Adrien felt too much. That's what his mother had always said. He never just felt happy, he felt exuberant, he felt buoyant, he felt radiant. Instead of sad, he was distraught, he was inconsolable. Instead of mad, he was furious.
Sometimes, when he was feeling exhilarated, he could feel adrenaline pumping through his veins, could feel his very soul vibrating with energy. His eyes would be bright and his cheeks would be rosy and he would just about explode until his mother took him to the backyard so he could run around and chase the bunnies and birds and release the backed up vigor.
On nights when he was despondent and his chest hurt and all he could do was heave sobs and curl up in his bed, his mother would climb in right next to him. She would hold him, rock him, soothe him with patient words and gentle touches. When he was agitated and felt like his skin was too tight, she would give him space and let him pace in circles around the foyer. When he was enraged she would gather him into her arms and squeeze him tightly until his emotions faded away.
Sometimes, he needed a little bit of help grounding himself. His mother understood. His father didn't.
He tried his hardest not to act up around his father. His mother would squeeze his shoulder or pinch his side in warning if he was too jittery, too doleful, too irate. He would do his best to suppress whatever emotion was consuming him. Sometimes he would clench his fists tightly, bite the inside of his cheek, or pull off the hairs on his arm. He would feel a bit duller, a bit numb, and he thought that was enough.
It wasn't, apparently. Nothing was ever enough for his father.
He had been bouncing his leg too much at the dinner table when his father suddenly loomed over him and grabbed his arm. His father shook him and breathed angrily in his face and all Adrien could do was let his limbs go limp and senseless.
He was waiting for a photo shoot to begin and fuming over how unfair it was that he had to miss his playdate with Chloé when his father took hold of his shoulders and shoved him against the wall.
He was sniffling and rubbing at his eyes when his favorite toy ripped (a soft cat he had held close to him since he was an infant) when his father took the toy out of his hands and threw it against the wall with a loud thud.
(In those moments, he wasn't just scared. He was petrified.
Adrien learned how to lock away his emotions. He learned to feign calm smiles. He learned to compose himself in front of his father, in front of managers, in front of photographers. He learned to be a new person.
It became easy after awhile. Every time he felt his emotions riling up in his stomach, he would imagine his father's hand around his arm, his father's breath on his face, his father's palm on his cheek. Fear, concealed as numbness, as placidness, became the only emotion he felt.
When his father grabbed his arm a little too hard or loomed over him in a threatening manner, Adrien would stare blankly ahead and give in to whatever demand was being thrust upon him. When a photographer got a little too touchy, he remained calm and collected, never showing any outward discomfort. When a makeup artist scrutinized his body, pinched his baby fat, he simply breathed.
He found that it was safer to feel nothing at all than to feel too much.
Adrien saw his mother deteriorating right alongside him. He saw her skipping meals, locking herself away in her room, donning bruised eyelids and gaunt cheekbones. Sometimes he would sit outside her room with his ear pressed against her door. Sometimes he would hear her shuffling under the covers, walking across the floor, breathing heavily in her sleep. Sometimes he would hear nothing and worry she was dead.
He once sat outside his mother's door for six hours, right beside a tray of food the maid left for her to retrieve. He watched the lettuce in her salad wilt, and felt his chest ache with a glint of melancholy.
Sometimes she had good days. Sometimes she would smile and cook him crêpes filled with hazelnut spread and topped with heavy cream. Sometimes they cuddled on his bed and watched superhero movies together. Sometimes she came along with him to his photoshoots and cooed over him as he posed.
But most days she distanced herself so much that when she actually disappeared, it felt like almost nothing had changed.
It was approximately two months after his mother's disappearance that Adrien started trying to get attention from his father. It had been two months of no threatening glares, no shoves, no bruised-up arms, and Adrien knew he should have been relieved. But he found himself longing for some sort of physical interaction from a parent, whether it be good or bad.
Adrien started being difficult at photoshoots, not sitting still for hair and makeup, complaining about the outfits being too tight or itchy, deliberately fidgeting while photos were being taken. He slacked off in his Chinese lessons, didn't practice piano, sat on the bench during fencing lessons. Adrien would stare at his food during mealtimes, watching the food grow cold and lackluster. His father never commented on any of it.
His final act of rebellion was asking to go to public school. When his father turned down the request Adrien made snarky comments, talked back, acted as out of character as he possibly could. The slap on his face he received snapped him out of his stupor and he found himself smiling sickeningly as he walked to his room with a red mark on his cheek.
Even with his new friends at school, even with the safe and secure environment, even with all the great changes in his life, Adrien still felt empty. He still feigned smiles for everyone at school, still stood with artificial confidence around his friends, still didn't feel a single emotion.
Chat Noir was a different story, however. He was thriving. He spent hours every day leaping across rooftops, scaling the sides of buildings, sitting on the tallest towers he could find. He started to look forward to Akuma attacks, just so he could experience the adrenaline rush fighting always seemed to result in. He longed to feel in control, powerful, alive.
Chat Noir could feel. He could feel the zeal in the air, the woe in the rain, the pique in the ground. He felt the vivacity in Ladybug's laugh, the ribbing in her smile, the gaiety in her run.
Feeling was something Adrien had missed.
The two superhero partners had agreed to patrol the city every night; typically Chat took care of the southern regions of the city while Ladybug patrolled the north. They would meet up afterward and Chat would ambush her with awful puns and silly stories, and the heroine would mock him in return and challenge him to races and games of tag.
Sometimes she would get irritated with him, and he could feel the vexation rolling off her in waves. He was immature, she would say. He needed to grow up, to be more serious, to stop being so annoying.
Adrien tried not to dwell on his partner's obvious dislike of him. He liked himself as Chat, and that was all that mattered.
For the most part, Adrien steered clear of social media. It was full of people idolizing his body, of people reimagining his life based on photographs and snippets of dialogue. People said they loved him, said he was perfect, that he was the ideal image of adolescence. They cropped photos to highlight his eyes, his mouth, his hair, his chest. All they did was make him acutely aware of the unevenness of his pupils, the crooked tooth he sported on his left side, the greasy effect product always had on his hair, the weight he bore in his upper body.
They love you, his manager had said. You're the embodiment of perfection.
Adrien could never take these words to heart. They didn't love him. He wasn't a boy, he was a ghost, an echo, a hole.
Their words of praise and love and adoration never got through to him. They were meaningless, they were void of anything real. They meant nothing.
The only words that hit him with emotion these days were his father's (You've disappointed me, you're a disgrace to the Agreste name, you're too much like your mother). Those words meant everything.
AN: Thank you for reading. I honestly have such a hard time liking anything I write and tend to hate everything after it's been up for more than a week, so hopefully I don't end up deleting this like everything else lol