Chapter Text
Adrien sees the online quiz someone sent to the group chat. He’s curled up in bed with the lights off, in a spot he hasn’t moved from in hours. There’s extra blanket from the couch wrapped around his shoulders in addition to his comforter covering him, to prevent any chance of non-friendly air finding him.
It’s a cocoon he feels safe in, not an unwelcome feeling. As of yet, he’s not getting the itchy, crawly feeling of claustrophobia telling him to jump out of his room and not come back until sunrise.
Plagg’s asleep, anyway. Adrien could wake him up, but that would be rude, without legitimate reason. Plagg always gets a weird uncomfortable attitude after a transformation that was clearly a coping mechanism. There’s always a vibe like Plagg feels like he should give constructive advice or talk to Adrien about what’s going on, and Adrien doesn’t want the kwami to feel obligated or annoyed into listening to Adrien’s excessive teenage angst.
So Adrien is lurking in the group chat again. Nino, Alya, and Marinette are all awake and having a lively discussion about whatever this “love language” quiz means. He’s pretty sure that they know he’s seeing all of their messages in real time, and that they all know he’s simply choosing not to engage with them. If he was feeling more himself, he might respond.
His mood is too heavy for him to be a good conversation participant. He would probably make a great Chat Noir right now, with all his brooding. He’s on a strict no-sugar and no-carb and no-breakfast diet for the next three weeks in preparation for a magazine cover shoot (not to mention that his father is now requiring that he comes home for lunch, having discovered Adrien’s acquired habit of going to Nino’s or Marinette’s during lunch to frantically forage as much as he can to get through akuma attacks without passing out), which means he’s cranky and exhausted. He knows he needs to chill out on the extra snacks and pastries and dairy and meat and whatever else. He eats too much, and Natalie tonelessly reading a note from his father saying that Adrien had better not come to his next fitting “bloated” or whatever the fuck isn’t helping his mood in the slightest.
The fast-paced conversation in the chat is hurting his eyes trying to keep up with it. He clicks on the link to the quiz--he has to scroll up quite a ways, because the conversation has moved on to other, more interesting things.
He feels sort of dumb going through the quiz. It’s not like his friends sent it to make him feel bad, but his mood is really heavy and the thirty questions about how he wants others to treat him is just reminding him that he’s worlds away from feeling loved .
In the end, the results don’t really surprise him. He’s tied for “physical touch” and “words of affirmation.”
Adrien knows he needs to have physical contact with people around him. Even back when he and Chloe were tiny, he would go out of his way during sleepovers to fall asleep before the movie was over, so that he could curl up against her for as long as possible before they had to go to bed. He hasn’t changed much; Adrien still fights to deserve hugs from his father and he goes out of his way to fistbump Nino or even just press their arms together while they’re sitting on Nino’s couch.
The same goes for positive words sent his way. Adrien practically throws himself at the mercy of anyone who spares him a compliment, because genuine ones (ones not about his looks) are his practical lifeblood. Ladybug has called him out for actually purring following a more heartfelt congratulations before.
Anyway, thinking about all this is only making him feel lonelier. Adrien is about to call it a night when Nino messages him outside of the chat. ‘Everything good?’ is the simple question.
Adrien doesn't know what to say. He always freezes up and forgets how to respond like a normal human being when he’s like this.
‘Yeah sorry,’ he types, way too slowly. He winces, knowing that Nino is going to catalogue the “unnecessary” apology for fodder for a future concerned conversation, and then deletes the ‘sorry’ before sending the message.
Nino doesn’t respond for a while, letting Adrien know that Nino knows that Adrien is full of shit. ‘Did you take the quiz lol. I got quality time.’
It’s a pretty harmless question, but Adrien weighs the outcomes of telling his best friend that he needs physical touch in order to survive. That’s a weird energy to put into a friendship, he thinks. And he doesn’t want Nino to feel obligated to give Adrien fakey-fake compliments just because they make Adrien feel like he doesn’t actually want to Cataclysm himself.
Once that thought crosses his mind, Adrien decides he needs to just go to sleep before he spirals and does something stupid. ‘Didn’t see it oops,’ he tells Nino. He pauses for a length of time that is hopefully believable, then sends, ‘Ooh I might take it tomorrow idk. Goodnight.’
He doesn’t see if Nino responds, because he’s put down his phone already and burrowed deeper into his blanket cocoon. Maybe his mood will be gone in the morning.
Even though Adrien didn’t tell anyone what he got on that quiz, he can’t help but feel like his friends already know, somehow.
The following Monday, Nino immediately throws an arm around Adrien, saying, “Dude! You have to see this video, I’m losing my mind.”
Adrien, after a long, lonely, cold weekend in which his father had actually locked him in his room for a day, sinks into Nino’s side and does everything in his willpower to not let his head fall onto Nino’s shoulder. That’s not what bros do. “Wait, I saw this yesterday!” Adrien says, but he refuses to move away, keeping his eyes glued to the screen. It’s some sort of fighting competition for really bad robots. “We should do something like this, in our class.”
“Max would totally win, though,” Nino says, shaking his head. “We’d have to handicap him somehow, to make it fair.”
