Work Text:
Kagami did not—would not, could not, should not—attend delinquent teenage parties.
As the daughter of Tomoe Tsurugi, and as a famed fencer, there was the matter of honor. And, true, that expectation sunk low in her chest as she crawled over her windowsill and shut the pane behind her. But she had made her decision, and she refused to look back, and besides, there were more pressing concerns than a lofty, idealistic concept of honor. These were concerns newer than honor: they coiled at the back of her skull yesterday, after she had accepted Marinette’s invite. It was the concept itself. Party. That meant people, staring. Food. Perhaps music and dancing. And that was a party as she knew it. But a party filled with teenagers could mean anything.
It was...exhilarating. Terrifying. Exciting.
Kagami tapped at her phone to awaken her slumbering map application and searched through her text history, eyebrows furrowed as she scrolled up until she spotted the address of the party she was meant to be walking towards. The walk was short, the light of the living city of Paris bore down on the sidewalks, and Kagami ventured onward, sure-footed and quiet.
She stopped at a brick building, short and stubby and with fresh paving and pretty windows. The address matched. She climbed the stairs and gave a swift knock to the door. Silence. She shifted her weight to the other foot and stared straight ahead.
When the door swung open, Kagami painted a bright smile on her face, teeth showing just a little too much, perhaps—the girl who answered the door simply blinked. Kagami licked her chapped lips and fought through the awkward stretching at her cheeks as her smile shifted into something softer and smaller.
“Hey. Kagami, right? Glad you decided to come. Marinette is already here, but the rest of them are fashionably late .” The girl who answered the door stepped aside to allow entry, and Kagami stared, putting a name to the face.
“Alya. You are hosting this party?”
“Uh, yeah, you could say that. But you can credit the music to Nino, because that boy has been way too focused on crafting the perfect playlist for tonight, and I can’t remember half of what’s on it.”
Kagami entered the house, taking her shoes off and staring at the photographs on the walls. “I will try to remember that.”
They shared a quick silence as they walked down the entryway. The photographs followed them, each one a different family member or sibling. Kagami wondered, briefly, what it would be like to have a brother or sister. But then the sounds of low bass and pretty singing tumbles out from ahead and spills into the hallway.
“So, did Marinette tell you the theme of this party?” Alya asked. But then a loud and devastating groan sounded from around the corner, and when Kagami stepped into that room--leather couches, mounted television, a warm rug--she found Marinette crashing to the floor.
“Are you hurt?” asked Kagami.
“You okay, girl?” asked Alya at that same moment.
“I was okay,” Marinette flailed. “Well, until you reminded me about your totally mischievous plans.”
“Come on, it’s a great idea!” Alya exclaimed.
Nino peered around the recliner he sat in as he clung to his computer. He grinned. “I dunno, babe. What if I have to kiss someone other than you because of one of these games?”
Delinquent. Teenage. Parties.
“Well, I suppose it depends on who exactly you’re kissing. Besides, you won’t have to kiss anyone on the lips if you don’t want to.”
Kagami stared beyond Alya and Nino and directly at Marinette, who recovered from her fall and sat criss-crossed on the floor. The rug felt plush against Kagami’s socks as she approached Marinette and sat.
“Will Adrien be coming?” Kagami asked.
“...He said his father would never let him. But, well, he said he w anted to. Maybe he should text you—I mean, you should text him.”
“Oh...” Kagami reached for the phone in her pocket and stared at it. “But I don’t have his phone number.”
“Wow, really?” Marinette blurted out, her face a confusing shade of red. Kagami nodded. Marinette nodded, and spoke again. “Okay, then how about we both text him from my phone...”
Marinette tapped at her phone, paused, bit her lip, and then tapped again. Then, minutes later, she flipped the phone around. Kagami read the drafted message.
Hey Adrien, Kagami and I wanted to let you know that if you can come to Alya’s party tonight, the one I mentioned at school yesterday, that you’re still invited. We can also put you through a video call if you can’t make it. :)
“...The smile doesn’t make sense.” Kagami said. “We shouldn’t be smiling if he can’t make it.”
Marinette nodded, deleted the smile, and hit send.
A loud knock sounded at the door, and Kagami half expected to find soft, green eyes, a boiling gaze, warm skin, fierce hands—a well-behaved (not delinquent), free-spirted boy. But the guests were girls, one of them blonde and giggling, the other hiding behind black hair, and Kagami pressed her lips together and folded her hands in her lap and focused on the music instead.
Their names were Rose and Juleka, she learned. Kagami practiced her smile, though it ached in weird spots when it wasn’t directed at Marinette. A few others knocked at the door, and she recited their names to make them memory.
“Alright, Nino, can you crank that music down for a second?” Alya called out. She grinned at the crowd in front of her, curled up on the couches and on the floor, a glint shining in her eyes. “Okay, it’s time to discuss why we’re re ally gathered here today. It is time to engage in a forgotten rite of passage. Our predecessors crafted whole movie plots and genres around this rite of passage, but the youth of today has, according to some anonymous sources, moved on. But not us! We will honor the old ways, as ridiculous and cringe-worthy as they might be. We will—”
Another knock at the door, and Alya’s speech was cut short. Nino laughed. Alya groaned, and shot him a look, and that unspoken agreement had Nino on his feet and at the door.
Those gathered in the living room began to chatter, and Kagami listened to a boy named Max discuss his development of another new video game, and she nodded. And then came the burning green gaze. She noticed his hands, next, and remembered the strength in his grip. And then his smile, so impossible to mirror.
“Hey guys,” Adrien said, and offered the group a little wave.
