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It starts out innocently enough.
Marinette takes a sip from her eggnog. She laughs politely at Chris' joke. Then she reaches out over his back and pulls down a twig of mistletoe from the Christmas tree. She stuffs it deep in the pocket of her cardigan.
She excuses herself from the conversation soon enough, and goes to help Alya out with welcoming the guests, while Nino is busy picking the perfect playlist for the party. She doesn’t forget to refill her cup, though, or to slam the front door just a little more forcefully than necessary. The decorative wreath made out of greenery rattles as it falls flat on the floor, before Marinette hides it behind a collection of winter coats.
“Hey, Kim! I bet you a drink you can’t reach the head of that door!” she calls out over the hallway, loud and confident.
All the answer she receives is a challenging cock of an eyebrow, before Kim rubs his hands together and jumps up three meters to slap the doorframe to the living room so hard, it rings through the house.
“Kim, you’re ruining the decoration!” Ondine shrieks.
Marinette hides her smirk behind a sip, before she walks over and picks up the tiny bunch from the floor. “Don’t worry about it! I’ll take care of this, you go and enjoy the party.” She smiles, making the mistletoe disappear faster than Houdini. “Oh, and I owe you a drink, I totally didn’t think you could do that.”
The lie slips so easily, she doesn’t even bother. After all, the life skills you acquire when you fight and defeat a supervillain at the ripe age of 16 — then pretend it’s all peachy that your partner-best-friend-love-of-your-life moves to his aunt and might never return to the country — are versatile.
Marinette goes to fetch a drink for Kim’s services, but when she finds herself in the kitchen — totally alone, with only the lights over the counter on — it’s an opportunity she can’t miss. She downs the rest of her drink, and without giving it a second thought, climbs up on the kitchen island. Squatting, she fumbles around for a pair of scissors, and when she finds it, she straightens with a victorious look on her face. Her cheeks are flushed from the alcohol and her pulse drums in her ears, but her footing isn’t unsteady enough yet to stop her. She rises on the tip of her toes, and reaches, higher, just a bit higher—
“Careful up there, you wouldn’t want to fall for me!”
The voice sends a shiver down her spine, and she tumbles forward, grabbing the sprig of mistletoe hanging from the lamp with one last swipe. She steadies herself on Adrien's shoulders, who stands in front of her, arms open to save her anytime.
“Thanks for the tip, but I think it’s way too late for that,” Marinette counters.
She stares into his eyes — green, green, green — a little longer than she should, before she pushes herself backwards, and sits on the edge of the counter, legs crossed casually.
It's nothing. Really. Not even light-hearted flirting. It's just how their relationship is. He doesn't mean it, and she doesn't hate herself enough to say she has never been more serious. And Alya might not understand this , but she knows that, when it comes to Chat Noir, Marinette has to find the answers herself; so she doesn't pry.
“Did you arrive long ago? I didn’t hear you coming,” Marinette says.
“You know me, I’m like a cat in the night,” he answers with a smirk.
He stands closer than he would to Chloé or even Nino, his hips almost touching her knees, but that's just what years of partnership does. Marinette knows.
“A sad, lonely kitty, I really should take pity?” she asks, returning his smug grin.
Adrien groans, but his voice is far from annoyed. “I knew it was a mistake to talk to you about that time I ran away and sang dramatic Christmas carols in a catsuit.”
“It was a dare, you couldn’t have helped it.” Marinette shrugs and pats his cheek as she slips off the counter, before he comes a step closer and she gets ideas from the leaves poking her palm.
"I could have chosen many other things I regret doing — or not doing — as a teen, believe me," he says with such a pointed look, as if it means something . Though, he never stays settled long enough on the expression for Marinette to figure out what . "But talking about regretful choices, can I ask, why are you parkouring over Nino’s kitchen?"
“Oh, just fixing the party decoration.” She waves dismissively, as if it’s nothing. For good measure, she rights a little ceramic reindeer on the countertop that wandered too far from its pack, before she slips her hands in her pockets and grins at Adrien. “I didn’t go to design school for five years to let Alya make a fool of herself with her interior design choices.”
Not that her degree in fashion design helps any with that — but that is currently beside the point. She’s proud of that degree, regardless. It’s from a very prestigious university in New York, after all. It’s awesome. It helped her to land a great job when she returned to Paris a few months ago, and now her life is amazing. She’s proud that she went and got it. And she’s glad that she didn’t let anyone hold her back.
(Really, how was she supposed to know she’d run into Adrien at the airport, both of them clutching the rail of a suitcase that fit their whole life.
“You’re going away?” he asked, voice so small and eerily familiar, it crumpled Marinette’s stomach into a tiny paper ball.
“You’re coming back,” she said, the only syllables able to make it past her clenched teeth.
He shrugged, a motion barely there. “Always.”)
