I'll Keep You Warm
Merry Christmas @omnoramayday! I'm your @lovebugs-and-snakecharmers Secret Santa 😁🎅
I used the prompt you provided of: "Playing in the snow when Luka tackles Marinette/Marinette trips into Luka and they fall to the ground. They have pink cheeks and snow in their hair and they're staring at each other." which was so incredibly cute and I knew I had to use that one. Hope you like it!
Read on Ao3
Marinette shivered and clutched her backpack tighter as she exited Collège Françoise Dupont. It had seemed beautiful and sunny out all day, but during her last class a chill had crept in and a biting wind had picked up. She was thankful she’d at least worn a sweater that day, but she was still planning on speed walking most of the way home.
That is, until she saw a familiar mop of blue-tinted hair leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Juleka, and she couldn’t help her smile as she bounded down to greet him. Luka always made her feel warmer, for some reason. He’d been showing up more and more to meet Juleka after school and walk home with her, but Marinette was still excited to see him every time.
“Luka!” she exclaimed breathlessly when she’d made it to the bottom. He turned and smiled when he saw her, which made her cheeks flush with welcome heat. His smile twitched downwards, though, when he scanned over her outfit.
“Why don’t you have a jacket?” he asked, with concern coloring his tone. “It’s freezing out here and it smells like snow.”
She stopped to look at him curiously. “It smells like snow?”
He only nodded, and before she could protest, he’d pulled off his own jacket and draped it around her shoulders. For good measure, he fluffed the hood out and tucked it around her neck. She didn’t know what snow smelled like, but at the moment she didn’t really care because Luka’s jacket smelled just like him and her face felt like it was about to spontaneously combust. His hand drew across her cheek as he pulled away, and he had a soft little smile on his face as he admired his handiwork.
“You can’t possibly smell snow,” she tried to recover, lamely, as she shoved her hands through the sleeves, accepting his gift.
He hummed in thought and looked up at the clear sky, with just a few wisps of gray clouds starting to gather. “It’s like rain,” he mused aloud, “like that same smell, but crisper and colder.”
“Don’t argue with him,” Juleka muttered as she appeared beside Marinette. It made Marinette jump a little, but she was starting to get used to Juleka’s quiet way of walking up. “Just bring gloves to practice today.”
“And a hat, at least,” Luka added. As the two of them started to walk away, Marinette went to take his jacket off to return it to him, but he waved her off. “See you later,” he reminded her.
It was only after they left that Marinette felt the cold creeping in again, but as she pulled Luka’s jacket tighter around herself, she remembered the feeling of the back of his fingers lightly trailing along her cheek, and her whole walk home was very, very warm.
***
By the time Kitty Section practice came around, they were forced to meet down in the hold because the temperature had definitely dipped below freezing. Marinette rubbed her hands together for what felt like the thousandth time and thanked Juleka silently for her recommendation to wear gloves. The boat was cold in most circumstances, let alone with the temperature dropping so rapidly. She was missing Luka’s jacket, though, which she’d given back as soon as she stepped on deck. Luka tried to tell her to keep it for practice, but she insisted she’d forget to give it back if she didn’t get it back to him right away.
Although since she’d worn his jacket there, she was now shivering in just her sweater again and the only “gloves” she’d had on hand at the time were a pair of mittens, which made it extraordinarily difficult to sketch. Every so often she’d get too frustrated and rip them off, only to deal with the consequences of freezing, trembling fingers until she was forced to put them back on.
It was slow going.
On one of those instances, Luka unslung his guitar, unofficially announcing a break, and he came over to sit by her. Without saying anything, he took her frozen hands between his and gently blew warm air on her fingertips.
“How’s the sketch going?” he asked.
She glared at the patchy, faint, unrealized lines on the pages of her sketchbook. It wasn’t exactly the book’s fault that she was feeling so inspired and couldn’t get anything to work, but she still felt like blaming the paper would somehow help.
“It’s not, really,” she admitted. She couldn’t help her frustrated little huff. “If it just snowed, I wouldn’t mind it being so cold.”
He chuckled. “It will,” he said calmly, and blew on her fingers again. She wiggled them to see if any feeling was coming back. No such luck. They were still stiff and a little numb.
She couldn’t help her skepticism. “Because you can smell it?”
He only hummed to confirm, but since her fingertips were so close to his lips, she could feel the vibration and it made her shiver.
“Not helping?” he asked.
Before she could protest, he pulled away, but in the next second his jacket was back around her shoulders and any kind of protest died on her lips. What came out of her instead was, “Won’t you be cold?”