“He could be the judge,” Adrien says, and Nino squeezes his shoulders before letting go. Adrien looks up, hoping he didn’t say something wrong somehow, but it’s just that Alya and Marinette have arrived and Nino’s waving a hand to greet them, which Adrien echoes.
“Adrien!” Alya says, after she’s given Nino a sufficiently PDA-ey greeting. She slaps Adrien’s arm, to punctuate her greeting. “We missed you this weekend!”
Adrien grimaces. “Yeah, I’m really sorry. I couldn’t leave my room on Saturday.”
Perhaps that’s the wrong thing to say. Whatever Alya was originally going to say next doesn’t come as she stares at him, and Marinette looks gently horrified. Nino’s bristling to Adrien’s right, uncomfortable, and Adrien leaps to correct himself, if only to dispel the new awkwardness. “I mean--I just had to practice. A lot. Because I suck at piano? And I have a recital coming up. I didn’t--”
“Did he lock you in again?” Nino asks, quiet. He’s probably putting himself on high alert for other signs that Adrien’s struggling, now, which means Adrien is being a really bad friend.
Adrien pushes a hand through his hair, overwhelmed, and he decides to just change the subject entirely. He hates the way that his friends are looking at him. “No? Anyway, do you guys want to--”
“You don’t suck at piano,” Marinette tells him, cutting him off in an uncharacteristic steely tone. “You’re really good, we’ve all heard you.”
“Yeah,” Alya agrees. “I’ll fight your dad with my bare hands.”
“Get in line,” Nino says to her.
Adrien, despite himself, laughs, a high-pitched and nervous sound.
Marinette pats his arm, lightly enough that Adrien is disappointed when she pulls her hand away. “Hey, you should come with us, we’re going to my house for lunch today.”
Adrien’s heart sinks. He’d hoped this wouldn’t come up. “Sorry, I can’t. I have to go home for lunch from now on.”
“What?” Nino asks, newly angry. “Why?”
Adrien shrugs, trying not to look utterly miserable. He doesn’t have to say anything about a change in diet for Nino to know exactly what’s going on, but Alya and Marinette look equally upset without knowing about that unfortunate aspect of the situation anyway.
He’s well aware that he’s made his friends worried, sad, or angry, even though they’d all been in a good mood before he showed up. Adrien feels sick, and only partly because the kitchen had been locked up when he tried to steal some food early this morning.
The chime of the clock lets them know that they need to get to class, and Adrien is relieved that the conversation is over, for now. Maybe they’ll all forget and he won’t have to deal with this line of discussion again.
When he’s Chat Noir for the next two weeks, he practically keeps himself glued to Ladybug’s side. He’s come to depend on her as the one friend he has who won’t get weirded out if he throws compliments at her like confetti or grabs her hand or sweeps her off her feet to run somewhere or pushes their thighs to touch if they’re sitting side-by-side. If she minded, she’d have spoken up months ago.
But, maybe he’s feeling a little lonelier, and a little more tired, and a little more needy lately, because she seems to take notice of a recent uptick of affection from him. She notices everything, after all. Her civilian persona probably keeps a freaking bullet journal, or something.
“Everything alright?” she asks. It’s a quiet night, with not much going on besides the dull hum of traffic beneath them. They’ve done little to no actual crime-fighting (they stopped a mugging, but the mugger had just caught sight of them and booked it, which meant no fighting got to happen), but Adrien feels like he’s run a marathon. He knows he should eat something to keep from losing consciousness entirely, but he’s pretty sure he can make it another hour or so before they call it a night. He always gets sort of anxious about eating anything when he’s on a diet like this.
(He always gets sort of anxious about eating anything, but being on a diet makes it a hundred times worse.)
“Yeah,” Adrien says, his tone of voice saying everything to the contrary, and he leans over to rest his head on Ladybug’s shoulder. She puts an arm around his shoulders to keep him there, which is very kind of her.
He’s being kind of pathetic right now. Adrien looks past his own whining for just a second to try and catalogue how Ladybug’s doing, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her beyond her normal late-night sleepiness. “How about you?” he asks.
“Same old,” she says, but she quickly pivots away from herself again, so there might actually be something bothering her. He feels bad for not noticing, but he doesn’t get to voice this because she asks, “Do you need to talk about something?”
Adrien sighs, and looks down at his feet, dangling over the side of a rooftop. The truth is, he doesn’t have a great reason for being so down-in-the-dumps lately. “I’m just kind of hungry, to be honest.”
She snorts, and moves to get up, dropping her arm from around him. “Is that it? We could just go run and get something from a bakery, if anywhere is open.”
Adrien’s stomach twists, and he misses the feeling of her arm on his shoulders. He doesn’t know how to explain to her that he’s fighting to find a balance between eating healthy and eating as much as he wants. His father wants him to drop at least four kilograms, but if he says that, she might freak out, telling him to get out of that situation or to call the child protective agency, ASE. That’s how Nino usually reacts (Adrien’s moderately sure that Nino has the ASE number saved in his phone, in case of emergency, since the first time Adrien showed up to school with bruises).
