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The bedroom window was closed.
Perched on top of the mansion roof, Chat Noir stared at it as his stomach sank lower and lower. As if looking at it would force it to swing open. The wind must have shut it earlier and now it ruffled and played his hair, whistling its laughter at him. It had been trying to storm all night. Why hadn’t he propped it open?
For a split second, he had the idea that he’d just sleep out there under the stars, thinking of Lady, tucked snugly into an alcove until he had to get up for school the next morning. He could just show up early and shower and preen in the locker room. Freezing to death and getting harassed by pigeons wasn’t nearly half as bad as walking with his tail between his legs (ha!) up the front steps.
He was perfectly prepared to do just that, a moment away from retracting his claws, until a flash of lightning struck out far in the distance. Thunder that seemed to shake Chat Noir down to his bones rolled with a crash over Paris and, before he had a chance to blink, the skies opened up with a tantrum.
Chat Noir made a sound between a groan and a cry, curled in on himself as rain and wind pelted him with a fury. He didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t wait this out all night.
His stomach churning in fear and anxiety, nervousness putting a frog in his throat, he made his way down to the back lawn. Idiot. Moron. Dumb. Stupid. Dumb stupid moronic idiot who’s going to get yelled at and punished and grounded for the next thousand years because he didn’t prop the stupid dumb window open before going to fight a stupid and dumb Reflekta.
But Reflekta wasn’t really stupid and dumb. Definitely not. She was just an Akumatized Juleka who had just felt depressed and insecure and angry after waking up from a horrible dream. And Juleka wasn’t stupid and dumb. He was, though. Chat Noir was stupid and dumb.
And so was Adrien. “Claws in,” he muttered, shuddering and sniffling in the downpour the second his suit no longer offered him protection.
“Whoa!” Plagg squeaked and immediately dove underneath the protection of Adrien’s shirt. “Better get inside before you let me drown in this! There’s not much protection under here, you know, even if it is Egyptian cotton! You know, they used to worship me there before I—“
“I can’t. It’s almost midnight! Father’s gonna kill me!” Adrien’s shoulders hunched as he looked over his shoulder, as if Nathalie had teleported just behind him so she could admonish him before he even stepped foot inside. (She’d done weirder and scarier things.) “He’s gonna ground me for sure, and that’s only if he doesn’t pull me out of school for at least a week instead!”
“Come on, you’ve still gotta go inside! You can’t stay out here all night like this! I’m starving, anyway! Maybe you won’t like being stuck in your room all week, but I will. Especially right now. I have a delightful little chunk of Caciocavallo Podolico waiting for me just inside that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about all night,“ Plagg said dreamily. “You’re not gonna keep the two of us apart for much longer, are you? Imagine if I tried to keep you from seeing Ladybug!”
Adrien sighed and closed his eyes for a moment before finally giving Plagg a nod, the beseeching green eyes staring up at him from inside a bundle of soaked fabric. “I know I have to,” he murmured. “I guess I should admit to my mistake. I really shouldn’t have gone out past curfew.”
“That’s more like it! Caciocavallo Podolico, here I come!”
Despite Plagg’s reassurance, as Adrien approached the steps, his stomach churned. His knees felt weak enough that he shouldn’t have been able to move forward, but he still dragged himself towards the house anyway. On the third strip of stone his foot touched, one of the front doors swung open. His breath caught and his eyes blinked wide as golden light spilled over him, nearly blinding him.
Nathalie stood in the space just beyond him, impassive and cold. The only thing that betrayed the way she really felt was a hard glint in her eyes and the way her mouth pressed together.
Adrien dropped his head and shut his eyes, taking a deep breath before he climbed the remaining steps. The light from his home, as welcoming as it should’ve been, brought him in with all the disingenuous teeth of a smiling predator.
“It’s eleven-fifty-four, Adrien,” were Nathalie’s first words to him.
Adrien shivered and hugged himself, wishing he was as dispensable as the rainwater that dripped around his limp body. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Where were you?”
“I was... out with my friends,” Adrien said softly. “We went to see a movie at a late showing.”
“You know perfectly well you were expected to be home no later than nine. You have to be at school tomorrow morning. As badly as you always claim you want to be there, for your benefit and no one else’s, do you really think you have the luxury of treating it like it’s something arbitrary?”
“No,” Adrien whispered. “I said I was sorry. I know I shouldn’t have been out so late.”
“Why didn’t you answer your phone all night?”
“I—I turned it off during the movie and I guess I forgot to turn it back on.”
Nathalie sighed between her teeth, looking over her shoulder at Gabriel’s office door. Curious for how late it was, it hung open just slightly, the toothy, predatory light seeping through it as well. “Your irresponsibility is destructive and frightening. Your father has been concerned. He’s been trying to contact you for the last few hours ever since he got out of a late meeting.”
