After seeing their interactions in "Despair Bear", I got the impression that Kim's attraction to Chloé is deeper than I thought. So I started throwing words onto paper to see what possible explanations I could come up with, and this is what happened.
Everyone seems to have a criticism or two for Chloé Bourgeois. Kim is no exception, but he also feels as though he is one of the only people capable of seeing something other than flaws.
"Chloé is a coward who picks on others," is what Kim hears.
'Not all of the time,' Kim thinks.
Her sense of humor is a little twisted, but isn't everyone's? Kim often finds himself laughing at things without fully understanding why. Chloé always seems to think she's being helpful, and sometimes she actually is.
X
"Me, be your Valentine?" Chloé practically spits in his face. She doesn't, which is not only appreciated by Kim, but also protects her flawlessly applied lip gloss from smudging. There's hardly a single word that isn't emphasized by a disbelieving trill.
They are twelve years old. It's the first year anyone in their class has really celebrated Valentine's Day, the first year it meant anything more than getting chocolate from their parents and giving some to their best friends. Asking someone to be their Valentine feels like a movie cliché, but most of them are twiddling their thumbs and dancing on their toes at the very prospect, now that it's their turn to try. Cinema and holiday specials no longer seem like the ideal way to study such an important ritual.
They way his stomach somersaults isn't romantic, it's – it's more like being stuck in Greece and not understanding a word of the language, Kim thinks. Or being unable to wake up from a bad dream. An entire morning spent dedicated to standing in front of the bathroom mirror and practicing what he wanted to say, and he still couldn't say it right.
Kim shrinks a little, something that's hard to do, because even at twelve he's among the tallest and most developed of their grade. His mother had told him the girls would be taller than the boys at this age, but Kim towers over most of his classmates regardless of gender. And height certainly isn't helping him in this situation – anyone could see how miserable and rejected he looks just by glancing over the top of Chloé's head.
The way his voice cracks like a walnut whenever he's nervous only makes things worse.
"Uh, that is... un – unless you've already – "
Chloé rolls her eyes and snaps, "Did someone tell you to say that?"
Stunned into silence, Kim feels his jaw dropping open. Those were his own words, but he lacks the confidence to say so. If Chloé was already celebrating with someone else, he would try to be happy for her.
"Or let me guess, you found that on an online advice column, didn't you?" She laughs, sharply, and continues, "If you're always worried about other people's feelings, you'll never get what you want!"
He wonders if she meant for it to sound that callous, but not for long, because Chloé is like a fire that's determined to consume him. Burn him up and leave nothing left but a skeleton.
"Listen up, everyone!" she screams at the top of her lungs.
Everyone's eyes are immediately drawn to the shady corner of the classroom where Kim had just attempted to confess, the one he'd specifically chosen because it was out of the way and half-hidden by books he's never read and a coat rack. Even Sabrina agreed to leave them alone for a few minutes, and she's normally closer to Chloé than Chloé's own shadow.
Chloé's fire is currently attacking his face – he doubts anyone has ever blushed this hard in the history of the human race.
"I, Chloé Bourgeois, don't even need a Valentine's date! None of you are anywhere near awesome enough to be my Valentine, so stop asking!"
A few people recoil. Some look disgusted or snicker derisively to their neighbors, muttering things behind their hands that Kim couldn't quite hear but wished he didn't have to imagine about the girl he currently liked. Among all of those, however, there are a few kids who glance awkwardly at their feet or scuff the floor. Feeling something akin to relief, Kim decides that he's probably not the only person who's rejected by Chloé so far.
Then it dawns on Kim what she's just implied, and that feeling gives way to disbelief. Even his best friend, Max, is a little afraid of not receiving a Valentine, despite liking machines more than humans and never having a crush before in his life.
With a disdainful flick of her hair, she concludes, "Try to have fun at your silly middle school dance, everyone, because I won't be there."
That "silly dance" is the only thing anyone in their class has talked about for three weeks.
For the first time, Kim's concept of strength is turned on his head. He could do five hundred push ups and still not have the courage to make a statement like that.
"Well, Khun – "
"My name is Kim," Kim corrects automatically, wondering how Chloé could forget the name of someone she's shared a classroom with all year. He's ignored, of course.
" – better luck next year. Remember to sound more confident and pick someone in your league and maybe you'll actually have a chance!"
X
"Chloé is the meanest girl in our school," their classmates say.
'She's the strongest,' Kim thinks.