Is it too incriminating, to tell her about this? She might be able to connect the dots from this to the next time Adrien gets too dizzy standing up in class.
“I should head home,” he says. He’s just lucky that he’d been able to hide all the food in his mini fridge before someone had come and cleaned it out, and then put it back once they were gone--that’s where he keeps Plagg’s cheese, so at least Plagg won’t be upset at him.
“Wait, Chat,” Ladybug says, and grabs his arm. He must have made some sort of facial expression to make her newly worried. “I’m sorry I brushed you off like that.”
“It’s okay,” he says. He flashes her a weak smile. “I really just need a good night’s sleep. I promise I’ll be back to normal next time, my lady.”
He has no idea if he’ll be able to keep that promise. She narrows her eyes at him.
“I’ll see you Thursday night,” Adrien says. He gets up and leaves, and she doesn’t do anything to stop him.
He de-transforms in his dark room, and cracks open his small fridge to get Plagg some cheese. The smell makes his stomach simultaneously grumble and roll over itself, but Adrien tries not to think about that too much.
“Kid, let’s share it,” Plagg says, and tries to give Adrien back a piece, but Adrien smiles and waves him off.
“I’m not eating dairy right now,” Adrien reminds him.
“You didn’t even finish your dinner.” Plagg tries again to push the cheese into his hand.
Adrien moves away, going to find some pajamas to wear. Plagg hovers, clearly concerned, but doesn’t say anything else.
The shoot comes and goes. Adrien is more hesitant accepting snacks from his friends, a change that probably doesn’t go unnoticed, but if his father isn’t impressed with his diet, things will get even worse. As it is, he loses five kilograms, and knows he shouldn’t beam as much as he does when his father praises him for that. It doesn’t matter if he’s healthy, anyway, because his father’s good mood means he’s allowed to have a sleepover with a friends. Adrien’s over the moon with this news (and Nino is just as excited when he hears).
Adrien is in his father’s good graces, with the raw photos from the shoot and comments from the photographer assuring his father that Adrien’s staying small enough to keep modeling, which means that Adrien’s even allowed to go to Nino’s . That means less surveillance, less anxiety, and more food to make up for the past few weeks.
He finds, however, that his hangups about food haven’t disappeared. He only has a few bites of dinner before he feels full, and he’s lucky that they’ve been allowed to eat in Nino’s room, in front of the TV, because he sets his mostly-full plate aside in a way that would be very rude if he was at the dinner table.
“The shoot’s over, right?” Nino reminds him. “You’re allowed to eat.”
Adrien thinks his face is very red. It’s reassuring, that Nino knows exactly what’s going on, but Adrien’s also embarrassed. There’s no way to explain himself without saying something along the lines of but my father was so proud of me when he saw how small I am or this is the first time in months my dad has praised me so if this is all I have to do then it’s worth it.
No, those would definitely make Nino worried. And this is supposed to be a chill evening, not one where Nino feels obligated to make Adrien feel better.
But it would feel good, to tell someone about how even after the shoot, the kitchen doors have remained locked whenever he’s home. Or how Nathalie always watches him eat every meal, and keeps a chart with the calories he’s consumed that day. Or how he’s considering keeping his own chart again, because he slips up and has extra snacks sometimes. He knows that none of it is especially healthy, but maybe Nino would know what to do.
Adrien cautiously picks the plate back up, but he’s mentally calculating how many calories he’s going to need to report to Nathalie tomorrow. He needs to tell someone, and Nino’s still watching him instead of the TV show that’s on the screen.
“You’re okay,” Nino eventually says, when Adrien still can’t figure out how to phrase anything. “I’m here when you need me, alright?”
Adrien finishes his plate, and Nino gives him a big thumbs-up when he sees.
He knows exactly what his eating habits mean. Back when he was twelve, completely insecure about every aspect of his appearance and missing his mother more than anything, he’d been hospitalized for habits like this. But his father would flip his lid if Adrien asked for a counselor or a therapist, so Adrien needs to pull himself out of this.
After all, he’s only becoming a worse and worse superhero as he loses weight. Ladybug, Nino, Alya, Marinette, even Chloe-- everyone is worried, and he’s starting to consider that his father might be in the wrong on this one, with the evidence stacking against him.
When Adrien sits down to dinner by himself one Friday, with Nathalie looming over him, he interrupts her and asks, “Do you think you could stop tracking what I eat?”
Nathalie kind of sputters to a stop, and then ventures, “Well, you’re in the public eye, and your appearance is the most--”
“I know,” he says. He looks down at the dismal salad in front of him, and hates that he already knows exactly how many calories are in it. “But, um, I really don’t like it. And I need to eat...more than this,” he forces out.
“Your father calculated this diet to keep you in shape, for your activity level,” Nathalie says, unimpressed.
That’s because his father doesn’t know about the hours of jumping, running, flipping, fighting that Adrien does, and there’s no way to tell him about it without seriously compromising his identity. Adrien sort of twitches, not knowing how to refute that, until he blurts, “I blacked out at fencing on Thursday.”
