Once again, with huge thanks to the LBSC crowd for everything. This is Lukanette. Everyone is of legal drinking age in this fic, and I shouldn't need to say this, but - responsible alcohol consumption, if you're going to do it.
Liquid Courage
A Miraculous Ladybug fanfiction
By Mintaka14
Marinette sighed and allowed herself to be dragged forward. Alya had an arm hooked through her elbow, and Juleka was blocking her retreat behind. She'd been assured that Rose and the other girls were meeting them wherever it was they were going. There really wasn't any point resisting, although she baulked a little as they drew closer to the neon bright doorway of the club.
"Alya, it's my birthday," she whined.
"Exactly! And we've got a surprise for you."
"Shouldn't I get to do what I want?"
"Oh, you'll want this." Alya's grin grew wider. "Our girl's legal now, and we need to celebrate."
Marinette sighed again. She'd wanted to spend her birthday hanging out on the Liberty, listening to music, eating cake, laughing with Juleka and Rose, and trying to work up the courage to finally ask Luka … but Luka had a gig tonight, and it had been ages since she and Alya had been able to catch up, so when Alya had insisted on a girls' night out Marinette didn't really have a reason to say no. Particularly not when Rose had been so enthusiastic, and Juleka had given her an unreadable look from under the black and purple curtain of her hair and suggested that it'd be worth her while.
The noise inside hit her like a wall. As her eyes adjusted to the strobing darkness, Marinette felt Juleka nudge her arm and she looked up.
"It's live band tonight," Juleka leaned in to mutter into her ear, and Marinette could barely make out what she was saying. "Told you you'd want to come." Juleka nodded towards the stage, and over the heads of the crowded dance floor Marinette caught a glimpse of a familiar head of blue hair. Luka's gig. She could feel the butterflies - the good kind - take flight inside her.
Luka was saying something to the drummer. Marinette watched as he frowned down at the guitar in his hands. He'd stripped off his hoodie, and the tattoos on his muscled shoulders stood out in sharp relief under the stagelights as he strummed a quick chord and made an adjustment.
Marinette let out the unsteady breath she'd been holding. Before she could say anything to Juleka, Alya tugged her arm and towed her past the bar to a table in the dark corner, and the cake that was waiting there. She could make out a handful of their former collège friends grinning at her, and Rose waving excitedly, with Kim and Alix holding up a banner in the background. Judging from the way the words Happy Birthday Marinette! were sparkling even in the darkness of the club, Rose had been at it with the glitter.
"Surprise!" The collective shout drowned out even the noise of the club, and Marinette couldn't help smiling. She found herself passed from one set of arms to the next, exchanging hugs and exclamations with people she hadn't seen in far too long, catching up on snippets of news and beaming until her face hurt. At some point, someone pressed a paper plate full of cake into her hands, and Alya gave her a broad and slightly smug grin.
"Having a good time, birthday girl?" Alya yelled. "Just wait, it's going to get better!"
On her other side, Juleka muttered, "For the record, coming here to see the band was my idea. The rest of it was all Alya. Just remember that later." She pushed a shot glass of vodka into Marinette's hand. "You might need this."
Before Marinette could respond to Juleka's cryptic comment, Alix claimed her attention, asking about her plans for after lycèe, and then Nino wandered over to chat. She was very conscious that she only had half her attention on the conversations around her as she finished off her cake. Most of her focus was on the music. She leaned back in to Alya, who seemed to be checking her phone again, and half-shouted, "I'm going to go dance for a while."
Alya's eyes flicked up briefly from her screen. "I'll come find you in a minute. I'm just waiting for… someone… to text me if they're coming."
Dancing wasn't Marinette's goal, though, as she edged her way through the crowd towards the stage, and she could tell the moment that Luka found her because his stare of intense concentration broke into a smile and a quick wink thrown at her. He turned away to say something to the lead singer under the cover of the drum solo.
When that song finished, Marinette was a little startled when Luka stepped up to the mic. He rarely sang lead.
"Hey there," he told the club, and Marinette felt a shiver run through her at the gravelly sound of his voice echoing through the speakers. "Hope you're all having fun tonight. This one's for the birthday girl."
