Much as Lila adored crafting ever-more-elaborate yarns about her exploits in Achu, humanitarian work, or torrid friendship/possible romance with one of the superheroes or superheroines that were popping up everyday now – she left that to her peers' imagination with just a smidgen of innuendo – sometimes, the simple truth was the best option; honesty the best policy.
Because sometimes – only sometimes in the most opportune or, well, desperate of situations – she didn't have to weave and forge. On rare occasions, life offered all the material that she needed. So much better to guide gulls into entrapping themselves than to spin the web yourself; merely present the whole collection of simple, straightforward facts and let others come to their own conclusions.
Sometimesm a true story well-told was all you needed.
The five second video clip of Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Adrien Agreste's oh-so-faithful and simpering girlfriend of the past two months, her arms locked around Kagami Tsurugi's neck as she pressed the gasping and disheveled girl against the art-room wall and plucked up a tender, yearning kiss from her mouth?
Well, a picture was worth a thousand words. And at twenty-four frames per second, she had a 120000 word novel to share with the rest of her class.
Gabriel and Adrien Agreste, in particular, would love to read it.
Odd that Tsurugi was at their school, but she didn't question her good fortune.
As she slunk her way towards the lunch room, where she knew her peers had congregated, another thousand words was devoted to the associated crystalline image of her wedding to the Agreste heir, orchestrated by a doting father-in-law who had been wrapped around her finger so tightly that his pocket book was just on the verge of bursting now that she'd demonstrated herself sufficiently apt at cowing his son into obedience while breaking his will through the provision of proof that miss-goody-two-shoes class president Marinette Dupain-Cheng was an unfaithful harlot.
Harlot. Good word.
That was the thought that crested over her mind and impelled her to spill the proverbial beans, complete with photographic evidence, the moment she burst into the lunchroom and found the majority of students – less Marinette herself, who was probably still sucking her apparent girlfriend's tongue – from Madam Mendeleiev's class had congregated at a single table.
Staring in a distinctly forlorn fashion at the more robust meals – from pasta salads to meaty sandwiches – enjoyed by his fellow students, Adrien sat before his kale salad, spearing random leaves with his fork and then flicking them off against the sides. While Alix and Kim bickered, as was their want, Rose and Juleka sat curled up together in only the second most disgustingly gay display that Lila had seen today.
Gay in the colloquial sense only because it involved love.
Cunning and forward-thinking young women who had the world at their feet and intended to keep it there, pausing only to plant a heel to the back of its head and force it to grovel harder, didn't permit themselves to indulge in something so juvenile and emotionally-compromising as love.
But they could leverage it, of course, and any sense of moral duties or justice. Anyone could be twisted up around her finger if she just found the right kind of knot.
Like the one that Kagami and Marinette had apparently been attempting to tie between their tongues.
"Oh, Adrien!" That holler was utterly unnecessary as it would have been a simple matter to cross the room, guide Adrien to a quiet corner despite his misgivings regarding her conduct, and engage him in a clandestine conversation wherein all parties could retain their dignity and maintain secrecy.
But who wanted this to stay secret?!
Not Lila Rossi, that was for damn well sure.
"It's just so awful." A surreptitious glance towards the assembled classmates, who appeared to be stricken with varying degrees of mortification, outrage, and trepidation confirmed that her acting job was working as she plopped down right next to Adrien and put a comforting hand to his shoulder. "I- I'm so sorry!"
She also took the chance to grope his thigh under the table. It wasn't like she could pass up the opportunity for a little sexual harassment that wasn't actually sexual harassment because that couldn't happen to wealthy Caucasian men.
"What?" Adrien's tone dripping with dubiety as he pushed his salad towards the centre of the table while his face contorted in disgust likely at her, but she only revelled in that, soaking it in, relishing that watery and salty sensation that burned the lining of her gut, a sweet twisting pain.
"It's-" Oh, Adrien's face was going to break so beautifully. That was the glorious thing, really: watching people dying on the inside, the husks continuing to shamble about in grotesque and inhuman fashion like marionettes on her puppet strings, jerky contortions and flopping limbs merely suggestive of unseen hands orchestrating the play of their non-lives from behind the stage.