It’s not a lie. He’d had to sit out the rest of the practice, and it had taken a lot of wheedling and cajoling and convincing to make sure his instructor didn’t tell his father. (And it’s the best he can do, because he can’t exactly tell her about when he’d passed out and almost fallen off the Eiffel Tower during an akuma attack.)
“Why didn’t we hear about this?” Nathalie asks. To her credit, she’s not as impassive as she was before.
“I didn’t want anyone to worry about it,” Adrien says. He realizes he’s hunched over, and corrects his posture as best he can. “So, do you think you could talk to my dad about it?”
“I’ll tell him about the fencing incident,” she concedes, and uses her clipboard clamp to secure her pen to the board, before leaving the room. It’s better than nothing.
Adrien, more anxious than relieved, waits a few minutes before leaving the room without finishing his dinner. He finds the kitchen door unlocked, for once, and Plagg slips out of his pocket and nuzzles Adrien’s face, saying, “Way to stick up for yourself! Now steal whatever else you can carry, and we’ll have a party!”
Adrien thinks about telling Plagg just how much sugar fruit has, but Plagg is pushing him towards the kitchen and he’s right--there isn’t much time until someone sees him. He dashes inside, finds strawberries and chocolate chips and a long loaf of bread, and bolts for his room.
He’s halfway through the baguette when there’s a harsh knock on his door. Adrien has barely shoved his makeshift picnic underneath his bed when it swings open, and his dad sweeps in.
Thankfully , Adrien doesn’t have a mouthful of food, and he can answer when his dad demands, “How long have you been skipping meals?”
Well, Adrien would have been physically able to answer that question, but he’s so confused about the premise that he just stammers, “What?”
It’s his dad who hasn’t been allowing him to snack, or have breakfast, or have any of his favorite foods. He really can’t blame Adrien for taking the next logical step in this diet’s direction.
Gabriel says, standing over where Adrien is sitting on the carpet, “A nutritionist plans your diet, and there’s no way you’d get to this level of bad health if you were following the menu correctly. It’s perfectly calibrated for a fourteen-year-old who only fences twice a week.”
Adrien meets his father’s eye and fights not to lose his entire shit. “I’m sixteen. And if that nutritionist knew anything , they wouldn’t be putting a strict diet on someone who was hospitalized for anorexia four years ago.”
He’s said the a-word now. His father recoils (Adrien wouldn’t be surprised if his father had completely forgotten about the hospitalization until now), and eventually says, “That doesn’t explain how you would get the point of collapse.”
“It doesn’t?” Adrien asks. “You think that eating a thousand calories a day is enough for someone--?”
“You should have said something sooner,” Gabriel snaps. “You need to trust me.”
“You should know that your only son is sixteen fucking years old--”
“ Adrien !” Gabriel snarls, and Adrien claps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide.
“Sorry, that wasn’t what I meant, I’m sorry,” he says through his hand, but Gabriel grabs his free arm and hauls him to his feet for them to be eye-to-eye.
“Do not talk to me that way,” Gabriel hisses. “If you’d said something before it got this bad, this could have all been avoided without theatrics. It’s like you want to hurt yourself.”
Adrien wants to say, sarcastic, yeah, that’s it, definitely! , because he remembers being in the hospital as a time when he didn’t see his father for three months, and nurses poked and prodded and asked invasive questions, and he couldn’t go to group therapy or have visitors because that could have become very bad press. Nobody had been allowed to know he was there, and so he sat, lonely, with some coloring books and a stuffed bear that a pitying doctor had given to him. A super great time, for everyone involved. Adrien was definitely aiming for that.
“You’re lucky I’m not pulling you out of school, with your horrendous behavior and language,” Gabriel spits, towering over Adrien, still with an iron grip on his forearm that’s really starting to hurt. “You have a responsibility to be healthy and sane. You’re not leaving the house until Monday morning.”
“You promised I could go to Alya’s tomorrow--”
“I don’t care,” Gabriel tells him. He turns and heads back to the door.
Adrien scrambles to run after him, and grabs at Gabriel’s wrist to stop him, reaching for contact that isn’t a bruising grip around his arm. “Dad, wait, please just listen--”
Gabriel only turns partway, slapping Adrien’s hand away before he can make contact, hard enough that it stings (any amount of force would have stung, because Adrien hates that he can’t get positive touch from his father whenever he needs it, but he hadn’t expected real malice behind the blow). “I will not be changing my mind, Adrien.”
Adrien watches his dad leave. He hears this bedroom door lock from the outside, and he doesn’t realize he’s crying until Plagg swoops over to him with a tissue to wipe at his face.
He sits back down on the floor, numb, looking at his forearm. The spot where he’d been hit is bright red, and the spot where his dad had held him up is already starting to darken. Not a bruise yet, but it will definitely become one soon.
Plagg is trying to talk to him, he realizes distantly. Adrien looks up, and tries to focus, and hears Plagg saying “--I can go get help, would that help you? I could Cataclysm him right now--”
“Plagg, don’t,” Adrien says. He wipes his face. He needs to tell Alya that he won’t be able to make it to her house tomorrow, but his bed, and by extension his phone lying on it, seems so far away. “I just need a minute.”
