(A/N)- A Bad Things Happen Bingo request. The prompt was "Insecurity" with Adrien, and hoo boy did this one hurt to write.
But I was glad to get to branch out a little with my whump/angst targets.
Enjoy?
Disclaimer: *grumbles something incoherent about Season Three*
Enough
Adrien always felt like his life was a tightrope walk, balancing on the razor's edge of perfection. The spotlight blared in his face, and every move—every unsteady step, every wobble, every moment of precarious balance—was watched and judged by hundreds of eyes from below looking up at him, including the ringleader.
His father, the man who controlled every facet of his schedule and public persona, keeping a careful lid on all of Adrien's comings and goings lest he slip up and do something to embarrass the Agreste name.
And yet the house was always crushingly empty, his father directing his life from a distance, never involved, never interested, never invested. The soloist played on but the conductor had gone out for lunch, leaving him alone on the stage under the blinding lights, performing the same song over and over for the faceless audience.
The paradox of observation—of being watched and yet unwatched at the same time—was almost enough to make him scream.
Nothing he did ever seemed entirely right. Even when he was out with his friends—with Nino and Chloe and Marinette and everyone in class—it always felt like he was one move away from disaster, one sour, incorrect note, one wobble too many that would send him plummeting down.
Still he threw himself into the performance. He did every modeling gig his father asked him to. Studied until the wee hours of the morning, his only companions Plagg and a solitary desklamp. Went to all the after-school functions scheduled for him. Practiced and practiced the piano until his fingers wanted to fall off.
It never felt truly genuine. It always felt stiff, deadened, rehearsed. He could polish his motions to a sheen and there would always be some lingering artificial quality to it, because Adrien could not put his heart into it no matter how hard he tried.
He just wanted to be out of the spotlight. To not have eyes constantly watching him, looking for imperfections, cracks in his perfect image. Small blemishes. Skin folds he'd maybe let get a little too fat. An angry outburst he maybe should have held in instead of letting come out, no matter how righteous and justified.
He only felt truly like himself when he put on the mask.
Chat Noir was another performance, but one wholly his own, not dictated to him by his father and the weight of expectation. It was something vivid and personal, not bound by the stringent rules of Adrien Agreste, son of the famous fashion designer, and all the weight that role carried. He could be quippy. Make all the bad puns he wanted to. He could be flirty, teasing and playful and maybe just a touch too inappropriate for his own good. He could be bold and brave and charming and powerful and free-spirited and everything he wanted to be and he was happier playing the part of the superhero, celebrated for what he did rather than who he was. Beloved by Paris.
...And even then it still wasn't enough to capture the heart of the one he truly wanted.
He pretended her disinterest didn't bother him. Ladybug at least confided in him, gave him credit when he did something right, trusted him to have her back and—he was pretty sure—did care about him deep down. Even though he wanted more, what she gave him was often more than satisfactory. He felt real with her. Relied-upon. Warm.
There was nothing warm about his father.
Adrien let his mind drift as he ran through yet another iteration of the Etude Op. 10 No. 3 by Chopin. There was a complicated part in the middle that he just wanted to get right, just once. His hands flew over the keys as he concentrated, lost in the performance, balancing so, so very carefully along that tightrope edge.
The melody played out, ringing off the corners of the empty mansion, filling the open space with gentle music. Adrien came to the end and slowed down tenderly, letting out a breath as the final notes echoed through the room.
He tingled softly. It had sounded beautiful. Moving. Almost like something he would have done as Chat Noir, from the depths of passion in his heart and with strength and confidence in his own abilities. Chopin had always been his favorite composer and it felt like, just for once, he had done the man justice.
He didn't know what caused him to look up as his hands left the keys, but he did, and there was his father. Gabriel Agreste stood to the side, hovering just inside the doorway to Adrien's room, and Adrien's breath caught, his body stilling, freezing like ice had traveled down every limb from head to toe.
He waited, breathless with anticipation, everything in him keening to hear what the man would say.
His father... smiled.
"That was lovely, Adrien," he said.
Adrien's heart began to lift—
"There was a wrong note as you came out of the interlude and you didn't hit the glissendos as cleanly as you could have," his father continued. "Take it again from the top, with more emphasis on the chords this time."
His heart sank all the way down into his shoes.
Not enough.
It was never enough.
Still, he nodded meekly, replied, "Yes father," with all the patient obedience of a practiced doll, and began again, taking a first step out onto the tightrope and praying desperately not to look down.
(A/N)- You can request a prompt/character over on Tumblr. See this post: h tt [#]p s: / / tari silmarwen . tu mb lr . c[#]o m / post / 673415204767465472 / im- doing- a-bad-things-happen- bingo- because (delete the spaces and the special characters in the brackets)