Immediately, everyone pounced. Everyone except Kagami and Marinette, sitting crisscrossed in the middle of the floor.
Kagami watched. A couple of the boys crowded around him, a few others exclaimed from the couch that they were glad he could make it, and he gave them each his attention, a few simple hellos and a few quiet laughs. But then Nino wrapped an arm around Adrien’s shoulder, grinning wide.
“How’d you do it, man?”
And then Kagami bounced to her feet and approached him before he could even answer.
“Adrien. We were just discussing tonight’s festivities. Would you join Marinette and I?”
“That sounds great,” Adrien replied, smiling and nodding. And then, together, the three of them sat in the center of the room.
Alya reclaimed her recliner-throne, huffing out a breath and adopting a grin once more.
“Anyways, tonight we’re going to be playing cheesy party games. The cheesy kind of party games you see in American films with a bunch of no-good children doing no-good things. A few base rules: 1) we are obviously not no-good children, so don’t do anything too crazy; 2) consent is mandatory; and 3) don’t forget, these games are absolute trash. They're bad. Embrace it.”
The three of them were silent, seated in their own little circle, a little stiff, shifting this way and that, while the rest of the room was full of laughter and glee.
And then Kagami simply shrugged. “This could be fun.”
“Or it could be trouble,” added Marinette with a grumble.
“Well, this isn’t the first time we’ve been in trouble together.” Adrien laughed, his cheeks reddened, and when other people blush it doesn’t make sense, but this, this makes sense, and Kagami’s own cheeks become a little warmer and redder than usual.
Let the games begin.
🙪 🙪 🙪
“Adrien, dude, you don’t get to use a dare to ask a truth, that’s totally against the rules.” Nino chided.
Adrien blinked, his shoulders sagged. “Sorry. I revoke my initial dare and change it to...okay. Marinette, I dare you to do the chicken dance.”
“ What!? I don’t even know the chicken dance. What if I just um, answer your first question?”
“Nope, no way Marinette. You gotta do the chicken dance. If you can’t do the dare, then you must drink the hot sauce.” said Alya.
“Ugh, fine.” Marinette grabs the bottle and takes a hefty swig, and then immediately screws her eyes shut and groans. A full minute passes before she opens her eyes again, and they are red and burning, but she offers nothing but a dead stare in Adrien’s direction.
“Your turn. Truth or dare?”
“Dare.”
“Are you sure? I definitely took you for more of a Truth kind of person...”
“Nope. Dare.”
“Okay, okay. I dare you...”
“I have a suggestion,” Kagami offered, tilting her head to the side in thought. “Dare him to swap outfits with Nino for the rest of the night.”
“That’s a great one! Yes, Adrien, I dare you to do that.”
🙪 🙪 🙪
“Kagami, is it true that you believe Ruroni Kenshin is...vastly superior to Samurai Champloo?”
“...Yes. Adrien, truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“Is it true that you have never read a single shonen manga?”
“...Yes.”
🙪 🙪 🙪
“Would you rather kiss Ladybug or Chat Noir?” someone asked Kagami.
“Chat Noir,” she said, after a brief pause. Adrien turned a deep red, and Kagami quickly amended. “But I’d prefer to know who is under the mask, first, before making a final decision.”
It is Kagami’s turn to ask, next, and she faced Adrien. “What about you? Would you choose Ladybug or Chat Noir?”
Adrien appeared to sweat. “...Chat Noir. Yeah. But I mean, Ladybug is awesome too.”
🙪 🙪 🙪
Adrien stared at the empty glass bottle on the floor. Kagami stared at his hand as it gripped the bottle’s neck. The playlist grew silent as one song ended and the other was slow to begin. When he spun the bottle, it glistened like a kaleidoscope. Her eyes narrowed and her gaze burned, and when the bottle stopped to point at Nino, Kagami choked the neck with her own hand and pulled, as determined as gravity, until the bottle pointed at her instead.
She looked up, and blinked, and then Adrien’s lips were on her cheek.
🙪 🙪 🙪
The night quieted. Adrien apologized, wearing a twisted frown and sad eyes as he stood in the hallway and murmured that he ought to return home. Kagami touched his shoulder and looked up at him. Most of the other boys had left, already, but Adrien had lingered.
“There is one more game I know of that we have not played yet tonight.”
Adrien clung to the jacket in his hand—he had finally been allowed to change back into his own clothes when Nino needed to leave—and stared down at her, eyebrows wrinkling and nose scrunching up.
“What game is that, Kagami?”
“Never Have I Ever. Let’s play one round, right now, before you go. I’ll start.”
“I’ve...never played it before.”
“Neither have I,” she admitted. Her hand still clung weirdly to his shoulder, she realized, and so she quickly moved her arm to her side. She took a deep breath, jaw relaxing and tense muscles loosening, and spoke. “Never have I ever told Adrien Agreste that I admire him.”
“Admire?” he asks, eyebrows no less furrowed than before.
“Yes. Is that confusing?”
“No, I just...I admire you too?”
She stared at him. A hard, deep, penetrating stare.
“I am saying I have romantic feelings for you, Adrien. I would like to be with you as more than a friend.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Uh.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but it was promptly shut by Adrien’s own mouth pressing against hers. And then, as quick as his lips came, they left, leaving hers feeling rather chapped and cold.
The door swung open, and the night air filled the spot where moments ago Adrien stood. But now the hallway was empty, and Adrien had fled before another word could be said. Kagami spun on her heels and balled her hands into fists, and there stood Marinette a few steps away, peering out from the kitchen.
“You were right, Marinette.” Kagami pressed her lips into a thin line. “Tonight was trouble.”