Plagg stops talking, but he’s still hovering, making worried noises.
Adrien sniffs, and finally pushes himself to his feet to cross to his bed and collapse onto it. He picks up his phone, and doesn’t know how to tell his friends that he has to miss yet another gathering. At some point, they’ll just stop inviting him, right? And then he won’t have to worry about cancelling on their plans anymore.
Plagg hugs the side of Adrien’s face, much more subdued than normal. “Call your turtle friend,” he mumbles. “He said you could call him whenever.”
It’s a Friday night, and Nino almost certainly has better things to be doing. Still, Adrien unlocks his phone and sends a cautious ‘Hey, are you free?’
Nino takes a few minutes to respond, but when he does, he says, ‘YEAH do u wanna hang out?’
‘Can you talk rn?’ Adrien asks, and then forces himself to send the message before he can regret it.
Nino calls almost immediately, and Adrien picks up right away. “Hey, Adrien!” Nino says, cheery. “What’s up?”
Adrien clears his throat, an attempt to make himself sound less choked-up. “Uh, nothing much,” he says, but when Plagg makes a threatening gesture, Adrien amends, “I can’t hang out this weekend.”
“What? Why? We were going to hang out at Alya’s tomorrow.”
“I know,” Adrien says. He takes a steadying breath, but it wavers just a little too much.
“What’s wrong?” Nino demands. “Is it your dad?”
With that, Adrien breaks down again. He’s barely coherent, trying to get any information out that could possibly explain his situation. “I tried to--to tell him about my, my food thing and he doesn’t even know how old I am and--I was so rude to him and he got really really mad at me so. He locked the door and I don’t know what to do.”
Nino says, “Oh my God.”
Adrien shudders, and yanks a pillow down to hug to his chest (and to muffle his crying in, just in case somebody on the staff is wandering past his room).
“Did he hurt you?” Nino asks. When Adrien freezes up and forgets to answer, Nino asks again, “Did he?”
Plagg, again, is making threatening gestures, and Adrien stammers through a, “Well, not really that bad, it’s just my arm.”
“What about your arm?”
“I don’t know,” Adrien says. He looks at the arm in question, and yeah, he’s going to need to wear long sleeves on Monday. “It’s not really that serious. I was so rude to him.”
“That’s what you said earlier,” Nino says, but grudgingly lets the injury talk end. “What did you mean when you said your ‘food thing?’”
Adrien clears his throat again. “Uh, well. I got. Put on this diet for the shoot, and it’s crazy restrictive, and it’s kind of messing me up, because I was in the hospital before for stuff like this. I passed out at fencing the other day because I didn’t eat enough.”
“Adrien,” Nino says, quiet and sad.
“I told Nathalie about it and she told my dad and it turns out he’s been planning a diet for a fourteen -year-old, because he forgot how old I am,” he says, and laughs, almost hysterical.
Nino isn’t laughing. “That’s so shitty,” he says. “Adrien, it’s not okay for him to do that, that’s not healthy for you.”
“No, I was really rude to him, I was out of line,” Adrien says, and covers his face. He knows that he’s not telling the truth, but he doesn’t know why he has such a strong reflex to defend his father. “I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t be bothering you with this.”
“Adrien, I’m your friend,” Nino insists. “If you can get out of your room, come over and you can live here forever.”
Adrien laughs again. It’s a very pathetic sound. “Thanks. Thanks for listening.”
“Yeah, anytime,” Nino says. His voice is warm and kind, and almost as good as hanging out with him in person. “Do you need to stay on the phone for a while? Are you safe?”
Plagg has been diligently pulling the food out from under Adrien’s bed and setting it around Adrien in a semicircle, calling for round two of the picnic, and Adrien can hear someone in the background of Nino’s end of the call, calling Nino to come help them with something.
“I’m okay,” Adrien says.
“I might call later,” Nino warns. “I’ll talk to you then, okay?”
“Okay,” Adrien says. “Bye. Thank you.”
Nino hangs up. Plagg solemnly puts some strawberries in Adrien’s hand, and then floats up and pats Adrien’s cheek.
“Are we sure your dad’s not Hawkmoth?” Plagg snipes.
Adrien sighs and shakes his head. He considers the berries in his hand. “If I asked you to transform me right now, would you do it?”
“Probably not,” Plagg says honestly. “You look pretty awful.”
Adrien eats a strawberry, and his stomach turns at the thought of how much sugar he’s putting in his body, and he watches his phone as Nino purposefully starts spamming the group chat so that Adrien will have something to read to distract himself.
The next day, Adrien’s father calls a doctor to the house to check on Adrien. Thankfully, Adrien gets enough advance warning to put on a sweater and cover the circles under his eyes with makeup, but then the doctor has barged into his room and it’s too late to do any other disguise work.
His father lurks in the corner of the room, a disapproving eye trained on Adrien, but Adrien tries his best to forget that Gabriel’s there at all.