Adrien looked up, scowling. “Really? Concerned? Sure, I’ll bet.”
“I wouldn’t try anyone’s patience right now, Adrien,” Nathalie snapped, scaring him into silence. “I’m sure he’d like a word with you before you clean yourself up.” She turned for the door of the office that had stared Adrien down for so many years of his life. It stared him down now as he approached it, his heart tumbling in his chest like it needed emergency attention. He followed close behind Nathalie, his heavy clothes feeling heavier with each step her took at her heels.
His father sat hunched over in his chair, rubbing his temple in a restless rhythm. His head jerked up when Nathalie touched the office door, pushing it open. “Is he—?”
She nodded and stepped to the side so Adrien, burning with shame, could enter. Adrien saw utter relief flicker across Gabriel’s face as he sat upright, breath shaking. Inevitably (of course), it turned to anger. “Where were you?” His voice sounded almost like a snarl, his lip curling. It sounded so twisted that Adrien thought briefly of Hawk Moth, his own heart skipping a beat. “My God—Nathalie, thank you, take your leave. Please.”
Without another word, the door shut behind Adrien. The click of it sounded like the lock of just another prison cell.
“Adrien, come here.” His father’s words bit at Adrien’s ears, sharp and hard and mean. “Right now.”
Adrien was shocked his knees didn’t give out entirely. He did as he was told, afraid of an outcome that he didn’t even know would happen or not. He didn’t know what it would be. All he knew was that his father usually just threw cursory discipline at him and sent him to his room and it would be the only interaction Adrien would have with him for the next week. That was what he could expect from Gabriel.
That version of him, at least. This version looked... a little erratic. A few strands of hair were out of place. His glasses were a bit lopsided. His waistcoat was unbuttoned. His jacket was thrown over the back of his chair. He didn’t look quite right, just to understate at all.
The half-empty bottle of plum wine on the side table and its accompanying glass seemed to wink as it glinted at Adrien. Just another object that wanted to make fun of him for the sake of it.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Adrien said, sounding far stronger than he felt. His blood was cold as it rushed inside him and it had nothing to do with his clothes. Something about Gabriel’s disheveled state made Adrien that much angrier. His father hadn’t been out all night trying to keep Paris from turning into a city of Reflektas. How dare he look like that after he’d been stuck all day in the same cold, stagnant room?
“Where were you?” Gabriel stood, his height forcing Adrien into shadow. Adrien stumbled back a step, swallowing hard. “I tried to get in contact with you. Nathalie tried to get in contact with you. I was more than prepared to call the police.”
“You never notice when I’m here or not. Why does it matter now? What, you just care all of a sudden?”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that. Don’t you ever say that to me.” Out of the corner of his eye, Adrien saw Gabriel’s fist clench and it poured dread down his spine. Chat’s instincts urged him to tense up, prepare him if something were to strike. “Do you think I don’t notice? I always see you in this house, Adrien, and it is only ever because I care!“
“You see me through cameras! It’s not because you look at me, you just spy on me! You spy on me, Nathalie spies on me, anyone else you hire spies on me, and I’m still always alone!” Adrien exploded, feeling the corners of his eyes sting. “I wish you would look at me! I wish you really did care, that you saw me—!“
Gabriel snatched Adrien by the shoulders, yanking him forward. Adrien's Chat brain screamed at him, telling him to break away, to fight back, paranoid and destructive as ever. He needed to claw back. Claw at his own father in order to protect himself.
"I always see you," Gabriel hissed. "Always. I can always see you. Everything I do is always for you. I just spent all night—" He seemed to choke himself up. Adrien's breathing was shallow, his spine straight and frozen as Gabriel's fingers dug into his arms. Gabriel exhaled through his teeth, searching Adrien's face as though he were looking for something in particular.
It was as if he could feel both his parents' eyes on him: his father's staring him down above him, and his mother's behind him, watching from her portrait.
"...I spent all night trying to look for you," Gabriel finally said, shifting his gaze and looking somewhere near the floor instead. "You do know what day it is, don't you?"
"Yes," Adrien mumbled. The eve of the anniversary of his mother's death. A year and a half exactly—and, considering how late he'd gotten home, it must have now been the day of. "I didn't know you even would've wanted me here. Not yet."
"I do." Gabriel's grasp loosened, but didn't fall from Adrien. It still felt so strange to be touched by his father in any capacity. Hugs from him still felt abnormal, even if Adrien craved them. Just a simple hand on his shoulder would put something like butterflies in his stomach (the analogy wasn't that weird, shut up). And now, when Gabriel's thumb began to stroke over Adrien's arm, it instantly made him lighter, as if it was drawing the water out of his clothes.