"It's Marinette."
And that got precisely the reaction that she had hoped, Adrien bolting upright in his chair to snarl down at her, exposing a ... fang?
"What happened?" he growled, reaching below the table to pluck up her hand from his thigh. Unfortunate. He suffered in silence so beautifully.
Oh, well. She'd have to settle for him suffering loudly.
The screaming match that might devolve into a duel to the death with Tsurugi would make it worthwhile.
"It's just so horrible, Adrien," she simpered as the entire table of students pressed in more closely, breathless with anticipation.
"What?" Alya this time, eyes narrowed into fine lines as she also bared her fangs. Weird. Only a few months ago, Alya would have been the first to bite, and latched on for even the smallest mouthful of "juice," given her gullibility, but in recent weeks the blogger seemed to have completely reconsidered her outlook on Lila.
No matter. Marinette would be a complete social pariah after this debacle.
Pulling her cell phone from her pocket and unlocking it after three shaky attempts at swiping her pass-code, Lila cleared the emotion (glee, but it surely sounded like distress – she was a good actress; she worked with Steven Spielberg, after all! ... Wait. Had that actually happened? It was tough to keep the lies straight sometimes.) from her throat before brandishing the device for all to see.
"It's just so terrible that – that I can't even say it. You – you just have to see for yourselves." A small tremor caused the phone in her hands to sway and jerk as she took in the aghast expressions of all the assembled students. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't – well, if the evidence wasn't so obvious. I mean. Right in this very school, Adrien. It was just so cruel."
A derisive guffaw, which she believed was the correct term under these circumstances, was not what she expected; nor did the other students gaping and gasping at the image, only to be thrown off by Adrien's sheer, unbridled amusement, based on the confused glances they shared between themselves as they gazed upon the concrete evidence of Marinette's infidelity.
Perhaps Adrien had broken psychologically under the strain. That would be nice. Unexpected, but nice, as it just meant that, in about three years, she'd have to orchestrate some kind of relationship with his father, who was, like, sixty years old and so would raise fewer alarms when he died of 'natural causes.'
Adaptability. That was the name of the game.
But for now, she had a mental breakdown to deal with. Sympathy points with the class and Gabriel Agreste were available to be earned.
"Adrien, I know that it's a lot to take in, but it's going to be alright." Lila put a hand over his, which promptly cooled his laughter as he gazed down at her fingers like a flock of pigeons had just passed by and left him a present.
"I never would have thought that this would happen when they got together for an art project." Lila took no offence when Adrien ripped his hand away from her clasp, but that was a rather befuddling retort.
"Man, are you okay?" Kim bumbled rather oafishly, in Lila's opinion, while looking around at the uncertain expressions worn by their still silent classmates. "Am I the only one who's confused here?"
"I can see why." Gathering up the remnants of his lunch as if he was savoring the anticipation, or mulling over matters carefully – far from the emotional explosion that Lila had anticipated, Adrien pulled a sour face as if his salad had gone fuzzy. "See, I haven't been entirely honest with all of you – actually, we haven't been honest at all."
"What do you mean, Agreste?" Alya tapped at her phone, screen blank as it rested on the table before her.
Adrien shrugged while ducking down to slide his lunch into the gaping front pocket of his backpack. "I mean that I'm not actually, well, dating Marinette, so I can't be angry about it."
The gaggle of classmates recoiled with several gasps and murmurs.
Considering how restrained they were in public, which Adrien had always informed them was a consequence of his father's limitations on "untoward" behaviours that could generate negative press, that ridiculous lie was nearly believable, and more than enough to have Lila slipping a hand into her pocket to stab sharp fingernails into her thigh to keep from screaming.
It was at that moment that the girls in question chose to enter the scene. Though familiarity with their recent activities allowed Lila to pick out the telltale signs of moderately dishevelled clothing, carefully reorganized, the girls maintained a "just friendly" distance as they strode into the room from the entrance to the south wing of College Francois Dupont. Their makeup was just slightly too pristine to be anything other than freshly applied, though.
