette stepped back, and Juleka turned to face the mirror.
"Wow. Damn, Marinette," she breathed. She angled herself a little, her eyes still on her reflection in the mirror. "I take it all back. You're welcome to wreck my dumbass brother, as long as I get to keep this dress."
Marinette gave a tightlipped little smile, and went back to regarding the gown with a critical eye. There really didn't seem to be much that needed adjusting. She repositioned the crystal chipped dragon brooch that coiled over Juleka's hip, where it caught up the fall of the fabric, but it all seemed to be working.
She extracted Juleka from the gown again, and back in the living room Rose was sprawled on the couch, scrolling through something on her phone. Luka had his guitar in his hands again, strumming something with his coffee forgotten on the table beside him. He looked up as Marinette and Juleka came in.
"How's the dress?" he asked.
"It's stunning," Juleka said, and heaved a put-upon sigh. "I can't stop you from being stupid, but at least you have good taste."
He gave her a suspicious look, his eyes shifting to Marinette when there was no further explanation forthcoming. "What was that all about?"
Marinette shrugged awkwardly, but fortunately he didn't press her on it.
"So are we doing Thai or that new Indian place tonight? There's nothing on the Akuma alert," Rose said from the couch, "but there is a new theory about who Ladybug is on the conspiracy forums."
"Aliens, or the Mayor's secret revenge love child this time?" Juleka asked, dropping onto the couch beside her.
"I miss the Ladyblog," Rose said, stretching her arms over her head. "Remember that time Alya thought that Chloe was Ladybug?"
Marinette remembered.
On the couch, Juleka laughed. "How is Alya," she asked, and tilted her head to throw a look at Marinette. "Have you seen her lately?"
Alya again. The universe seemed determined to beat her over the head with her failures. She opened her eyes to find them all watching her, and she gave a strained and unconvincing smile.
"Not recently. I think she's working in a travel agency now. It's been a few years, though."
Nearly six years, to be exact, since she'd last bumped into Alya.
"Jules," Luka said casually, "how about you and Ro go pick up dinner? Mari and I really should work on the song for the wedding a bit more."
It was a transparent excuse to shift the subject and give her a bit of space, and she was grateful for it, even if Rose did give Luka a very unsubtle wink that he pretended to not see. Rose and Juleka didn't seem to have noticed anything odd, but Luka threw her a quick glance as he laughed at something Rose said, and reached out to toss his wallet at Juleka, who pulled a few euros from it and threw it back. Marinette managed to respond lightly enough to a question about her preferences, and by the time it was just her and Luka she'd pulled herself together again.
"I take it that things aren't good with Alya," he said gently.
She shrugged, and the smile she gave him was a little unsteady. "Our friendship didn't end well. We don't talk to each other anymore."
It wasn't exactly the truth, but it was as close as she could get without giving away too much. There was no way she could explain how her former best friend had looked straight through her as if she was a stranger the last time they'd run into each other, or the sickening wash of guilt, remorse, and self-loathing she still felt over the reason behind it, even after all these years.
"It was a long time ago," she said as easily as she could manage, but Luka had always been able to read her better than that. His hand closed over hers briefly, reassuring and strong, and for a moment she let herself draw on his warmth.
"It still leaves a mark, though, doesn't it?" he said.
She couldn't help wondering a little bitterly how different things might have been if she'd told Luka everything, instead of Alya, back when she was fourteen. Would it have been Luka looking at her with that terrible emptiness?
Marinette broke eye contact and pulled her hand away to wrap it around her now-cold mug. She was aware that Luka was regarding her as if he saw a lot more than she was letting on, but he didn't push for more. Instead, he got to his feet.
"I need another coffee," he said, and gave her a questioning look. "Tea for you?"
She took the distraction, and followed him into the galley.
Luka kept to safe subjects after that, telling her about the group of students he'd been working with after school, and a gig that had gone disastrously wrong, until she couldn't help but giggle when he described the drummer slowly sliding off his stool and passing out face down on his snare drum.