As if Gabriel could read his mind, he half-smiled, something Adrien rarely saw outside of public appearances. An odd shape for his face to make. "Look at you. You're soaked through. I'd be surprised if you didn't catch cold."
"Um... yeah, it, uh, it started storming before I could get inside." Adrien shifted on his feet. "I'm kind of freezing."
"Well, you should get out of those soon, shouldn't you?" Despite that, Gabriel still didn't let him go. He raised one hand and used it to tip Adrien's chin up, a softness in his eyes that Adrien had only seen reserved for— "God, I look at you sometimes and only see your mother."
It wasn't anything new. Adrien had been told the same thing time and time again, variations on "just like your mother" pinned to his sleeve like his heart was, and half of that had always been from his father. However, the longing in Gabriel's eyes was, well. Also not new, Adrien had seen it before, but it hadn't ever been quite so blatant. It suddenly made Adrien feel small and inadequate. Like he had to apologize for not being her.
"Your eyes, Adrien, your hair, your face." Gabriel cupped Adrien's cheek in his hand, cradling him. Adrien had to hold his breath again, his heart soaring as he leaned into the touch. He couldn't help it. He didn't know when or if he'd be getting anything like this again. "You must be shared with the world, but sometimes I... I just want you all to myself. You're sacred, son. You really are. She lives in you."
Adrien closed his eyes, his heart swelling in affection. He was about to say something, maybe "Thank you" or "Sometimes I don't want to be shared with the world either", but his ability to speak was suddenly stripped away from him: he felt the cool, smooth press of lips against his.
It short-circuited his brain. In his blank confusion, he blinked a few times, his stomach sinking with a deep, dark feeling that this was insanely, horribly wrong. As if to compensate for his flickering, broken, current thoughts, memories of Marinette and Kagami glowed in his mind’s eye, forcing him to think about cherry and black raspberry lip gloss and how both of them had felt, one sweet and brief and nervous and the other lingering and soft and gentle.
This felt different. Adrien couldn’t find words or a category at all for it, because he was struck totally dumb by the fact that not only was he being kissed, but he was being kissed by his father, and why?
Trying to pull away didn’t work, because Gabriel clung tighter. His fingers sank back into Adrien’s shoulders and Adrien felt himself stumbling forward. His eyelashes fluttered and a little gasp fell from his lips as he tripped over himself, yanked down when Gabriel fell back into his chair. His shock only made him more vulnerable and one of Gabriel’s big hands pressed into the back of his head, the other bunching up Adrien’s waterlogged button-down.
Adrien felt a unique panic he’d never felt before. His heart beat against his tonsils, his knees trembling, a guilt building inside him that made him almost sick to his stomach. A guilt just because he was doing this at all, and maybe because some tiny, tiny part of him just liked his father showing him this much affection at once.
That thought scared him beyond measure. With a desperation, he finally yanked out of Gabriel’s grasp, trembling, his head cloudy with a fuzzy, red heat. “Father?” he managed, his throat aching. He wanted to cry, but he had no idea why. “Why?”
“I…” Gabriel’s hand still held purchase on Adrien’s arm, his eyes wide, wet, and dark behind his glasses. “Please, sweetheart,” he whispered, licking his lips. “Forgive me.” His gaze shifted momentarily to Emilie’s portrait before he pulled Adrien back down, kissing him again, firmer and harder.
Adrien felt Gabriel’s tongue in his mouth. All slick and wet and hot and thick enough to suffocate him, Adrien felt like he was drowning in something a lot worse than just water. It was blood and tar, totally impossible to pull himself out of, stuck fast and sinking faster. He kept asking himself why, why why why why, over and over, needing more than anything to just leave.
(Or maybe he didn’t really want to.)
(Maybe he liked his father’s tongue in his mouth. There wasn’t any other reason he would be feeling this way. As he felt Gabriel’s soft sigh against his mouth, he felt a shock of heat snap down his spine that only made his shame climb right back up the nape of his neck, turning his skin red.)
Everything felt so heightened. As if he were currently under the influence of his Miraculous, Adrien could feel every little deafening touch and sensation. He felt when Gabriel shuddered and when he moved again. He felt the tug on his jeans, fingers slipping its button free.
Gabriel broke the kiss and grabbed at Adrien’s hair, pulling his head to the side. Adrien heard himself sob, fingers contracting in Gabriel’s shirt as he felt his father’s mouth on the frantic pulse point in his neck.
