MiracuCrack #4MB: When No Words Can Suffice
by DFC
(Timeline: Post-Season 3.)
"Your father wishes to speak with you."
There's a sentence that's full of... I don't know what, thought Adrien. Nathalie seemed a little bit off of her normal self when she told me... like she was uncomfortable with something. I wonder what this could be about?
He sat quietly on his computer desk chair, occupying himself with some random web searches until he heard his bedroom door open.
"Hello, Father," Adrien greeted him.
"Good afternoon, Adrien," Gabriel replied as he approached. He pulled a chair over, placed it across from Adrien and sat down in it, a bit awkwardly. "I'm glad that we could have this time together."
"I'm always happy to spend time with you," said Adrien. "Nathalie told me that there's something that you wanted to talk to me about?"
"There is. It concerns Miss Tsurugi."
Adrien frowned slightly at that. Now what? he wondered. It's hard enough for me to work out my real feelings for Kagami with our parents pushing us together, the way that they have been. Am I going to get a lecture here about something that I've done wrong with her?
"I'm, er... trying to work out how i should begin this," Gabriel harrumphed.
"Now I'm a little worried," fretted Adrien. "What's so important that you can't just tell me?"
"All right, I'll try."
Gabriel cleared his throat, closed his eyes, then focused an intense stare at his son.
"My son, you are reaching an age where young women are becoming more than just classmates and friends to you. You are rapidly transitioning from boy to man, and with that transition comes certain... ah. urges. Drives. Changes that may encourage you to want new things."
A startled Adrien was speechless.
"With your romance with Miss Tsurugi proceeding nicely, it has come to my attention that at some point, the two of you may wish to become... physically amorous," his father continued. "Naturally, I would assume that you would already understand the need for discretion in such matters. The last thing that we need is paparazzi photographs of the two of you, being caught in a compromising position in public!"
"Father...?" Adrien stammered. "Okay. Wow. I don't know what you've seen... or think that you've seen... but we have never... ever! We have started kissing a bit, but... only when we're alone together? And we don't get very much of that kind of private time to begin with."
"Good," Gabriel muttered. "Then I am not too late with this."
"...Too late for what?"
"Ahem," grunted Gabriel, clearing his throat once more. "As your relationship progresses, the desire for physical intimacy will no doubt increase for both of you. This calls for extreme discretion on your part; an unplanned child would certainly be a most disastrous outcome for all involved."
"Children?" gasped Adrien. "Just what do you think that we're... doing?"
"And," continued Gabriel, undaunted, "it is also important for you to approach intimacy with the proper mindset. A healthy attitude towards sex is vital to the success of a relationship! Like what your mother and I share, for instance."
Silently, so as not to alarm his father, Adrien glanced around his bedroom to see if any jugs of brain bleach were nearby.
"And so, Adrien... it is time for you to learn about the birds and the bees, as they say. Not just the mechanics of reproduction... but the nuances of pleasing a lover, as well."
Okay! thought Adrien. So this is Hell. It's not as hot as I thought it would be here.
"I... should probably stop you before we go too far with this, Father," he managed, haltingly. "I am already aware of the... um... mechanics part of that. How babies are made, how bodies change during puberty... that sort of thing."
"I see," Gabriel replied, with something of a frown. "Some sort of... street education? Loose talk amongst your classmates? I do hope that they haven't been filling your mind with misinformation."
"N-no," Adrien said. "For one thing, we do have Health classes in school, and sexual education is part of it at our age. They're actually very helpful; they're open to all sorts of questions about our bodies and how they work, and even have a drop-box for questions that we might be too embarrassed to ask aloud. There's a group class for general knowledge, and separate workshops for boys and for girls for the more intimate topics."
"That is a relief. I think," mused Gabriel. "That could save us considerable time here."
"...And I had researched some of that on my own. Years ago. It seemed like very important information to know," Adrien added. "I assumed that you knew that I had been looking up certain topics, as about a week later, a new content filter popped up on my web browser."
"Yesss... it did," his father said, shifting uneasily. "At the time, we had assumed that you were simply looking things up for the purposes of... ah..."
"Self-gratification?"
"That would be it. Not that it is an inherently bad thing," Gabriel stammered, "or one that should carry any kind of shame-"
"Stop right there. Please," Adrien waved his hands. "Look. I'm fifteen, okay? I can assure you that I, uh... understand how that works."
One thing's good to know, he thought to himself. I might be as quiet and discreet as I think I am. Not that Plagg hasn't caught me a few times...
"Good," breathed Gabriel, obviously a bit relieved. "That was a part of this talk that I was, er, not looking forward to."
"That makes two of us," muttered Adrien.
"Now, then. We come to the other major component," Gabriel declared. "As a child of a house of fashion, you should already understand this better than most. Function is important, whether we are speaking of a garment or of body parts... but aesthetics and presentation separate the standout performer from the mundane."
He rose from his seat. "Come with me, please. A small presentation has been prepared."
As he walked down the hallway with his father, Adrien felt like his skin was crawling.