Adrien is weighed, and not permitted to see the number on the scale readout--but his father is, and he sighs, making Adrien tense up. His pulse and blood pressure need to be taken, and the doctor, Dr. Dupont, rolls Adrien’s sleeve up, immediately seeing the blue and green bruising on his arm. He asks, in a tone that isn’t casual in the slightest, “Oh, what happened there?”
Adrien accidentally glances at his father, whose glare deepens, and Adrien’s mind is completely blank of any sort of excuse that would have caused an injury like that. Finally, he manages, “I think that’s from when Ladybug had to save me last week,” he says, and laughs sheepishly.
Dr. Dupont sort of laughs, too, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and continues putting the cuff around Adrien’s arm.
The numbers he sees at the end of the blood pressure test clearly don’t make him any less worried, because Dr. Dupont’s eyebrows furrow at the results. “Alright,” he says, in a much cheerier voice than his expression would indicate, “only one more part of the exam.” He turns to look at Adrien’s father. “Would you mind stepping out for a few minutes? It’s standard procedure.”
Gabriel doesn’t look pleased. “I’m sure whatever needs to happen can happen with me in the room.”
“It’s Adrien’s decision.” Dr. Dupont turns back, and calmly regards Adrien. “Would you like him to step out?”
Adrien, wide-eyed, looks at his father, who is still glowering at him, and then cuts his gaze back to Dr. Dupont. “I guess for a few minutes?”
“You heard the man,” Dr. Dupont says. Gabriel, glaring daggers, leaves the room and shuts the door behind him.
It’s clear that getting Gabriel out of the room was only so that Dr. Dupont could ask, “Is there anything you’d like to tell me, now that he’s not here?”
Adrien yanks his sleeve back down to cover the marks on his arm.
“You can tell me the truth. I’m not allowed to tell anyone,” Dr. Dupont says, unruffled. He turns his clipboard to indicate some numbers to Adrien. “But I can go first. Your blood pressure is higher than normal, while your pulse is a little ways below average. This isn’t necessarily cause for further treatment, but I noticed that your chart mentions a previous hospital stay regarding anorexia. Is that accurate?”
Adrien forces himself to nod. He wonders, dimly, if he would fool the doctor if he told him they have the wrong chart.
“Do you feel like you’re starting to fall back on bad habits?” Dr. Dupont asks.
Adrien shrugs, and looks at the floor. “I mean, I was on this diet for a while, and it didn’t really...help.”
“What did the diet entail?”
Adrien winces. “Um, I don’t know. I’m sure Nathalie would be happy to let you know all the rules.”
“So you didn’t put yourself on it…?”
“No, my father did. I think my BMI was too high.”
That’s not the right thing to say. Dr. Dupont writes something on the clipboard that he doesn’t look very happy with. “Well, I don’t want to beat around the bush, alright? You’re under what we would consider a healthy weight for your age and height, which isn’t going to be what’s best for you in the long run. BMI doesn’t necessarily mean ‘healthy,’ and I’m worried that basing a diet on BMI alone is pretty dangerous, especially when you’re a teenage boy who, frankly, could eat as much as he wanted and be fine.”
“Yeah.” Adrien scratches his neck, a little too roughly, just for something to distract him from his rising distress. “Yeah, I know all that, in theory. Um, I just can’t really do anything to eat better here.”
“What do you mean?”
Adrien glances at the closed bedroom door, making sure that his father isn’t trying to creep back in. “I don’t know. The kitchen is always locked, I guess.”
Dr. Dupont nods, and finishes writing whatever he’s been writing down this whole time. “I’m going to have a talk with your father after this, just to let him know what’s going on. Is there anything you’d specifically like for me to mention to him?”
Adrien shakes his head, and looks back at the floor. Nothing constructive comes to mind.
The doctor packs up his things, and then gently says, gesturing to Adrien’s arm, “If you take a picture of that before it fades, you’ll have a record of it,” he says. Adrien knows exactly what he’s implying. “It’s just something to keep in mind.”
Adrien nods.
“You can get through this; you’ve done it before,” Dr. Dupont says. “There’s still time to change your habits and get back to being healthy without lasting damage.”
Adrien nods again.
“Only you can choose to get better, though,” the doctor says. “Nobody can force that on you.”
“Okay,” Adrien says.
It’s going to be a lot of work, but he’s been reminded of how he never wants to spend time in the hospital again. The constant questions make him tired and also kind of itchy.
“Good luck,” the doctor says. Adrien shakes Dr. Dupont’s hand, and then Dr. Dupont leaves the room and quietly shuts the door behind him. On his way, he collects the scale he'd used, and Adrien knows he shouldn't feel upset at the loss of it.
Adrien is kind of out of it. He sits on his couch, staring at the blank TV, for upwards of an hour and a half, before he comes back to himself and finds that Plagg is continuously trying his best to push his phone on him, telling him to call a friend and tell them about what’s going on.
“Plagg, I shouldn’t have even told Nino . He doesn't need to worry about stuff like this.” Adrien pushes the phone back at Plagg, who glares at him.
“Didn’t it make you feel better to tell him?” Plagg demands.
“I guess,” Adrien concedes, then says, “but that doesn’t mean I should just bother him whenever I want.”
