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Adrien is panicking.
Actually, panicking may be an understatement. He’s dead, that’s what he is. He is straight up dead. He is going to be so so so dead, and there’s nothing he can do about. He just has to resign himself to the fact that he’s going to die in a few hours and that’ll be that. At least he doesn’t have to stress about the future, because he doesn’t has one! HA! Ha ha! Ha ha…ha ha ha… Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh—
“Hey, man, you okay?” Nino puts his hand on Adrien’s shoulder. “You look like you’re freaking out.”
Understatement. Everything is an understatement.
Adrien forces a smile. “Just stressed about the test, that’s all.”
Nino shudders. “Relatable, dude. Way too relatable.”
Alya gives him a weird look when he sits down. “Are you okay?”
He nods, shooting Marinette a small smile.
She blinks a few times and doesn’t return it. Which is weird. And so not helpful. Why didn’t she smile? Is something wrong? Did something happen? Is she just nervous about the test or is she—
“Adrien?”
He turns to Alya. Her look is more concerned now. “What?”
She raises an eyebrow. “You look like you’re going to throw up.”
Adrien swallows and shakes his head. “Just nerves, I promise.”
“The test?” Marinette asks. “You’ll do fine, you know the material better than all of us.”
He shrugs, hoping it looks somewhat casual. His plan of channeling some of Chat’s relaxed and loose demeanor isn’t helping too much, seeing that he is Chat, and he can’t channel himself. “If you say so.”
He knows he messes up the test because his mind is running in circles. All the things he hasn’t done, all the things he has done that aren’t up to par, the fact that he’s going to have to sneak around again, his room isn’t clean—
His room isn’t clean.
This time, Nino shakes him hard. “Okay, Adrien, the test is over. What is wrong?”
He blinks rapidly.
“We just want to help,” Marinette says softly.
Alya nods.
They’re standing outside the school before leaving for lunch, and honestly, he doesn’t remember leaving the classroom. It’s all a bit of a daze.
“My room isn’t clean,” he mumbles. The pit in his stomach widens into a chasm and he’s falling, falling, falling. How could he forget such a simple thing? How is he such a disappointment?
They’re talking to him.
He pushes past them towards the limo. “I have to clean my room,” he says. He feels numb.
Adrien stumbles up to his room. His phone has been buzzing constantly. He knows what to expect, a few worried texts from Nino finished off with a ‘hmu when youre ready’, about half a million from Alya complete with audio messages, and maybe one or two heartfelt and understanding ones from Marinette. He throws his phone on his bed with his backpack.
Nathalie had mentioned lunch to him when he entered the house. He had thanked her and ran up to his room, skipping steps as he went. He doesn’t need to eat and he’s been eating too much anyway. His room needs to be spotless. His hair needs to be trimmed. Everything smells like cheese, he has air freshener somewhere, doesn't he? And he’d been perfect in the last few shoots, right? Right. He has to be right. He can’t remember. Had his mind been somewhere else? It might’ve been, and you can always tell in pictures.
Plagg yanks a notebook from his hands.
Adrien stares at him. “What are you doing?”
“Stopping you from tearing yourself to pieces!” Plagg shouts, dropping the notebook with a thud. “You have to breathe, Adrien, it’s part of being human!”
Adrien takes a slow breath. “Okay, I breathed. Now I need to clean, Plagg.”
Plagg snorts. “You need to eat. You’re exhausting yourself, kid. Do you want to pass out during class? Or better yet, at the shoot?”
Adrien freezes. He weighs all his options very carefully. In every circumstance, he’s a failure. He’s a disappointment and drags everything down. He wastes time and makes people unhappy. If his room isn’t clean, he can’t handle basic responsibly. If he faints, it's more likely to be chalked up to lack of sleep or sickness or heat or something. He can deal with that conversation, he decides. Cleaning over food it is.
Plagg is concerned, he can feel it, but Plagg isn’t important. His window sills are dusty, when was the last time he dusted?
His only thought throughout the rest of his classes is “my grades are still perfect, right?” In his mind, he goes through every assignment, checking that everything’s been turned in and accounted for. He runs through the tests and quizzes and projects and all the extra credit he did although teachers assured him it was unnecessary. He recounts his piano lessons, he’d practiced and made the necessary amount of improvement, his Chinese, he’d been helping Marinette and his tutor said he wasn’t going to need lessons much longer, and fencing, the last tournament had to have gone well enough. Then he ran through it all again. And again.
Alya is the one to break him from the never ending cycle. She crosses her arms after she pinches his arm. “I said, ‘are you planning on leaving anytime soon?’”
Adrien shakes his head. “Class is over?”
Marinette’s smile is worried. “It has been for about five minutes.”
Alya makes a sound of disapproval. It makes his stomach twist. “Nino had to run home, so we promised to make sure you were alive. And no longer freaking out about cleaning your room. What was up with that?”
He stands up and pulls on his bag. “It was nothing. Something important I had to do. I have a shoot to get to, see you tomorrow?”
They nod, but he can feel them watching his back as he runs to the limo. The Gorilla is waiting and hits the gas as soon as the door slams shut.
He’s going to be sick.
T minus five hours, forty-two minutes, thirty-six seconds.
Adrien’s heart feels like it's being slowly snipped with scissors. The sharp, precise ones that his father uses to cut fabric. He’s being reshaped with these scissors, with their striped plastic and light metal shine. Pins hold pieces together, silky fabric slipping out of place. Dressmakers chalk clouds his mind as he’s fitted, more pins poking him all over. Painfully tight stitches become more visible each time he tears.
He’s so torn.
There isn’t going to be enough fabric to salvage what’s left of him.