"It actually improved the quality of his playing," Luka said wryly.
And he laughed when she countered with an account of Chloe Bourgeois commissioning her to design and make an outfit last season.
"I don't think she'd even considered that MDC might stand for Marinette Dupain-Cheng until she turned up for the fitting," Marinette grinned. "You should have seen the look on her face, though."
"Ridiculous!" Luka scoffed in a passable imitation of the Mayor's daughter, and waved his hand in the air as Marinette giggled at him. "Utterly ridiculous!"
"And of course, nothing was good enough. She couldn't believe I was expecting her to pay full price for such shoddy workmanship. I should be paying her to wear my rags."
"Tell me you told her where to shove it," Luka said, and folded his arms on the benchtop, leaning forward in anticipation. Marinette's smile grew broader.
"Oh, better than that. I told her if it wasn't to her satisfaction she was welcome to leave the dress and I'd cancel her contract, and I'd even waive the cancellation fee because we'd known each other such a long time. I was very helpful. I told her I was sure I could find someone willing to buy it instead, and Clara Nightingale had already seen it and asked if it was for sale. Which was true," she added as an afterthought.
"And?"
Marinette tilted her chin, her smile turning smug. "She took the dress, of course. And ordered another one under a fake name a month later."
"Seriously?"
"B. Queen, to be delivered to the Grand Paris Hotel. With her exact measurements. Seriously."
Luka tipped his head back and laughed hard, and Marinette lost herself in the sound. God, he was a beautiful man.
Next to the couch in the living room, her handbag shuffled in agitation, and Marinette ignored it, but her smile faded in response to the reminder.
"Marinette," Luka said more seriously, and when she looked up his blue eyes had deepened into something that was a little hard to read. He frowned a little, as if he was trying to decide what he should say. "You don't have to tell me anything, but I get the feeling that things haven't been so easy for you. I know it's been hard to let yourself get close to anyone."
He was speaking slowly, measuring out each word carefully, and it felt like there was a whole lot he deliberately wasn't saying.
"I just need you to know, the Liberty is always a safe place. We're here for you. I'm here for you, whatever you need."
It would be so easy, so very easy, to fall into those ocean deep eyes and fall into his arms, and tell him everything. That was what made Luka Couffaine so dangerous to be around. With ten years of Tikki's constant litany of concealment and duty ringing in her ears, Marinette clamped her mouth shut on all her secrets even as a tiny voice in the back of her head pleaded but this is Luka.
"Weren't we supposed to practise the song?" Marinette blurted out, and felt the heat of an embarrassed flush rise in her cheeks. She hadn't felt this thrown in years.
Luka accepted the abrupt shift with nothing more than a nod and a soft smile, as if he'd expected it.
"Back to the Disney salt mines," he said drily, and startled a laugh out of her. "Don't tell Rose I said that. She'd have me tried for treason."
"How did we get ourselves into this?" Marinette asked, and Luka chuckled.
"Well, Ro loves Disney, no surprise there, and Jules loves Ro."
"And you love them both," Marinette said softly.
"And you'd do anything for the people you care about, even agree to sing at their wedding if they asked you to," Luka said just as gently, and they exchanged glances. "So here we are, knee deep in Disney magic. I can't tell you how many times I've had to sit through Cinderella, both versions, and I can recite Tangled in my sleep." His smile softened. "I'm developing a new appreciation for it, though."
Marinette dropped her gaze, avoiding his eyes. He said in an easier manner, "I have to admit, there's some great music. You should hear Rose belt out Let It Go sometime, and Jules did an incredible cover of Once Upon a Dream one Valentine's Day for Rose."
"What about you? Do you ever sing along?" she asked, trying to match his tone.
"What do you think? Music nerd here."
He rapped out a solid, syncopated beat on the benchtop, and that husky voice of his sang, "Tatou o tagata folau..." She couldn't help grinning, and he grinned back as he segued into a phrase from Circle of Life before riffing a bit of the simple bear necessities, and then finished on "You're welcome, and thank you!" as she burst out laughing.