A PRESENTATION?
What kind of horror show am I about to walk into here? he worried. Is this going to be, like... PowerPoint slides with helpful tips? A movie?
Surely, he couldn't have... hired performers to demonstrate, right?
Visions of random factory workers summoned to the mansion to fornicate for his benefit, with his father using a laser pointer to point out interesting details, floated in Adrien's mind's-eye. They were not particularly helpful.
They came to a stop in front of one of the conference rooms that his father used for business purposes.
"Enter, please," Gabriel told him. "If you have any further questions... I will... ah... make myself available as needed. I do hope that this proves educational to you."
Adrien opened the door and stepped into the room, trying not to cringe...
...only to see the Gorilla sitting at the main table, looking equally uncomfortable.
"...Father?" Adrien turned to ask, only to see the door shutting tightly behind him.
Seeing no alternative, Adrien walked over and sat across the table from his bodyguard.
"Well," he sighed. "I suppose that Father talked you into giving this part of my education."
The Gorilla nodded, slowly.
"And that you're not any happier about this than I am," Adrien continued.
The next nod was more vehement... but the big man then shrugged, wearily.
"All right. Thank you for putting up with this," sympathized Adrien. "I want to make sure that you know that this was not my idea. But I will admit... that there are some things about sex that I am at least... curious about? I mean... I've never done anything more than kiss a girl, and that not very often. I'm not planning on more than that any time soon, either. But when the time comes for it, well... I wouldn't mind knowing more about, uh... what to do."
The Gorilla nodded again... then patted his chest, authoritaritively, then waved his hand in Adrien's direction as if he was formally presenting something to him.
"You can help me with that. Good," Adrien breathed, still a bit unsure about this. "I take it that you get no complaints in that department?"
A small, self-satisfied smirk crossed the Gorilla's face, with a You could say that wave of his hand.
"So... how do you want to do this? I mean, I can try to think up some questions for you, or..." ventured Adrien. "Do you have something prepared?"
The Gorilla reached down by his side, and pulled a large bag up into his lap, producing objects from it rapidly.
Adrien's eyes widened as the table between them rapidly filled up with the Gorilla's action figure collection. The figures had been carefully entwined in a wide variety of positions, generally in pairs, although a small number of trios startled Adrien greatly. Most of the impromptu pairings were of opposite sex... though not all of them.
Before the young man's eyes, the Gorilla waved his hand across the tableau, as if asking, Where shall we begin?
"Oh...kay," Adrien managed. "Let's start with... um. Yikes. Ah... okay, I'm into girls, right? And I really think that one at a time is how I would want it. As far as I know. So..."
Unfazed, the Gorilla picked up the same-sex and more-than-two exhibits and moved them off to the side. He reached back into his bag and produced two more dolls, these being larger and unclothed, albeit not fullly anatomically correct. He slid them across the table to Adrien, presumably so that Adrien could arrange them as he saw fit for practice purposes. The boy doll had blonde hair, while the girl's hair was dark.
Adrien stared at them for a moment. "Is there any particular reason that the girl's hair is in pigtails?"
What he got from the Gorilla's response was roughly "it was an educated guess," but Adrien let his follow-up questions to that go unasked.
Adrien closed his bedroom door behind him upon his return, flopping down onto his bed with a muffled thwump! sound from the mattress.
"So," Plagg grinned, approaching him rapidly. "Are you now a fifteen-year-old aspiring sex god?"
"Shut up," Adrien grunted.
"Oooh. I know that your father wasn't exactly the right guy for this job, but was the rest of it that bad?" wondered Plagg.
"To be honest... it wasn't?" said Adrien, sitting up. "I can't say that I'd ever imagined that teaching method. But the Gorilla's a good guy. He was honest with me, he answered what questions I could manage, and it wasn't just this-goes-in-here, that-goes-like-this. He taught me some things about when and where to be gentle, what kinds of motions and acts are well-liked, what to talk about before anything would happen... and those, I really do think will be good for me to know. Someday."
"So you're not going to test them out with Kagami," Plagg prodded him.
"Of course not!" Adrien replied, quickly. "I mean... if things got more intimate between us, and she asked for certain things... I still think that I'd have a problem with it now. We're not there yet. But at least I'd have a better basis for talking about it with her."
After a beat, Adrien added, "He also had interesting ideas of whom he'd expected I would be that in love with first. The girl doll had dark hair and pigtails! Which means that either he's noticed my crush on Ladybug, or..."
"You think that he meant..."
"I don't want to talk about that right now," evaded Adrien. "I might have some thinking to do."
He glanced over at his desk and grimaced, standing up and walking over to it. "One more thing that I need to do right now," he noted.
Plagg watched as Adrien picked up his Ladybug and Chat Noir action figures, stared hard at them for a moment... then put them in a desk drawer and closed it.
"...Are you giving them some privacy?" quipped Plagg, looking amused.
"More like putting them out of harm's way," Adrien sighed, returning to his bed. "They're just not ready."