He shook his head, then smiled at her, the same way he had earlier, like he liked seeing his jacket tucked around her, and she felt what was becoming a familiar flush of heat creep its way up to her cheeks.
“I’m always warm around you, Marinette,” he admitted quietly.
She opened and closed her mouth several times, but nothing came out in response. Luka looked over his shoulder and said something to Juleka, gave Marinette one more soft smile, then went back to playing like he hadn’t just made her heart start pounding in her ears and left butterflies fluttering in her stomach.
She gave up on sketching anything useful for the rest of the time and instead let her hands wander over the page aimlessly as she tried to get her mind to focus on words. She wished she could disappear somewhere and talk through what just happened with Tikki, but the only place to go was above deck, which would take her further away from Luka and out into the bitter cold, and those were the last places she wanted to be.
“You make me feel warm, too,” wasn’t right, but neither was an outright, “I love you.” She bit her lip as she thought. He made this seem so easy, every time he did it, and she couldn’t even tell him how much she loved that he’d given her his jacket, not once, but twice today just to make sure she stayed warm. Or that his words made her feel warmer than his jacket ever could. Or that she wished she could just always be around him because then she felt like she’d never be cold again.
Practice was over all too soon, and she still didn’t know what to say to him. As a group, they trudged back up the stairs, arguing about chords and lyrics, complaining that they had to walk home in the cold, and already shivering as the wind started nipping at their noses.
But when they got on deck, they all stopped to gasp.
Little bits of white fluff were gently cascading down from the sky, coating the deck in what looked like white, sparkling icing.
Marinette turned to Luka, shocked, and he was just smiling back at her, knowing he’d been proven right but not feeling the need to rub it in. She turned back to watch the snow fall, wrapped his jacket tighter around herself, and tugged the sleeves down over her mittens, flipping the hood up for good measure over the hat he’d warned her to bring.
Rose was the first one to break the silence they’d fallen into when she squealed with delight and grabbed Juleka’s hands to spin her around the deck. Ivan stood stoically nearby, but Marinette had a feeling he was wishing Mylène was there so he could wrap an arm around her.
To her surprise, a familiar warm hand closed around hers. She blushed up at Luka and he was still smiling at her in that same, soft way. He gestured with his head to the deck as if asking her to join in. With another glance upwards at the glittery falling snow, and then at Rose and Juleka laughing as they danced in it, she smiled back at Luka and nodded.
Although she’d unfortunately forgotten to factor in how incredibly clumsy she was.
As soon as she took an enthusiastic step forwards to follow Luka, her foot slipped out from under her and she gripped Luka’s hand even harder as she flailed to try to keep her balance, which only ended up yanking him down with her in a completely ungraceful tangle of arms and legs and a little puff of white snow as they hit the deck together.
Luka had somehow managed to twist underneath her, softening the blow for her, but that meant…
She was nose to nose with him, with his arm around her and her hand on his chest and there were snowflakes melting in his hair and dusting his eyelashes and his cheeks were pink from the cold and in that moment, she swore he looked like some kind of angel.
She let the feeling carry her forwards to close the last little bit of distance between them, pressing her lips to his shyly in what could’ve been mistaken for a stray snowflake, it was so light and tentative.
Luka didn’t miss it, though. His eyes widened and his arm around her tightened as he returned the gesture, the lightest of touches of his warm lips against hers. It made her feel braver than her Ladybug suit ever did, and she dared to try it again, more firm, more sure, trying to tell him everything she hadn’t been able to figure out how to say.
His other arm wrapped around her waist as he held her there, kissing her back on the snow-encrusted deck of the Liberty as more snow kept falling on them.
She’d hardly noticed she was shivering, but then, Luka was, too. It forced them apart and as they got to their feet, they both seemed to remember at the same time that they hadn’t been alone on the ship. Although, it didn't seem like time had stopped for anyone else like it had for them just now. Thankfully, Rose and Juleka were still dancing, oblivious, it seemed, to what had just happened, although Marinette thought there was an extra twinkle of romance in Rose’s eyes when she glanced their way. Ivan glanced their way, too, but only nodded once, smiling, and lumbered off.
Luka had helped her up, and his hand was still somehow around hers. They were both still shivering, his cheeks were as pink as hers were flushed, his jacket was still around her shoulders, and the snow was still gently falling all around them, but as they stared at each other, smiling and breathless and warm, Marinette knew that she’d never be cold again.