This is a Lukanette fic with an akuma and fair warning for mentions of abuse and bullying. Hope you guys enjoy (this is mostly just a cute drabble)! Also I am technologically inept so like, I can’t figure out how to make a link to my Ao3??? But if you want to check it out, my username is the same!
Purple was her and him, it was them.
But purple was also the color of anger, of heartbreak.
It was the color his father screamed through the house until his voice went raw and it was the color his knuckle turned after punching the wall. Purple is what his mother cloaked herself in when he left, like her whole body turned bruised with grief. Purple is the color his sister wore until she turned it from mourning into bravery and learned how to love again despite the fear. Purple danced from his fingertips and stained his cheeks as sobs clung to his bedroom walls. Purple is what he has to protect himself from— his past from leaking out and his sensitive heart from twisting into colorless knots, his anger from striking, his sister meant to be held instead of frightened. Purple was sorrow, it was aching and cruel and merciless.
Purple was not meant to be happy, wasn’t meant to them.
Because Marinette is so many shades of pink that it leaves Luka breathless, but she’s always a bubble-gum glow when she sees him.
That’s when she’s herself.
Him who’s a blue— dark enough some days to drown his soul, dark and deep and enough of an ocean blue that he could sweep the world away in a tsunami and not even care. A cyan blue when calm, when he teases his sister, when he meditates to his guitar. But he’s a soft azure when he’s with her; indigo when she cries and a blazing navy when she’s hurt. Her laughter makes him go bright blue and her smile melts him into the color of the sky at midday.
And purple is still not a happy color, still not something she’d choose.
She wants yellow instead.
She’d be happy with yellow. With someone other than him.
And he wants her to be happy— so there’s no room for purple.
Besides, he thinks, purple just ruins things and she deserves to be safe.
“Lovely?” Marinette pokes his cheek, making the musician blink up at her at the sound of what the tiny bluenette has chosen to call him for months now. That and ‘sweetie’. “Are you okay?”
“Your freckles are darker than usual.” Is all Luka can say, eyes drifting over her slightly pink-tinged cheeks as the little freckles stand out.
When he glances down, he sees the frown on her lips— they’re pink too— and feels the uncertain skip in the best of her song. It makes him sigh.
“Don’t worry about me, Melody.” Luka gently reaches up and tugs a loose strand of hair behind her ear, not wanting it to block her beautiful electric eyes. “I just have a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
“Are you sure?” Marinette tilts her head and it takes almost all his self restraint not to awe out loud at how adorable she is. “I’m here to talk if you’re not.”
“I’m sure.” He chuckles, ruffling her hair even though his heart aches. Yellow. She likes yellow, not blue. “Want to hear a song I’ve been working on?”
“Of course.” His melody smiles softly— the same smile that makes his heart beg to never let it end— and motions for him to continue. “What’s it about?”
Luka smirks, “You’ll see.”
Marinette gives him a look that’s somewhere between ‘Why don’t you just tell me?’ and ‘What are you waiting for?’ and it makes his smirk broaden into a grin, lips tugging up at the sides as her nose crinkles.
They’re sitting across from each other on Marinette’s balcony and the sunrise is orange and red and pink— and it makes Luka feel something he’s too scared to feel alone but doesn’t ask or pry. He sits there patiently and he plays his guitar for the girl he fell in love with.
If she was happy, being friends would be easier.
If she was happy, he wouldn’t mind yellow.
If she was happy… would it be worth it?
Now they’re laughing and talking and teasing and it makes his heart melt in his chest because she isn’t happy with him how he wants to be happy with her, but she’s still happy.
It’s more than enough and it’s worth it a thousand times over.
Her eyes twinkle in Paris’ lights and the sun makes her hair glimmer as it flows around her shoulders and— god she’s so beautiful and she doesn’t even realize how much she affects him and god, she’s smiling and her freckles are drowning under her blush and he’s drowning under his own love and he can’t handle it but god, he would do anything for her.
And it isn’t fair and it never will be fair because he’s blue and she’s pink but she doesn’t want him, she doesn’t want anything but to become the soft color of a peach with yellow.
Peach would look good on her— a gentle color with no chance of going dark. Yellow is too bright, too easy to love for that. Too nice of a color to make peach anything less than what she would hope.
And purple is still a dangerous color.
Purple is still dark, it’s still unstable. He knows why she doesn’t want purple but he wants it. He wants the mulberry shape of bruise-kissed lips and magenta blushes and mauve-colored winks and he wants to love her so much that it’s painful.
She crawled so far into his heart that all his walls crashed down into a dusty cloud of pink, and that pink mixed until she was in his lungs and he was breathing her in with every breath. He doesn’t need oxygen— he just needs her.
But now it’s midday and the sky is the color of his eyes whenever he looks at her and there’s nothing dark or hard about it. It’s a soft color and a soft feeling and it expands even when the sun— even when the thoughts of yellow— try to break through.
It’s midday and they’re still laughing.
