Chapter Text
Surrounded by emotionally distant family members and alongside friends whose development was stunted by shitty parents of their own, some might have found it a miracle Adrien learned to process his feelings at all.
This would have been, of course, a very shallow understanding of his situation.
Adrien learned to value ideas, passions, and affections without much difficulty after the age of five. Corralled away in his room for hours on end proved painful for a child at first, but it slowly lost its cutting edge at the start of his tutoring.
Adrien’s father had been an affluent man, stranded between the desire to accumulate wealth without forming any meaningful bonds with the people around him and an intense infatuation with a beautiful model whose wit and charm swept him off his feet. He’d never before thought himself capable of forming a genuine relationship with another human being, instead planning on forging a convenient alliance with someone of a similar or greater social status than his own and wedding, with only thoughts of securing an heir to propel his actions.
Meeting Emilie, in all her shimmering blonde-haired emerald-eyed glory, uncovered a pin in his evening wear, stabbing him when he least expected it.
But even their relationship could never fully dissuade Gabriel from his goals. He found it was easy to convince his new wife of the necessity of homeschooling a child of such esteemed parents. And once she’d agreed to that, there wasn’t much her couldn’t persuade her of.
Only let their child play with children of carefully vetted parents? That’s only responsible.
Have him follow in his mother’s footsteps and enter the world of modeling under the watchful eye of his fashion designer father? How precious!
Hire a personal bodyguard to watch his every move? Simply a nanny with muscles, nothing any other working parents wouldn’t do if they had the opportunity.
Adrien’s parents both agreed, it seemed, that his relationship with the outside world should be—at best—strained.
At worst—nonexistent.
But growing up without the knowledge of what he was missing wasn’t difficult. Without comparison, his world was his normal and he had no reason to long for something more. Which was why when he was five years old and his soon-to-be-fired tutor handed him the first book he’d read on his own, his entire world shifted.
Nothing exactly changed . He was still cut off from creating any kind of real connection with a human being outside of his immediate family, still monitored closely by every adult in his life, still entirely unaware of most of what society had to offer, but he was suddenly aware of his lacking. And this awareness was anything but trivial.
The book wasn’t anything particularly special. It was short with only a few lines per page and colorful illustrations cluing him into word meanings when his young mind came up empty.
Featuring three musical cats—one black, one blue, one red—a young Adrien discovered something entirely new.
“Excuse me, sir” Adrien paused in his reading, looking up into the reflective glasses of the older man. “But what does it mean,” he pointed to a word on the page and sounded it out slowly. “‘Songwriter’?”
His tutor’s voice was gruff, but pleasantly so, like rolled oats covered in maple syrup. “It’s someone who writes songs.”
His eyes grew comically wide, staring in wonder at the glossy pages. “And they do that?” His tiny hands ghosted over the cats’ smiling faces.
He shook his head patronizingly. “Cats can’t write music, Adrien.”
Adrien scrunched his nose. His tutor didn’t
understand
. “But what does that
mean
?” he tried to better convey his question. “Do they exist?”
“Songwriters?”
Adrien nodded so intensely, the clip holding his hair out of his eyes almost came completely undone.
“It’s a job some people have. They write music.” Seeing his student’s confused gaze, he continued. “Sometimes they just write the lyrics, sometimes the instrumental, sometimes both.”
Adrien sat with that for a moment. He’d never considered someone had to
write
the music his caretakers played for him. It just appeared. No one had ever told him how.
“You only have a few pages left, why don’t we try to finish before I leave?”
The conversation dropped, but Adrien couldn’t help the way his mind rolled over the new information. Writing music sounded incredible. Creating something unique—that no one had ever heard before—out of thin air.
So he kept reading. Anything he could get his hands on. He learned more about music too, eventually convincing his father of the importance of piano lessons and somehow even the elegance of classical guitar.
And once Adrien no longer had a mother, words of all kinds kept him sane, kept him from the frozen ice tower others seemed to construct around themselves. The distance his father kept between them could never be bridged by Adrien alone, but he found loneliness was a less faithful companion when he had words on his side.
Books of all genres filled his room, piling up on shelves and hanging open over the side of his couch. Sloppily handwritten sheet music was used as the occasional bookmark or crumpled in overstuffed notebooks and folders as he explored the emotions and relationships he’d read about without ever having experienced himself.
His modeling career continued without any resistance, but Adrien longed for more.
Once he was given a computer and mostly uninhibited internet access, he started writing songs and uploading them, improving from strangers’ feedback and growing to love the conversation his music could spark.
Somehow—incredibly—he caught the attention of a rising star.
An artist only two years his senior but quickly rocketing towards stardom wanted to work with him. Set to open for Jagged Stone in only a year-and-a-half's time, Adrien was immediately intrigued by Luka Couffaine’s small band and offer of a lifetime. Knowing his father would never allow Adrien to risk his modeling career for a musical one, he chose to write behind the scenes, crafting music and lyrics without any hint of fame for himself.
It worked for them. And once they had a good enough lineup and additional songs for an EP, Adrien watched the band takeoff, knowing he played a hand in creating something magical. Something people would write articles about. Something a teenager would play alone in their room and finally feel like someone got them.
With the band on tour, Adrien once again lost himself in novels. It was his new routine. Write music, read. Write music, read. Write music, read.
On a particularly cold February 14th in the “read” portion of his schedule as Luka’s band had grown and was on their third solo tour, Adrien flopped onto a bed covered in Valentines from people he did not know. Though he’d read extensively on the subject of love, he was loath to believe any of those “confessions” held the sort of the emotion he was intellectually drawn to. He’d received them for years and attempted to draw any kind of inspiration from them, but they always fell short.
He rolled on his side and was stuck by something hard and pointy, hidden underneath the stack of red and pink cards.
A book.
Solid and elegant, the silhouette of a girl and a boy on the top of a hill, backs resting against a tree with leaves highlighted by the soft glow of a crescent moon, title artfully stretching across the night sky. And at the bottom of the cover, so small he almost missed it, one word in a loping script so unique he almost thought it had been handwritten on.
Ladybug
A ripped piece of paper stuck between the cover and opening pages fluttered out as Adrien picked up the book to examine it further.
I know you’ve been looking for something new to read and from what I hear this author’s amazing. This time of year sucks and we’ll miss you on tour, but hopefully it won’t be too bad. We’ll call you soon. Don’t go insane without us.
-Luka, Nino, Rose, Juleka, & Ivan
It took mere moments to become fully engrossed in the novel.
He’d never read a world so immersive. He took it with him everywhere; to the dinner table, to photoshoots, to meetings where he’d smuggle it under the desk and read when no one was paying attention.
He finished it in two days, utterly crushed when the pages flipped to acknowledgements and the words ran out.
He fell in love with Ladybug’s writing so quickly, so thoroughly, so unconditionally that he honestly felt ruined for other authors.
For years Adrien read every book Ladybug produced, devouring their words like an emotionally starved barnacle only kept from sinking when sucked into one of their written worlds.
Even with his connections, Adrien never attempted to discover Ladybug’s identity, letting them exist in society in whatever capacity they wished, though Adrien longed to form a connection with the person behind the words. Let them know how grateful he was for their contribution to the world. He’d written speeches in his head hundreds of times if he ever finally got the chance to meet Ladybug and shower them with his adoration. Sometimes the sentences would pour out of his mind so quickly he didn’t even think his mouth would be able to keep up if he was blessed by Ladybug’s presence. He just had so much to say.
This was why when finally confronted with everything he’d ever dared hope for in the form of a beautiful young woman staring up at him with too-blue eyes and a truth he couldn’t ignore, his silence was deafening.