#past few days ive done heavily supervised times where i let her out and have her poke around

[orcelito]

She was so brave at the vet today so now she is hiding behind the toilet. As she deserves ❤

[quickspinner]

The Best Laid Plans

TW hospitals, operating room, mention of a needle, surgery, childbirth, NICU. Nothing graphic as to actual body stuff, but the whole thing does kinda take place in a hospital and there will be hospitally things, so if that freaks you out, be prepared to click away.

I set out to write fluffy Dad!Luka stuff and...I got this instead. I’m not even sure angst is the right word for this. And it doesn’t really go with any of my other stuff so I haven’t figured out what to do with it yet. I was originally planning a collection, which I might still do? But I might wait until I have a nice fluffy part 2 to go with this before I put it on AO3. But yeah, not my normal fare, so I’ll understand if you nope out.

Summary: The birth of Marinette and Luka’s first child doesn’t go exactly according to plan. Or at all according to plan, actually.

This isn’t how they planned it. And oh, did they plan. Because his wife is Marinette and Marinette is Ladybug and Ladybug always has a plan. 

But that was before the phone call and the what do you mean you’re bleeding and no no no it’s too early this can’t be happening now. 

Luka can hear her suppress the panic for his sake as she reminds them that it’s only four weeks early, they’ve passed the real danger zone and everything will probably (probably) be fine. He quickly puts a lid on his freak out (he is supposed to be her safe place, not yet another person she has to pretend for) and tells her as steadily as he can that he’ll meet her at the hospital, and no, he’s not waiting until she gets through triage, he doesn’t care if it might be nothing, it might be something and he wants to be there. 

He gets to the hospital in less time than it takes to jump through all the hospital’s hoops to verify that he is who he says he is and that Marinette signed all the right forms to let them tell him that yes, she is here, and where to go.

Finally he peeks cautiously into the right room. 

“Luka,” Marinette says, relieved as she reaches for him.

“I’m here,” he says, catching her hand in his own. This is a song they’ve sung a thousand times, a dance they know by heart. She calls, and he responds. They’ve done it over and over again, since the first time she let herself fall apart in his arms, when she’s worn to pieces, when she’s lonely, when she has nightmares. 

When she’s scared.

They’re both scared now. They sit in anxious silence as a stream of people who are paid to be calm and reassuring come and go, until the doctor comes in with a grave face and the proverbial good news, bad news.

The good news is, their baby is fine—for now.

The bad news is, she won’t be if they don’t act now. Marinette and Luka exchange one stricken look and agree to everything the doctor recommends.

They had a plan and it didn’t include any of this. They make her take off her earrings. She and Tikki exchange a stricken look, but there’s nothing to be done. Luka quickly wraps them into a tissue so they won’t poke, and tucks them in his pocket with Sass. The blanket Marinette made herself for this moment is not allowed in the sterile operating room. She’s got on an awful hospital gown instead of the labor dress she planned and slaved over with such care. Luka is wearing a stiff paper suit over his clothes and a surgical cap over his blue hair and a surgical mask across his mouth that makes him feel like he can’t breathe, and the whole outfit is hot as hell. Her mother is not here. There is no soothing music. There is no counting or breathing or walking it out or any of the things they practiced. There’s no cursing and crushed fingers and no powering through. They are helpless. There is only a white room and a table shaped like a cross (seriously, what the hell), wires and IVs and a needle in her spine that takes away the pain but not the fear.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, Luka accepts this unwanted reality, takes a deep breath, and lets go of the plan. Marinette is a creature of order and detail, but Luka was born and raised in chaos. He can do this. Marinette needs him to. 

So he sits on a stool by Marinette’s head, strokes her forehead below her own surgical cap and speaks soothingly to her as tears leak out of her terrified eyes. She’s out of control here and she hates it, he knows. “Luka,” she whispers desperately. 

“I’m here,” he promises, covering her hand that they’ve strapped to the table, careful not to dislodge the oxygen monitor on her finger. “We’re gonna be okay. Just a few more minutes and we’ll meet our little girl. It doesn’t matter how she got here. All that matters is that she’s coming and she’s gonna be okay.”

