A/n: these first two chapters are a rework of the initial oneshot.

A lot had changed since Luka had left school. As you'd expect after graduating, life shifted from teenage shenanigans to young adult ones. Right now he was in Italy, on a scholarship to one of the top arts universities where he was learning to make instruments by hand. It was a lot of work, but he loved it. Despite the tiny apartment and almost hour long commute to campus, he was living by the sea and doing what he loved. To afford the rent, he worked not far from his apartment at the juice bar of the farmers market. It actually paid decently to his surprise, he was sure he'd need to ask his mum for a bit of starting off help money when he first got here. Oh, and he had a cat! You'd expect him to have a snake as the snake miraculous guy, but there were laws around reptile keeping in Italy. So a cat it was, he'd picked up a very fluffy like guy from a shelter that was overflowing with kittens from a rather hectic kitten season. They were willing to give some away for free if you could take care of them from only a few weeks old. Bottle feeding them and such. Luka was just going to look, but he was weak to the tiny mews of a scruffy little fella who didn't have a name yet.

He'd FaceTimed his mum and sister back in Paris to show them after the cat had grown a little, and he was still trying to think of a name. It was Juleka who came up with it, but it was so good he had to use it. The cat had a habit of narrowing his eyes to look very intently at people, so Juleka came up with the name 'Quintin B Squintin'. Luka laughed so had he had to pick that name. So his cat was now Quinn for short, formally known as Quintin B Squintin.

When he'd graduated back in Paris, Kitty section all got together and decided to take a break while everyone went off across the country for their university degrees. But they did plan on coming back as a band when they all had them in about three years. It was the second year at the moment, the band still keeping in contact and planning to reunite eventually. The friend group as a whole has kept in decent contact, despite being all over the place for their work and university endeavours.

His sister, still dating Rose of course, was in university for literature while Rose was doing fashion design with Marinette. Nino had managed to get a decent amount of DJ gigs here and there and was working to make that his full time thing, Alya was going into journalism. Nath and Marc were actually making some really good money off their comics, but still went into an art course to really define their skills. Overall, everyone was making their way.

Well, all but Adrien. No one actually knew where he was.

After Ladybug has taken back the miraculous, and Hawkmoth was revealed as Gabriel Agreste, shit (expectedly) hit the fan for Adrien. He was thrown for a massive loop, he already had a bad relationship with his father but now he knew the truth, everything was worse. He knew it was his own father causing the city terror and he the broken miraculous was the cause of his mothers death and Nathalie's chronic illness. Understandably after that he'd completely withdrew from everything and everyone. No matter how many times the group tried to help, it didn't seem to work.

The company fell as well, no one wanting to support Gabriel and Gabriel himself behind bars so he couldn't run it. Adrien would have been the one to inherit it, but he was underage when this all happened. So it went his his aunt instead, who after talking to Nathalie and Adrien decided there was no way to save it after such a scandal and sold it off. The funds made went to Adrien for when he turned 18 as was his right as next of kin. And then graduation happened, and Adrien was just gone.

It was hard to figure out the details, but from what the group knew he and Nathalie left Paris. The reason why wasn't clear, maybe it was to be away from the city that traumatised him or maybe it was for Nathalie's treatment since she was stuck chronically ill now. But they were both gone, the Agreste mansion was sold, the billboards Adrien was plastered all over slowly disappeared and all that was left was rumours.

While the friend group was kind of sad they never got a proper goodbye or explanation, they did understand why. After all the trauma Adrien had to go though, his father abusing him and then ending up hawkmoth, the very public trail and his whole childhood being in the spotlight? Who wouldn't want to get away from all that?

As for the heroes, they were still around occasionally. But without a villain they weren't needed as much. Since miracle boxes existed outside of France, meaning other heroes and villains did too, occasionally Ladybug and Cat Noir would have to show up again to help them out, or stop an international magic related threat from another country. But the sightings of the heroes weren't as common as they used to be. Probably for the better, they had lives themselves too. And the lack of a villain was a good thing for the city overall. Luka did miss Sass at times, but he knew that it was better for the city of a villain wasn't a problem to begin with. And he knew Sass would understand that too.

So yeah, a lot had changed.

But Luka was happy, he was enjoying Italy and would no doubt be passing his course with flying colours if he kept things up how he was now. His current assignment was to make a horn. Any kind, but it had to be a horn. Because he was absolutely insane and loved a challenge when it came to this stuff, he picked a Carnyx. A type of ancient Celtic war horn, usually shaped like a dragon. It would be played to disorient and scare off Roman troops back in the days when wars were fought with spears and shields. It was big and hard to shape, but it played a hauntingly unique sound that Luka loved to mess around with.

This course didn't just involve designing the instrument and tuning it, it meant woodwork, metalwork, carving and shaping, bending wires and painting details. It was very hands on, and all the work on brass instruments and heavy piano lids had gotten Luka rather ripped in the arms. He was already fit from living on a boat his whole life and having to help maintain it, but so much work carving wood and shaping brass had his upper arms very toned and made his hands very steady.