The conversation ends there, because Adrien’s father opens the bedroom door, and Plagg zips out of sight, burrowing between the couch cushions. Adrien turns his gaze forward again, every muscle in his body tense, and waits for his father to lecture him.
Gabriel sits down on the other end of the couch, completely silent. Finally, he says, “I regret the way that my temper made me act yesterday. I hadn’t seen how bad things had gotten.”
Adrien blinks, but still doesn’t look over. Or move at all.
“I just wish that you had spoken up sooner,” Gabriel says. “I hadn’t realized that you were still so sensitive about food.”
Adrien still doesn’t say anything.
“We will no longer be monitoring your food intake,” Gabriel says, “and the doctor recommended that I allow you free access to the kitchens again. However, I will step in if things get out of hand.”
Adrien straightens, cautiously optimistic, and finally looks over at his father. “Thank you.”
Gabriel opens his arms, and Adrien throws himself into them before the offer can be rescinded.
Adrien’s mood has improved substantially by the time Gabriel leaves the room, but Plagg is less than pleased when he emerges from the couch cushions. “It’s not your fault all this happened,” Plagg grumbles, as he nests into Adrien’s hair. “You know it’s your old man’s fault, right?”
Adrien sighs, and wipes his eyes. His father hadn’t noticed that Adrien had cried on his expensive suit jacket, which is probably for the best. “I guess. He’s right, though, I should have said something.”
“It’s his fault he’s a dickfish and that doesn’t make you want to talk to him,” Plagg snipes, and Adrien swats at him vaguely.
“Plagg!” he admonishes, and Plagg just cackles.
There’s an akuma attack later that evening. Ladybug brings Carapace and Rena Rouge along with her, and Adrien briefly wonders how Nino and Alya had gotten away from Marinette without Marinette being deserted at Alya’s by herself.
Hawkmoth’s heart doesn’t appear to be in it, this time. The four of them easily dispatch the villain, a run-of-the-mill jilted ex-boyfriend, and then they reconvene on a rooftop.
Alya and Nino don’t de-transform right away. Nino asks Ladybug, cautiously, “We have a friend we’d like to check up on, would that be okay?”
Ladybug raises an eyebrow, and says, “Well, I could take you there out of costume, maybe? I think you shouldn’t reveal your secret identities to this person. Who is it?”
“Adrien Agreste,” Alya says. “You know him, Ladybug. Chat Noir, have you met him?”
Adrien’s ears droop. He summons up some false bravado and rolls his eyes and says, “Oh, I’ve met him a couple times. Not a lot of...substance, there.”
“What are you talking about?” Nino snaps.
Adrien shrugs, and looks at his nails. “I mean, he’s just kind of a pretty face, right? Count me out, if you’re going to go visit.”
Nino doesn’t take this lightly, his face descending into a glare. “You don’t even know him. Why do you hate him so much?”
Ladybug looks at him like she has no idea what’s gotten into her partner, but covers for him anyway and tells Nino, “He’s just jealous because I like Adrien a lot more than him. Here, let’s go see him, but you’ll have to de-transform before we go into his room.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Adrien says, mentally planning the best way to get inside his room as quickly as possible, without anyone seeing.
“He’s my best friend, and he’s not a waste of time,” Nino snarls. “Fuck off.”
Adrien tries not to be affected by the genuine anger he sees on Nino’s face.
“Whatever,” he says nonchalantly, even though his voice is wobbly. “I’ll see you three later.”
He runs and leaps off the building, zipping out of sight, but as soon as he’s out of eyeshot, he breaks into a sprint and tears through the city, taking as many shortcuts as he can think of. They can’t beat him home. (He’s still sort of reeling from Nino defending him against Chat Noir, and Ladybug’s admission that she likes him. She likes Adrien!)
He changes back into himself once he’s safely in some bushes in the courtyard, having evaded several security cameras, and he runs up the stairs and knocks on the front door, coming face-to-face with Nathalie.
“Why aren’t you in your room?” she asks.
“I went for a walk,” Adrien squeaks. “Can I come in?”
She moves aside, disapproval radiating off of her, but Adrien is already bolting past her and running up the stairs, slipping past a confused Gorilla and slamming his bedroom door behind him a little too loudly.
He can’t see any sign of Ladybug approaching his window yet, with or without guests, so he runs to the bathroom and locks the door before doubling over himself, wheezing. The heavy sweater he’d put on that morning to hide his bruises is sweaty and disgusting against his skin.
“Stand up straight,” Plagg says, concerned. “You need to recover faster so you can get me some camembert before they get here.”
Adrien stands up straight, but stumbles back into the door of the shower as he loses his balance, the room tilting side to side around him as nausea rises in his stomach. Dimly, he realizes he missed breakfast and lunch, and his effort to “recover” isn’t really off to a good start.
“Breathe,” Plagg says. “They’ll be here any minute!”
Adrien opens the shower door and turns the water on cold, sticking his head under the water and letting it calm him down. He hears a knock, probably on his window, and he shuts the water off, finding a towel to dry his hair. Maybe it’ll be less incriminating if it looks like he’s been in the shower for a while. Either way, he’s almost breathing normally (though his lungs and throat are still burning) and he leaves the bathroom to find Ladybug at his window.