The doctors are formal and preoccupied but the nurses are sympathetic. Neither of them can see past the curtain erected below Marinette’s chest, but at Luka’s quiet request the anesthesiologist at her head keeps her updated on what’s going on.  Luka can’t do anything about the lack of control but at least she can know what’s happening. 

“Here she comes,” murmurs the anesthesiologist soothingly. “One, two, three—and here she is.” 

Luka can’t resist standing up to see over the curtain, and his breath leaves him as he sees his child in the doctor’s hands. He doesn’t want to see anything else though so he sits down quickly, and a heartbeat later the nurse comes to show them the baby.

It’s only a quick glimpse and then Luka has to leave Marinette for a moment, to cross the room and cut the cord and marvel at the impossibly small number on the scale. His daughter (his daughter) is cleaned up and wrapped up and then she’s in his arms at last, and maybe the first thing she saw wasn’t his face and maybe the first thing she felt wasn’t his hands and maybe the first thing she heard wasn’t his guitar, meticulously composed and recorded and prepared and played on loop just for that moment when she entered the world...but she is beautiful, and she will have his hands and his voice and his love every day from now on.

The nurses allow him a quiet moment, and then he carries her carefully to Marinette. They take the restraints off Marinette so that she can touch and caress the tiny face, and Luka leans close so she can press a kiss in soft black hair. It’s one moment of peace before the chaos descends again, and the nurses gently insist that the tiny newborn must come to the NICU for tests and observation. 

Luka looks at Marinette, his face stone, but she presses her lips together and says, “Go with her.”

Luka kisses her and promises he will be back as soon as he can. It feels like his heart tears in two and he leaves half behind as he follows the nurses out of the room.

The NICU nurses that take over as soon as they cross the ward threshold are competent and caring but bossy in a manner that rubs Luka the wrong way. Part of him can appreciate their dedication and the need to protect their tiny charges, but that doesn’t stop the swell of righteousness indignation. A growl of “I’m her father,” passes his lips when the nurses suggest that he should leave the baby to them. She’s tiny in the plastic bin they’re calling a bassinet, with a pink sign above it that has two tiny ink footprints next to the name written in black marker: Couffaine, Erika, with her birth time and weight underneath it, and a space that reads “Mother: Couffaine, Marinette.” 

Luka stares at that little piece of pink cardstock, trying to take it all in. The nurses bring a bottle of formula and he feels another pang—this is not the way we planned it—before he insists on taking the bottle and feeding his daughter himself. 

God, his daughter. 

The nurses object but seat him in a chair next to the bassinet and allow him to give her the bottle (he is her father and they can’t stop him). He is heavily supervised, which annoys him, but Luka genuinely doesn’t want to screw this up, so he listens to their advice. He outright refuses to put Erika down afterwards, instead holding her close to his chest and singing softly to her, the same songs he sang every night with his head as close to Marinette’s belly as she would let him get. He remembers their childbirth classes and puts her down long enough to strip off his shirt. Then he picks her up, unwraps her from the blanket, and cradles her against his chest again, skin to skin. Marinette was supposed to do it, that was what they planned, but she can’t, so he will. Reduces stress, helps with heartbeat and breathing—Luka can’t even remember half of what they said but he knows it’s important, it was important to Marinette too and she would want him to do this, even if the nurses are giving him weird looks and some of the other parents glance wide-eyed at the shirtless man with the snake tattoos holding a tiny baby in the middle of the NICU. 

An older lady in a volunteer uniform approaches him and he eyes her warily until she taps his shoulder, motions for him to lean forward, and puts a warmed blanket around his shoulders. Luka thanks her. She pats him approvingly, and says something he doesn’t understand but does appreciate before shuffling on.

Luka has time to notice the other babies, many even smaller than Erika, in their own little plastic bassinets, and he takes a moment to be grateful that though she seems tiny to him, she is strong and healthy. Sass sneaks up from his pocket under the blanket to peep at the baby. He gives Luka a fanged smile and makes himself scarce again. There are two many people here to take risks.