“W-why—” Adrien tried to say, finding it almost impossible to speak. Through the haze of tears, the high ceilings became a blur above him. “Father—ngh—what are you doing?”
“Don’t be afraid,” Gabriel pleaded, his voice broken. Adrien was far worse off than him, but Gabriel was still terribly unstable, his teeth nipping at Adrien’s neck and his fingers fumbling with Adrien’s jeans. “Please, just tonight, I-I need—I need you more than anything. You’ll forget in the morning.”
“This is really wrong.” Adrien hated how young he sounded, his voice breaking and squeaking. Crying like the kitten he was. “Father, don’t, you can’t do this.”
“Adrien, I don’t want to gag you.” It sounded painful for Gabriel to say. Adrien’s stomach twisted hard enough that he almost gagged. With jerky movements, Gabriel pulled Adrien’s jeans down and Adrien’s exposed skin felt clammy.
He was too scared to speak. He was too scared to move. And even despite all that, that one tiny part of him still soared, the littlest golden beam of light inside him telling his father “Yes”. Adrien wished he could decay, starting with whatever was making him feel that way.
Gabriel wrapped his fingers around Adrien’s cock, nearly covering it all. He pressed hot, needy kisses down Adrien’s neck as if that was supposed to make it feel any better, one deft thumb stroking the pink, dripping slit. Adrien made a choked little noise, his wet cheek pressing against the side of Gabriel’s head. No one had ever touched him this way before. Chloe had tried to, just once when she’d managed to get into his dressing room, but he stopped her before she could get her hands on him. She’d tried to and he was able to shake her off.
But not Gabriel. Why was he able to reject a pretty girl his age, but not his own father?
(Was this his fault?)
(Had he somehow made Gabriel think he wanted this?)
“I just want to see you spread out on my bed again, waiting for me, wanting me,” Gabriel breathed out, stroking Adrien’s cock in a smooth, steady rhythm. Against his will, Adrien’s hips stuttered and rode with it, his mouth open as he clutched at a fistful of silver hair. “I need to make love to you, Emilie.”
(Again? Emilie?)
“I need to be inside you. I need your warmth. I don’t know who I am anymore without you.” Gabriel kissed Adrien’s skin like he never wanted to taste anything else ever again, his tone weak with grief. “I need you to help me remember.”
Adrien was so on edge and so upset that he could barely process anything Gabriel was saying, but he couldn’t remember at all the last time Gabriel had grieved Emilie so openly or had even mentioned how he felt about it. Adrien would have never accused Gabriel of not missing her, but he never knew he felt this much. Or could ever feel this much.
His body shaking and too oversensitive to handle what Gabriel was doing to him, Adrien thought, He must love me after all, too before he cried out, his mind shorting out in sparks and going black.
“Oh, God, you’re still so young. Too young. Not even a man yet. So early...” Gabriel’s voice sounded very far away. Blood rushed through Adrien’s ears, saliva leaking out of the corner of his mouth and clotting in Gabriel’s hair. Adrien grabbed blindly at Gabriel’s clothes, dimly aware that he really was crying now, heaving breaths that could barely escape his taut, tight-knit rib cage.
“Dear heart, please don’t.” Gabriel pushed himself back out of his chair and pulled Adrien into his arms properly. Adrien held on tighter, burying his face in Gabriel’s undone waistcoat. He could feel the stickiness of what he’d done on Gabriel’s clothes and his father’s erection pressing into his stomach, making it all that much worse.
“You’ll understand someday. You don’t yet, but you will.” Gabriel kissed the top of Adrien’s head and stroked his back. Each new touch felt like a violation, but one that Adrien couldn’t seem to hate as much as he knew he should have.
“D-do you—” Adrien sniffled and gritted his teeth, his eyes squeezing shut. “—do you—do you love me? Like her?”
“Yes. God, yes, more and more each day. More than you’ll ever know.” Gabriel gently broke away from Adrien, only forcing him to hold on tighter. For the first time in who knew how long, his face was legible, fretful and concerned and guilty and agonized. It was the only time Adrien had never wanted to see it. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
Adrien sniffled again, looking up at him. “Can I please go to bed?”
Gabriel hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. Of course.” He fingered Adrien’s collar. “Take a shower first, though. And then go straight to bed.”
Adrien would have showered regardless. He needed to remember that his skin still belonged to him. He nodded back anyway, quickly brushing his tears away.
“I do love you. Trust me when I tell you that.” Gabriel tipped Adrien’s chin up and leaned down to kiss him again, far lighter, gentler than before.
And Adrien kissed him back, helpless to do otherwise. He would only ever take the little twisted pieces he was given and he would take it with his entire heart, mind, and soul, regardless of the form it came in.
Just like always.