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mikauzoran · 5 years ago

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LuXY/Lukadrien/Lukadrienette: Welcome to La-La Land: Chapter Seven

@luxyweek

Welcome to La-La Land: Chapter Seven: AU

XY was having a suck-tastic day.

Most of the fans seemed to be satisfied with Kitty Section appearing at the end of the show to perform their version of the song, but some people were making a big fuss because that guy had gotten akumatized.

No one seemed to care about XY and how he still didn’t have a new song to perform or how the akuma had attacked him, stolen his voice, and tied him up.

His dad was too busy performing damage control to tell XY what the plan was now, so XY was feeling a little anxious and unmoored, uncertain of what he should be doing besides waiting in the dressing room.

The worst part was that his father had called him an idiot on camera.

My imbecile son.

The words kept echoing in XY’s mind.

All of Paris had heard.

XY knew he was dumb, but he didn’t like other people thinking it or saying it out loud. He knew he was a little slow. He just couldn’t stand when it was pointed out.

It reminded him of when he’d started school in France and how all the other kids, younger kids who had actually grown up speaking French, rubbed in how stupid he was. He didn’t always understand the colloquial speech, but he knew the other kids were badmouthing him. When he looked up the words at home, he was ashamed that he’d been too dumb to understand that they were talking about how dumb he was.

His father’s words, “imbecile son”, cut deep, dragging up old hurts along with it.

He wished he could come up with something good, a new song, something original and unique like the fun, catchy unicorn song that Kitty Section had made. Maybe then his father would say something nice, not think XY was quite so stupid.

XY sighed heavily and pushed himself off the countertop so that his roller chair spun again. He closed his eyes, spinning, letting himself get dizzy.

Twelve minutes later when that ceased to be amusing, he let the chair slow to a stop and sat there for a second before he tried to get up.

He was tired and wanted to go home, but no one had come to get him yet. He was kind of hungry too. Akuma attacks always made him hungry, but there weren’t any snacks in the dressing room. He decided to go out in the hall and look for a vending machine, maybe get a soda or something.

He opened the door just in time to see the Kitty Section members pass—three girls and that giant guy—their backs to him.

XY wondered where that other guy was.

Luka. That was what his friend (girlfriend?) had called him.

Luka with the blazing blue eyes that lit a flame low in XY’s gut.

When Luka and his friend had first confronted XY and his father and Luka had reached out for the mask on the side of XY’s head, XY’s heart had done a double backflip. He’d thought for a second that Luka was reaching out to cup XY’s cheek.

In the moment before Luka had ripped the mask off, making the elastic snap painfully against XY’s skin, XY had stared into Luka’s smoldering, storm-like eyes, and it had been three kinds of magic.

XY had had crushes on guys before, but never that intense that quickly.

After the akuma had been taken care of, XY found the cheap, discarded mask where Ladybug’s magical ladybug swarm had put it back together after Chat Noir destroyed it. XY secreted the mask away, hiding it with his things to take home and save.

Luka was kind of terrifying but also incredibly attractive.

XY had watched him interacting with that girl he’d come with and the rest of his band, and Luka had a nice smile, a melodic laugh, a soft-spoken, sweet voice. It was clear that Luka could be a kind, fun person when he wasn’t angry.

XY kind of wished they’d met under better circumstances so that XY could have a chance at getting Luka to smile and laugh like that with him.

With a sigh, he shut the dressing room door and turned to head the opposite direction from Kitty Section.

He nearly ran right into Luka trailing behind his bandmates.

“Hey. Watch where you’re going,” Luka hissed, glaring XY down.

XY jumped, putting his hands up in self-defence as he flashed back to Silence finding him cowering in the storage closet, calling out to him with his own disembodied voice, tying him up, and then throwing XY over his shoulder to cart him off to the recording studio where Alec was already similarly bound.

Luka’s glare quickly dissipated into an uncertain, uncomfortable frown. He shook his head as if trying to shake his preceding thoughts loose and then turned, continuing on his way, putting XY and Bob Roth and this entire day behind him.

XY watched him go, noting the perfection that was the tight fit of his skinny jeans. He sighed again, lamenting the futility of his love life.

But then Luka slowed to a stop, fingers balling into fists, back muscles going taut as he seemed to struggle with something internal. Finally, with a huff, letting the tension go, Luka turned back around and tentatively approached.

His expression was shamefaced, his tone hesitant.

“Hey,” he breathed. “Sorry.”

XY blinked, mind scrambling to come up with an adequate response. “Oh. Uh. No. I wasn’t paying attention, so…”

Luka grimaced, fair skin easily showing a blush. “No. I meant…” He bit his lip, drawing XY’s gaze. “I meant sorry for more than just snapping at you right then. I meant…I’m sorry for today in general.”