His eyes found her again in the crowd and stayed on her as he played the opening chords, and the drum kicked in with a soft hiss of cymbals. Marinette didn't recognise the intro, but when Luka stepped in a little closer and started singing about the amazing girl with endless horizons in her eyes she realised that it must be something new. One of his songs.
About her.
He seemed to be searching for something, his guitar echoing the melody in a rising question. Marinette could feel her pulse beating in time to his music, and when she pressed her hand to her heart, his mouth quirked up in a smile as if he'd found what he was looking for.
"Damn, the boy can sing," Alya said in her ear over the music and the noise of the club. "Is that a new one?"
She'd put away her phone now, and if Marinette had been paying attention she might have wondered at Alya's palpable air of satisfaction. Marinette ignored her, her eyes only on Luka.
When the final chords ended in silence and the club around her errupted in cheers and clapping, Marinette drew a shuddering breath.
Before she'd really had time to recover, Luka leaned in to the mic again.
"Happy Birthday, Marinette," he told her over the speakers, and that smile of his widened into a smouldering grin that should have been illegal. "Okay, time to change the pace."
He glanced back at the band, and started playing. Luka's heel thumped a beat in time to the almost aggressive chords he struck out on his guitar. He swung back into the mic.
"Cut my heart about one, two times. Don't need to question the reason I'm yours," he growled, his eyes only on her and his smile growing broader as she stared up at him with wide eyes. They'd been circling around this for months, since he got back from touring (years, if she was honest), and when he leaned in a little and told her to sign me up for that full time, I'm yours it felt like they were the only people in the room.
She jumped a little when the drums crashed into the chorus, and was vaguely aware of Alya bouncing along to the music beside her, but she was far more interested in the man with the guitar and the gorgeous tattooed muscles on stage who kept his eyes on her and sounded like he meant it when he asked what he'd have to do to be hers.
Oh boy.
"Come on," Alya shouted, hooking her hand through Marinette's arm, and Marinette turned dazed eyes on her as the applause exploded around them and drowned out everything else. She glanced back at the stage as Alya towed her away through the crowd. Her eyes met Luka's.
Tonight, no more hesitating. He'd already asked her, in his own way, if she only had the courage to speak up. She could do this.
"Here." Alya handed her another shot glass full of vodka. "A litle bit of liquid courage to help you confess."
It couldn't hurt, Marinette decided, and she threw down the contents, shuddering at the taste.
Luka never sang. He always let his instruments speak for him, but he had sung for her. And damn, his voice could bring her undone when he chose to use it. She put the glass down, feeling the warmth run through her, and Alya put her hands on Marinette's shoulders.
"Okay, birthday girl. You're eighteen now, you're a strong, confident woman, and you can totally tell a guy you love him without freaking out. Time for your birthday wish. What do you want more than anything?"
Marinette squeezed her eyes shut, and saw a slow grin and soft ocean blue eyes. She felt Alya spin her around, and the movement threw her off balance. She opened her eyes again, searching for a glimpse of Luka. He was laughing at something that the bassist was saying, and settling his guitar back on its stand. When he reached up to rake sweaty blue hair back from his face, Marinette felt dizzy all over again.
She reached for her shot glass, which someone had refilled, and knocked it back. Right.
"Marinette," Alya was saying slyly. "Look who's here!"
There was a blond head in front of her, blocking her view of the stage as she staggered. Adrien caught her with one hand on her arm, and his green eyes were watching her in fond concern as she righted herself.
"Oh, hi Adrien," Marinette said brightly. "I'm so glad you could make it. We should catch up some time."
Without waiting for a response, she wove around him and made her purposeful way towards the stage. She could do this. She could do this. She felt someone catch at her arm, and she thought it was Alya, but she shrugged her off and kept scanning the crowd.
She couldn't see Luka anywhere, and she turned in a giddy circle trying to find him.
