Chapter Text
🐈⬛
When Adrien was ten, he begged for permission to model. He wanted to wear pretty clothes and spend more time with his father, especially since his mother had started getting… sleepy earlier and earlier. It was a win-win.
He doesn’t quite put into words all the ways it hasn’t worked until years later.
The obvious one, that only took him a few months to understand, was that he doesn’t get to spend more time with his father, as his father is rarely present at shoots, and what time he does spend with him is now as much focused on discussing his appearance and professionalism as on his academic success and musical performances.
And then his mother disappears, and with her, what little warmth his father ever possessed.
He is sixteen when he realizes that the disappointment he feels about modeling isn’t all directed at his father.
He presses his back firmly against the back of his couch, sitting on the floor behind it. He is taking slow, deep breaths.
This is not something he can let himself get Akumatised for. Not that it’s normally a risk he gets to take, being Chat Noir.
One of the best and worst parts of being a hero is currently floating in front of his face, saying words that Adrien can’t register no matter how hard he tries—if he focuses too hard on Plagg, his breathing goes wonky again and his vision starts to swim and he can’t focus on Plagg, he has to focus on his breathing.
But he should listen, when he’s being spoken to. He’s being so rude, right now, and he should be ashamed, he isashamed*,* but even the shame coursing through him is just fueling his stuttering heart and straining lungs.
His lips are tingling.
He needs Plagg to shut up; if Plagg stopped talking, he could stop trying to listen.
“C-claws out!”
And he tips to the side.
Or at least, he must.
Because he’s blinking his eyes open, looking sideways at the world, hearing a voice call through his door, “Adrien, you have ten minutes to get to the car.”
“I’ll be—” he coughed, sitting up. “I’ll be right there!”
And he could hear Nathalie’s heels clicking away.
He winced at the sharp sound.
He took a deep breath.
Okay.
…Okay!
He can do this.
He had been to hundreds of photo shoots, and this one would be exactly the same.
Before hyperventilating, he’d been looking at pictures of himself with his mother, from before he’d started modeling professionally.
He was sitting in her lap, looking up at her. He could remember, being ten, looking up at her beaming face, wanting to be as pretty as her some day.
He still wanted to be as pretty as his mother some day.
But he had realized that he would settle for pretty at all, instead of handsome.
And he had been hyperventilating before he could put the rest of it into words.
He moved into his bathroom to wash the tears from his face and then realized that he was still transformed.
It was all a blur after that, his body moving on auto pilot, his mind hiding from reality.
Detransforming, making his way down to the car, the ride to the photoshoot, having his hair done, being made up, being prodded by the two assistants it took to get him dressed without messing up his makeup and hair, the flashing lights, the loud voices, those assistants helping him into another outfit, more voices, more lights, more, more, more.
Until finally, silence.
He sat facing away from his piano, his face in his hands.
He had homework to do. A song to practice. Makeup to remove. A superhero partner to meet.
He could not talk his body into listening.
It had stopped moving on auto pilot, but he wasn’t back in control yet.
Which might be for the best, really. Part of his mind was still on his floor, hyperventilating.
He wanted to be pretty. And wear beautiful gowns. Like his mother.
But he also wanted cute summer dresses and skater skirts. Flouncy blouses. Ballet flats.
He couldn’t blame that on a childish desire to be like his mother when he grew up, because she didn’t do those things.
His mother’s femininity had been... regal, in a way. Aristocratic.
Adrien didn’t want to be his mother.
Adrien just wanted to… be a girl.
And he’s… she’s? No, he can’t start thinking like that or he’ll slip up somehow, he’s sure. It’s already hard enough to keep the cat jokes—mostly—to one half of himself. One third?
Anyway, he thinks it’s a little ridiculous that it’s taken him this long to put words to a feeling he’s certain he’s had a lot of times before.
He also wishes that the realization had had the decency to wait a few more years.
Adrien isn’t stupid, as much as he plays up the dumb blond thing sometimes.
His father could barely stand to be in the same room as him, since his mother’s disappearance.
Even if his father would have taken Adrien being… not a boy, well, in another lifetime where Adrien had figured this out before Emilie had vanished, he would not take well to Adrien looking any more like his mother in this reality.
And Adrien did not think his father would have taken it well, even then.
And so this is another secret for Adrien to keep to himself.
A third identity. Perhaps his first true identity, and one he refuses to think about long enough to allow it to become concrete, become real.
He didn’t even explain it to Plagg, when he inquired about the panic attack later that evening, after Adrien had turned himself around and placed his hands on the piano.
He ignored it. Maybe if he ignored it, this feeling would go away. He hadn’t always felt like this had he? He couldn’t be that oblivious...
Could he?
🐈⬛
It worked and three days later he no longer wanted to crawl out of his skin.
No, he hadn’t actually expected that to work, either.
But here he was, staring at himself in the mirror and, where yesterday he hadn’t been able to look at himself, he was… fine.
More than fine, even.
He liked the suit he had been given for this shoot. The faux leather accents and powder blue pin striped shirt. The way it enhanced his shoulders was distinctly masculine.
And he liked it.
He leaned on the sink.
Looked himself in the eye.
The makeup made his face look more mature, now. Where for years the makeup had just been to even his complexion and hide late nights, for the last several months the artists had been… sculpting his face, contouring and highlighting much more drastically, depending on the shoot.
He looked almost like a grown man, sometimes.
Now.
Was that what had made him think about skirts and being pretty?
He frowned.
He would much rather be handsome, today.
Maybe he should just ignore this, too.
Adrien had been wishing for the feeling of discontent to go away, but for some reason, now that it had…
It was more distressing that it had gone away, almost.
Had he been imagining things?
Just missing his mother? That had been what had started it, wasn’t it?
That wasn’t how things worked, was it?
Adrien was a model, Adrien knew about trans people, and had been not thinking about the fact that he… she…? for days, long enough to almost come to terms with living the rest of his life with that discomfort, like he lived with loving Ladybug:
A constant ache in his chest that he spoke of to no one, except maybe Plagg, some day. Maybe even Ladybug or Nino.
But something that Adrien could never admit to anyone.
Having that vanish was like removing a wall he’d been leaning on after working really hard to build it.
He’s tipped over, metaphorically, and he needs to pick himself back up.
At least he’d only had to deal with a long weekend of work while… that had been burning a hole in his mind, rather than deal with wasting time ruminating when he could be with his friends during the week.