It was like a long forgotten mark on a calendar, the last grappling with parental responsibility, the moment of trying to appease him that doesn't falter, becomes many moments instead.
Adrien can't think of when they entered this practically solo dance, when they started watching things fizzle and fade; perhaps it was after his mother left, though he'd come to doubt that that was the true start of this cut off.
He'd never been super close to his father as the man ran the house like an extended office, and Adrien was left like a secretary, not even in control of his fate in this broken place.
It start felt like a spark had sizzled and danced before his mother had left, before she vanished without even a trace, and he wonders if it had used up its last surge of electrical energy, its last surge of joy, on the day that she walked out that door and left with no packed suitcase, no beloved brooch, no pictures, no clothes, nothing to her name aside from whatever was on her back.
Adrien wondered though what they were really clinging to whenever his father relented or Adrien pushed for something a little more, a little like retaliation, though against what he isn't ever quite certain.
He doesn't shove or push or do much of anything when his father's arms loop around him, pull him tight, and he remembers the past like a mark on an old calendar, once valuable, though mostly just a relic for fools to grab out of the trash, and he realizes this hug feels a lot like that: a hidden charm, a tell tale tribute of the past.
It doesn't matter whether his father used to hug him more when he was younger, when his mother was still around, as it just feels like something that belongs in the olden days, something unreal, something that they are barely holding on to.
Words fester on his tongue, half reminders and fading memories, half things that can bounce off the walls and cause arguments; sometimes he isn't quite sure where the cut off between child Adrien and Cat Noir are compared to this strange limbo of who he is now.
He smiles and hopes that his father doesn't find it a weak one or see just a model smile staring up at him; he feels somewhere like the pit of his stomach that his father can just tell from hours spent with models, hours spent with his mother, when a smile was faked purely for the camera's sake or some strange means of hiding the world from the heart of the one that is smiling.
There's a certain secrecy to modeling, something that peeks out of the blinds of where reality meets fantasy, and Adrien realizes that sometimes he's still stuck in that middle ground when he's supposed to just be Adrien.
When his father pulls back, Adrien can just imagine that this isn't like stepping up to a cliff and realizing all that's before you is such a steep fall, a winding path that gets you nowhere fast, while what's behind you is gone and dead like wilting flowers that haven't seen a watering can or steady rainfall in months.
It feels both like the last moment that could ever be like this and one of the last; as if there's a silent expectation of what they can find just around this bend, just turn another corner, let reality brush along beside you.
Adrien takes a deep breath, either for his sake or for his father's, but neither sake speaks the loudest to his own mind, and he tries to smile again.
"Don't pretend for me." His father's eyes focus on something quite far in the distance, "I worry sometimes that that's what people in my life always do to me."
There's the silent heartbreak of what if his mom had been doing that for years, and Adrien can't look at his father for a while even as he spins on his heel and leaves the room.
The feeling of loss or almost loss clings to the much too big space, and Adrien realizes that he and his father may never be close again; this is a type of loss without his mother fleeing, without someone dying, it's another loss, the almost could have beens becoming just reminders of the past.
Adrien remembers that calendar again as he moves past the broken silence in his room that irritates his ears with its ringing, and his attention is so far rotted away by all that's fading faster than he could ever dare let it, that Plagg's words are too soft for his ears.