Chapter Text
Kagami is a good girlfriend. A really, really good girlfriend.
She makes sure that they go on at least 2 dates per week, and schedules them far in advance. She texts him good morning and goodnight like clockwork. She’s even proactive about cute nicknames, sending him vetted lists of options which they can debate the merits of. If dating was a sport, Kagami would be a gold medalist.
And she kisses him. A lot.
“Good morning, sunshine,” she’ll tell him with a peck on the cheek, catching him on the steps before he goes into school. He’ll grin and she’ll tilt his chin closer, planting one right on his lips.
“Come here,” she’ll coax, swiping away their homework with one hand and tugging at his shirt collar with the other. He’ll look up at her through his lashes and part his mouth just so, letting her press their lips together again and again.
“You’re perfect,” she’ll whisper, pulling him close in the locker room after practice. She’ll run her hand through his sweaty hair and lift her face to his until all his senses go dark.
Kagami is great. Kagami is really great.
And Adrien… Adrien is…
He’s curled around a pillow on his bed for the fourth time this week, caught somewhere between nausea and dread. His homework is unfinished, piano pieces unrehearsed. A lock of hair is irritating his eye but he feels too detached from his body to do anything about it. He hates when he gets like this for a multitude of reasons, but mostly because it doesn’t make sense.
He’s been depressed before. He’s been dissociated before.
But this?
He thinks of Kagami’s lips, warm and sticky with lip gloss, moving against his mouth. He feels her mouth open, tilting to meet him at an angle, and her tongue—
Adrien’s whole body shudders involuntarily and he curls up tighter around the pillow, squeezing it for dear life. Awful. Awful. What’s wrong with him? It’s kissing his girlfriend, the most natural thing in the world. Why does it feel like—why does he feel like he’s dying?
When Adrien closes his eyes, he’s right back there again. Kagami’s firm hands on the back of his neck, holding onto him. Her spit warm in his mouth, the small noises in the back of her throat, the pit carved out like a chasm in his stomach—
“You look terrible.”
Plagg’s nasal voice jars him back to the present. When Adrien looks up, bright green eyes are squinting just centimeters from his face.
Plagg frowns. “Are you still sick? Wait, did you eat some of my moldy brie? You know I said not to touch it until May!”
Plagg zips away, into the cabinet under the trophy case. Adrien takes a shaky breath.
“I didn’t touch your cheese, Plagg.” He forces his fingers to unclench from the pillow and stashes the memory of Kagami’s lips under some rug in his brain. He’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Plagg phases back into view, breathing a sigh of relief. “Phew! That could’ve been disastrous!”
“Yeah.” Adrien sits up and clenches his fists hard, enough for his fingernails to dig into the skin of his palms. The pain wakes him up, brings him back. (It’s penance too, maybe. He needs to be better than this.)
“Maybe you really are sick, then.” Plagg flits around him, poking his nose into Adrien’s belly and armpit and hair and even trying to look in his ears. He pulls back and frowns, cocking his little head. “Geez, it’s been on and off like this for, like, a month. Shouldn’t you go to a doctor or something?”
Adrien adverts his eyes. “I don’t think a doctor would help.”
Not with… whatever this is.
“All I’m saying is, you look really bad. Like, really bad—”
“Thank you. Thanks.”
Adrien painstakingly swings his legs over the bed and puts his feet on the ground, manually shifting weight to each leg. Muscle by muscle, reminding his body how to stand. It’s easier once he’s up. Fog filters through his mind, and then he doesn’t think as much.
The sickness burns off in the shower, seared from his skin. Adrien emerges clean and good and normal and he puts on new clothes and blow-dries his hair. Ready for anything. Ready for—
Nathalie knocks twice on his bedroom door before opening it.
“Kagami is here,” she tells him. “Your dinner will be served shortly.”
“Thank you Nathalie,” Adrien says. He smiles, because he is excited to see his girlfriend.
Downstairs, Kagami is waiting in the entryway, punctual as ever. She’s wearing a red raincoat he hasn’t seen before, buttoned neatly up to her chin. Her hair is just a little bit messy, and tucked behind her ears—it must have been windy outside. There are tiny raindrops on the windows. When she sees him at the top of the stairs, her warm eyes brighten.
A surge of fondness flows through him. He really does love Kagami.
“Why, my fair maiden,” Adrien calls, skipping down the last few steps so that he can gallantly extend an arm to her. “Might I offer you some respite from the raging storm outside? A meal, perhaps?”
Kagami’s smile is subdued, but playful. She shrugs off her coat and drapes it over his extended arm.
“I do believe a meal is in order,” Kagami plays along. Her eyes crinkle as Adrien obediently takes her coat and hangs it gently in the coat closet. “Though, I was supposed to dine with my boyfriend tonight.”
