Miraculous Ladybug collection

Manipulation >Lies

The first and only time his mother caught him, he was four, Nathalie was being a meanie and wouldn’t let him play so he just…. Forced her hand a bit. He was cold, calculating (for a four year old) and had looks and charisma to back him up.

His mother stopped him

When he asked why she told him it wasn’t nice to people, and you can't make good friends if you manipulate people all the time. Then they wouldn’t be friends, they would be puppets.

He didn’t understand why that would be such a bad thing. It's nice to have puppets, they do whatever you want them to.

But…. Well, his mother was the only person who stayed with him, the only one who didn’t neglect him. So, he listened. He curbed influencing people slowly, stopped telling Chloe what she wanted to hear mixed with what he wanted her to hear and just listened instead, stopped being cold to Nathalie, even stopped avoiding his father. He looked at someone new, ran exactly how they could dance to his tunes and kept that thought in his head.

He did like galas though, it was a free pass to lie and manipulate to his heart's content. He wasn’t there to make friends and he had both his parents encouraging him. it helped keep their facade.

"Oh that's terrible!" I don't care about your pantsuit.

"You look lovely as ever" please for the love of god stop wearing pink, it's not your damn colour.

"Of course I can see what your wife is doing wrong" she married a stubborn neurotic man like you.

He could be nice though. His mother asked only that of him and he loved her. So, he stopped.

And then she was gone.

His father's sudden rush of protectiveness surprised him, not more than it annoyed him, but it did surprise him. Of course then he went on to try to build him into the perfect face of his brand and whatever goodwill was between them vanished, they were more distant than ever and despite Adrien trying for his mother's sake the gaping hole between them never really filled.

And he went to school, because goddamn he could not stay under his father's tyranny all the time. And hey, isn’t that what his mother wanted? For him to make friends?

And then Marinette Dupain Cheng came stumbling into his life and for the first time in his life he got blamed for something he didn’t do. It was abrupt and he didn’t realise until later how refreshing the girl was despite only being mad at him.

He wanted her to notice him. Maybe she could be his friend?

And then Hawkmoth happened and he got Plagg and then,

Ladybug

He fell for her hard.

And then, things were going great. Sure, he had a hectic schedule that had to be flexible enough to allow being Chat Noir but that also meant he got to see his lady, he thinks made friends and not mindless puppets.

And while Marinette was... guarded? around Adrien Aggrest, she wasn’t around Chat Noir. So he may be abusing dual identity a little bit to spend time with the blunette. But there's just something about Mari that has him hooked.

And then there was Lila Rossi.

At first he was amused more than anything. It was fun watching her go around and claim stuff she had no way of proving. He scoffed internally, hers are the kind of lies that collapsed inevitably and left you in a mess. He wondered what would happen when they did. Would she tell a bigger lie to keep it going? Will she give up and take her losses?