They laugh until their sides hurt and Luka doesn’t even remember why but when he looks at the way Marinette’s head tilts back with a loud giggle he finds that he doesn’t care.
Midday doesn’t last forever, though, and neither does the feeling of being drunk on happiness. Purple comes crashing in with sharp edges and a wicked laugh and draped in gold garments and purple is the color of the mask they’re wearing and purple is the color of fear that seizes Luka’s heart when it tries to hurt her.
When it threatens to make them relive their most painful memories or when their lives changed forever.
When he thinks about his father; the purple yells bouncing around their home, the bruises, the injuries he had to hide, the hits meant for his sister but left orchid-colored marks against him instead.
When he knows that she’s been hurt a lot too.
When he knows that both of them have things they never want to experience again.
Akumas were common and they were always thrumming with energy and he knew that they weren’t in control of themselves— that Hawkmoth had his manipulative claws digging into their minds— but it doesn’t help the rage that contorts and twists in his veins because how dare they try to hurt the girl he loves.
So he fights for her and she fights for him but they’re just two teenagers and they weren’t supposed to be a team and what were they supposed to do when the world feels like it's falling down onto them?
Luka felt like he was drowning but that wasn’t what scared him.
What scared him was looking to his right and seeing that Marinette was drowning too. That his eyes were growing heavy and he couldn’t breathe and he felt so weak but he reached out for her anyway— he reached out and everything went numb when their fingertips touched.
It felt like he was flying, flashes and colors and smells jerking him from one place to the next and it could’ve been years since his feet had touched the ground by the time that Luka crashed into the cold, plasticy feeling of whatever was under him.
Coughing, he sat up in a blind frenzy, blinking repeatedly as his senses tried to grapple his surroundings— skin feeling too tight to fit his panic.
“Melody?” Luka pushed himself to stand, knees shaking but not as bad as his voice. “Melody, where are you? Marinette!” Seeing her groaning behind him, the musician only sees a wave of pink before he’s already crouched next to her and holding her face in his hands.
She’s cold and her face is scrunched up like she tasted a lemon.
But she’s breathing, she’s alive— and it makes relief puncture his lungs and for a heavy sigh to escape him.
“L-Luka?” Marinette’s eyes slowly blinked open, mouth parting in some form of a daze— as if she’s looking right through him. “What… the akuma! No, oh no. This is, this is bad! I can’t be trapped here, I have to get back! And, god, Luka. I need to get back to Luka.”
“Melody, it’s okay, I’m right here.” Luka shuffled closer, both of them sitting side to side now as his hands calmingly ran up and down her arms, confused as to why she wasn’t looking at him. “We’ll be okay. Ladybug and Chat Noir will fix everything and—”
“No, no.” She clutched at her head with a groan, not acknowledging his words, blue eyes filling with terror and guilt. “If I’m here then, then— Tikki?” Watching her suddenly whirl around and stand up gave Luka whiplash and he wondered how she didn’t even stagger after being teleported to… wherever they were. “Tikki, I really need you!”
Tikki? Who’s that? Luka blinked a couple times, hands itching by his sides to just drag her back to him and never let go.
He’s blue and she’s pink but purple would be okay if she’s safe. Purple would be okay, for just a moment, if he could hold her. If he could make sure nothing else— no one else— could hurt her.
“Okay, okay, this is fine,” Marinette said to herself and Luka watched, unsure of what to do if she couldn’t see, hear, or feel him— seemingly anyway since she gave so indication that she knew he was there. “Chat Noir will fight that Akuma or find a way to break me out of here and everything will be fine. He knows who I am. He’ll figure it out.”
Chat Noir? Why would Chat Noir focus on getting her out then just winning the fight and cleansing the Akuma with Ladybug?
Luka was a Couffaine, chaos ran in his blood and he was used to life throwing a curveball and painful things his way, used to going with the flow and preparing for the worst, used to figuring things out on his own.
But honestly? This was giving him a headache.
“Melody?” He stands up and tries again, only for a wave of purple to explode around them as the scenery flashes around them, their bodies now side by side as they’re forced to move through wherever this Akuma’s power is taking them.
They’re off to the side, his Melody not too far away and she clutches at her hands to her chest breathing heavy as she stares at what looks like a playground around them, and he can smell the wood chips underneath them and the wet soil, puddles here and there as drops of water drip from the trees.
He blinks again and recognizes it.
The playground from the first school he went to, when he was five or six and still so scared of everything and anyone that he avoided people at all costs— blending in with the background and making no friends.
But this wasn’t from his memory.
“Mari,” Luka looks down and wishes he could hold her, but she still can’t see him or feel him. They’re trapped together but they’re still so far apart. He sighs, looking around more and frowning. “Why would one of your worst memories be on a playground?”
As expected, she didn’t answer.
Then Luka sees her— a short little five-year-old with a shy smile and a pink overalls that are too big for her and a white shirt underneath, dark hair into pigtails and blue eyes nervously taking in all the other kids playing.
