Watching the sunset from the top of the Eiffel tower with Ladybug as Adrien was a vastly different thing from doing so as Chat Noir.
As Chat Noir, his heart was thumping in exhilaration, even in their quietest moments of companionship. It didn't show, and why would it have? How could she have noticed the difference when his heart had always raced in her presence, so much that he barely thought about it anymore? Skip a beat, and another, and then some, and catch up with all of those beats at once. It was his every night.
As Adrien, he felt like his heart was melting and imploding and exploding all at the same time. He felt like he was melting and imploding all at the same time. He felt so warm and soft and in love he didn't know what to feel.
She had carried him there (the logistics of the trip had been creative and exceedingly dangerous). She had spent an entire hour by his side, watching the sun disappear over the horizon, not only one evening, but for four nights in a rows, all of that just to comfort him.
Every night, Chat Noir had joined her on patrol feeling a little less broken and angry.
It helped.
Marinette also helped. She had brought him pastry. She had made "lunch with Alya and Nino" happen. She tried her best to talk to him every day, even if her words did not always make sense or contain all of the syllables they were meant to contain.
Seeing Nino had cheered him up.
Seeing Alya had cheered him up.
What had not cheered him up where his father's efforts to cheer him up.
Gabriel, who was not able to earn his son's affection through basic human interactions (and God knew Adrien was not setting the bar very high), attempted to buy it instead. He was showering the teenager in gifts and bribes. Adrien had received cinema tickets for a movie premiere, and given them to Nino and Alya while he ran off to patrol as Chat Noir. He had gotten one theme park ticket. He had gotten two free afternoons, one of his photoshoots had been moved to the next week, and he had been given the "very serious and important task" of explaining everything he knew about modeling to Marinette. He figured it was some veiled, disguised way to allow him to interact with a friend. That, or matchmaking. He didn't think it was matchmaking.
While his father's existence made itself clear in monetary form, the physical form had vanished. It took six days, after their discussion about Adrien's mother, for Gabriel to make an appearance. When he finally did, the only thing he noticed was Nathalie.
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If it wasn't about the hair, Nathalie figured, winning the war was easy enough.
###
Adrien had been prodding and poking his breakfast for twenty solid minutes, attempting not to eat it just in case Marinette planned to bring pastry again, when Nathalie arrived and gave him a shock. Not the shock of his life, but not a tiny shock either.
He had never seen her with her hair free before. He had seen her hairdo fall to pieces by accident, but it was not nearly the same as her arriving to work with her hair flowing behind her, every strand of it brushed into straight, silky submission.
The teenager stared at her.
She didn't even look at him. It was business as usual, and business as usual meant 'handing him a tablet with his planning and escaping as fast as humanly possible'.
"I have this afternoon free too?" he asked as soon as he touched the tablet, forcing her to stay long enough to answer him.
Which she did. With cold indifference.
"As long as you are finished with your daily homework before you leave, yes."
She brushed her hair away from her temple, once, twice, and showed more emotion doing that than she usually did talking to Adrien.
"Am I expected back home for supper or can I plan something with friends?" he asked.
"It would be better if you came home before seven", she replied.
Her back was turned to the door, so she didn't see Gabriel enter. She didn't see him pause, his face expressionless but his eyes riveted on her, just her. She didn't see the way he followed the movement of her hand as she pushed her hair over her shoulder for a third time. She didn't see him swallow, clasp his hands behind his back, and straighten up to hide any sign of interest.
Adrien did.
He knew his father. His clasping his hands behind his back was a big tell, if only because his son knew Gabriel did it not to have tells. If you stood behind him, every now and then, you could catch him balling his fists or tapping his fingers, while the rest of him remained perfectly composed.
"Good morning, Father", Adrien said.
"Good morning, Adrien", Gabriel replied with a short nod in his direction.
He unclasped his hands so he could look at his watch instead of at the boy.
