Chapter Text
"I'm going to die single," Wanda announced dramatically, slamming her lunch tray onto the table before dropping into her seat next to Jen with a groan.
"What happened to hello? How are you? How did the quiz that your lunatic of a teacher set on the third week of school go?" Jen raised her brow, side-eying Wanda with a deadpan look on her face.
A snort left Agatha's mouth as she sat opposite of Wanda. "No one cares about your stupid quiz, Kale. I hope you fail."
Wanda's gaze snapped to Agatha along with an accusatory finger. "You don't get to talk — this is all your fault!"
"Moi?" Agatha gasped.
"If you didn't bring up Vision at dinner mom wouldn't have imposed this stupid rule!"
"Lilia's kooky, not blind and deaf. She would've caught you giggling at your phone while twirling your hair and kicking your feet sooner or later," Agatha retorted. Honestly, it was a miracle Lilia hadn't noticed it up till yesterday. Agatha could hear Wanda's laugh almost every night through their shared wall — nightly calls were ridiculous enough; you want Agatha to believe that a guy is that funny? Wanda must be down bad.
Jen raised her hand. "I am so confused right now."
"Mom said I can't date Vis until Agatha starts dating someone again," Wanda rolls her eyes, "which is basically her way of saying there is no way in hell that is happening."
"Aww, you wound me." Agatha pouted exaggeratedly before dropping a fry into her mouth. "All the football guys are jerks anyway, why would you wanna date any of 'em?" She would know. Been there, done that, got the stupid T-shirt.
"Vis is different!" Wanda insisted, "He-"
Jen raised her hand to interject the spew of sappy bullshit that was bound spill out of her, gracefully diverting her attention. "Hold up. Why does your mom care if you date Vision? We're literally almost adults."
Wanda threw her hands up in exasperation. "Who knows what goes on in her head? All I know is no one's going to want to date Agatha, so I'm fucked."
"And I don't wanna date any of these incels either," Agatha sneered. Give a mediocre guy one chance, suddenly he gets a huge ego boost and thinks he's better than everyone. The audacity of men never cease to baffle her.
"You could always fake date someone," Jen suggested.
"Are you offering, Jennifer?" Agatha asked sweetly.
"What? No! Like I would be caught dead dating you. But…" Jen cocked her head to the side, dragging out the word, "…there is someone who probably isn't familiar with Agatha's… generally distasteful personality."
Agatha and Wanda both turned to glance in the direction of Jen's gaze, eyes landing on a table of three. Agatha recognized two of them: Alice, who was in the school band; and Billy, one of the school photographers. The third figure was a girl with a large pair of glasses on her face, wearing a shirt that had a cat plastered in the middle and the words: save the environment, eat plastic. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a short ponytail, with a few strands falling into her face which was split into a shy grin at something Alice or Billy had said. She looked… like a massive nerd.
"Huh, I've never seen her around before. Is she new?" Wanda asked.
"Yes, which makes her the perfect target." Jen grins at Agatha. "So, what do you think?"
"There little issues, Jenny Kale." Agatha began ticking them off on her fingers. "One, I never agreed to this." Wanda begun to protest but was quickly cut off by Agatha's glare. "Two, how do you know she's into girls? Three, I'M not into fucking girls!"
Now it was Jen's turn to roll her eyes. "She sitting with the girl with red streaks in her hair and the guy that wears more eyeliner than all three of us combined, I'm pretty sure she's gay. Is this you admitting that you can't be good enough of an actress to pull this off?"
Agatha wanted to wipe that stupid smirk off of her face. Did she really think Agatha would take the bait so easily? "Ha! Nice try, you're gonna need to do better than that."
"Come on, since when did you need a good reason to mess with someone? It's our last year — might as well make the most of it. Just date her for a couple of weeks then break it off. I can't wait to see the look on her face when she finds out." A smug grin was plastered on Jen's face.
Wanda turned to Agatha with pleading eyes. "Agatha, pleaaase. I'll owe you big time. You can be the maid of honor at our wedding. You'll be the godmother of our children."
"Not good enough."
"I'll do the dishes for a month," Wanda bargained desperately.
Agatha's lips flattened into a deeply unimpressed line. "You owe me all of that and more, Maximoff."
"Oh my god, thank you so much!" Wanda squealed, clapping her hands together rapidly. She reached over to hold Agatha's hand in hers. "Seriously, Agatha. I'm so grateful."
Agatha immediately pulled back and swatted her hands away. "Yeah, well, don't get used to it. Just give me a few days to work my magic."
Internally, Agatha was freaking the fuck out. Who possessed her as she agreed to that nonsense?! Although Jen was right (don't tell her she said that) — it did sound like fun to play with the innocent new kid and it was exactly something she'd usually do — this whole plan sounded insane. Seriously, lying to Lilia, and pretending to be gay on top of that? She could hear her mother rolling in her grave and cursing at her from hell already. Of course you would be so ungrateful to bring your sinful lifestyle into the house of someone misguided enough to raise you. Have you no shame, child? On the other hand… her mother was a miserable cunt — and Lilia's rule made no sense anyway! So this whole thing was totally justifiable. Right? Totally. Probably.
◊⋰⋇⋱◊
After her last period, Agatha popped into the art room, hoping to catch Rio working on one of her projects. She had heard from Jen that Rio was an art student and, lo and behold, there Rio sat behind a canvas. Her ponytail had evolved into a low, messy bun, while her glasses sat low on her nose as she squinted at her painting. She mindlessly chewed on the tip of her paintbrush with her head tilted in concentration.
Agatha made her way behind Rio and studied the canvas. It contained a blue background with some grass at the bottom, and what looked like a cheese block with one too many holes that someone had taken a chomp out of.
"This is cute."
Rio flinched so hard she nearly fell out of her chair. Clearly, she didn't notice Agatha as she was too deep in thought. Whipping her head around, she stammered through her shock, "Wha- thank yo- Really?"
It's the ugliest fucking thing she's ever seen. "Yeah, totally!" Agatha waved at the painting. "Tell me about it."
"Oh! So, it's supposed to be the Colosseum, but it's not done yet, obviously." She gave out a nervous laugh. "I still need to paint the details, and add in some shading, and… yeah."
Agatha crossed her arms and squinted. She could sort of see it, she supposed. It was actually kind of cool. Whatever.
At her silence, Rio continued her anxious rambling. "It's just something I'm working on outside of class. Did you know it was built nearly 2000 years ago and can hold up to 80 000 spectators?"
Never mind, she's such a nerd. Who the fuck voluntarily paints buildings in their free time?
Nonetheless, Agatha raised her brow. "Very impressive." She paused and smirked. "I wonder what else those capable hands of yours can do."
Rio grabbed the edge of her seat like she was about to fall off again. "What?" She sputtered, blush quickly rising to her cheeks.
"Don't worry your pretty little head about it, pretty boy." She gave a few gentle taps of her finger on Rio's temple, who looked like she'd just been short-circuited. "Love your shirt, by the way." Agatha added before turning to leave, waving a hand over her shoulder. "See you around, Vidal."
Rio snapped out of her stupor, scrambling to to catch up to Agatha, but it was too late. "Wait! I didn't get your… name."
Agatha smirked to herself. Well, that went better than she thought. And, Rio seemed fun enough to toy with — she was in a better mood after their interaction already. Maybe these few months won't be too bad. The trick to things like these is to play hard to get: plant the seeds of interest, and wait for them to take root, until all they can think about is you. Once they're hooked, it'll be game on.