But sometimes Marinette still wonders what her life would be like now, if she chose to pretend she’s in a cheesy Hallmark movie back then. If she turned back just before the check-in gates and ran along the corridors of the airport. Would Adrien have met her halfway, picked her up and spun her around, kissing her senseless?
She shakes her head. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter anymore.
“Don’t you think those choices are deliberate? That she wants it like that?” Adrien asks, as if he is wondering about Alya’s interior design choices long and hard. He fixes the lonely reindeer back up, maintaining its distance.
“Well, who’s the expert on the topic, me or her?” Marinette says, cocking an eyebrow.
She doesn't wait for an answer, though. She dashes out the door without looking back, and climbs the stairs to the first floor with a speed that's hard to follow. Adrien does.
"What's the plan, m'lady?" he asks, the conspiratorial tone of his voice throwing her heart into newer and newer summersaults.
"It's easy," Marinnet says as casually as it gets. "We just have to collect all the decorations with mistletoe."
And she jumps, trying to pluck off the greenery from the arch over the hallway, but it's like Nino's house was built for giants — seriously, who even needs three meters of interior height. Marinette clutches onto thin air, but her momentum carries her forward and she stumbles, barely avoiding colliding with a dresser.
Her hands are on her hips when she spins back to eye the bunch with a pointed look.
"Need a hand there?" Adrien asks, his voice way too amused for the situation of utmost seriousness they are in.
“If you could lend one of your ridiculously long arms that would be nice, yes.”
And so Adrien comes under the archway, but instead of contemplating how to get the bunch down, he only looks at her, eyes shining.
“I can lend two, actually,” he says, and Marinette doesn’t have enough time to squeak before his arms are looped around her thighs and she’s being lifted off of the floor.
“That’s not what I asked!” she complains loudly, even if she knows, your superhero partner grabbing you like it’s nothing is a pretty stupid thing to fall out for.
But the whole situation is stupid, because all Marinette wanted was… Well, decidedly not to have her blouse riding up her stomach when she reaches up to pluck off the decoration.
“Got it, you can put me down now!” she calls out, and in the next second she’s back on her feet.
It’s the inherent, cruel trick of her situation that now she wishes she wouldn’t be — not when Adrien’s face is only centimeters from her as he bends down, and hers still flames a refined crimson.
“Do you know what they say about mistletoes?” he asks, sounding genuinely curious.
As if Marinette could stop thinking about that.
“That they provide an excellent hiding spot for nargles,” she says. She boops his nose, and leaps back, out of the stupid-friendship-runing-decisions danger zone.
He snickers as he follows her to the parlour in the middle of the floor. “I’m honestly impressed you know that.”
“My roommate in the dorms was the biggest Harry Potter nerd. You pick up a thing or two.” Marinette shrugs.
“Well, still impressed,” he says, but his expression turns solemn. “But you know that isn’t what I’m asking.”
She comes to a halt before the balcony door and stares out at the night lights of the city, and her fidgeting reflection in the forefront. “Of course I know. I know what they say about the mistletoe, and that my fun fact wasn’t what you were asking, before you take each and every one of my words apart,” she adds teasingly.
“Oh, you’re no fun,” he says, slumping down on the couch behind her. “On the other hand, communicating in a way that doesn’t leave room for second guessing? Very sexy of you.”
Marinette is unimaginably grateful that she’s facing away because there’s no amount of foundation that could salvage her violently darkening face.
There’s a sharp intake from Adrien before he blurts out, “In a ‘that’s very sexy of you, my treasured friend’ kind of way, of course. Everything you do is sexy like that, in fact, because you are my treasured friend. Just— Just because of that.”
And maybe she’s embarrassed, but isn’t embarrassed enough to miss his face as he fumbles for words, so she looks over her shoulder with a smirk. “You’re aware you just called me ‘sexy’ three times in a row?”
“Unfortunately,” he whimpers. Even in the dim lights, his face is red enough that if she wouldn’t know better, she’d swear he has had too much mulled wine.
A laugh escapes her, his own embarrassment easing the tension in her shoulders. “Good. Because I’m objectively attractive, I’ll have you know.” We both are. A perfect match, don’t you think? “But yes, just because I never spent the holiday season in an English speaking country, I’m aware of the so-called tradition,” she adds, a bit sharper than she means.
Not like she can be mad at Adrien for going home to his family for the holidays, but it’s hard not to take it personally when she used to go out of her way to come back in time to catch him but still remained unsuccessful, time and time again. Or when she had made sure to break up with whoever she had been dating at the time, because ‘one month is too much time, I can’t do long distance’ . Or so she was telling them, but their pointed looks were enough to know, they heard the ‘with you’ omitted at the end.
“Then why are we getting rid of all the mistletoe, exactly?” Adrien, who is very much here in Paris, despite Christmas drawing up on them, asks.
“Because it’s a stupid tradition,” Marinette says, crossing her arms over her chest. He cocks his eyebrows in a questioning manner and she begrudgingly explains. “You have to kiss anyone you’re standing under a stupid bunch with. How is that not messed up?”