Only when Luka gets a text from Juleka letting him know that she has arrived does he reluctantly put little Erika back in the bassinet. She looks small and cold in nothing but her striped cap and impossibly tiny diaper, wires on her chest and wrapped around her foot, a tiny cannula in her nose. The NICU is warm and Luka knows the little bed is heated and she is totally fine, but he hates it. There is tape on his baby holding everything in place and Luka doesn’t care if it’s special baby tape or whatever, he hates it. This is not the way they planned it.

But it’s the way it is. He breathes away the frustration. He doesn’t know how to swaddle her (they have a book, but it’s at home) and the nosy nurses have left him for the moment, but he tucks the blanket around her as best he can. Luka glances up at her pulse and oxygen levels on the screen. The numbers themselves mean nothing to him, but they are green so he thinks that means she’s all right. He puts his shirt back on and goes to the ward entrance to fetch his sister.

The nurses object again when he wants to bring Juleka in, but Luka is firm: Erika will have a family member with her at all times, and he needs to see his wife. She’s been alone in the recovery room all this time, without even Tikki, and he has her phone in his pocket so she can’t even check on anything. Luka knows what her state of mind must be.

He tries to keep in mind that they mean well, that they have tiny, delicate patients to care for, and so he manages to stay mostly polite as they urge him not to ‘bother’ the baby with a constant rotation of relatives. 

They compromise; Juleka stays, but won’t pick up Erika or disturb her sleep until her next feeding. Someone escorts Luka to Marinette. It scares him when he sees her; she is pale and shivering uncontrollably. “Luka,” she whispers.

“I’m here,” he says immediately, moving to her side and taking her hand. It feels like ice in his. “She’s cold,” he says, looking at the nurse. 

The nurse tending to her brings another heated blanket, but tells him this is normal and the shaking is a side effect of the spinal block. Marinette will be fine. 

Luka presses Marinette’s fingers to his lips and gives back her phone. “The baby?” she asks.

“She’s fine, sweetheart, she’s doing really well,” he told her. “They have her on oxygen and they said something about her blood sugar, but they said she should only have to stay in the NICU a day or two, and then if she’s doing okay she can come stay in the room with us.” He pulls out his phone as he speaks, showing her the thirty or so pictures he’s already managed to take. “Jules is with her now and your mom is on her way.”

“I want to see her,” Marinette said tearfully. “I’m her mother.” Her face crumples and Luka’s heart breaks. “This isn’t the way we planned it.”

“I know,” Luka says, kissing her forehead. “I know it’s not, but you’re okay and she’s okay and that’s what matters. We’re gonna get through the next couple of days while you heal up a bit and they make sure she’s stable, and then we’ll go home and it’ll be fine. We’ll do everything the same way we would have if the plan had gone off without a hitch. We’ll be okay. We can be flexible.” He winks. “Some of us, anyway.”

Marinette huffs a laugh and then winces. Luka squeezes her hand and pulls her earrings from his pocket. She visibly relaxes once they are back in her ears and Tikki zips to cover under her blankets. Luka sits down to wait with her. When her two hours in recovery are finally up, they put her in a wheelchair and push her straight to the NICU. Juleka looks up and smiles and immediately surrenders both the bottle and now-swaddled baby to Marinette. They’re politely reminded that no more than two visitors at a time are permitted in the NICU, and Luka sends Jules down to the lobby to bring Sabine up to what will be Marinette’s room. Sabine has stopped to pick up all the things Marinette either forgot or couldn’t carry in the rush to the hospital, and Luka knows that by the time Marinette gets to her hospital room, Sabine will have her blanket on the bed and her gown laid out, and the little baby caps Marinette knitted set out for use. Just like they planned. 

As he watches Marinette whisper and smile and kiss their little girl, the tension leaves his shoulders, and he knows that everything will be okay. He believes what he told Marinette earlier. Maybe it didn’t happen the way they planned, but it doesn’t matter. Later they will probably laugh and call Erika a true Couffaine for coming into the world in chaos instead of by the book. For now, they have each other and Erika and a horde of loved ones ready to descend on them at a moment’s notice. Marinette will heal and Erika will grow and Luka will never stop loving either of them.

“Luka,” Marinette breathes, looking up at him with a beaming smile as she cuddles their daughter (their daughter) close.

Her hands are full so Luka reaches out and lays his hand on Erika’s soft black hair instead. “I’m here.”