Thanks to JuliaFC for betaing!

Luka blinked. "You practiced your love confession with someone?"

It'd been several weeks since he'd accidentally found out Ladybug's and Chat Noir's true identities. While he'd initially held out hope that, over time, things in Marinette's life would calm down and she may want to get together with him again, he'd given up after that little discovery.

It was a square. A damned SQUARE. And he couldn't even tell anyone. Nope, he just had to suffer through watching Marinette and Adrien dance around each other. Truly, this was hell.

Maybe that's why no one else seemed to have figured out the full picture. Everyone who did promptly found some way to erase the knowledge so they wouldn't be tempted to go up to the two of them and shout You two love each other dammit, just kiss already!

Though of course Ladybug and Chat Noir HAD actually kissed before…

And there was the headache again. He'd gone through more pain relief medication in the past month than he had in the previous year, just thinking about what it meant that Ladybug and Chat Noir were Marinette and Adrien.

At least Juleka was happy to keep him updated on any new developments in Marinette's love life, or lack of one. Though Marinette also consulted him about it on occasion as well, since he'd reassured her that he was there to help her and was fully on board with her asking Adrien out.

Marinette nodded. "You know how much trouble I have with it - I have everything prepared and planned out, but then when I actually try saying it…"

"Your song becomes jumbled and discordant." He plucked a few strings, producing an awful twang.

She winced. "Exactly! I've tried again and again, but every time it goes wrong. Adrien was feeling really awful that day, because-" She paused. "Huh. I… actually don't know why. He was fine during fencing practice the next day, so I guess it was resolved?" She shook her head. "Anyway, I rushed out to give him the cheering-up gift I made. I'd thought it was a hamster cage and he'd reveal that he always loved hamsters, I'd be able to confess, and he'd stand up, take me in his arms, tell me how much he loves me…" she trailed off, grinning deliriously as she re-imagined the scene. Coming back to reality, she groaned. "Turned out I'd grabbed the wrong gift. I got him a potter's wheel. A POTTER'S WHEEL. You don't give someone a potter's wheel to cheer them up! I ended up throwing it in the trash, it was all wrong."

"It's the thought that counts." Which was especially true with Adrien. He'd seen the way the kid responded when anyone showed him the slightest bit of care or affection. And with his fondness towards Marinette on top of that, she could give him an old pair of socks and he'd probably consider it a precious treasure.

"But it has to be perfect! No way could I confess if it wasn't."

He strummed a few calming notes. They'd had this conversation before. But while he could tell her that perfectionism was holding her back from accomplishing her goal, and sometimes she'd even agree, that didn't stop her from panicking. Hard to reason with emotions.

"I wasn't the only one to notice Adrien feeling down," she continued. "Kagami drove up and told me I needed to confess, to help him feel better. She even had some advice for how!" Marinette rubbed the back of her neck, looking away. "Though uh, well… let's just say that I discovered later on that she might not have gotten her ideas from the most reliable of sources." She shook herself. "She said I should practice my seduction with someone I had no feelings for, someone who I was one hundred percent sure had no romantic feelings for me either."

Huh. Wonder who? It wasn't Juleka, she would've told him. Alya maybe? They were certainly close enough. He was kind of surprised they hadn't practiced this kind of thing earlier, actually. Though he didn't think she fit into Kagami's specifications. Alya and Nino were an inseparable couple, but he'd seen enough of hers and Marinette's interactions to suspect that she and Marinette had tiny crushes on each other.

Maybe her kwami? In that case she couldn't tell him about it. If she stuttered and deflected, then that was probably her seduction practice partner.

"Luckily the perfect partner was just a few rooftops away!"

Oh no. Please no.

"Chat Noir really leans into the cat-thing. You ever need him, just try calling 'here, kitty kitty kitty!'".

He cleared his throat. "You're sure he's a good partner for this? Kagami said to make sure that the practice partner had no feelings for you. Are you sure he might not develop some?" Or rather, he already has strong feelings for you and you know it, since you're Ladybug.

"Psssh!" she waved her hand dismissively. "He turned me down before when I asked him out, it's fine."

She asked him- no, no, focus on the here and now. This was enough of a lovesquare trainwreck, he didn't need yet another thing to churn over in his head at night as he thought about the sheer dramatic irony that ran through his friends' love lives.