"Hey, Kagami." Adrien waved both girls over to their table, waiting until they were standing before the assembled students before pressing onward. "I'm really sorry, but Lila showed a- uh – a photo of you and Marinette from earlier today, and, well, I think that it's about time for you and her to come clean about your relationship."
"Oh." Kagami worked her jaw for a moment, glancing between the scowling Marinette who looked deliciously mortified and Adrien. "Are you saying that you-"
In an uncharacteristically impolite display, Adrien cut her off: "You don't have to worry about me. I'm not the important one here. You and Marinette are."
A blink.
A quirk of Tsurugi's lips.
Boy. Tsurugi smiled ugly.
Of course, everything about the mannish sword lesbian was pretty ugly, in Lila's estimation.
Especially what she said next.
"Yes." The word was dragged out. Thoroughly unpleasant and unique scowl-smile in place, Kagami began smoothing out a few lingering wrinkles from her blouse. "I... was aware of the complications that could result if my mother became aware of my... unorthodox relationship, and asked Adrien if he would be kind enough to aid Marinette and I..." A subtle nod from Adrien (which the others, blind dopes, didn't seem to acknowledge as they were focused on the two girls) spurred Kagami on. "Yes. Aiding us in...concealing it from my mother. He is... cover for our dates."
In a blur of pink and blonde and every single cutesy stereotype that Lila could ever imagine turning her stomach, Rose was the first to respond, bounding to Kagami's side, though just before grasping the other, now grimacing girl, she relented and offered an apologetic bob of her head.
"I'm so sorry that you have to deal with that," Rose gushed while her girlfriend rose to stand beside her and looked caught between pulling her away to give Tsurugi space or, in a spurt of alien confidence, throwing her weight behind the Japanese girl as well.
"Yeah, girl. That's a pretty shit situation." While still seated calmly by Kim's side, poking away at her remaining mushy peas and lunch-room roast beef, Alix did look rather aggrieved. "I don't care about all that relationship stuff, too busy being awesome, but if I had to hide that fact. Well. It'd piss me off."
Now that kind of objection to bigotry and parental repression was something that Lila could use to salvage the situation, but just as she was settling into a new persona, about to launch into a screed against the injustices that Kagami was forced to endure, Kim, ignorant himbo that he was, just had to open his fat mouth!
"I didn't even know that you were lesbian, Marinette." One meaty hand rose up to scratch at his scalp, and if Lila had been able to stick a banana in his hand, he would have looked exactly like a stupid monkey.
Which he was, but she could only smile fainting at him to hide her sneer of disgust.
Marinette and Kagami were guided into the group, finding seats on the other side of Adrien.
"She's not a lesbian, you dope." With a swift side elbow to her partner's gut, Alix silenced his retort.
"Nope." Alya shook her head slowly, though she was looking Marinette right in the eye, gaze first questioning then steely in a way that made Lila feel like she was staring up at the gleaming blade of a guillotine. "I know that my girl is interested in boys."
"So did I." Lila had to say something, had to get a word in to refocus attention and deflect it at the same time while integrating herself back into the conversation; that was the only way to regain control. "I mean, up until this silly little misunderstanding."
"Wait." Though her brow was pinching with confusion and thought as she appeared, at least superficially, to mull, Alya was smiling. Didn't everyone else see that? It was enough to send Lila into a spitting range that she covered with a syrupy smile. "You thought that she was straight?"
"Well, yes." Hands and arms wide in a gesture of confused surrender, Lila knew that there was a way out of this; she just had to play her cards right, and she could emerge as a supportive ally. "She was – or we thought that she was dating Adrien."
While the rest of the students merely looked on at what Lila was convinced was an unfolding train wreck, the engine just tilting off the track in that precarious instant that would decide the fates of all the passengers, Alix piped up, "And everyone thought that she was straight."
Alya made a non-committal gesture with her hands. "I did until my girl told me about Kagami – in confidence, you know?"
"So, Lila, did you just try to out Marinette?" Alix was leaning forward in her seat now, fingers closed tightly around her cutlery while her other hand was pressed to Kim's chest, holding him back. Max's asexuality meant that Kim, however little he understood about... anything in the world, least of all sexual orientation and gender identity, was always ready to leap to the defence of anyone who was being... victimized.