He opens the window, and says, “Hi!”
She smiles at him. “I have some visitors for you, if that’s alright.”
He creases his eyebrows, playing up a sort of airheaded persona that’s an attempt to distance himself from his Chat Noir personality as much as possible (it’s also handy for most of his model work, and for when Chloe takes him to events, and for whatever else. Lowering expectations always works). “Oh? Who?”
Ladybug yo-yos away, and returns seconds later with Alya and Nino. Nino is held to her side with one arm, and Alya is on her back. Not for the first time, Adrien has to attempt not to be flustered by how strong Ladybug is.
“Adrien!” Nino says, and jumps into the room to give him a huge hug, which Adrien gratefully sinks into, a welcome change of pace from holding himself upright. Alya isn’t far behind, taking over for Nino when the first hug ends. “Are you okay? You weren’t answering our messages.”
Adrien glances over his shoulder, at his phone, where it’s been lying untouched on his bed for the last several hours. “I’m sorry. Things are kind of crazy around here right now. How did you get Ladybug to bring you here?”
Alya and Nino exchange panicked looks, but Ladybug steps in and says, “They just happened to be nearby after today’s akuma attack. Lucky for them, I also wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“I’m doing better,” Adrien says. He sees Nino’s dubious look, and says, “No, seriously. It’s okay. My dad isn’t mad at me, anymore, so I’ll probably be able to have lunch with you guys and Marinette next week!”
“Why was he mad at you?” Alya asks. She probably already knows, because Nino would have told her everything.
Adrien stumbles over his words, trying to think of an excuse that won’t make Nino or Alya call him out for lying. “Well, I snapped at him and was really disrespectful yesterday, because I wasn’t feeling well, but I went to the doctor and my dad talked things out, so, it’s fine.”
“Wait, wasn’t he mad at you because you asked to get taken off that crazy diet?” Nino asks, unimpressed.
Adrien gives him a pleading look, and then glances to Ladybug, who looks horrified. “ No ,” he mumbles, embarrassed. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter! We got it figured out and he’s not mad at me.”
“Are you still sick?” Alya asks.
Adrien scratches his neck. “Yes, but I’ll get better.”
“Okay,” Alya says, uncertain.
All three of his friends stare at him, worried, but then Nino goes in for another hug, and Adrien is too anxious to refuse that. “We’re here for you,” Nino says. “Marinette too, but she couldn’t come at this exact moment. She’s just as worried, though.”
“Great,” Adrien says, and pushes his face into Nino’s shoulder. He loves that he upsets the people around him like it’s his second job.
“You’re a really good friend,” Alya says, reading his mind. “And you don’t need to worry about upsetting any of us, if you need to talk about something.”
Someone else rubs a hand up and down his back, either Alya or Ladybug, like somehow, everyone knows that calm words and touches are the best way to make Adrien feel safe. They all stand there for a few moments until Ladybug’s earrings beep.
“I’m sorry, we have to go,” she says. She really does sound sorry.
Adrien emerges from Nino’s shirt, and crosses to Ladybug, giving her a brief but tight hug, which she thankfully reciprocates. “Thank you for bringing them,” he says. “Maybe next time you could bring Chat Noir, too, and we’ll have a party or something.”
She snorts. “Alright. I’ll ask him.”
“He’s sort of a party-pooper, but maybe your dashing looks will win him over,” Alya says, and cackles when Adrien’s face gets red.
Nobody mentions anything about Adrien’s self-hatred party he’d thrown as Chat Noir earlier. Instead, he just says goodbye to his friends and they tell him they love him and then they’re gone. Ladybug swings away, Nino and Alya clinging to her, and he’s alone again.
Behind him, Plagg pries open the fridge with a grunt, and flits inside, gathering up an armful of cheese, which he promptly unloads onto the couch. “Alright, eat up. Kitties need cheese to make them strong.”
Adrien cautiously takes a wedge of cheese. “Thanks, Plagg.”
“Hey, it’s your cheese. Give yourself some credit.”
Adrien takes a bite, and sits down on the couch, while Plagg gorges himself next to him.
“They really care about you,” Plagg says, through a mouthful.
“Yeah,” Adrien says, overwhelmed, trying to understand what he’s feeling. “I don’t get why.”
“Or you should just let them care about you,” Plagg says, after an uncomfortable quiet. “It’s not your decision.”
“Huh,” Adrien says. He accepts another piece of cheese.
It hits him, later, when he’s being FaceTimed into where Marinette, Alya, and Nino are hanging out, that the feeling he’s overwhelmed with is the feeling of being loved. He doesn’t have a reason, really, for getting misty-eyed and emotional whenever his friends remember he has feelings, but the warm feeling is so foreign and wonderful to him that he doesn’t try and push down his delight when someone simply uses his name in conversation.
Pathetic? Maybe. But the anxious feeling that’s been following him around like a dark cloud for the last month or two isn’t bothering him right now. That’s something to be thankful for.