#I’m so dizzy and tired and nauseous ughhhh

[timidewe]

got into a car wreck yesterday and ohmyfuck I am in so much pain

[ao3bronte]

Unseen Scars by @ao3bronte Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug

This is my seventh prompt for @badthingshappenbingo ! Please reblog and enjoy!

Neglect/Abandonment (7/8)

It’s not unusual for Nathalie Sancoeur to delegate the various staff members at her disposal to contend with Adrien, especially considering her own...precarious condition at the moment. Since being promoted to M. Agreste’s head assistant ten years prior, she’d been nothing but diligent in her duties and meticulous in her management. 

Except…

Nathalie grimaces and slumps over in her office chair, fighting off another painful migraine. She has enough on her plate as it is, so when faced with something as straightforward as another one of Adrien’s school related illnesses, Nathalie simply thought nothing of it.

Upon having Adrien’s bodyguard deposit him onto his couch in his bedroom three days ago, Nathalie had sent for the family doctor. Despite the short notice, D. Débile arrived within a few hours and prescribed an antiviral without so much as a second glance at the half-asleep boy and ordered Adrien to stay in bed for at least a week to stop the spread of illness to the rest of Paris.

Not that he’d been cognisant enough to hear it, of course. Leaving a note by his bedside with his instructions was a more than sufficient way of communication with Adrien, and Nathalie had done so promptly. Washing her hands scrupulously, she’d left the room immediately after to deal with the mounting responsibilities of being both an assistant by day and a magical cohort by night. 

Adrien would find his way under the covers of his bed eventually.

Meal deliveries were scheduled at 8h, 13h and 19h. Servants M. Simon and M. Dubois were supposed to rouse Adrien, compel him to take his medicine and eat his food promptly, then leave the boy in peace. Nathalie did not want either domestic to contract the illness and spread it to the rest of the staff; she couldn’t fathom the additional headaches she would have to contend with should half her personnel call in sick.

Nathalie’s communication with M. Agreste about Adrien’s physical state is to the point, as always. She relays that Adrien has caught an illness and has been prescribed medicine and seven days rest. Gabriel acknowledges this by asking her to rearrange Adrien’s modelling commitments for the following week.

Done and done. She has far more important things to accomplish.

She looks in on him only once on the third evening, cracking open the door and peering within. He’s sitting and hunched over on the edge of his bedside, dry heaving into the waste bin. She recoils and shuts the door, tapping on her iPad to schedule a cleaning in one half hour.

~

Plagg had long shoved Marinette’s empty container of soup under Adrien’s bed by the time one of the Agreste household maids had come into the bedroom to clean up the mess that his wielder had made on the floor. 

His regurgitations hadn’t exactly...hit their mark.

(And it isn’t that he hasn’t seen his fair share of human’s being gross, but at least he’d been just as drunk as his former wielders when they’d inevitably indulged in too much Roman wine.)

Plagg spends the next several minutes peeping from the covers at the foot of Adrien’s bed, watching from the dark as the maid cleans the bathroom and the area around his bed. The woman only looks slightly puzzled at the wadded-up pieces of cling film piled on his nightstand and finishes cleaning within ten minutes, shutting the door as quickly as she came.

Plagg taps at Adrien’s foot, giving him the green light.

“Ughhhh,” Adrien groans, rolling over onto his side now that the coast is clear, “Why is it so bright in here?”

“It’s not,” Plagg floats from beneath the duvet and hovers in front of him, “So do us both a favour and close your eyes.”

Adrien purses his lips, “Did they even teach you about bedside manners where you came from?”

“Hardly,” Plagg rolls his eyes, “I’m the embodiment of chaos and destruction. I don’t need manners.”

“If I could think straight, I’d make a joke about switching kwamis again. I’m sure Tikki wouldn’t be this mean to me.”

“You’re not wrong about that,” Plagg admits, tugging his whiskers, “She’s a coddler. Disgusting.”

“I could use a little coddling,” Adrien murmurs, rolling onto his back and draping his forearm over his eyes, “Plagg, can you believe Ladybug was in my room last night?”

“And the night before that,” Plagg rolls his eyes as Adrien flings his arm across his body and gapes at him in horror, “You were dead asleep for that bit. I wasn’t.”

“Oh no, please don’t tell me I embarrassed myself.”

“You didn’t throw up on her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Oh thank god,” Adrien groans, shuddering as he closes his eyes against the lamplight filtering down from his desk, “Can you turn that off for me, Plagg? I’d do it myself but...I don’t know what’s wrong with me, honestly. I feel dizzy and kind of...merde, it begins with an n…”

“Nauseous?”

“Yes! Nauseous,” Adrien’s lips quiver and he takes a raspy breath, “Is there a way to like, reboot your brain? Because I feel like I’ve forgotten half the French language which, you know, sucks. Because I speak French.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Plagg responds, the snark in his voice not matching his expression as he turns his eyes towards the time, “Whatever you knocked loose in there, it’ll come back. It’ll just take a while.”

Adrien shifts his arm enough to expose one eye, “But how long is a while?”

“I don’t know,” the kwami shrugs, “A couple weeks? A couple months? I have no sense of time, I’m a god.”

His wielder sighs, “You’re no help.”

“Says the kid who just asked me to turn off a lamp,” Plagg grouses back, hitting the switch with his paws. Adrien’s bedroom is blanketed in the blessed darkness of early evening and he can finally open his eyes without fighting off the headache that threatens to split his skull in two, “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Thank you Plagg. You’re always so kind to me, even when you’re kinda not.”

“Yeah yeah,” Plagg waves him off, “Now get some rest so you can heal that thick skull of yours.”

Adrien sighs his agreement with a tired smile and Plagg only returns the gesture once his kitten’s eyes are closed firmly. Sitting back on his sternum, Plagg waits until his wielder’s breaths have steadied before he takes a weary breath of his own.

This has been the first lucid conversation he’s had with Adrien in seventy-two hours; every other attempt at banter had been a nightmare. Between the stuttering, the forgetfulness and the random bouts of sobbing, Plagg’s anxiety had been threatening to skyrocket through the roof. After all, the sputtering he could deal with. After a round or two of catnip, he certainly knew the struggle of trying to string a sentence together. 

But the sobbing bit?

Plagg shivers at the thought, burrowing against Adrien’s cheek as he settles deeper into his pillow. Plagg has never been particularly competent at managing his kittens and their inevitable moods, but the fact that Adrien has been rocketing through every hue of emotion every time he wakes up is enough to make him want to start throwing up too.

Concussions, as he was finding out, were awful.