Which made Marinette the victim in his mind.
Which made her-
Oh.
No.
"What?" Her hands waved off the accusation while she tried to process and adapt. "I- that's ridiculous. I mean. I was just so shocked and Adrien deserved to know the truth – or what I thought was the truth."
"And you had to tell me right in front of the entire class? Show everyone the picture, too, when you could have taken me aside to talk to me in private?" Adrien asked with his hand to his heart, and though Lila could see the smug glint in his eyes, no one else could. All they seemed to register was the clearly feigned shock, the wilting tenderness directed at Kagami and Marinette, and the little quiver of his jaw. "That... that would have been so cruel. Just springing that on me in the open."
"And without any consideration for Mari-hime's feelings on the matter. Even if she had been unfaithful, we are all entitled to privacy regarding our personal lives, which you've stripped away from both of us," Kagami added with a quick flick of her eyes towards Adrien's fallen face.
"You-" Marinette choked slightly in her seat. "You could have at least spoken to me- or- or Adrien before you just told everyone."
Lila nearly screamed. It was so obvious. All three of these preening, moralistic overachievers had obviously orchestrated the entire affair just to entrap her in some Machiavellian masterstroke, conspiring against her, while spinning this yarn wholesale from the little threads of insinuation and innuendo that had been left dangling from the plot that she thought that she'd framed so brilliantly.
Not a single one of their reactions was genuine!
Those winces.
Adrien's pensive expression as he examined the two girls and started apologizing for having failed them when he hadn't done anything wrong and that was just a ploy to generate sympathy from all the assembled students.
The comforting hand that Kagami placed to the small of Marinette's back as the neophyte fashion designer wilted, only to be scooped up into a group hug from the rest of her "girl squad."
The fragile little smile on Adrien's face when Kim socked him in the shoulder and told him to buck up while Nino squeezed his shoulder and told him that he'd "done good."
Not even remotely convincing!
None of it was real! Just theatre, pantomime for the benefit of an audience that was allowing itself to be so cruelly and carefully manipulated like a gaggle of absolute dullards by the most threadbare of lies!
How could her classmates be so gullible as to belie-
Oh...
Well, fuck.
Lila took the rest of the day off after scurrying to the nurse, complaining of a stomachache.
Later that night, a trio of teens found themselves bedded down for an evening of broken diets and video games, though it was unclear whether Chat Noir was lounging over Marinette's chaise, or a pair of girlfriends. The sweaty tangle became a little bit difficult to judge at times between rounds of Smash Brothers and Mario Kart, particularly when Marinette was winning (which was all the time), and the two fencers had to resort to particularly underhanded and dastardly methods to distract her so that they could have a mere chance of placing first.
"You know, Adrien." As the girl reached down to retrieve a profiterole from the platter on the floor, where Wayzz and Long were engaged in a sagacious meditative stare-down while Tikki nibbled on her own special plate of cookies, Marinette's voice was a thick bubbly ocean, slightly hoarse from laughter after they spent the last five minutes tickling those sensitive spots right under both her armpits. "You could have just told them that we were a throuple. It probably wouldn't have mattered at that point. If everyone's going to be keeping me and Kagami a secret, they'd have done the same for all three of us."
Adrien was about to shrug, but Kagami's warning glare as she had settled on his chest and curled up like a dragon atop her hoard, was a clear sign that motion would be unwise. "Well, in part, I guess I just panicked."
"Much like our princess, you panic quite cutely, you know," Kagami hummed, her eyes still mostly closed and breathing steady, only moments after a tickle fight, which was really rather impressive. Sleepy-gami against his cat-furnace body was one of the reasons he tended to stay transformed. "But I too would have just told them the truth. It is far less complicated than living by lies, and having to conceal this."
"Well, it's not like I could have told them that you two had been swept off your feet by the hero of Paris, you know," Adrien objected, hand to his chest, angled around Kagami's head, as if he was simply aghast at the suggestion.
