Work Text:
Adrien stopped in his tracks the moment he was through the door to the locker rooms and saw Kagami inside. The sight of Kagami was not inherently peculiar, but rather that she was staring intently into a little wall mirror with her lips pursed.
“... Lipstick?” he commented, forgetting to even greet her.
Apparently unbothered, Kagami kept painting the deep red colour across her mouth, meticulously following the line of the lips. Adrien thought the shade looked nice on her, if a bit stark; he had rarely seen her in makeup past a basic everyday look. But it was, on the whole, flattering — something that would be great for a party or a high society event.
The bizarre part was that she was dressed for fencing, and the helmet and sabre were waiting on the bench next to her, ready to be worn.
“Yes,” she said.
“Why are you putting on makeup now?”
“It’s for a bet,” Kagami explained, though it was an explanation that only raised more questions in him. She seemed to be finished with the lipstick at that point, and put the cap back on the applicator while rolling her lips over her teeth.
Adrien stepped up behind her, so that he appeared above her shoulder in the little wall mirror she’d hung up on a locker. “What’s the point of the bet?”
The look she gave him reminded him very clearly that he was, both figuratively and literally, in her rearview mirror. “I do not have time to explain my whole afternoon right now,” she said. She didn’t sound mean, but she did sound like a teacher addressing an unruly child. “It’s a bet. That is all you need to know.”
“... All right,” he said, offering a sheepish smile to her before turning around. “Sorry. I’ll, um, I’ll be going, then.”
Kagami sighed. “Fine,” she said, and then — as though regretting how sharp she’d been — she added: “I may be more amenable to answer later.”
Later. After fencing, or tomorrow altogether? He didn’t want to bother her more by asking, so he kept that question (and all his other questions) to himself for the time being. “Okay. I’ll talk to you later, then,” he said, and went to find the washroom.
♡＼(￣▽￣)／♡
Later, more specifically an hour later, he returned to the locker rooms to pick up his bag. He wasn’t strictly speaking in a hurry, but Auntie had promised her special three-meat cassoulet for dinner when he got home. That meant he was interested in dinner starting as early as possible, which meant making the metro line back home as soon as he possibly could.
He was in the middle of stuffing everything into his backpack when the door opened, and Kagami — visor flipped up and lipstick noticeably smudged outwards — stepped inside. She hesitated when she was halfway through, having caught sight of him, but then she sighed and came all the way through. “Hello, Adrien,” she said.
“Hi,” he said, zipped up the backpack too, and paused with both hands clasping the top. “So… are you finished with your bet?”
“I am,” she said, slumping down on a seat. The sword dropped at her side, and she pulled the helmet off; it fell carelessly beside her and rolled underneath the bench.
“How’d it go?”
“I lost.”
Adrien nodded, a little bit uncertain what that meant. “So… can you tell me what the bet was now?”
She didn’t look up at him. The blush on her cheeks was angry and fierce, despite her bashfulness. “A touch is a kiss,” she said.
“A — what?”
“A touch is a kiss.”
“Yes, but what… what does that mean?”
She groaned softly. He wondered, just for a little bit, whether she was embarrassed about admitting to what the bet was, or about losing it. “If we landed a touch, we could kiss the place we touched.”
“Oh… were you fencing with Marinette again?” She nodded once, still not looking at him. Kagami, losing to Marinette? Surely that was impossible. Kagami was the strongest fencer their age that he’d ever met, and Marinette had only really picked it up a couple of months ago. “So how did you… lose?”
“She —” started Kagami, but at that point the door went up again. Inside stepped Marinette, helmet in one hand and sabre in the other, and a relaxed grin on her blood red-painted lips.
None of those things were particularly noteworthy, though. The noteworthy thing was that her white fencing suit was — and here the meaning of ‘a touch is a kiss’ truly went through to Adrien’s brain — absolutely covered in red lipstick marks.
“Hi, Adrien!” said Marinette, lifting the sword hand slightly to wave with the fingers.
“Oh,” said Adrien.
She blushed, the abashed kind of blush that made her shrink together a little bit. “Um, I’m a bit of a mess,” she said. Then she looked at Kagami and softened; her smile, her posture, her voice, her eyes, all gave him the distinct impression that she had melted slightly. Like a candle put next to a fire. “Hey,” she said.
“Hello,” said Kagami. She made an effort to look away from Marinette, too. It was absolutely bizarre to behold: Kagami, the one who was always forward and direct, was too embarrassed to look even her own girlfriend in the eye. Meanwhile Marinette, the girl who years ago could barely string a sentence together in front of her crush, hadn’t been utterly paralysed by getting kissed — from a glance — several dozen times across the body.
Adrien swallowed. He wasn’t one to involve himself with other people’s love lives unless they concerned him, but it was very hard to ignore the pattern of the kisses. It was even harder to ignore that they almost coated Marinette like a piece of armour that only protected her stomach, back, and her ribcage above her breasts.
“... So, um,” he started, scratching his neck, “how exactly did you lose, Kagami?”
“Lose?” said Marinette, apparently confused. “She beat me easily.”
“A thousand needles are less harmful than a sharpened spear,” mumbled Kagami.
Adrien looked from the thousand kisses on Marinette’s outfit, across to Kagami’s outfit that was so red it was impossible to tell where any kisses might have landed. He swallowed again. “I mean, er, I mean the bet.”
“Oh! Well, she bet that she could make me conk out from embarrassment before I landed a hit.”
“It was a grave error of judgement,” said Kagami. She glanced over at Marinette just for a moment.
“I landed two touches,” Marinette added.
Adrien looked at Kagami again — but he didn’t want to scan her for kissing marks. That seemed too intimate. Marinette, on the other hand, was openly displaying her marks of intimacy, and it was really hard not to notice them. When he looked up at her face, he saw she was blushing pretty hard. She was also not looking at Kagami right now.
“... Where did you land those touches?” said Adrien. He knew Marinette was a weaker fencer than Kagami, but her deviousness and foresight when she fought was unrivalled. The girl who was Ladybug wasn’t dangerous because of her powers, but because of her mind.
“I, um… I landed them on, on Kagami. Somewhere. I, I, it’s, somewhere on Pagami’s kerson, um, yep!” Admittedly, Ladybug’s mind was also highly temperamental in how well it worked…
“Adrien,” said Kagami. He turned to look at her — and now she seemed more like her usual self, fierce and direct. “I advise you not to ask any follow-up questions.”
“R-right. I, um, I was just curious.”
“Curiosity killed the cat.” Her eyes glowed like dragonfire.
He raised his hands. “I’m sorry! I’ll go. But um, congratulations, Marinette.”
Marinette smiled for a moment. “Thanks, Adrien.”
As he turned to walk out the door, he heard Marinette turn to Kagami and say, “Kagami, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you there —”
— and then Kagami’s interrupting reply, which was, “It was my mistake, I should have paid better attention —”
— and then he was out in the relatively fresh air of the hallway, with burning ears and an itching desire to call Nino and suggest they maybe take up fencing together.