"Nathalie. I'm heading to Aria Rossignol's house right now, then I will call you to reorganize the afternoon. She just sent me an email with reference for that gala dress she wants, and it has nothing to do with what she asked for. I forwarded it to you. I'll need a few hours to revise the designs I prepared."
"Very well", Nathalie replied, turning to him without showing any feeling whatsoever. Just boredom.
Adrien wondered if, instead of being angry about that thing they had, he shouldn't have felt worried. His father was so set upon not feeling anything, and Nathalie would be the last person to encourage him out of that.
He watched his father leave. He watch Nathalie escape.
He sighed.
###
Whatever was going on in Gabriel's head needed to stop, because Nathalie was not sure of how many surprise "R&D" afternoons she could take before snapping and taking her boss' calendar editing permissions away.
He had vanished after his appointment with Aria Rossignol, disappearing for three hours, surfacing for the only actual meeting he had that day, then disappearing into thin air before Nathalie could get her hands on him. He had ignored his emails, he had not answered his phone, and - on top of that - she had not been able to keep calling because a new supervillain had taken control of every cell tower in town for most of the afternoon.
She managed to track him down at six in the evening. He had gone to his fencing club, and was busy training.
Her employer was a firm believer in the 'Mens sana in corpore sano' saying. From her perspective, he was halfway there. He practiced sports several hours a week, on schedule, but tended to limit himself to agility training or running. He loved fencing, but had mostly given up on it.
Nathalie had a limited understanding of the sport, especially since Gabriel scarcely ever practiced anymore. From what she gathered, he was good at it. She was used to seeing his defeated opponents walk away in utter frustration, which was not an uncommon reaction to interacting with Gabriel.
He rarely lost. She had watched him train for years (him, and Adrien), and still couldn't quite follow the rhythm of the fights, the flurry of hits, the footwork. She didn't know what Gabriel's tactics were, of if he had any. He seemed to attack a lot. He parried with ease.
Usually, it seemed to calm him down. Now, however, it looked like he could have used a different outlet, one that involved a lot more punching and kicking.
He won his fight, and - being the disdainful ass that he was - immediately turned away from his opponent, handing his saber to the instructor who took it without even pausing to think. The man's expression quickly changed to "why am I holding this?", but it was too late.
Gabriel removed his mask, straightened up, and looked at her.
She was too far to talk, so she tapped the tablet she was holding under her arm. She had important news.
###
Attraction was a strange thing, she thought as he vanished into the locker room to shower and change. You spent years not paying the slightest attention to someone, and then… Then you had to remind yourself that you had better things to do than to blush like a schoolgirl at the idea of your… partner changing clothes.
You had to figure out how to convince important customers that the Gabriel brand's creations was just as valuable as Gabriel's personal designs, because Gabriel was not going to be available for two weeks, and Jagged Stone needed his new outfits in four.
Instead of trying to figure out who she could drop that problem on, Nathalie was endlessly distracted by fantasies.
###
Gabriel spent the drive back to the office on the phone, with the back of his free hand ever so slightly pressed against Nathalie's thigh. Every time Nathalie tried to get her stupid, unruly hair away from her face, he gave her a thoughtful look, and did not quite manage to turn away.
She should have kept the bun. Clearly, he liked her hair too.
His telephonic conversation had started in the locker room. It ended in his office. Nathalie had been waiting for a chance to inform him of the 'Jagged Stone is a spoiled brat' problem.
He hung up and locked the door.
Nathalie raised both hands.
"Not now. I've been trying to find you all day", she announced. "There's an emergency to handle."
He rolled his eyes, looking at the ceiling with a long sigh, then shook his head and walked to his desk to sink into his chair.
"Not now."
When?
He allowed himself ten seconds of closed eyes, then poured himself a glass of water, drank it, and tried to delay their talk some more by checking his emails. He didn't read them. He just opened his mailbox and stared.
Then, he turned back to Nathalie.