"So how'd you practice with him?" Might as well learn the full extent of the trainwreck, if only to stop from dwelling on whatever previous ironic snowball had led to Marinette asking Chat out and his subsequent rejection.

"I read out my love confession letter to him!" she said brightly. "Well, not to him-him, the confession to Adrien I mean, but I was reading it to Chat Noir, not Adrien - you know what I mean?"

He nodded, keeping his usual neutral, supportive face. He'd become an expert at screaming internally.

"Did you tell him who it was for?" Is there at least a little more progress towards this damn square collapsing already?

She blushed. "Well, no. I- I know it's not much of a secret, but I still don't exactly want to advertise my crush. I used a codename."

Oh no. "What codename?"

"Buttercup."

He burst out laughing. She pouted. "You're just like Chat Noir. He couldn't keep a straight face either."

"I'm just surprised you referenced Operation Secret Garden."

"How- I never said- Juleka!" she spluttered.

He chortled. "She's not the greatest at keeping secrets from me. Hazard of sharing a room with your twin."

She continued pouting for a moment longer, then sighed. "Him laughing wasn't the only problem. He didn't know what expression I wanted from him so he kept making weird faces or overacting when pretending to reciprocate-"

"Pretending to reciprocate?" Part of him wanted to know. The other part was screaming at him to maintain his ignorant bliss.

"Oh yeah, I asked him to act like he was interested in me. Didn't go well. He interrupted me a few lines in to declare it the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard, 'Like a sky opening up after a storm', complete with lots of gesturing. It was, uh, a little much."

He could picture it. The two oblivious lovebirds overacting to each other while pretending to be in love, to the point that neither could take the other seriously. He'd say Chat would be the more extreme of the two, but he'd heard about some of Marinette's confession schemes.

"I got so frustrated I told HIM to show me how it was done." Her eyebrows drew together. "He was actually really good at it. Like, surprisingly good. It sounded corny, but that was because of the words. He sold the emotion, and the gestures and expressions throughout the performance… I think he'd make a great actor."

Considering that he's an experienced model and voice actor, I'm not surprised.

"I was really down and frustrated and burnt out, so he suggested we take a break and go to the movie theater!"

"You went. With Chat Noir. To the movie theater."

"Yes…? Oh!" She looked down. "Sorry, I know that might be a sore subject, considering what happened on our date back then."

He shook his head. At least now he understood why she was constantly flaking out back then. But the cost to his sanity of that revelation… "It's fine, I understand." Better than you know. "I was just surprised I hadn't heard about it before."

That was a lie, but he couldn't exactly say 'I can't believe you went on a date with the boy you're head-over-heels for and don't even know it'.

"We- we had a really nice talk during the movie," she said, looking off into the distance, smiling. "A little too nice, actually - this one guy nearly got us thrown out because we kept on talking! We uh- we quieted down after that." Her tone turned wistful. "But after the movie, it started raining, both of us walking back underneath Chat's umbrella-"

Luka's eye twitched. He'd heard all about what caused Marinette to fall for Adrien in the first place. It raining after a date with Chat Noir, and him happening to have an umbrella on hand? He wasn't sure whether the universe was mocking him, or Marinette and Adrien.

"-he's having his own love issues, you know," she said. "Ladybug cares for him, but not like that. It was funny; I was trying to get enough of a handle on my feelings that I could actually confess to Adrien, while he was trying to get a handle on his feelings so he could stop confessing to Ladybug."

His eye twitched again. "Yep! Really funny," he said, his pitch shifting up a half-octave.

She looked over at him, concerned. "You sure you're okay?"

He nodded, not trusting his voice.

"I practiced my confession one last time - after a little interruption. But this time, not by reading a piece of paper. I- I spoke from the heart. Nothing too flowery, just my feelings, raw and true. It- it felt so right. Chat thought so as well, saying that the person I'm in love with is so lucky." She gave a soft smile. "The person who falls in love with him will be lucky too."

NOPE.

NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE.

THAT'S IT, UNIVERSE, THAT'S THE FINAL STRAW.

He stood up.

"Luka? Are you going somewhere? What-"

He walked over the sidewalk and into the refreshing, non-complicated waters of the canal. Distantly he heard Marinette call out his name as he backstroked to his family's houseboat. He'd have to come up with some excuse for his bizarre behavior later, but for now, he just needed a nice, cleansing dunk to wash away the frustration over the universe's ongoing investment in making his friends' love lives as ironic as possible.