"Good music is good music," he said with a shrug. "I get a lot of eyerolling from some of the kids when I start talking Disney in class, but it's a starting point for a lot of discussion, and it turns out everyone always has their favourite song."
"So what about you? What's your favourite?" she asked, and he said easily, "Oh, there are a lot I could go with. It all depends on my mood."
"Yes, but if you had to pick one?"
She wasn't sure why she was pushing, and he hesitated for a long moment. Just when she thought he was going to brush it off, he reached for his guitar.
"It's not strictly Disney, but ..." She didn't recognise the soft, rippling intro that he played, and it wasn't until he started singing that she worked out what it was.
He didn't look at her as he sang about someday, out of the blue. It didn't have to mean anything, it was just a song, he could have been thinking about anyone, but when he sang about still believing and still having faith in a voice that was far too heartfelt, Marinette felt her breath catch.
She couldn't be doing this to him all over again.
...
He knew, the moment that his hands stilled on the guitar strings, that he'd gone too far and given away too much. The stricken look on Marinette's face made that blatantly clear.
From the doorway, Rose breathed, "Oh Luka, that was lovely!"
Juleka dropped the bags of takeaway on the table and muttered something, while Luka watched Marinette and felt his heart sink like a stone.
"We so have to do a Road to El Dorado movie night tonight," Rose was saying brightly. "You're staying, aren't you, Marinette? Otherwise Luka's going to be the odd man out again."
"I wish I could," Marinette said. "I… I have to go. Sorry, Rose, maybe another time." Her glance flickered in his direction. "Sorry. I'm really sorry I can't stay for dinner after all."
She scrambled her things together, dropping her handbag and coming up red-faced. This was more like the Marinette he remembered from their teenage years, and it brought up some difficult memories. She flashed an awkward smile in answer to Rose's protests, and then she was gone.
"Well," Rose said, staring at the empty doorway. "I guess Marinette's still Marinette."
"Rose!" Luka's voice cracked like glass, and his future sister-in-law's eyes widened at Luka's uncharacteristically sharp tone. "Remember all those plans to get Marinette and Adrien together?" How well did those work out?"
"But this is different!" Rose protested.
"This is no different. No more plans. I've screwed things badly enough as it is."
He drew in a deep breath and blew it out again, thinking of all those secrets that Marinette had to keep, and the distances that had grown in her life because of them. More quietly, he said, "Marinette could really use a few good friends in her life. I don't want her to lose us again because we're pushing for more than she can give."
"I…" Rose looked away, biting her lip, and then met his eyes. "Yeah, I get it."
Dinner was quieter than usual, and Luka ignored the perturbed glances his sister kept shooting him. He pushed the food around, barely tasting it, and put it aside when he couldn't pretend he was actually eating it anymore.
Luka swung away from the table, his phone in his hand, and hesitated, then he texted Marinette before he could talk himself out of it.
+Sorry about that. Rose has promised to back off on the matchmaking – I think she's just got wedding fever. Want to run through the song one more time before the wedding?+
It wasn't Rose's schemes, though. He knew that. Marinette was taking far too long for it to mean anything good, although he kept trying to tell himself that she might not be able to answer, she might be in the middle of something, she might have her phone off... Juleka muttered at him to stop fidgeting so much, god, you're driving me crazy, before it finally chimed with a response.
+I think I know it now+ she sent back. +See you next week+
Luka stared numbly at the words on his screen. It was happening all over again, and this time he had no defences left. Juleka was watching him with a look of exasperated sympathy.
"You're just as stupid as you ever were," she told him, and Luka exhaled heavily. It was hard to argue with that.
Ed notes: Big, big thank yous to everyone in LBSC for playing along with "What's Luka's favourite Disney song?" and "What Break Up song would annoy Juleka the most?", and also for just generally being awesome and supportive. A special shoutout to Verfound, for coming up with the song that Luka plays to Marinette. That song is not actually Disney (make of that what you will) and is inspired by Jonathan Young's cover of Someday Out of the Blue from The Road to El Dorado.