Chapter Text
For Andre “The Ice Cream Man” Glacier, all relationships were a pleasure to behold. Aged couples who showed off pictures of their grandchildren while picking out old, familiar flavours, long enjoyed. Newly-weds, sampling something comfortable made fresh and exciting again because those same varieties of ice cream fit into a wondrously novel new cone.
But, oh! There was nothing in this world that brought him more joy than seeing budding romance, and capping it off with a flourish of his ice cream scoop, blessing couples with a combination suited just for them.
Of course, that also meant that there were disappointments, and ice cream was all too often a balm to a bruised or broken heart as much as it was a saccharine sacrament for sweethearts.
Today was one of those “all too often” times, it seemed.
Two lovely children who had seen him in months past, dancing around each other, he felt, were standing before him again: Marinette Dupain-Cheng, whom he remembered because there was just something magical about her that matched the mystical power of his ice cream, and the world-renowned teenage model Adrien Agreste.
So many broken hearts over that boy. So many schoolgirls who had never met him, hoping to get a green and yellow-topped cone only to leave disappointed.
And schoolboys, too, particularly that Wayhem lad who kept coming back to the cart, time and time again, hoping for a different cone and being disappointed each week. It was actually one of the reasons that Andre had decided to start moving his cart to a new location each day.
Not that any of that was Adrien's fault, by any means - teenagers had celebrity crushes; and celebrities had stalkers - but still sad.
Today, though, the broken heart might be something of his fault.
Marinette's doll-blue eyes focused on one tub and then the next and the next: Orange, Blackberry, and Peppermint.
Poor girl. Too much was on her shoulders, but the choice had to be made, and both the other girl, Kagami, he believed, and Adrien had put the responsibility on her.
One of the two girls was going to be leaving with sweetheart ice cream and the other with heart-break ice cream, he felt.
Because, really, Orange, Blackberry, and Peppermint. That just wouldn't work together.
Then, the school girl in black, white, and plaid interjected.
“Actually Marinette, I'm suddenly feeling slightly tired,” Kagami said while pointing off towards a park that adjoined the area in which Andre had set up his cart today, drawing Marinette from her apparent fretting, fraught musings over ice cream flavours. “Would you and Adrien be so kind as to check to see if there is a shaded bench there. I would like to get out of the sun.”
“Sure, Kagami,” Adrien offered with a nod. “Will you handle the ice cream?”
“Just scout the park and then you can come back,” she replied brusquely. “I wish to review the many interesting flavours that are on offer here, as I have never been to Andre's cart before.”
“Ah, if you're sure, Kagami,” Marinette said with a slow, uncomprehending look back and forth between the fencer and the model. “Wouldn't you rather I get the ice cream while you and Adrien head off to find a seat? I can bring it to you.”
“No, no, Marinette,” Kagami assured with a wave. “You are our friend, and it is only right that you should spend time alone with Adrien in the same way that all three of us have spent time together today.”
“Okay,” she mumbled dubiously, blushing strawberry-ice-cream pink when Adrien grabbed her by the hand and tugged her towards the park.
“Come on, Mari! Let's go find a seat,” Adrien enthused, followed by a stuttering Marinette, whose eyes were locked firmly on their joined hands.
“They are beautiful, are they not?” Kagami said once the pair had crossed the street and begun to penetrate into the park.
"Quite a lovely couple, it's true. But where, I ask, does that leave you?" Andre questioned. Such an incredibly self-sacrificial girl, giving up on the boy she loved ... and the girl, if his sixth-sense for such things was correct.
"It would be a terrible shame if Parisian health inspectors were to find that you engage in unsanitary practices, would it not?"
What? The very idea! Ridiculous and a non-sequitur.
"Why, my little dear,” Andre began as gently as he could, suppressing the natural indignation. After all, the poor girl had just gotten her heart broken... twice. “Andre runs a clean cart, it's clear."
Turning in a sudden jerk that had Andre's heart clench in shock, she whirled on him. Her somehow electric brown eyes gleamed, cold and threatening, pinning him in place before her.
They were the eyes of a predator.
“Hm,” she grumbled as she put a hand to the edge of his cart and leaned in. “If someone were to fall ill after consuming your product, particularly after taking instagram shots with Adrien Agreste of all people, the negative press alone would be enough to shut you down.”
Tugging at his bursting collar as sweat that was in no way related to the heat of the day began to collect in the myriad folds of his flabby flesh did nothing to alleviate the choking sensation that assailed him. Andre only just managed to maintain a smile.
“Whyever would one want to complain? Not enjoying sweethearts' ice cream is simply insane.”
Kagami growled at him, jerking forward to grab him by the front of his shirt and tug him down to her level, just above the spread of ice cream. Under her now-heated, unflinching glare, he melted, like a scoop of ice cream on steaming black asphalt in the midst of a heatwave, into a blubbering (and blubbery) mess.
"Listen you,” she said in a cool, detached rumble. “I just spent ten minutes frolicking in a ball pit with a supermodel and a goddess after which he serenaded us while drooling over the sight of her with her hair down. I am this close!" The point was emphasized when she squeezed her thumb and forefinger together in front of his face, leaving only a millimetre between them, and then jabbed a finger into his nose.