Another skill he'd learnt while on this scholarship was of course, Italian. He was in Italy after all. He wasn't fully fluent but could hold a conversation fairly well. The locals could always tell he was French thought, from his accent. It was usually what people asked when they heard his voice as he took their order at work. He'd ask:

"benvenuto, posso prendere il tuo ordine?"
Welcome, may I take your order?

And they'd reply:
"il tuo accento francese?"
Your accent, french?

And he'd just chuckle and reply
"sì, da Parigi"
Yes, from Paris.

Before going on to order their drink. The market was full of stalls for fresh produce, fresh fish and meat, hand made pasta and bread, jams and pestos, baked goods and coffee beans. It always smelt really good, and Luka always left work smelling like whatever food the stall next to him was making. Usually wood-fired pizza or bruschetta. The stall he worked in was an outlet for a bigger company that sold juice and smoothies as many other markets across Italy, using the fresh fruit from said markets. Things were going well for him, he was having fun with his classmates at uni and coworkers at the markets. He missed his family of course, but he'd go back to pairs over holidays to see them again so it wasn't like he was completely cut off from them.

On his weekends, he'd swim at the beach or try to learn a new recipe from one of the local Nonas, write some music or if he was particularly tired that week he's pass out with the cat all weekend.

Although this weekend he was in the local thrift stores looking for old broken instruments he could fix up and sell for some extra money. He'd often find guitars way out of tune and missing strings, sometimes a violin missing it's bow and tuning knobs. Anything he could fix up, he'd take and flip it to sell. While he was in the stores he couldn't help but look at everything else in there of course, he'd found some rather cool things on his thrift hunts before. In fact the bedside table in his apartment as found for $30, a total steal for what it was. The legs of the table shaped like lyre's and with some polishing it looked good as new.

Flipping through the racks of clothing, he mentally slapped himself.

"You're here for instruments Luka, not a new coat. It's summer you won't wear it..." he muttered to himself, despite continuing to flip through the racks.

A coat caught his eye, it looked familiar. And when he pulled it out to look at it and saw the logo he realised why. It was an old Agreste piece, if he recalled correctly Adrien as modelled it on an advertisement when they were in school.

"Yikes- can't say I'm surprised people are still getting rid of their Gabriel stuff though..." he muttered to himself, putting it back.

Although seeing it did make his mind wander to Adrien again. It did that fairly often actually. Now he was grown up and had hindsight, he could tell that he absolutely, totally had a huge crush on Adrien back in the day. He never acted on it because of the whole Marinette thing, but in hindsight, he was down bad for the blonde. He wondered how life would have turned out if he had dated Adrien in high school sometimes...

This store didn't seem to have any instruments he could flip this time around, but he did leave with a CD from one of the many bands he'd gotten into since moving to Italy. Heading out of the store he saw the sun was starting to set, and he realised he'd been out most of the day and he should get back home. He had work tomorrow, he had to get up early. The walk back wasn't too long, the sea breeze was a nice cool compared to the heat of the summer sun. As he approached his apartment building, he spotted Quinn sitting in the window waiting for him. As soon as the cat spotted him it zoomed off to go wait by the door.

Hearing his dramatic meows from behind the door as Luka messed with his keys to get in, he rolled his eyes.

"You're so dramatic Quinn..." he snickered.

As soon as the door opened, the cat was all up in his space and demanding attention as cats do. He was admittedly a sucker for that cat so he immediately sat down on the floor to allow Quinn to do his usual sniff inspection and make sure he hadn't been patting any other cats.

"Yes, yes hello to you too. No other cats, I promise" Luka said.

Quinn mewled at him, putting his front paws up to his chest to sniff at his face. Luka ran his hands through his scruffy fur, no matter how much he tried to brush it he was always a scruffy little guy.

"Anyone would think you were dying with the way you act. You were fed before I left you know? I bet you haven't even finished it, you just want more for the sake of it" Luka told the cat, only to get a paw to the face as a response.

Picking him up, he placed him up on the cat tree by the window while he put all his stuff away and got his shoes off, ready to wind down for the night.

"Guess what I found in the thrift Quinn? A Gabriel coat. Yikes right? I'm surprised people didn't burn all Gabriel stuff to ever exist after that scandal" he said, talking to the cat like it was a person.

Quinn listened, doing his signature squint as he watched Luka walk around the kitchenette hoping he'd open the cupboard that contained the cat food.

"Did make me wonder what Adrien's up to now though. You'd like him, he was a cat too. Kind of- a leather cat but still" he continued.

There was a group photo from graduation up on his fridge, the whole friend group in their gowns all smiling at the camera. Adrien was smiling, although you could tell it was forced. He looked tired, so so tired. Compare it to the other photo containing Adrien Luka had up it was like night and day. It was from he and Juleka's 16th birthday party, they'd had the whole group over on the boat sailing around for the day and into the night. Even though things still weren't great for Adrien, they weren't as bad as they ended up. He was still having pretty long bursts of joy at the time.

And the way he smiled in that picture, the both of them soaked from swimming off the back of the boat, wearing party hats and laughing together. Hugging tight, not even looking at the camera, but each other. He smiled so brightly, Adrien always had such a bright smile. Luka looked down at the photo for a moment, missing his long lost crush.

Even though it'd been so long, there was still a yearning faintly aching in the back of his heart for Adrien.

If only he knew where he was now.