In a gesture that had come to be more than reminiscent of Ladybug for obvious reasons, Marinette rolled her eyes, chewing through her snack and swallowing down pastry and cream that Adrien hungered to taste vicariously.
"You realize you're just along for the ride, right?"
"Maybe so, but what a ride it is," Adrien retorted without hesitation before frowning down at the growing aggregation of Kwami on the floor who had begun to observe the stare-down between Longg and Wayzz. "And, honestly, there was a little bit more to it than that."
"Oh?" Marinette popped, observing him with that keen Ladybug glare that pierced through the flesh of Akuma and unlocked the secrets of their powers and weaknesses. Hey, if she wanted to truss him up with her yo-yo and get him to talk, he'd spill, but he'd do that anyways, just with that glare. "What was your master plan, oh hero of Paris?"
"Well, we know that Lila has ties to my father, right?" Throwing wide his free arm as Kagami snuggled into the crux of his shoulder, giving their girlfriend the space needed to readjust her position, Chat allowed both his princess and his queen to enfold him in two comfy and slightly squishy slices of girlfriend bread.
"I have been meaning to speak to her about that." A dark growl, given the circumstances, generally foretold the antitheses of pain. In this case, it did not, and given how Lila had felt him up in the lunchroom, Chat Noir couldn't object to that inclination, even if Adrien would never dream of it. Time enough for that later, if Ryuuko wanted to educate the youth on the dangerous consequences of sexual harassment.
"Well, she doesn't have an 'in' with Tomoe," Adrien continued, though he did shiver at that glare. "So there's no chance of Lila telling her anything."
Kagami's expression didn't rise, exactly; it morphed with the arching of her brow. Still judgmental, but calculating. "But she could still tell your father about your deception."
Adrien wagged a finger. "Ah, but he doesn't care."
"Did he not attempt to orchestrate a relationship between you and Lila? You did say that was why you wished to announce your relationship with Marinette publicly several weeks ago." Drawing back on the chaise, Kagami looked even more befuddled. She was never gifted in the sphere of social intelligence, and she didn't know how to manipulate; so much of her was clean. Straightforward. She learnt how to lie for him. "He clearly is ... concerned about your love life."
Though he had no desire to be dismissive towards either one of the girls, he couldn't hold back the scoff. "He's concerned about business relationships and the bottom line."
"Adrien." Marinette's whine as she glanced up at him with those massive watery eyes, all sympathy and empathy but no pity because that always left him feeling begrimed, like a victim, had him shifting in mild discomfort, even as the two girls repositioned him in a molten slow undulation so that he was well and truly squished between their softness, Kagami cradling his head and Marinette tucked securely under his chin.
Protected and protecting. Ideal, really.
"It's okay." Neither of his girlfriends appeared convinced as, sharing a quick series of baleful and then soulful glances at each other, him, the window, and Kagami's fencing equipment (Kagami stared at her epee for just a moment too long), they engaged in one of those weird silent conversations things that he had with 'Ladybug' on occasion but not Marinette or Kagami as of yet.
"Really," he insisted, breaking up the exchange by taking Marinette's hand in his, and raising her knuckles to his lips, lingering there and maybe suckling just a smidgen until she burst out in a snort, giggling while shying away to hide the alluring flush on her face. Trying the same thing with Kagami only got him bopped on the head, right between his flicking cat-ears. No matter. He'd get her next time. "It – well, it matters, but it doesn't ... really matter in the way that it did."
"If you're certain," Kagami offered dubiously, putting a hand to Marinette's cheek to cool and calm her with a series of slow strokes.
"I am." And he was as he snuggled back in, longing for a nice warm cat nap, but settling for cuddles. "The fans love Marinette. Our relationship has been good for the ... company image – my image, so my father won't do anything to upset that."
"That still doesn't explain why you wanted to go with the 'beard' explanation." Marinette was looking up at him; he could feel her eyes on his jaw as he worked through the answer, the best way to phrase the reality of his experience and compress down ... decades of abuse and thoughts that had been twisted up, plucked out, and then sewn into patterns, seen and unseen, by his father's hands.
