Chapter Text
Adrien prided himself on many things. Like working his phone…when he had it. Eating food…when he had it. Following through the multiple of stupid plan revisions. He stood with pride as he poked and jabbed at the still cameras for announcements in the company. He knew enough from the inner workings…that his dad just could project commercials. Hijacking normal networks…just like Monarch tended to high jack into everyday life.
But he wasn’t going to compare his father to Monarch as he set up cameras for the ultimate trap. That was like comparing red apples to green apples — both assholes in many ways, tortured citizens of Paris in many ways…
But yeah.
It wasn’t his father that almost chopped his head off…or tried breaking his neck…or tried to re-crush his injured arm. His father wouldn’t treat the mansion as an explosion test area…although totally neglect to knock on doors.
Let’s see if Monarch could treat this place as well as the mansion...who knows…maybe he wouldn’t have to follow his father’s footsteps after all. Not that he was planning too, his stomach threatened to puke if he even dared to think too hard about it.
Monarch first…puke later. Or puke on Monarch. He had choices.
Like the choice he was faced with now…
To try to kick Monarch’s privately…which he had…and got thrown around, held hostage, made Ladybug pissed, made Alya and Nino argue, and his father announcing Ladybug kidnapped him and his father missing…and Gorilla run…and his limo turned into ashes.
Or…
Take the sneaky Lila route…wherever she might be. It wasn’t like he was missing her…or her sneaky tactics that ousted his identity. This was the best choice…which didn’t say much.
He jabbed at the live screen…because why the fuck not? It wasn’t like Plagg was around. Or Ladybug. It wasn’t like he could be killed or anything…even though he had just thought about Monarch beheading him. And with his face…and a quite unflattering angle of up his nose…to was too late to back down now.
Unless…he wanted to get arrested.
Actually…would getting arrested help him any?
That would be an interesting turn of events…kidnapped then arrested. Especially on live television. He could tarnish his modeling image, his superhero reputation, and pose for his last photoshoot before he hung out with the tough thugs of Paris. Maybe he could get a tattoo and really buff…
Maybe he had watched too much television when he was younger and imprisoned…correction homeschooled.
Andddd…it was too late for that train of thought and plan out on how to be arrested. Especially when he just stood there…have a staring contest with himself in the reflection of the camera lens…that he had been staring at for the last five minutes. If people weren’t talking about him by now…they surely were now. Being creepy by himself was one thing…
Being creepy to others…
Well…
Creepy is as creepy does. Monarch, to him, was still voted most creepy. After all, why butterflies? Well…butterflies weren’t exactly creepy…but fluttery and looking pretty infected looking…it was like the end of the world was just waiting for its turn to happen.
But if Monarch wanted to be creepier…should have used spiders. Monarch got a passing grade on being creepy with the secret layer though. They had looked everywhere for it. The hotel…the school…the bottom of the Seine…in the Eiffel Tower…all reasonable.
Under flowerpots…for a possible secret button or lever to take a staircase…an elevator…or a slide. No such luck. And a lot of broken flowerpots.
Grocery stores…only because he had felt snacky…and Ladybug wasn’t really nice if she was hungry. Needless to say, it wasn’t a grocery store.
They even checked all kinds of stores even. Clothing stores, because Monarch had a cane that he liked to fence with. Anger management class that only succeed on pissing of Chloe before she found restraints, domination, and leather…orgy-fest lifestyle. They had gone to the movies…it had been a nice movie.
But the butterflies had to have come from somewhere…he had this really great idea to borrow a lizard because it would definitely follow the butterflies. The lizard had not. The lizard’s adventure was left unsaid but…the lizard was returned to the pet store unharmed.
The next place he could check was the mansion…in the giant refrigerator. Fuck. He missed Plagg. His sigh echoed in the speakers…
Oh yeah! He was still live streaming…?
Adrien smiled broadly as if he were in his Chat Noir getup and hadn’t continued to stare into the camera like a creepy person since the last five minutes. Realizing now his last five minutes could have been better spent with thinking up a greeting…a challenge…and a threat…the last two being for Monarch only events.
Instead…his masterful craft was…
“Hi. I’m Adrien Agreste and if you don’t know about me, great. If you do…well this isn’t for you. It’s for one person…Monarch!”