Confidence is not to be underrated, and Chloé has tons of it. Kim is afraid of spiders and being humiliated and rejected. Nothing worries Chloé except, maybe, people who think she's afraid of anything. There are plenty of things she hates, but nothing Kim can think of that she fears. Most of their classmates think he's the bravest person they know, and the ones that don't believe it's Alix.
Kim basks in the notion. Sometimes he even feels like he agrees with them, but, for the most part, he hides his true feelings like a secret.
X
A year later, Kim still hasn't gotten over his crush on Chloé. It's occurred to him that maybe he likes her more for her prettiness, and Max has stopped describing it with complicated words like "infatuation". Now he wants to know why he likes Chloé, even though Kim doesn't completely understand either. What started out as pretty eyes and designer clothes has turned into something indescribable.
At this point, Max's investment in his love life became purely scientific. Max wouldn't care if he liked her only for her appearance or her personality or because he secretly believed she were an alien from another planet. (She's not, Kim is pretty sure.)
So when Valentine's Day rolls around again, Max takes it upon himself to do some research using a self-made algorithm – Kim has no idea what that means – to collect data on the best cards and love poems and gifts. Max even offers to try the double date approach with Sabrina, but Kim declines. Max has been over Valentine's Day since he realized not celebrating was not the same as signing a death warrant last year, and that no one treated him any differently over not having a Valentine. If dating doesn't make Max happy, the double date plan isn't worth trying.
They're working with a couple of thirteen year olds' budgets, so it's not easy, but Kim is happy with what they eventually settle with. Instead of reciting his confession alone, in front of his bathroom mirror, he spends weeks practicing with Max. It's extremely awkward at first, but by the end he's almost gotten the hang of saying the words in front of another person and is feeling infinitely more confident than he was last year.
Despite this, his heart never stops trying to pound its way out of his chest as he waits for the day, and by the time it does, he's more anxious to get it over with than anything.
He must be the unluckiest guy in the world though, because everything goes horribly wrong again.
"Chloé – "
"What is this, some kind of joke?" Chloé stamps her foot.
Her fists are balled like she's about to slug someone, except she would never do that because it might mess up her manicure, and – Kim is the only one nearby, so he really hopes she's not about to slug him.
Kim's first thought is that she remembers last year, until she continues, "If you're going to talk to me, at least take that spider off your sleeve first!"
It's a little known fact that Kim is terrified of spiders, but now that he's screaming bloody murder in the courtyard he wouldn't be surprised if everyone knew by tomorrow.
"GET IF OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF – "
"You mean that's a real spider?"
"Who would ask someone to be their Valentine with a spider?!" Kim instinctively demands. His voice is as high-pitched as a steam whistle, but sounding uncool is the least of his concerns right now.
Chloé joins him in shrieking for a while, now that she's figured out what's going on. Kim swats at the spider – it's huge and gray and fuzzy – with the hand that just so happens to be holding Chloé's Valentine's card, letter, and a small bag of store bought chocolates. In spite of all his flailing, Kim swears he can count every hair on its creepy, disgusting legs. The gifts are crushed in his fist like tissue paper, but he doesn't notice.
Once he finally knocks it off his arm, he stomps on it for good measure, a little too late to realize he accidentally threw Chloé's gifts on top of it. He can't even tell what's spider and what's chocolate anymore, and the other two – he's starting to wonder if cards and poetry were a good ideas in the first place.
Max had suggested a card that represented his interests and personality, so it would be harder for Chloé to forget who'd given it to her. The cartoony soccer player and "I get a kick out of you" just looks stupid now, though. And that wasn't even starting on the short letter he'd written. Kim had given up on poetry around the same time he'd given up passing composition, but he'd gone for the next best thing and written a normal, half-page letter that he now thought would only look lazy and low effort to someone as sophisticated as Chloé.
Before he could mope too much, Chloé started shrieking again, "ARE YOU CRAZY?"
'This is it,' Kim thinks, convinced she's about to call him a creepy and a stalker and laugh at him for trying to play out of his league again. Or for being afraid of something only three year olds feared.
"What kind of idiot confesses to someone that unprepared?"
His eyes flutter open in shock, and his spine straightens. Chloé doesn't even notice, and certainly doesn't let up.
"Oh my God, what if you didn't take a breath mint first, would you seriously have tried to ask me out with smelly breath? I can't be known as the girl whose Valentine had smelly breath!"
Unsure whether he should be relieved or not, Kim made the very wise decision not to say anything.
"You have no class, no sense of style, and – " Kim is afraid of what will come next, but not as afraid as what she actually says " – you didn't even kill the spider!"