“Your boyfriend must be one lucky guy.” Adrien extends his arm to Kagami again, and this time she takes it. “Almost as lucky as me.”
Sat down at the dinner table with Kagami’s chair pulled right up next to his, Adrien can almost forget why being with her had ever made him uneasy. They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes, and Adrien soaks in the feeling of being together. Isn’t this exactly what he’d always wanted, someone who wanted to spend time with him? Share meals with him?
Her elbow brushes his arm as she slices her steak, and an almost-imperceptible shiver rolls down Adrien’s spine.
Almost.
Kagami fixes her eyes intensely on his face, and Adrien smiles. He scoops peas onto his fork nonchalantly, trying to shake the cloud of guilt that always seems to follow him these days. He always feels see-through when Kagami looks at him like that.
When she speaks, it’s matter-of-fact.
“Something is bothering you.”
Adrien stills, just barely. Guilt rises thickly in his throat. He swallows his bite of peas, forcing it down.
“It’s…my father,” Adrien tells her. It’s not a lie.
Kagami nods once, concise. She understands.
There’s comfort in that. Adrien’s been spoiled by it, the way that talking about his father to Kagami doesn’t require the same careful discretion as it does with others. She doesn’t gasp or balk when Adrien describes the realities of his home life. There’s no guessing about which stories can be played off as quirky anecdotes and which will cause wide eyes and hushed whispers of are you safe? and that’s…not okay.
Kagami just understands. He feels spurred on by her unwavering stare. It really wasn’t a lie.
“I’ve just been seeing him less and less lately,” Adrien explains, scooting food around his plate with his fork like a kid. “I mean, it was never very much after—after Maman—but he at least still oversaw my photoshoots and stuff. I would still have meetings with him biweekly for progress reports. He was still…”
“He was still being your boss,” Kagami finishes. “Even if he wasn’t acting like a father.”
She understands more than anyone else in the world, he thinks.
“Yeah,” Adrien says, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Exactly. But the last few weeks or so, it’s like… I don’t know. Nathalie’s been my direct supervisor for everything. Father doesn’t even video call into my photoshoots anymore. I haven’t seen him at all. It feels like he doesn’t even…” Adrien blinks hard. He didn’t even realize he’d felt all of this, but it’s all coming up now. “Like he didn’t want me as a son, but now he doesn’t even want me as an employee.”
Adrien presses his eyes quickly into his napkin and then takes another sip of water. When he looks back at Kagami, her expression has hardly changed.
“Your father’s involvement in your life is not dependent on your performance,” Kagami tells him flatly. “You have to stop trying to please him. It’s never going to work.”
It has worked before, the argument rises up in Adrien’s throat like venom. I’ve been good enough before, and then he wanted me.
But the words fall flat as soon as Adrien looks back at Kagami’s face, which is shaded in a subtle downcast. There is a reason why Kagami understands. There’s a reason why she is so confident about this.
(Deep down, Adrien knows she is right. There is nothing he can do to make Father want him, as an employee or otherwise. It’s putting that knowledge into practice that’s hard. But then, he supposes Kagami isn’t quite there yet either.)
The conversation turns lighter after that, and way too soon, a bright red car pulls through the gate. Adrien deflates a little. He hates being alone.
“Come on.” Kagami slips a hand into his and squeezes. “Walk me out.”
The pavement is shiny and wet outside, and on the bridge of his nose Adrien feels the tiniest drop of rain. Kagami uses the hand that’s not holding Adrien’s to tug the hood of her red raincoat over her head, and she is so cute that Adrien’s heart could pop.
“Thanks for coming over,” Adrien says, all in one breath. He squeezes her hand. His heart is hammering, and he keeps noticing things like—like how Kagami’s car doesn’t have a driver, so they’re alone, and how they’ve stopped walking but Kagami hasn’t gotten in yet, and how she’s looking at him determinedly, purposefully.
Adrien’s skin itches. He resists the urge to bolt.
“I come over for dinner every Thursday at seven,” Kagami reminds him.
“Well, thank you for coming this Thursday at seven.” Adrien smiles. “And thank you for coming next Thursday, too. Preemptively.”
That gets a smile out of her, and Kagami uses their joined hands to pull him closer. Adrien braces himself. This is it.
But she doesn’t kiss him. Kagami’s eyes flicker fast over his face and she pulls away instead, smiling a tight-lipped smile and squeezing his hands. Once, concise.
“Goodnight, Adrien.”
As he watches her walk down the pavement to her car, Adrien tries very hard not to name the feeling settling in his bones.
He really does love Kagami. He’s so glad that she came to dinner. She really is a good girlfriend.
Kagami gets into the car and rolls down the window, despite the sprinkle of rain. She waves and blows him a kiss. He does the same, waving until her car disappears from view. Once she’s gone, Adrien drops his hand down, something heavy untangling in his gut.
(The feeling is relief.)