She'd never had much luck with confessions, but this was Luka. This was months and years of songs that sounded like her, and clothing that was so very him, and little private jokes, and long video chats from half a world away. This was eyes meeting and sharing a silent moment in the middle of a crowd, and curling up on his bed for quiet, late night conversations that skirted awfully close to declarations of love. This was Luka stepping up to sing his heart to her. He'd made it as easy as it could possibly be for her, and it was time for her to meet him halfway. The vodka left a warm prickle under her skin that blurred the edges of her nerves.
The stage was empty now, and Alya caught up with her as she ducked around another set of flailing limbs. She was saying something, but Marinette couldn't hear her over the electronic beat of the dance mix that had started. Marinette tried to peer into the staff area behind the stage. There was no sign of Luka.
"Looking for someone?" a familiar, amused voice said close behind her, and Marinette spun around too fast. Luka caught her as she crashed into him and clutched at his tshirt. She looked up into deep blue eyes.
"Hi," she said a little breathlessly. "I love you."
And in the end, it really was that easy to say. Luka's eyes went wide, but he didn't let her go.
"Girl, what do you think you're doing?" Alya was hissing in her ear. "Adrien came especially to see you!"
But Marinette had other things to think about.
"I loved my birthday songs," she told Luka, who still had his arms around her and a dazed expression on his face. "Did you mean it?"
As he leaned down to her, his forehead brushing hers, his smile turned a little wry. "How much have you had to drink?"
"Not enough that I don't know what I'm doing," she insisted.
"Enough that you're not thinking straight," Alya interrupted forcefully. "Marinette –"
"Enough that it might be time to call it a night," Luka suggested, levelling a cool look at Alya. Marinette caught the swift, unreadable glance he flicked at the blond model talking to Nino on the other side of the club, and she pressed deeper into Luka's embrace.
And clearly, Marinette found, she'd had at least enough alcohol to shut down her usual filters, and blunt the overthinking. It was her birthday, dammit, and she wanted birthday kisses.
"That sounds like a good idea," she said brightly. She turned in Luka's arms to beam at Alya and throw her own arms around her friend. "It's been an amazing party," she told her blithely over the noise of the club. "Thank you so much for organising this tonight, Als. I think I need to head home now. Raincheck?"
Alya's eyes were narrowing at her, but Marinette was already turning back to Luka.
"Walk me home?" she asked him.
He took the hand she held out to him, and followed her like he always did.
"Marinette –" Alya was saying, but Marinette was already towing Luka through the crowd, dispensing hugs and thank yous and promises to catch up again soon to all her friends on the way. Then finally Marinette was out of the overheated club, and it was just her and Luka.
In the cool night air, the fuzz of too much noise and distracting lighting and vodka was clearing fast, and she glanced up at Luka.
He sighed. "Come on, birthday girl, let's get you home."
"I can't go home," she said, and there may have been a trace of smugness in her voice, because Luka gave her a startled look. "I was supposed to stay at Alya's place tonight. You don't want to rat me out to my parents, do you?"
"You couldn't have mentioned that before we left the club?"
"I could have, but then I wouldn't be here with you," she pointed out. Her sense of mild triumph faded into sudden worry. "Don't you want to take me home with you? Oh god, I just forced myself on you."
"No! Marinette, that's not…" He raked his hair back with one hand, and gave her a rueful look. "Sweetheart, you're killing me here. You're drunk, and this isn't a conversation we should be having until you're sane and sober."
"I had three shots." She held up three fingers, just in case there was any confusion. "I've been trying to have this conversation sane and sober for a while now."
"You're not even walking straight," Luka sighed.
"I can still kiss straight, though," she offered, and lifted up on her toes with her face turned hopefully towards him.
It felt like an unpleasant jolt when his hands caught gently at her shoulders and set her back at arm's length. Marinette blinked up at him, trying to recover her balance.
"Did I… that song, did I misread it?" she asked a little anxiously, and Luka gave a strained laugh.
"No."
"Then… why won't you kiss me?"
He sighed, and took her hand. "Marinette, I've been stupid in love with you since you were fourteen. Every year, you get more amazing, and every day I fall a little harder, but here's the thing – if you kiss me, I don't want it to be something you did while you were drunk."