She slams her foot down on the eight-legged nightmare he somehow missed, that's currently trying to escape (Kim shudders to think of what would happen if it had). "Ew, now it's on my shoes. Now I have to go shoe shopping – wait, that's a good thing!"
"Um, you're welcome?"
Just like last year, Chloé doesn't appear to hear him as she skips away. Although she hadn't so much as glanced at his card, she calls over her shoulder nonchalantly, "Don't worry about messing up, Kyle. I wouldn't have been your Valentine anyway!"
"My name's Kim," he mutters numbly.
A little while later, he recounts this story to Max, who admits that he hadn't expected Kim to succeed or even confess without stuttering in the first place. "On the bright side," Max struggles, visibly wincing after noticing that was the exact wrong thing to say, "she probably won't remember you confessed next year either."
X
"Chloé is a bully."
'Only because you've never noticed how she acts around her friends,' Kim thinks.
Naturally, he's not counted among that number. No one is, except for Sabrina – and Adrien, as he'd recently found out. It's unclear how much Adrien reciprocates her feelings, but Kim thinks it works out better for him if Adrien doesn't.
X
His crush on Chloé is officially celebrating its third birthday. Max is ready to start pestering him about his plans for Valentine's Day this year, when they stumble onto the following scene:
Chloé, yelling at and berating a group of teenagers who'd called Sabrina too ugly to ever get a date.
Chloé, with one of her shiny new shoes she'd spent all last week bragging about, planted firmly on someone's desk and looking like she'd prefer it to be planted on someone's throat right now.
Chloé, with her teeth bared and Sabrina cowering behind her like her best friend was also a guard dog – Chloé probably wouldn't enjoy that comparison, now that Kim thinks about it. He opts to lock that thought in the back of his mind and admit it to no one.
"How dare you call Sabrina ugly? Nobody gets to do that to my best friend but me, and only when she really, really deserves it! And at least she's wearing a designer sweater, unlike you filthy street rats – "
"Are you still planning to ask Chloé this year?" Max asks meekly.
"When was the last time you even looked in a mirror? Do you you think nobody's going to notice that your ugly, knockoff sweater looks like it was pulled out of a trashcan – "
"I'll wait until next year," Kim gulps. Considering the shelf life his crush has had so far, waiting a year for Chloé to become normal levels of scary sounds like a great idea.
" – and so what if Sabrina has poor fashion sense? Nobody's perfect! At least she's not some unpopular, spiteful, two-faced – "
"Then we agree – Valentine's Day is on hiatus for another year."
On a side note, Sabrina did receive a Valentine's card that year, albeit from a secret admirer. Presumably, whoever sent it was now too afraid of undergoing a trial by Chloé to sign.
X
Alix believes his crush on Chloé is a lost cause, which makes Kim wonder why he bothered telling her in the first place. She promises not to tell anyone, but she had also promised to give him advice – so Kim is feeling a little sour about that, thinking it would've been better to keep it a secret between just him and Max.
Since he skipped out on Valentine's Day last year, the duo have had a full year to come up with a full proof plan. Naturally, they put it off until the last month, but that – that is beside the point.
Even though Alix and Max are the only two people he's told, Kim imagines he hears, "Chloé will never like you," from all of their classmates.
'This time, Chloé is definitely going to like me,' Kim hopes.
X
It's the fourth year Kim will entertain the thought of confessing to Chloé. People compliment his cool hair and his athletic build and Chloé seems to be capable of remembering his name now, so he's off to a good start. At least, he hopes so.
He asks his parents about what girls like, receiving a "she'll love anything if it's from you" from one and a "don't give her flowers, give her something that will last" from the other. The latter seems like far superior advice, and later that night he makes a phone call to his wing man, Max – "stop researching flowers, we're going with jewels instead".
No expense will be spared. Chloé is a classy girl, so when it comes to price Kim declares that the sky is the limit. He realizes what he just said at the same time he's promising to repay Max no later than a month from now, but Kim bites his tongue and arrests his anxiety because he really, really, really wants to be done with failed confessions.
Meeting Chloé at the end of a quick jog to get his heart rate and dopamine levels up is partially Max's idea, but partially it's just convenient because that's the route Kim likes to run after school anyway.
"Also," Max cheerily declares, "it will prevent you from feeling any residual anxiety caused by confessing on school grounds that will remind you of the last three times."
But it's really Marinette who gives him the courage to do it.
...I hope someone actually reads this story, haha.