Summary: After months of lies and clandestine dating, Marinette wants to come out to her parents and introduce them to her girlfriend... and their boyfriend so that they can get the support that they need, but even good parents aren't perfect parents.

Adrien and Kagami had been forced to "break up" due to Gabriel and Tomoe's mutual agreement that their children only encouraged each other to embrace destructive, rebellious impulses that could not be countenanced.

Given the lingering wounds inflicted by her partners' parents, Marinette assured them that now was the time for them to be open regarding the true nature of their relationship. She seemed like she was always bold when it came to defending other people, attending to their needs; anxiety only ever really overtook her when she had to be "selfish." As they had struggled through their own crises with honesty and were still recovering, piecing themselves back together, they knew how important the chance to live honestly actually was.

So, Adrien found himself having dinner with Tom, Sabine, Marinette, and Kagami. The entire meal was a bustle of breads and authentic, homemade Chinese foods that mingled with the flavours of Italy and France, and there was never silence. There was only warm life, and it scalded after the chill of meals with Gabriel, or, more often than that, dinners alone in the massive Agreste dining room.

It overwhelmed Kagami when Marinette introduced them as her boyfriend and their girlfriend – the noise and the heat and the way that Tom had grinned and started planning out a rather complex wedding while Sabine busied herself with dinner, attending to the kitchen so her husband could gush.

Their girlfriend had looked to him, eyes frantic as they were when she was exposed to the din of a large crowd, so he held her hand under the table, trying to match the vicious force of her squeeze. He knocked his foot against hers when she failed to respond to Tom's attempts to coax her into a conversation as he ladled more of his wife's brazed pork balls onto both fencers' plates because they needed more protein to support all that lean muscle mass that was starting to show through from behind Adrien's increasingly tight tee-shirts.

Eventually, Kagami let go, getting lost as she delivered a master-class on fencing technique that had Tom nodding along as if he understood. As if her interests were hers, rather than something imposed and expected, so they mattered just because they were important to her.

Neither of them needed to cling onto a lifeline.

Marinette just watched all of them like they were strutting down a catwalk, modelling her clothes – impressed, abashed, awed, disbelieving.

And, more than anything else, proud because her father was appreciating them and not what they were wearing, their clothing or their masks.

He knew that because he felt the same expression bloomed across his own face – slow contented spreading of the lips and the easy slackness of his cheeks as all the worry fled from her and so from him as well. While Kagami mimed the stroke that scored her the winning point in their last match, Marinette took his other hand and he played with her knuckles, imagining all the kisses he'd levelled to them and her palm.

Marinette had tried to divert her parents when they brought up the subject of Gabriel and Tomoe, Sabine tightening up and Tom boasting that, should they know, surely they would be proud that their respective child had managed to catch the interest of Marinette, on whom everyone seemed to have a crush. It came to a head when Tom had insisted that he was going to call up his future brother and sister-in-law once removed – as he put it – and start discussing wedding dates and the kinds of ceremonies that could include a fusion of French, Japanese, and Chinese traditions, even if only two of them could get married legally.

"Papa, please. They don't know and they can't know because – because they'll do something terrible," Marinette pleaded, hand to her father's burly shoulder, but he was too far gone to listen.

"Oh, Marinette! Don't be ridiculous. Any mother or father would be thrilled to hear they're getting you as a daughter-in-law!"

She deflated and shrunk back, but Tom hardly even seemed to notice.

If it had been Gabriel, Adrien truly had no idea what he might have done – what he might have regretted.

But this was his father. At least, he hoped.

"Sir, with all due respect, please don't dismiss Marinette like that. If she's afraid of something, you should listen." Was this harshness cathartic – the fact that he could say this to someone who might listen if he heard? "It- it's very cruel to make someone feel like – like what they're saying doesn't matter. Like he doesn't matter."

Tom looked as if he'd just been sucker-punched in the gut by a super-powered Chat Noir, rather than a lanky Adrien Agreste.

"I'm sorry if I offended you." His gaze fell to the interlocking slats of brown tile-work at his feet, while he wished for the snake miraculous which still sometimes featured in his nightmares, those where he was trapped in a new kind of prison, walls within walls, so that he could take it back and be more gentle when speaking out of turn because he shouldn't do that.

Kneeling so that he was shorter than Adrien, Tom cradled his shoulder in a massive hand and looked him straight in the eye.

"You never have to apologize for defending my little girl. From anyone." He looked away, to Sabine, who was smiling at him in a way that didn't reach her eyes – eyes that were painfully tight – and they seemed to hold an entire conversation in the span of a few silent moments.

Chat Noir had that with "Ladybug," but Adrien was yet to arrive at that point with Marinette or Kagami. You had to choose that kind of intimacy every day, work towards it.

Tom turned back to him.

"And you never have to apologize for choosing who you love over someone who doesn't accept you."

Neither Adrien, nor, as it turned out, Kagami, had realized just how much they needed to hear that as Tom opened his arms wide in invitation.

An invitation that, with some trepidation on Kagami's part, both heirs accepted as they were accepted.

They didn't regret choosing that, either.

Author's Notes

Tom is a delightfully supportive parent, but for a man whose father shunned him for years due to marrying "outside of his race," as is the clear implication, he has something of a problem actually listening to his daughter sometimes.

Thank you to all those of you who have suck out this story, offering your thoughts, suppositions, and praise along the way, such as Yellow14, Animewatcher202, Yorume, mckellepstephen, and others. Without the support of readers, and your encouragement, I would merely be shouting into the wind.

You you be blessed, and happy reading, wherever your travels take you.