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There are certain things that children require as they grown up, beyond basic human needs such as water and food and shelter. There are certain things that children need in order to be healthy, in order to enjoy the best quality of life possible.
There are certain things that Adrien was not given. Any semblance of freedom, mostly. Emotional validity. Actual interest. There are other things that Adrien was given too much of. Clothes. Money. Space.
It seems contradictory to have too much space and not any freedom but his parents diligently managed. There were eyes on his every step and yet there was no warmth in them, no care. Adrien has spent much of his life being cold.
He used to hunch under the sheets and shiver, despite his room being the optimal temperature. It was almost every night before he found a cure. From then on, he would curl up under the covers, weak torch on, and thumb through the pages of his fairytales.
His mother had smiled indulgently when she saw his recent order, seeing no problem in allowing her son to have a book or two. It wouldn't teach him enough about outside for him to want to go there, after all.
It hadn't taught Adrien about outside. His first book of fairytales had taught him about humans instead. When he ordered his second, his mother had barely blinked. By the fourth, she'd stopped paying attention. And so it was, that his materials grew darker and darker, shifting from fairies and unicorns to selkies and sirens. Adrien himself grew less outwardly emotional, immersed further and further into his fairytales.
His mother went missing.
Adrien fell deeper into another world, sunk into the gaps between the letters of the fairytales he never stopped reading and let his mind whisper of tragedies and bargains and sacrifices and kidnappings and spells that backfired. He watched his father with narrowed eyes, waiting for the grief to manifest itself. His father no longer ate dinner with him. Nathalie offered to but he turned her down, taking the opportunity to read at the table too.
Somehow, just as his mother faded from visible to obscured, his fairy tale books went from obscured to visible. If his father noticed, he did not care. His father never cared what Adrien was up to as long as he didn't stray from the path he had set out.
Then Adrien did stray.
He'd become desperate to gain his freedom from his tower, his six months in the Aboveworld, his own grand adventure. In exchange for his failed attempt, his father took his books. He didn't truly look at Adrien as he did so, despite the antics of his son catching his attention. He took Adrien's books and didn't even have the decency to look at him.
Plagg had entered Adrien's life before he could truly begin to despair and Adrian had considered it a fair bargain. His books for the chance of a real-life fairytale.
One of delicate flutters and bloody smiles and vibrant gashes and harsh giggles. One of predators and prey and glowing, green, poisonous eyes and lazy smirks and jagged wounds.
Ladybug and Chat Noir won most battles but Adrien was never sure whether or not they'd win the war. Fairytales become easier to predict the more of them you read but how could he be sure which one this was? There are consequences to thinking yourself on the wrong fairytale. Too much haste can lead to the mongoose losing its life for saving another’s. Too little can lead to avoidable carnage.
Adrien doesn't know which fairytale he's in. He doesn't know much really, other than academics and awkward moments with friends. He especially doesn't know what to do with a kwami. Feeding Plagg is natural, as is putting up with his laziness and general inconvenience.
What isn't natural is the way he bites his lip and glances over at Plagg after a particular bad alums that leaves the kwami exhausted. What isn't natural is the skittish way he approached the god, hands tightly clutching the sole book to survive his father's purge. (Adrien suspects his father has forgotten about the whole thing. He could be punish him still, of course, but that's less likely.)
What isn't natural is the way he cracks open the book and starts to read, his voice uneven and stuttering. What isn't natural is the way that Plagg eyes him speculatively the next morning. ("Fairytales, huh? I can work with this.")
What isn't natural at first but swiftly becomes so if Plagg's voice in his ear as he struggles to breathe, to fight back against the choking weight of anxiety. The kwami reads him fairytales as Adrien struggles to focus on his voice and when those run out, he starts to make up his own.
Plagg is a horrible storyteller, all disorganised and full of both rapid passages and long pauses but it's good. It's good to have these spaces to lift Adrien up, to anchor him back to firm ground. Fairytales have always been something for Adrien, something he keeps to himself. They are safe in a way that people are not. Plagg is certainly not safe.
And yet, when the kwami tells him fairytales, Adrien can pretend, might even believe that he can one day be both loved and free.