"And you are not going to fuck it up for me with peppermint and orange ice cream, magic or not! Or I'll skewer you through with my bokken and spit-roast you over a campfire. You understand?"
“Yes, ma'am,” Andre whimpered, though he didn't, not even daring to try to tug himself free. From trembling hands, his ice cream scoop tumbled to the ground.
“Good,” Kagami added icily before pointing down to his lost scoop, which was now attracting ants. “And don't use that ice cream scoop.”
“No, ma'am.” He shook his head frantically.
While he busied himself with his cart, keeping his eyes to his work so as not to attract the... monster's wrath, he pondered possible ice cream replacements. That was his job, and that was safe... usually. For her part, the daemon girl simply reclined against the wrought fencing to the side of his cart and withdrew a cell phone which she reviewed with studious care.
Mercifully, the other two angelic children returned only about a minute later, Adrien waving to the pair excitedly.
“Hey, Kagami! Mari found a really great spot in front of a flower bed,” the model shouted from across the street, the girl blushing and trembling when he said 'Mari.' It grew worse when he stroked her shoulder approvingly.
“It's out-of-the-way and has some great shade,” he finished as he reached the cart.
“Did you nice scream?” Marinette bumbled and then focused wholly on the ice cream cart. “I-I mean get nice- Ice! Cream- that is?”
“Yes, Marinette, Andre was just about to serve us our flavours,” Kagami said as she ushered the two forward. They moved to stand in-front of Andre and Kagami receded, and while the distance between them, and the barrier created by the other two children, offered Andre momentary relief, to his abject horror, he found that, now, her new position just allowed Kagami to glower at him without the possibility of them knowing what she was doing.
“Ah, yes,” he fumbled. “Orange and blackberry, an unusual pair-”
Kagami cleared her throat... which she began to drag her forefinger over under the pretense of scratching an itch.
“But- but not one that I think... is soon to err!” he finished in a scream, gabbing a waffle cone and smashing two ugly lumps of blackberry and orange ice cream into it.
“Next is peppe-”
Kagami smiled.
Smiled like a great white shark, all jagged teeth.
“-lime,” Andre corrected while sniveling, tossing another scoop to the ground, and plunging a new one into the bucket of lime ice cream. “Because that's... just sublime.”
Marinette and Adrien looked at the stumbling, twitching Andre, who was now struggling to plop the lime ice cream into the waffle cone, as if they were worried that he had lost his mind.
For her part, Kagami just rolled her hand in a gesture to for him to 'keep going.'
“Sublime just like this. ... unique combination of ice cream... that shouldn't split up because it works... best?”
Kagami nodded, head bobbing up and down like a languid drinking bird on a desktop, wooden and mechanical.
“Don't you usually rhyme your ice cream, Andre?” Adrien asked in that gentle way of his with a slightly-disappointed droop of his head. Much to the benefit of Andre's strained heart, it had the little devil girl looking away from him for a second to smile at the blonde, clearly smitten.
But then, after that strangely sweet moment, she turned on him again, and her narrowed eyes spoke to him.
Rhyme for him, fat man.
“Rhyme is fine for normal couples,” Andre laughed hysterically while holding out the ice cream cone and pleading mentally for someone to take it from him, “but something special when- when one foresees a... throuple?”
Rhyming couple and throuple? Chef's kiss.
“What's a throuple?” Adrien asked with his head quirked.
Marinette was now no longer casting glances at the various forms of ice cream and was, instead, jerking her eyes between a radically smug Kagami and the young blonde model who blinked with a little confused kitten expression on his face.
“It doesn't matter, Adrien,” Kagami soothed. “You shouldn't question the magic of Andre's ice cream, right?”
“I guess,” the boy offered with a shrug before taking the mixture of orange, green, and purplish ice cream from Andre's hands and plopping down a twenty euro note, which was far more than he had to pay, but Andre wasn't going to tell him that.
He was probably going to retire after today, so he needed the extra money.
Mopping his brow and slumping against the railing behind him, he watched as Kagami took Marinette by the hand and extended the free one to Adrien. A gentle hum of pleasure rumbled in the model's throat, sounding suspiciously like a purr, as he brought the ice cream to his mouth, laving his tongue across all three scoops to collect their combined flavour.
Decadent melting cream washed over his lips, which came away stinging and multicoloured with purple and yellow hues, making them appear sinfully bruised.
Though Adrien had made a little sticky mess of himself, both girls were the ones who licked their lips almost simultaneously, clearly interested in sampling ... something sweet.
Hand in hand, with Kagami in the middle, the triad walked off towards the park in the distance, Adrien ambling along happily, his expression oblivious, Kagami walking beside him with confident strides, and Marinette tripping over her own feet as she watched the boy mouth his ice cream cone.
Unconcerned regarding the possibility of cross-contamination of ice cream, Andre dipped his new scoop into two other buckets, mingling the remaining lime with the other flavours, then tested the combination absently.
Orange, lime, and blackberry.
Oh! That was actually quite nice...