Excerpt from my MLB college AU Fanfic. What if Adrien was legally too old to need to get adopted?
TW: Self-starvation, trauma.
The Agreste mansion smelled of dust and mildew and the particular, cloying sweetness of air that had been cycled through the same filters for twenty months without changing. The HVAC system hummed somewhere in the walls, a mechanical heartbeat that had outlived the man who'd installed it, pushing the same dead air through the same dead rooms. Adrien had closed every window in the house the week after the funeral, and he had not opened them since. In the colder months he told himself it was because he couldn't bear the draft, now he told himself it was the way Paris's spring air carried pollen and noise he wanted to shut out. But the truth was simpler and more terrible: he wanted the ghosts of his parents to stay. If he opened a window, they might escape.
He sat at his father's desk. The desk lamp was off. The only light came from the monitor, casting his skin in a colour that suggested drowning, suggested hypothermia, suggested a body found too late in too much water.
Sitting here was a form of self-harm he had never named, not even to Plagg, not even to Marinette in her most patient moments. The mahogany was cold beneath his forearms, a gift from his maternal grandfather, imported from a colonial plantation whose name he did not know, polished by hands that had been paid too little. The leather chair still held the ghost impression of Gabriel's spine, a shallow depression in the cushion that Adrien could feel pressing against his own vertebrae. He despised himself for finding comfort here. He despised the way his body relaxed into the chair's posture of authority he'd never asked to inherit, the way his fingers found the same grooves in the desk's edge that Gabriel's fingers had worn smooth over decades. He was twenty-one years old, legally an adult, too old for adoption, too young to be an orphan in any way that made sense. No one had come to take him home. Nathalie had tried, in her exhausted, grief-dazed way, but she had been grieving too; grieving Gabriel, and the years of her own life she'd poured into his shadow. She was a broken shell of herself just as Adrien had been, now burdening herself with filling the position of Emilie again, this time not as Gabriel’s wife, but as Adrien’s mother. She couldn’t do it. There was too much pain filling that role. She'd left five months ago, a mysterious job offer she wouldn't explain, and Adrien had not blamed her. He had only locked the door behind her and gone back to his father's desk.
He had not eaten since Friday. He did this sometimes, when the grief got too loud, when the hatred in his gut grew teeth and started chewing. It was easier to feel the hollow ache of hunger than the hollow ache of everything else. Easier to control. The starvation was a familiar companion, an old friend who'd moved in when he was seventeen and Gabriel was still alive, when he’d been told to eat less or he’d lose his fathers approval, his value as a model. The feeling was nostalgic.
"You're doing it again," the Cat Miraculous’s kwami said, drifting from the shadows with a heaviness that belied his usual levity. He landed on a stack of unopened client folders, his green eyes reflecting the desk lamp's weak glow. "The not-eating thing. The sitting-in-the-dark thing." He paused, his tiny face doing something complicated. "I thought we were past this, kid. I thought things had gotten better since you told Marinette about what Ladybug told you about your dad."
Plagg sighed, taking a different approach: “ok, just because you're starving yourself doesn't mean I should stop getting fed. Some of us have metabolisms."
Adrien did not look up. "There's Camembert in the kitchen."
"Nope. I've checked. Like 6 times. You're too busy moping to realise we've ran out. Also, I think something is moulding in there, it smells bad. And that's coming from me." Plagg landed on the desk, his tiny paws sinking into a pile of unread contracts. "You've been staring at that screen for four hours. The only thing you've produced is a very impressive impression of a corpse."
"I need to finish this email."
The monitored displayed it, half-written, addressed to Professor Durand:
I am writing to request an extension on Assignment 4, due to|
The cursor blinked. Adrien stared at it, watching it pulse like a heartbeat that felt more steady than his own. The deadline was Thursday. Today was Sunday. He had not started the research. He had not started the three client briefs that sat in unopened folders to his left, their deadlines cascading toward him like dominoes he had already failed to catch: Friday, Wednesday, Tuesday, each one closer than the last, each one impossible now. Not missed. Approaching… Encroaching. The difference felt important, a technicality that kept him from being a complete failure even as he sat motionless in the dark.
Instead of typing the email further, Adrien's fingers traced the edges of two keys on his keyboard. The plastic was cold, the letters worn smooth in places where Gabriel's hands had worked. G. A. The initials were everywhere in this room, engraved in the silver letter opener, embossed on the leather blotter…
If you want to read more, this is part of my Lukadrinette slow burn story with a lot of emotional damage and tension.
https://archiveofourown.org/collections/The_lukadrinette_saga