Luka looked up, fighting off his shame and forcing himself to meet XY’s gaze and own up to his own shortcomings. “Yes, you and your father were in the wrong for plagiarizing, but I completely lost my cool when he threatened Marinette, and I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have let my anger get the better of me, but I did, and I’m sorry I lashed out at you.”

XY kept blinking as he stared into those cool blue eyes, sparkling like aquamarines even in the unflattering fluorescent light of the hallway. “Oh. Uh…thanks.”

A pained expression took over Luka’s face. “I don’t remember what happened, so I don’t know what I said, what I did to you, but I’m sorry for that too. I wasn’t in control, and I never would have done or said any of that if I had been, so I just want you to know that I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” XY admitted, trying to make Luka feel better and make himself out to be brave. “I mean, sure, I was a little uncomfortable when you tied me up and slung me over your shoulder—” XY would never admit that he’d kind of liked being carried and that the angle afforded him a splendid view of Luka’s tush in whatever skintight material the evil suit had been made out of. “—but it wasn’t anything compared to when Jagged’s akuma tied me up and made me stand out on a plank at the top of the Eiffel Tower.”

XY shrugged, pretending to be aloof and composed, hoping Luka would pick up on how cool XY was.

Luka’s mouth dropped open as he attempted to process himself slinging Xavier-Yves Roth over his shoulder and Jagged Stone dangling the pop star off the side of the Eiffel Tower.

“Oh,” Luka finally responded. “Wow. Okay. Well…sorry again. I’m glad it wasn’t that bad.”

XY smirked, voice full of bravado as he declared. “It was no sweat, really, so don’t worry about it.” Luka didn’t need to know that if XY had had his voice at the time, he would have been emitting high-pitched shrieks. “The worst part was losing an hour out of my day.”

“Uh… Well… Sorry for the inconvenience, then,” Luka offered, feeling conflicted about the way this conversation was going.

There was a beat, and it looked like Luka was turning to go when he abruptly stopped mid-rotation and asked, “Purely out of curiosity, why did you steal Kitty Section’s song and Marinette’s costumes? You’re a professional musician with your own established style. Why poach amateur work?”

XY crossed his arms defensively, looking away. “It wasn’t stealing.”

Luka’s eyes narrowed, and his fingers began to coil once more in indignance that even now XY refused to admit he’d done anything wrong.

“It was just inspiration,” XY corrected petulantly. “I couldn’t come up with anything that Dad thought would sell, so he said all we needed to do was let someone else do the work for us, so we went through the entries, and I made the song based off of yours…and Dad said it was good, that it would sell.” XY shrugged, wishing Luka would drop it.

Hadn’t Luka gotten to perform his version of the song on TV? Wasn’t that good enough? Why did he want to make XY’s day worse? Hadn’t enough bad things happened to XY already?

“You had writer’s block?” Luka inquired in exasperation. “So you decided to rip off somebody else?”

XY changed the cross of his arms and looked at Luka defiantly. “Dad said to. I was just doing what Dad said. He’s the best in the business—he has been for years—so I just trusted that he knew what he was talking about. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Luka pursed his lips, trying to understand how a person could have their head so firmly in the sand to the point where they couldn’t acknowledge that they’d made a mistake. “But didn’t it feel wrong playing someone else’s music? I put a lot of myself into my songs, little bits of life experience, the things that happen to me, the things I feel. I couldn’t imagine playing someone else’s music with the same intimacy that I play my own. Didn’t it feel wrong to play something that wasn’t yours?”

Deep trenches formed in XY’s forehead as he tried to comprehend Luka’s meaning. “No,” he answered bluntly. “I just…you know. I make music that’s catchy, sure to be popular. Repetitive. I don’t ‘put myself into the music’, so…it’s just…whatever, you know?”

Slowly, Luka began to nod as he started to understand where the disconnect was coming from. “I always thought your music sounded soulless.” He didn’t say it in a mean way. It didn’t sound like an insult, more like a realization, an epiphany.

XY still didn’t like it.

He crossed his arms harder and shifted his weight so that it rested on his right leg, making his hip jut out. “Okay, well, tell me how to ‘put myself into the music’, then, if you’re so great.”

Luka’s expression softened. “I’d hardly call myself great, but…if you really want to make authentic music, the first step is to stop caring so much about what sells.”

XY visibly recoiled.

Making marketable music was the catechism Bob Roth had drilled into his son from an early age, so Luka’s first step sounded like downright heresy.