"An emergency, you were saying?"
"Jagged Stone wants a set of outfits for his tour. For him, for his dancers, and - of course - he asked specifically for the designs to be yours."
Gabriel perked up. World-renowned stylists tended to like creating clothes, and she knew his favorite moments were those where he managed to get his hand on some fabric, on or a sketchbook. Now that he was at the head of such a large company, he no longer had the luxury to follow his fancy, and he missed it.
"When does he need them?"
"For the tenth of September. And it's too short a delay, since you're to leave for two weeks for your trip to South America. Which means you will have to meet with Jagged Stone to discuss alternatives."
"Push the trip to mid-September", Gabriel replied without hesitation.
His words stunned her into silence.
He had been meant to travel to Bolivia and Brazil for the sole purpose of meeting with the investigators who were looking for his wife. He had never, ever delayed appointments with the detectives before, and the idea had been inconceivable.
She stared at him, filled with cold dread she had no reason to feel. This didn't concern her.
Still.
She had never questioned why he had started sleeping with her, and she should have. The answer was blatant.
You couldn't compete with Alice. From the day Gabriel had noticed her, from that exact second, he had been hers and hers only. He would never have looked at someone else, never have thought of it, never. He would never have put his hands on another woman.
What do you know that I don't?
"You've never moved one of those meetings before", she said, voice as careful and quiet and neutral as she could make it.
He looked at his empty glass.
"It's pointless", he replied. "She is dead."
His eyes were lost in the distance.
Nathalie had no idea what to answer to that. She racked her brains. Silence filled the room. Gabriel looked like he didn't care. There had been nothing in his voice but cold certainty.
"How long have you known?" his assistant asked, when the silence started feeling worse than the twist in her stomach.
"The third of October last year."
It had been ten months.
"How…" Nathalie tried to ask. "I mean, why…"
"She called me three years ago. To tell me she would be gone for a few more months. She was with a friend. The friend came back. Alice didn't."
'Three years ago' meant Alice had spent nearly two years alive and hidden. It meant that she had walked out on her son and husband.
"Did you talk to that friend?" Nathalie asked. "What did they say?"
Gabriel breathed in, then looked up and met her eyes, face just as unconcerned as if he had been discussing the weather.
"I haven't called them. But I can say with ninety-nine percent certainty that my wife is gone."
Ten months was a long time. One grieved, one tried to move on. It was enough time to start thinking that, maybe, flirting with someone else was acceptable. It was even enough time to actually do it.
"Adrien doesn't know", she whispered.
"I will tell him when I have irrefutable proof", Gabriel replied.
Proof that could be obtained by calling that mysterious friend.
"Are you telling me you have been lying to your son's face for the best part of a year? Your funeral."
The moment that last word was out of her mouth, Nathalie wished she could swallow it back. His eyes widened. She pursed her lips and pretended he could not be hurt by a slip of the tongue. In all likelihood, he couldn't.
"I'm sorry", she said, keeping her composure. "Are we having this discussion as colleagues, or as…" - She fumbled for words, as 'lovers' did not nearly fit. - "Friends?"
He leaned back in his chair and smiled. It was a cold smile, close to a smirk, without the malice.
"Do you have friends, Nathalie?" he asked.
She thought back of college, of roommates, of classmates, of remarks such as 'You are petty and ruthless and pretty heartless', and of the 'Seriously? How long have you been been practicing that one in front of your mirror, Sarah?' she had retorted.
"Not really."
"That makes two of us."
What does that make us, then?
"As I was saying, I will tell Adrien when I have tangible proof", he repeated. "I don't want to shatter his hopes without absolute certainty."
"Then call Alice's friend", she advised.
She knew he knew it was the thing to do. She also knew he would not. His having ninety-nine percent certainty of his wife's death left him one percent of hope. He would never be able to let go.
He shook his head.
"Give me Jagged Stone's number. I need to get in touch."
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