Crinkles run together at the corners of his eyes as he makes her favourite sound, laughter. She doesn’t even mind that it’s at her.
“It is weird!” she insists, though, and throws herself on the couch next to him. She hunches over a little, one leg pulled under herself as she explains with grand gestures. “Having to kiss someone only because you drifted next to each other at a party… When you might not even know each other! Or worse, you’re the best of friends, but that’s all you are, and maybe a kiss is all it takes to ruin it! It’s messed up.”
Adrien throws his head back, but when he bests the laughter overtaking him and meets her eyes, his face is all sincere curls. “You know, it can be a kiss on the cheek. Or a hand kiss,” he says and — as a demonstration — leans forward and grabs her hand. He breathes a peck against her knuckles, his eyes never leaving her. “It can be innocent, really.”
“You know that’s never how people mean it,” Marinette says pointedly, hoping that having unquestionable facts at her disposal will anchor her and stop her head from spinning every time Adrien looks at her like that .
“And if so. What’s wrong with a little external prompting?”
“I knew you wouldn’t get it,” she pouts. Not like she gets it, either, or what she says makes any tangible sense whatsoever, but that’s beside the point. “But what about you? What’s this fascination with the tradition of mistletoes? A ton of fond memories, I bet!” she probes, because, evidently, she still hates herself just enough.
“A bunch ,” he deadpans, and Marinette slaps his chest lightly with a snicker. “Hey, smooching a pretty girl at a party, who wouldn’t want that? Too bad I never had the chance to try,” he says, but he hurries on immediately, as if trying to make her forget he even opened his mouth. “But all I’m saying is, maybe giving people a chance to do something fun isn’t all that bad. You do like fun things, don’t you, m’lady?”
Marinette fixes her gaze on the bulge of her pocket on her lap. The leaves of mistletoe peek out and it’s all too easy to pull out a bunch. “And what if it isn’t just fun? What if it’s serious?”
“In that case,” Adrien says hesitantly, and he clears his throat before he continues, “in that case, I really don’t see an issue with giving people an excuse for something they’ve been meaning to do for a long time.”
He’s way too close when she looks up, but he is never close enough.
“Maybe I just want all the excuses for myself,” she says with a crooked grin over an uncontrollable blush. And she twirls the bunch between her fingers, before she offers it to him on a silver platter. “But, I guess, I can spare one if you would like.”
“Yeah, I’d like that. I’d like that very much,” Adrien says, so close his breath crashes against her lips and sends her head spinning.
However, instead of taking the mistletoe, his hand clutches around hers; and Marinette pulls him in and is being pulled at the same time as she presses her lips against his. Her other hand grabs for him, until she’s sitting on his lap and clinging to him, determined to get drunk on something way sweeter than her eggnog.
Because it is intoxicating. His lips over hers, moving as if he had waited all his life for this moment. His hand on her back, holding her so securely like that’s what it was made for. And his breath in her lungs, a distinct sensation Marinette doesn’t know how she recognizes, but she knows it feels like coming home all the same.
And when they pull apart and Marinette opens her eyes, all this warmth isn’t gone. It’s in Adrien’s eyes and Adrien’s smile, and it’s waiting, only for her.
“Do you want to pretend it’s all the mistletoe’s fault?” he asks so casually, as if it’s all in good fun. But if his chuckle hides anything like the one Marinette returns, his heart might break if she even stalls with an answer.
So she shakes her head, decided. “Never. Do you?”
“Not in a million years!”
He grins and he’s leaning back, running his hand through her hair as one does, kissing the love of their life. Marinette mimics the motion.
“So, mistletoes, am I right?” Adrien asks, drawing away just long enough to flash her a lopsided grin.
“Oh, would you shut up and just kiss me?” she laughs.
He presses a kiss to her cheek, to her jawline, to the corner of her mouth, and then shies away, seeming totally unbothered by her dramatic pout. “Only if you admit it isn’t a stupid tradition.”
Marinette shakes her head fondly, her teeth biting into her lower lip. “Okay, it isn’t a stupid tradition,” she sighs in defeat.
“And?”
“And I only said it was, because I was afraid what would happen if you meet me under a mistletoe. Or, better yet, what wouldn’t.”
“Oh, that’s— that’s nice to know,” Adrien says, blushing so fiercely as if he didn’t predict this answer. However, he doesn’t show any sign that he would be anything but elated at the news as he swipes her fringe out of her eyes with gentle fingers. “But I meant, ‘and I’ll put all of them back to where I got them from, so others can also play this game.’”
Marinette taps her chin with a finger as she considers the offer, without any trace of even trying to keep her expression serious.
“On one condition,” she settles finally.
His eyes sparkle up at the playfulness of her voice, a curious grin sitting out on his face. “Oh? And what would that be?”
“I’ll put them back, but you have to kiss me under every one of them.”