He loved the way that she looked at him, even when he couldn't see her eyes. There was a feeling to it that heated his flesh, set his heart palpitating like – like it had never known how to beat before he'd met her, but as Kagami pressed her lips to the crown of his head, right where she'd tapped him, and began to fiddle with his cat ears, insensate but still tugging at the roots of his hair so it seemed like she was giving him soothing head-scritches, a peaceful stream of sensation like a crystal clear river of water, freshly melted and pure, washed out the heat.
How did they balance and match each other, handing off duties and roles, so expertly? How did they take on so many personae and still remain themselves?
Grip tightening on Marinette's hip, he swallowed. "It's... selfish."
Kagami frowned, jutting out her chin in a display of defiance. "Good."
"Well, I- I just wanted this to be ours," he admitted with a rueful grin.
"You mean our relationship?" Marinette's hand moved along his jaw, questing for that perfect... spot...
A purr spilled out, loud and lustrous, as he melted.
"Yeah." The reverberating hum turned his voice into a slurry as he began to paw at all the softness around him absently. "If it's important for you – either of you – to be honest about it, then absolutely. Let's do it. Tell everyone."
Much to his consternation, a most unmanly whimper rising up from his throat before he could stop it, she stopped scratching almost immediately. Needed him lucid, he supposed. Pity.
"But it's important to you that we don't," Kagami observed, her mouth set into a fine line.
"That would turn ... what we have into a spectacle, you know?" This time he did shrug, unsettling both of them. An accident. Or an on-purpose but unconscious accident. "Something that fans would be following. Something the media would report on and analyze. They'd – they'd make a massive production of it."
"And if he couldn't suppress it, your father would turn it into another PR production, spinning it to his benefit or-" Marinette bit her lip, and he really wanted to scold her for it. No hurting his princess. And lip-nibbling was his and Kagami's privilege.
Ever a faithful partner, Kagami finished the thought for her. "Colouring it and using it to drum up publicity, or otherwise exploit it."
And that was it exactly. His father understood relationships as pure transaction. Every item was merely an economic integer, and though he envisioned his father's face, seen through a haze of dense, soiled fog, as he forced Adrien to run through an itemized list of expectations and PR firm guidelines, he saw Lila and remembered that it was Nathalie who had instructed him, drawn up the list, made him memorize it.
His father had been too busy.
"I know that's stupid because they already do that with you, Marinette, and – and you deserve better than that-" Did she hear him saying what he really meant? "But he'd make it..." Chat Noir was on the chaise, with his girlfriends, but Adrien Agreste shook his head and it did nothing to clear away the image. "He'd take it away from us. One way or another."
Commentators had occasionally remarked that Ryuuko and Ladybug were strikingly similar: dark-haired, fierce Asian superheroines with similar builds and temperaments who, at least in Adrien's opinion, looked great in red, though Ryuuko was slightly more brash and flamboyant in her sword flourishes than Ladybug was with her yo-yo, given their respective roles.
In that moment, the sneering contempt attenuated and moderated by a thick layer of concern that shone forth from both Kagami and Marinette in equal measure left them as near mirror images.
"What we have isn't perfect. Nothing is. But it's worth it. Kagami is, and you are. No one is ever taking you away from us, Minou," Marinette assured with a smile that was as gentle as her eyes were fierce, and the pair's cuddles amplified from 'comforting weighted blanket' to 'rib-breaking,' set to the tune of creaking bones and a whine that was far from an expression of physical pain.
"Not your father, not my mother, and certainly not Lila, as we've demonstrated today." There was a tightness in his gut as all the ire and bitterness was squeezed and condensed by the force of Kagami's hold, spiraling inwards as if falling into a black hole and then compressed out of existence with the faintest of *pops* that echoed in his skull.
Just like Lila, really.
The ostracism that she faced for blurting out Marinette's supposed "secret" - which was ... half correct – right in front of the whole class meant that she probably wouldn't be attending school for the next few weeks at least.
That lying disease certainly was a crippling disorder.
Not that Adrien, and, he suspected, his girlfriend, and their girlfriend devoted even one more moment's thought to her that evening.