“Seriously,” Luka chuckled (making XY’s body stand at attention because Luka was laughing, and that laughter was directed at him). “You’re an established musician with hundreds of thousands of fans. There are people who will buy whatever you put out, so it’s not like you have to be so rigid. You have some wiggle room to experiment, so stop thinking about what sells and think instead about what you like.”

“What I like,” XY repeated, feeling clueless.

Luka nodded. “Sure. What kind of music do you like?”

XY bit his lip. “I don’t…I don’t really know.”

Luka’s eyebrows started to inch together. “Well…maybe figure that out first.”

“How?” XY challenged. If Luka was giving XY instructions, he wanted concert steps he could follow, none of this “figure it out” crap. XY was not much of a thinker. He couldn’t “figure it out” unless someone else explained it to him.

“Listen to a wide variety of music. Listen to classical, listen to folk music, rap, jazz, gamelan music, traditional Japanese shamisen and koto…listen to everything. Professionals, people busking in parks and in the subway, birdsong, the sound a bottle makes when you blow into it, children playing, passing cars, the wind in the trees, the sound of dropped coins, water splashing in a fountain. Listen until you find something that resonates with you,” Luka advised.

XY pursed his lips, furrowing his brow in confusion. “How will I know when it resonates with me?”

“You’ll know,” Luka assured. “You’ll feel it through your whole body. You’ll get really excited and want to share it with someone. You’ll know, and when you do, try to make something like it—Not a copy,” Luka was quick to clarify.

“Don’t copy it note for note if it’s another piece of music. Just create whatever it inspires you to make. After you’ve done that the first time, you’ll understand the process better, and then you’ll be able to keep your ears open as you go about your day,” he insisted, seeing the skeptical look on XY’s face.

Luka smiled encouragingly. “Inspiration will come if you just keep your ears open. Maybe it will be a snatch of something someone in the street is humming or the sound of someone’s laughter or the buzz of cicadas or an intricate display in a shop window. It can be anything so long as it strikes a chord in you. Just be open to the sounds and sights around you, how they make you feel. Feelings can be inspiration too. Sometimes you need to throw in a tritone or a two to get across the tension and unease.”

“Triton?” XY repeated, feeling lost.

Luka shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. The important thing is to try to incorporate your feelings and the things you come across in your daily life that strike a chord with you into your music. Don’t worry about if it sells. Just use your experiences to make something that you’re happy with. That’s what it means to ‘put yourself into the music’.”

XY’s fingers tightened around his bicep. “I don’t know. I don’t think I can do that. I’m not…” He looked away, mumbling, “I’m not very talented like that. I don’t have good ideas.”

Luka frowned. “I think your fans would disagree.”

XY blinked, surprised at the gentleness in Luka’s tone. He was so used to his father laughing and agreeing when XY commented upon how stupid or talentless he was. It had turned into a kind of sick inside joke, so it was jarring for the conversation to veer from the script he’d grown so accustomed to.

“It might be hard at first, but if you really want to make music that you yourself are happy with, you can do it. You’re already a professional musician with an eager audience. You don’t have to fight to get your music heard. Take the opportunity to experiment a little. Everyone has a song inside of them. You can find yours,” Luka encouraged.

XY’s insides melted.

He couldn’t remember the last time someone had cheered him on like that, telling him that he could do something. Luka made it sound so simple, made him think he could actually do it, create music for himself. Luka had XY believing that he really could find his own song if he dug down deep for it, the music reverberating inside of him even before he decided to go into the music business to connect with his father and make Bob Roth happy.

XY’s heart fluttered. He wanted to get to know this guy better. He wanted to hear Luka talk more, watch Luka’s eyebrows and the corners of his mouth as they made the most interesting microexpressions, injecting so much unspoken meaning into the exchange.

The words, “Can I take you out for coffee?” were on the tip of XY’s tongue when a dressing room door down the hall opened, and the giant guy from Luka’s band stuck his head out, calling, “Hey, Luka, you coming?”

“Just a minute!” Luka replied and then turned back to XY with a smile XY wouldn’t soon forget.

“I’ve got to go, but good luck.” Luka visibly hesitated, biting his lip and crinkling his brow, before adding, “And maybe don’t listen to your dad all the time. You might one day regret the person he’s turned you into.”

Luka patted XY on the arm and turned to go. “I hope you find your song.”

XY’s skin burned through his signature jacket in the shape of Luka’s hand. On the inside, his brain was exploding into fireworks in the loveliest shades of blue and green. Luka’s eyes were indelibly stamped on the back of XY’s eyelids, their delicate blue glowing in a way XY knew he’d be seeing in his dreams.