If he had more hands or more cameramen…or women…he didn’t judge…he would definitely look more heroic than what he looked like now. He squinted his eyes…was that a booger? Oh no! It was just his hair…that looked wild…
That would really help to maintain the sane guy image…
“I challenge Monarch to find me! Because…”
What had been the reason for it? Therapy suggestions? No. Paris would be a lot safer if Monarch started therapy.
“Therapy…” Adrien said. The word feeling funny on his mouth.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
The room too smelled of cheese.
“Does it smell like cheese?” Adrien asked into the camera.
Were his eyes always so wide? He drew his eyeball even closer to the the lens of the camera. His eyes looked funny. Maybe because he was just that close to them. Or just looking with one eyeball? Or maybe it had to do with his head. If he squinted at his forehead. Was that a lump or a banana? It would make more sense if it were a bump. It wasn’t like his head hadn’t been pounding from the several hard knocks without a helmet. It wasn’t like his arm hadn’t just suddenly stopped aching.
And it was..., weird like the room suddenly smelled like bananas…or was that cheese? He glanced around him too.
Why was the room spinning? He didn’t remember a sudden new amusement park add on to the company…he was only thinking about food trucks…but he kind of liked this new development. It would definitely help boost work productivity.
But how would he know about that? Working with his father…oh no… for his father…he was racially a fancy hostage. Boosting his work productivity wasn’t important. He had everything but an amusement park in his room.
Actually…
He blinked.
And followed the wall as they spun around. Or was it him doing the spinning. Was this Monarch’s work? Instead of butterflies…or spiders…it was this? Making the over-emotional, more or less confused person more confused?
The camera fell out of his hand. Or his hand fell out of the camera. His world turned sideways!
“Monarch! Where are you?!”
The words poured from his mouth, sounder greater and grander and ever-so menacing for someone who had an injury, undoubtedly multiple concussions, and unarmed.
But he still had to talk shit.
“Monarch! Come find me!”
The world spun more and tilted sideways and went up and down. This was no rollercoaster he had ever been on. He felt totally ripped off that the amusement was just topsy-turvy. No wonder it had been free.
Just like he had… the floor fell out from underneath him.
What was going to happen with his fight? Was this the hidden boss level? Was he going to fight someone he completely unsuspected. Would be become a secret agent with only one initial to his name…and it would mostly like interfere with superheroing. Oh! Wait! Superheroing wasn’t a thing for him either.
Was this going to be his villain story? Where he finds out that he was secretly related to the bad guy all along? The. The villain has a change of heart at the end…but not in space?
Or was he going to land on a pirate shipwreck? Become a dreaded pirate…well…no…he couldn’t do questionable things while being a superhero. But he wasn’t a superhero anymore! He was only just haunted by multiple jobs opportunities, no listed benefits, and Plagg’s cheese was the worse benefit of all. His whole air smelled like cheese. At this rate, he wouldn’t be surprised if his whole brain smelled like it too.
Do brains smell like cheese? Who would he even ask…
Zombies? But those didn’t exist. Thank goodness.
Why were his thoughts getting stranger and stranger by the minute?
Why did the camera a bright light in it? Shining so brightly that made him groan.
He felt blinded and he he felt like he was going backwards…backwards…backwards…
The camera fell from his hands…oh wait…it already had.
He blinked. Blinked again. Blinked so many times to make sense of what he was looking at. Because…the last thing he remembered was being at the company. He remembered that, right? Adrien frowned…no…actually…the way he had thought he was at the company faded away, like it had been a dream…
On his ceiling…yes, his ceiling of his bedroom…were cheese blobs in shape of things…
Like statues?
He turns his head sideways…realizing now that he was laying on the floor…his feet dangled in the air…the computer chair pressed into his back funny. He felt heavy. He felt weird. He moved his hand…both hands without pain. He moved his toes…without pain.
The back of his head hurt a bit.
He cringed when he heard a wet slurp…the worst slurpy slurp he had heard for a long while. Only one thing made those sounds…he had been hearing those sounds since he was fourteen years. In the daytime. At night. With a surplus of cheese.
The slurping was usually followed by a wet burp. Adrien lifted up his hand.
His miraculous was on his hand.
What the fuck happened?
“Oh, you’re awake?”
Adrien went crossed eyed…staring at Plagg who stared at him.
“What the fuck happened?” Adrien asked. Because what the fuck happened? Because the faded memories were gone now. He felt awake and alive right now in the moment. He glanced around too…cheese statues…littered around his room again. Their cheesy eyes managed to cover the judgy look…
As if Adrien was the idiot.