Adrien’s not sure what he expected. It wasn’t worse than he imagined though, and his father had given him a nod of approval when he saw the raw photographs from the last shoot. Relief had flooded through him, and it almost felt like he was walking on air. Approval. There had been the hint of a smile, a suggestion of pride. That was all he needed.
He rests his forehead against the window. His room is nearly impeccable now, although he still needs to make sure his books are organized. They used to be alphabetized, but at some point down the line he started accidentally ordering them by genre, then publishing date. He needs to choose a system and fix it. That’ll have to wait, though.
It’s a patrol night. Ladybug probably wouldn’t mind too much if he backed out now, but he doesn’t want to hear or see the disappointment in her voice. The way her eyes would dim, how her shoulders would fall, the way her face would scrunch up slightly. The “oh, okay,” with a forced acceptance in her voice. He’s going out, despite Plagg demanding rest, because she needs him. He needs her. She doesn’t actually need him, but it’s nice that they’re able to pretend.
His father’s sleep schedule might be a little off since he’s been in a different timezone for so long, but Adrien is willing to risk it. He transforms and leaps up to the roof, the night air sending a rush of energy through him.
The energy lasts until he reaches Ladybug on patrol.
“Are you okay, Chat?”
He started keeping count about an hour ago. This is the fifth time she’s asked. Chat gives her an exaggerated smirk. “I’m always okay around you, my lady.”
Ladybug doesn’t even bother smiling this time. He’s done something wrong. How does he fix this?
She crosses her arms, giving him a look that’s surprisingly similar to the one he’d gotten from Alya earlier. “You’ve been strange all night. I know you fidget, but usually not this badly. And your head’s not in it tonight. Did something happen?”
He chuckles and looks out to the city. As beautiful as it is at night, there’s something eerie about it. “I thought you wanted to keep our civilian lives a secret.”
She scowls. “I do! But that doesn’t mean you can’t tell me what’s going on. Because something is going on.”
“It’s nothing, mon ami,” he says.
“Nothing,” she mutters. “Nothing, he says!” she says to the city of Paris. She turns back to him. “It’s not nothing if it’s bothering you.”
Chat ducks his head. “It’s silly. I’m be fine.”
Ladybug takes his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “Chat Noir, your feelings are valid, no matter how ridiculous they may seem. Nothing you feel is silly . The only thing silly here is you, you silly cat.”
He stares at her, allowing himself this one moment to get lost in her eyes. “If you have to know, my father came home from a business trip tonight,” he says softly. His eyes drop to her freckles. He finds himself fascinated in them, how many there are, any patterns that may lie in her spots.
“Is that a bad thing?” she asks when it's clear he’s not going on.
He shrugs, and gently removes her hands from his face. “I’m not as perfect as I should be.” The words sound strangled and choked and hurt. And that’s not okay. He has to be strong and emotionless and not…whatever this is.
Ladybug is staring at him now. “What do you mean ‘should be’?”
Chat looks away. He should be used to people staring at him, why isn’t he? Why can’t he be good at even this? “I’m not good enough.” She’s not meant to hear, it’s only for him. His one small admittance of the night. He’s not perfect. He’s not even good. He’s just present. Present isn’t enough.
“Good enough,” she echoes. “Chat, who is telling you things like that?”
He shakes his head. He wants to leave. He wants to go home and curl up with Plagg next to him and just stop thinking about existing for a few hours. Drown himself in the coma that is sleep. He would, except for Ladybug’s arms are wrapped around him tightly.
“You aren’t supposed to be perfect,” she whispers, like it’s a closely guarded secret. “You’re supposed to mess up and be late and make mistakes and sometimes even do bad things, because we’re human . Chat, we’re human, these powers we have don’t change that. We bleed, we cry, we live. There is no perfect, there is no good enough.” She pulls away so she can see his face, using her thumb to brush away a tear on his cheek. “There aren’t meters that you have to fill, bars you have to reach. You’re good enough because you’re you. If someone tells you you aren’t, that’s because they clearly don’t know you, because you are.”
Chat is crying more now. He can’t stop himself, he’s not sure if he wants to. He’s just so empty and at least right now he’s feeling something.
She shuts her eyes. “And… I’m sorry if I’ve ever made you feel like you aren’t good enough. I need you, Chat Noir. I need you to do this everyday. I remember tackling akuma attacks by myself, and I never want to repeat. that. Without you, I’m just a girl running around in a spotted suit who can occasionally save the city. With you, I’m actually a hero. And beyond that, you’re my best friend.” She looks like she wants to say something more, but just hugs him again in lieu of words.
“I’m sorry,” he says into the crook of her neck.
“You don’t have to be.”
Plagg doesn’t complain about cheese when they get back. He just lays down on the bed next to Adrien. “I told you you needed rest.”
Adrien shrugs. “I’m not that tired—”
Plagg rolls his eyes. “You’re mentally exhausted. You aren’t able to hide that from me.”
Adrien closes his eyes and sighs. “He’s home, Plagg.”
“I know.”
“Think it’ll be any different?” When Plagg doesn’t answer, he opens his eyes.
Plagg is watching him. “I don’t know,” Plagg admits.
Adrien doesn’t believe him. He thinks Plagg knows exactly how it’ll be, he just doesn’t want to say it outloud. “At least my room’s clean.”
Plagg smiles. “Yeah, yeah. Your room is clean, now sleep so you don’t fall off a roof or something.”
Like he’d fall off a roof.
So maybe he doesn’t have to be perfect. But if perfect is what his dad wants, then perfect is what he’s going to get. Adrien can do it. He just has to push himself more.