"You don't believe me?"
His gaze shifted off to the side, and his mouth turned a little wry. "Tell me again tomorrow."
Oh Luka… She stared down at their linked hands, and there was a moment of silence between them, then Marinette looked up.
"Okay."
"Okay?" Luka's mouth quirked up in a quizzical smile.
"Okay, fine, I'm not going kiss you tonight, even though I've been in love with you for ages and three shots is not why I want to… anyway, okay. And tomorrow morning, we're going to talk about it."
Maybe she had been a little more affected by the vodka than she'd thought, because it felt so nice when they reached the Liberty and she fell into Luka's bed, and felt him tuck his quilt in around her. She buried her face in his pillow and the familiar smell of his shampoo with that faint tang of metal and water and hot sun.
When he wandered out of the room and came back with a cushion and the ratty old blanket from the living room couch, she mustered enough energy to prop herself on her elbow and frown at him as he eased himself down to the floor beside his bed.
"You're not planning on sleeping on the floor tonight, are you?" she asked, and Luka gave a nonchalant shrug.
"It's not the first time, and it won't be the last," he told her. "Go to sleep, Melody."
She gave a huff, and dropped back down into his pillow, too tired to put up a proper argument over misguided chivalry.
"This is another thing we're going to talk about in the morning," she muttered darkly. He reached up to turn out the lamp on his desk, and in the soft darkness Marinette fell asleep to the sound of his deep, rhythmic breathing, until the noise of Juleka returning home disturbed her in the morning.
"So this is where you ended up," Juleka muttered drily, and stepped over Luka, still asleep on the floor in his pile of blankets. "I thought Alya said my idiot brother was going to take you home. I'm pretty sure she thought it was your home, not his."
"We had stuff to talk about," Marinette whispered defensively, and Juleka's eyebrow rose.
"Uhuh," she said sceptically. "Talk. I don't want to know."
She turned away to sling her bag down behind her bed.
"For the record," she added. "I did try to talk Alya out of the whole Adrien thing last night. It's not like anyone ever listens to me."
"I know," Marinette sighed. "I love Alya, but there are only so many times I can tell her that I'm not interested in Adrien, and I haven't been for a long time now. I thought that she'd accepted that I was over that whole drama, but clearly, she just thought I was in denial or something."
"Clearly." Juleka's glance fell on Marinette's phone, sitting on Luka's desk nearby. "Speaking of Alya, you're going to have a lot of messages when you turn that on again. She's been trying to reach you since you and Luka took off last night."
Marinette's eyes went wide.
"Oh, God," she groaned.
"The look on her face when you threw yourself at Luka last night and dragged him out of the club was awesome, by the way." The corners of Juleka's mouth twitched up in a smirk. "Thank you for that."
"Jules –"
"What? You should have heard her when I tried to suggest that it'd been almost four years now and maybe you'd moved on from a dumb crush you had when you were fourteen." She put her hands on her hips and levelled a look at Marinette in an uncanny imitation of their friend. "No offense, Juleka, but I think I know my girl better than you. Yeah, like I'm not the one who's been watching you making googoo eyes at my brother since he came back to Paris. You never said anything to her?"
"Up until he got back, there wasn't really a whole lot to talk about," Marinette said defensively, and Juleka snorted.
"Except all the phone bills you two have been racking up while he was on tour." Juleka flopped onto her bed. "I'm so tired. I've been dealing with Alya all night at that sleepover you bailed on. Seriously, I know we've fallen out of touch with her a bit since we started lycèe, but how on earth did she miss that you're completely stupid for Luka?"
"Luka doesn't seem to have figured it out yet," Marinette muttered, rolling over and stretching for her phone on the desk. She understood why he'd done it, but she was still feeling a little hurt that he hadn't kissed her last night.
"I think he's starting to get the idea," said a masculine voice from the floor below her. Marinette looked down into Luka's blue eyes and sleepy smile, shrieked, and lost her balance. The wind was knocked out of Luka with a muffled sound as she landed on him. His arms reflexively closed around her.
