"You're usually smarter than this, Sabrina," Chloé admitted, from the sanctity of her own room. She'd recently redone the walls of her room in a chic pale yellow, replaced the furniture with white – it now matched the girl's unusual softness, the missing abrasiveness she normally put on display whenever anyone else was around to hear. Under normal circumstances, it's probably not even legal to repaint hotel rooms, but since Chloé is the mayor's daughter she receives special permission, as always. She swirled her spoon inside her yogurt cup a few more times before continuing, "but not always."
"Chloé, I – "
"Honestly, Sabrina, do I have to spell it out for you?" The irony was that Sabrina was much, much better at spelling than she was, something they were both aware of. "Book smarts don't get you everywhere."
All Sabrina had wanted to know was whether Chloé ever felt bad for any of the things she'd done. Sabrina did, sometimes, but mostly she was just glad to have a friend her own age. She would've made quick work of apologizing too, except Chloé kept cutting her off.
"Neither does hard work, talent, or good deeds."
Each item on the list is punctuated by a particularly sharp twist of her spoon. Sabrina observed as a form of distraction, predicting Chloé's reaction in the next ten minutes will include a claim that she's not hungry anymore and this brand of yogurt has too many calories and, besides, it was too cheap to taste good, she had no idea why Sabrina picked this one out. Next time, pick a better brand, Sabrina.
That wasn't entirely Chloé's fault though. She got bored of things so quickly, the poor girl, and Sabrina listened to her complaints every time attentively, faithfully.
Her eyes were too sore from crying to even care. Chloé was bossy because she liked Sabrina. At least someone did.
"So what if some psychology textbook says André freakin' Sancoeur is in love with you? First of all, he's, like Adrien's secretary's... younger cousin."
She said it with a lengthy pause, as if she wasn't certain she was getting all the details correct. Which would make sense, because she was constantly forgetting her butler, Jean's, name.
"Can we stop talking about this?" Sabrina replied meekly.
Now she knows how Kim felt when they laughed at him for confessing to Chloé. Or how Rose felt when they ripped up her love letter to Prince Ali. It's not a nice feeling. If she could go back in time and somehow prevent herself and Chloé from doing those things, she would.
But at least it worked out for Rose in the end. And a lot of people rose to Kim's defense after they posted that picture of Kim on social media. The only people who know about Sabrina and André are Chloé and Adrien, and right now all Adrien knows is that André rejected her confession and an hour later Sabrina ran out of his house, crying. The stuff in between, the part where she overhead André face-timing with his friends back in Nice about how of course he'd lied when he'd told her he already had a girlfriend, because he wanted to date an actual girl and not a toad, is a complete mystery to him.
As usual, Chloé ignored her protests and continued, "Second of all, he's completely heartless, and anyone with an ounce of social smarts would have already known that. And if he thinks you look like a toad – "
Chloé cut herself off after hearing another particularly loud sniffle, her eyes widening with concern. Not that Sabrina can see it, now that her vision is blurring again.
"H-he said his fa...vorite class was c-chemistry!" Sabrina all but wailed.
The only other person who liked science and math nearly as much as her was Max, and the entire school was convinced he was asexual. Or in love with his robot. It was a bit of an open debate, but Sabrina personally believed the former.
Dude, if she's that ugly she's probably desperate.
Besides, she'd mustered up the courage to confess to André Sancoeur and look at how that had turned out.
Hahaha, even if. No thanks, it'd be like sticking my di –
"That's exactly what I mean!" Chloé snapped. "See, Adrien and I are destined to be together. I know this because we grew up together. But you knew André for what, like, three days?"
Sabrina nodded, muttered a "I guess so" of agreement, because right now the last thing she wanted was to relive that memory. By all means, by the scientific definition – it was considered a memory now. But it still felt so fresh and new.
"I guess I humored it because I thought it was cute, but... ugh. Ugh."
"What was so cute about it?" Sabrina muttered again. "If you already knew it wasn't going to work out..."
"If I'd known it would end this badly, I would've told that jerk exactly what I thought of him before this had happened. And I'll make sure Adrikins does too."
"Please, don't – "
"Don't worry, I'm not going to give him the details. Just tell him it's totally his maid's cousin's fault that you ran away crying and I had to cut our date night short because you were crying and he will tell off André without my having to say anything else, I promise."
It wasn't officially a date night, but Sabrina chose not to mention that. They were watching Netflix together on the couch, which Sabrina guessed was a thing some couples did, but unless Adrien also called it a date it wasn't officially a date.
"Just because someone acts nice to you doesn't mean they really are," Chloé added, continuing her earlier explanation, "or that they're doing it because they like you."
That made sense. Chloé acted mean, but deep down she was super nice.
"I just wanted to know what it feels like," Sabrina admitted quietly. "To be in love, like you and Adrien are" – or, well, mostly like Chloé is – "to go on dates and stuff like that."
"And you will," Chloé insisted stubbornly. "Some day."
"What makes you so sure?"
There was absolute silence as Chloé lowered her spoon and stared at some invisible spot on her bed, looking away from Sabrina. For a moment, Sabrina thought she was right and Chloé was about to start ranting about the yogurt.
"Because," she replied finally, slowly, "after Adrien, you're the person I love the most, Sabrina."
This was originally something else, then I forgot to continue the fic for so long I forgot what it was originally supposed to be. But the ambiguous femslash was something I wanted from the start, so at least that still exists. It's really intended to be ambiguous, but I believe "love" is a very strong word.