Bob Roth ranted all during the long drive back to Le Grand Paris on the other side of town. Mostly it was a torrent of abuse directed toward Luka, Kitty Section, Chat Noir, and Ladybug, but there were some barbed comments about XY’s musical abilities and IQ as well.

XY sank down low in his seat, feeling miserable…until he thought of Luka.

Luka’s kind words, gentle smile…his expressive eyes, lyrical laugh.

I hope you find your song.

For the first time in a long time, XY really wanted to. He wanted to make music for the sake of fun and not have to worry about whether it would stick in people’s ears and sell copies.

XY wanted Luka to hear the music he made and think it was good. He wanted to put himself in the music and have Luka think it was good…think XY was good.

As soon as they made it back to their suite of rooms at the hotel, XY headed straight for the shower to avoid a further tirade from his father as well as to wash all of the product out of his hair.

He changed into less conspicuous skinny jeans, purple converse, and a white baseball shirt with purple, three-quarter length sleeves. He lost the blinged-out necklace advertising his identity, added oversized movie star sunglasses, and piled his long, blonde hair into a bun at the top of his head.

“I’m going out incognito, Dad,” he called as he made his way towards the door. “Back in a bit.”

Bob scoffed at his son’s appearance. “You look like Man Bun Ken. Didn’t I tell you never to style your hair like that? What if someone sees you? It’ll ruin your image.”

XY shrugged. “They won’t recognize me. I’m not wearing my bling or my signature jacket. No one will know it’s me without the tall hair,” he assured, hustling out the door.

He ended up in the Place des Vosges, sitting in the shade of the trees at the base of the Louis XIII statue with the weird tree trunk coming up through the middle of the horse.

Children were shrieking with joy as they played on the playground at the south-east corner of the park. The fountains were burbling, and XY could hear the indistinct, hypnotic murmur of people picnicking out on the grass. Birds sang, and someone was playing something jazzy on a saxophone under one of the arches of the brick underpass leading into the plaza. The notes echoed, reverberating out into the world.

The sun was slowly sinking, evening coming on with a vanguard of soft orange and yellow and rose-tinted light. The sky overhead was still blue. Blue, like Luka’s eyes, Luka’s hair, Luka’s clothing.

Blue.

Luka’s laugh, soft and self-conscious, bounced around inside of XY’s head like a song playing on repeat.

XY frowned, recalling Luka’s advice for creating authentic music. Hadn’t he said that XY could take inspiration from anywhere? Birdsong or dropped coins or someone’s laughter?

A melody started forming in XY’s mind, bouncing along to the cadence of Luka’s chuckle.

He hurried home and worked long into the dim hours of the dawn twilight on his song. It was nothing like when he’d made pieces focusing only on what would sell. That was formulaic and could be done, not in the five minutes he’d bragged to Alec about, but at least in one sitting. This, what he was doing now, making authentic music, was uncharted territory, and it took days of tweaking to get the song just right.

He called it Blue and presented it to his father the following weekend.

Bob Roth scoffed at it, saying that it was too obscure, too niche to sell to the masses, but that was okay with XY. He was happy with his song…and he thought Luka might be too.

It had been hard but fun and satisfying to create something heartfelt, to put himself into the music. He decided, after that first song, to walk around with his ears open and create more authentic music.

He thought about trying to get in contact with Luka, but every time he was on the cusp of actually doing something about his crush, he lost his nerve. Luka was probably dating that Marinette girl. Besides, what would Luka and XY have in common? Luka was really smart; what would he see in XY? What would XY’s dad say? Bob Roth had told XY that he could only date women and that he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone that he liked guys, so what was the point?

Time stretched on, and it eventually started to feel too random to go up to a guy he’d met once a year ago (two years ago, five years ago, seven years ago) and tell him what a difference he’d made in XY’s life, how XY had feelings for him, wanted to know him better.

XY settled for working on his music, creating something Luka would enjoy and respect. He secretly followed Kitty Section’s career and then Luka’s when he went solo. He attended almost every concert he could, incognito so as not to cause a scene. In private, he devoured Luka’s interviews, the photos posted on Instagram, the blog posts, the tweets.

He let his feelings smolder in secret for years until one night, ten years after they’d first met, XY and Luka attended the same party. He saw Luka’s name on the confirmed guestlist and put his plan into motion. His heart fluttered when he saw Luka there, standing off on his own. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and XY couldn’t help but take it.

#LuXY #luxyweek2k20 #Lukadrien #Lukadrienette #Miraculous Ladybug #Miraculous Ladybug Fanfiction #Luka Couffaine #XY #Xavier-Yves Roth #Luka Couffaine/XY Roth #Mikau's Writings #Welcome to La-La Land

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