" 'Morning, beautiful," he said with a hint of a laugh in his voice.
"How much of that did you hear?"
His smile grew wider. "That depends. How much of it did you want me to hear?"
She probably should get up, but he didn't seem in any hurry to let her go, and Marinette was enjoying the feeling of being tangled up in Luka's arms and legs, even if her face was burning at the unexpected proximity.
"How are you feeling this morning?" he asked softly.
"Really good," she said dazedly, and nuzzled her face into his t-shirt. "Warm."
"I meant, do you need any aspirin or anything?"
Marinette huffed, and felt him shift under her. "I told you, I only had three shots. I'm fine."
"You two are disgusting," Juleka complained, just as her phone went off and she gave the call notification an annoyed look. "I'm still here, you know, having to watch all this."
"Then go away," Luka mumbled into Marinette's hair.
Juleka stomped across the room, muttering under her breath, and paused in the doorway.
"Oh, and turn your damn phone on," Juleka said flatly. "She's calling me now, and I draw the line at dealing with Alya's little meltdown for you. And I expect to be the Best Woman at your wedding, you sappy lamebrains," she added without any change of expression.
The door closed behind her, and Marinette reached for her phone again, the corners of her mouth lifting irrepressibly at Luka's sudden intake of breath when she stretched against him. The moment that she turned it on, the screen flooded with layer on layer of notifications and messages, each one more incensed than the last, and before she could even open the first one the phone buzzed in her hand, startling her.
"What the hell, Marinette?" Alya's voice shrieked at her. "What was that all about last night? Do you have any idea how many favours I had to call in to get Adrien there last night?!"
"And it was really nice to see him," Marinette said soothingly.
She ignored Luka's smothered laugh, and focused on Alya's disgruntled huff.
"Not that you'd know," Alya grumbled on the other end of the line. "You barely said hello before you took off like that with Luka. What was that all about? I thought he was overseas with Jagged or something."
"Yeah… he came back," Marinette said brightly.
"So I gathered. So why didn't you tell me you were dating Luka?"
Marinette felt a twinge of guilt at the note of hurt in Alya's voice, but she'd honestly tried to tell Alya that things had changed. She'd been trying to tell her for years.
"Because I'm not yet," she pouted. Luka was laughing harder now, and she could feel his shoulders shaking. She glared down at him, but that didn't seem to stop him. "He wouldn't kiss me last night."
"Vodka shots," he mouthed at her.
"If it's any consolation, your pep talk really helped," she offered. "I did tell him I loved him, even if he didn't believe me."
The way that Luka's arms tightened around her at that was very distracting.
"You owe me details, girl," Alya was saying, and it sounded more like a threat than a promise. "I'll be there in ten."
"… Als, I'm not at home."
The shriek Alya emitted should have cracked the phone.
"Ow!" Luka complained from underneath Marinette. "Could you dial it down, Alya?"
Alya's second shriek was even louder. "Is he there right now? Marinette!"
"It's not what you think."
"The hell it isn't! Girl, you will call me later and tell me everything."
"Almost everything," Marinette promised, as Luka's eyebrow rose. "Love you, Als. Later."
She ended the call and put aside her phone. With Luka's arms around her, and given the way he was looking at her, she was pretty sure she was going to get her kisses, finally. No courage necessary.
"So, about that talk," Marinette said, propping her chin on his chest and looking up at him. "No shots, no schemes, I'm completely of sound mind."
The gorgeous jerk grinned at that.
"As much as you ever are," he said fondly.
"So do you believe me now when I say I adore you with all my heart and I've never been more sure of anything in my life? Or do I have to persuade you?"
"I'm convinced," he told her, and look in his eyes sent a flutter of entirely delicious nerves through her. "But you're welcome to persuade me if you want to. I think I'd enjoy that."
"Then can I kiss you now?" she asked softly.
"Yes," he breathed, and his mouth was on hers before she could even respond.
Ed notes: The second song Luka sings for Marinette is, of course, What a Man Gotta Do (Jonas Brothers). The cover of this that I had in mind was the one by Complicit feat. Shawn Johnson