How was it possible to get shamed by cheese? Hadn’t he told Plagg to get rid them? Hadn’t Plagg moved the cheese statues out into the street…hadn’t the news reported about the weird occurrence. Why hadn’t Plagg eaten them?
“A cheese statue,” burped Plagg. “It fell from the ceiling…”
Adrien blinked at Plagg…Plagg blinked at him…he blinked at Plagg…Plagg blinked at him.
Adrien opened his mouth to ask…then closed it…. then opened his mouth to ask…then closed it. He closed his eyes…feeling it physically to ask this question but he asked it anyhow…
“Why was there a cheese statue on the ceiling?”
“I was running out of room in the bedroom,” Plagg answered simply, as if it was plainly simple and Adrien was clearly overreacting and being dramatic. And you know, Adrien couldn’t quite be upset about it. Believe it or not, there was a tiny itty-bitty sliver of logic that he could make sense of…
He blamed his head…and he would never say the words aloud.
And he could only blame himself for what he asked next…
“What kind of statue fell from the ceiling?”
“Banana man,” Plagg answered happily, like Adrien’s question meant that Adrien was interested Plagg’s creative process rather than find out what the fuck happened…
But Plagg spoke….
“I tried stuffing it with bananas for accuracy. Didn’t have enough cheese to make a banana tree.”
Accuracy? From Plagg? This was coming from the kwami who wanted to throw a rock a dinosaur that made fun of him…that rock…ended up wiping out the dinosaurs. Adrien wasn’t even going to touch on the fact that banana man was — in fact — a man dressed as a banana and not a banana that could walk and talk. And also Banana man did not live in a banana tree.
Suddenly, he flinched as something came dripping down from the ceiling to land in his eye. It smelled of cheese, bananas, and glue. It burned much like the distant memory…or dream…of Adrien being in the shower…and Plagg being a little shit.
He wiped his eye with the back of his hand. His forehead had been covered with the same feeling.
“Plagg, what exactly happened to me?”
Plagg sighed. Then burped. Then ate the cheese that Plagg swiped off his chest. He…was still in the clothes from the photoshoot. He had been on his way home. He had opened the door to see this cheese surrounding him…
He had slipped. Banana man fell from the ceiling.
He remembered the dark.
Everything past the cheese statues…never fucking happened? Everything was a knocked out dream? What had been days…were only truly seconds? How the fuck did he in the computer chair? He was surprised that he hadn’t had a little dress, red slippers, a cat named Toto…and saying no plan like home.
“I thought the movement would wake you,” stated Plagg, either answering his well timed mentally inside his head asked question or Plagg had rambled on while Adrien had been mentally spiraling.
Maybe Plagg should stop thinking.
Because Plagg had tried…
Splashing him with water…then drying him off...,
Threatening his Ladybug collection.
Feeding him a sandwich.
Adrien just held up his hand, pinching Plagg’s mouth together for a second until Plagg phased through his hand. He didn’t want to hear what else Plagg had do to him when he was knocked out cold. Somethings…were better left unsaid. Plagg’s newfound mouth free only equaled to Plagg stuffing another mouthful of cheese into his void-colored body.
Regardless of what Plagg tried…he hadn’t woken up until now.
Everything. The bet. The cheese. Marinette. Ladybug. Monarch. Chloe. Lila. Mayura. The photoshoot. The golden buzzer. The intrusive thoughts…
Adrien moved and rose to his feet.
“Where are you going?” Croaked Plagg’s head titled, Plagg’s little black paws started to shape the blob of cheese that he had laid in. It brought hyper awareness to the thick cheese feeling sliding down his back. Dripping from his hair. Dropped from his fingertips.
Plagg must have tossed into a cheese statue or two. He was going nowhere. Fuck, at this points he took several steps forward and splatted face-first into his bed.
“Here,” he answered Plagg with a sense of tiredness, shock, relief, anger, and more tiredness that made him feel beyond tired. He could hate himself in the morning for poisoning his bed. Right now.
He was fucking glad…everything had been a fucking dream. Or a nightmare in some aspects.
Dream because of Marinette and Ladybug. That his feelings for both weren’t going to be complicated. Marinette was just his friend…even though his cock twitched in his pants…arguing that thought.
And Ladybug…still unobtainable. His mind knew that from when he couldn’t find her.
His secret still safe. His bank account too.
Dream, nightmare, somewhere in between…he would forget about it eventually.
And there were no longterm consequences that would bite him in the ass.