Compared to him at that age, she definitely looked more put together. Still kind, still adorable in that innocent kid way where they don’t know how cruel the world is. In a way that he never got to experience— childhood ripped away by his father’s hands much too soon.
Kids he recognized as her now classmates and his sister’s girlfriend, but not his sister— she went to school a year later than everyone else— were playing what looked to be kickball.
The Akuma also said life-changing memories, so many things wouldn’t be bad? Maybe this is just when she made friends for the first time?
Luka hoped that’s all it was.
But then, as the rest of her memory played out, he realized that was a too-soon assumption.
She’s five when she learns what it’s like to be bullied for the first time and goes home with a running nose and bruises from when Chloe— god, he hated that girl— pushed her into the concrete. She’s called Ugly Mari for the rest of the year and it breaks his heart as he realizes that this is what started her insecurity.
She’s seven when she’s told she’ll never be loved and Luka watches as she cries in her father’s arms as she asks what’s so wrong with her that no one wants to be friends. Mr. Dupain tells her that some people just don’t have the same gentleness and warmth inside of them that she has.
She’s nine when she makes friends with her classmates and everyone learns to love the kind-hearted girl but ten when her best friend at the time says she’s too much to handle. This is the year she learned to fold any pride she had into herself and hide it away next to her confidence.
Luka wants to scream at the world when he sees how scared she is of pushing people away because she’s a little too smart, a little too clumsy, a little too late, a little too much.
She’s twelve when Chloe beats her up in the locker room and she goes home telling her parents that she fell down some stairs. She’s twelve when she makes her first successful shirt and it gets ripped up. She’s twelve and she cries herxcself to sleep because she doesn’t feel like anyone will ever love her.
She’s seventeen now and she’s watching herself at twelve years old and Luka sees the tears in her eyes and he’s on the floor crying just watching her feel worthless and he can’t even hold her and tell her how she’s the most amazing person he met.
She’s thirteen when she becomes Ladybug— he learns that Tikki is her Kwami— and Luka’s breath gets taken away at how brave she is but then is given back as his heart breaks all over again when he sees that she’s so riddled with insecurities that she doesn’t think she will be good enough to protect Paris.
He watches her make a mistake and she is so terrified that she gives away the earrings to Alya. He watches as she takes them back and helps her best friend. He watches as a cop berates her for getting them into this mess. He watches as she saves the same girl who made her feel unlovable for the last thirteen years of her life. He watches as she’s confident for one of the first times and smirks as she takes down Stoneheart and all the butterflies.
He watches and he’s back to being the love-sick man he is as he sees his Melody, the one trapped here with him, watch herself without blinking.
Then she smiles and he feels so grateful that his heart aches because she’s letting herself be proud and she might not be healed from the trauma of being bullied so harshly for years but she’s strong and she’s getting through it.
It’s the next day she falls in love for the first time underneath a black umbrella and Luka sees the shy smile on her face and he scowls because pink and yellow don’t mix— even if it would make her happy. Pink and yellow is peach but she’s nervous and so scared of messing up and yellow can’t see it and he doesn’t even deserve her.
There’s a couple battles and other heroes and small conversations here and there but their brief flashes and distant sounds but Marinette smiles anyways and waves when she sees the people she loves.
Luka sees it all and he doesn’t know how he could ever stop loving this girl who’s compassionate and sweet and protects everyone without complaining and no one can even properly appreciate her for it because no one knows.
And he loves her all the more.
She’s fourteen when she meets him and he watches himself play for her and he smiles as his Melody looks at the scene with a familiar tenderness in her eyes that leaves him breathless. He watches over the course of the year as they grow closer through her eyes, as he gets akumatized and as he is granted with the Snake Miraculous for the first time.
Luka sees as, even though he wasn’t her first love, she fell in love with him.
She’s sixteen when she dies for the first time in a battle with an Akuma and Chat Noir is forced to take her earrings. She’s sixteen when she comes back from death with a smile and learns that her partner is Adrien Agreste. She’s sixteen when she found out her old crush is madly in love with her and she still chooses him— she chooses Luka— anyway.
She’s seventeen and she’s talking to Alya on the phone about how to tell him she wants him and it was this morning she did that, right before he came over, and then they’re sitting with bright smiles and he notices how she looks at him when he’s looking at something else— only briefly, as even the devil knows he’d be damned if he could just keep his eyes off of her for more than a couple minutes— and Luka is blown away with the knowledge.
The feeling is so purple that it makes him ache with the need to kiss her. It’s the smell of her lavender shampoo and the color of an Iris and it’s warmth and gentle and a burning amethyst and it makes him cry all over again.
He’s blue and she’s pink and yellow isn’t even an option anymore but that doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want yellow. She doesn’t want to be peach. She just wants him— she wants him and he wants her even more.
Purple was still dangerous.
But it was so, so beautiful.
He’d never give it up because of what purple was.
Purple was her and him, it was them.
