#but if queen asukiess demands i shall provide <3 within reason

[wisteriasymphony]

comfort snapshot for @asukiess ignore whatever the other one's name is queen she's not important just crtl+f mari onto it no biggie

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The lock looked simple, and like it had been forced upon before in the past. Claudia fought with the doorhandle for a moment, but it wouldn't open.

Jesus, calm down. You know he gets a bit of a fuse sometimes, hearing you try to break a door down isn't gonna fucking help you much.

She sighed, speaking softly.

"Adrien, I'm going to try and open the door," Claudia whispered, "And then I am going to step inside. I am not going to hurt you. I won't even come close if you don't want me to. Okay?"

Three minutes of dead silence. And so, she slipped her fingernail into the lock's middle slot, the lightest force enough to spring it open. She tread carefully into the bathroom, finding Adrien in the corner. He had ransacked every cabinet in the room and stolen all the towels and washcloths and even the bathroom rug; And in that corner, he had curled up in a ball and covered himself with them, until his silhouette was more of a shifting mass of fabric than a boy.

He didn’t bother to look at Claudia, only muttering “I’m disgusting” under his breath like it was a curse.

“Hey, people say things they don’t mean all the time.” Claudia slowly knelt down onto the floor, watching Adrien with a concerned gaze.

“I promise I didn’t mean it. I don’t– I wouldn’t want—“

“Shh. It’s fine, okay? I’m not mad over it or anything,” she said, crawling over to him. “…I’m going to put my hand on your head. Is that alright?”

He nodded, and so Claudia started to stroke his hair again. Adrien still couldn’t bear to look at her… but the feeling was nice. Even if it only led to more tears. It was insane to think that she’d still really love him after that. Was he even worth it? She had to have known that he wasn’t.

"Why do you stay?" Adrien finally asked. "You seem to make it so clear that I don't mean anything to you. Like one of these days you're going to discard me at the drop of a hat." He stared her down with dull, watery eyes, for the first time in a long while. "Why do you even stick around?"

It was clear that there was a very specific answer he was looking for. One that validated all of his worst fears, one that reminded him that even the person he loved most in the world would only ever see him as one thing. But Claudia was tired of lying. Even when it meant she said things people weren't expecting to hear.

"Because I don't know what I'd do without you." Claudia slipped her jacket off her shoulders, placing it in Adrien's lap as another thing to cover himself with. "Because I like hearing you talk, and I like your laugh, and I like that none of your fancy photos ever show the dimple on your left cheek but I get to see it everyday." Claudia laughed to herself, admitting "..It's very faint, but it's there."

Adrien shifted closer to Claudia, leaning on her a little more. He was still crying, sure, but the tears were slowing down. She was doing something right for once.

"What else... I like listening to you play piano. I think you're the best in the whole world."

"Th... that's not true..."

"Psch! To me, it is. Beethoven can suck my left nut for all I care, he's probably terrible compared to you."

This time she got a laugh back. Another shift closer. Adrien had finally reached a hand out to cling onto her.

"..So you do love me?"

"Mhm." Claudia planted a kiss on his forehead. "I love you, I love you, I love you, and I mean it even more every time I say it. I don't care what you look like, what you say to me, even who you are. 'Cause I don't love Chat Errant, or Chat Noir, or even Adrien Agresté." She placed her pointer finger on his chest, leaning in to let their foreheads touch. "I just love you."

He broke out into sobs again, his face contorting into something scrunched and unsightly. "Y-you won't let me be cold anymore, right? I was s-so cold— I-" Adrien let his head fall to her shoulder, heaving and blubbering into it. "And the lights and they'd— The way she touched me in- I-in— It lasted for so long and- There's pictures of all of it and— A-all I can remember is that I was so cold-"

He stopped when he felt her hand hover over the towels draped on his shoulder—stopped talking, stopped breathing, probably stopped blinking too. Claudia could feel he had the most terrible fever, was probably only going to kill himself with all these layers... but she moved her hand to his head, ruffling his hair.

"No, I won't let you be cold," she said, taking off her shirt, then her bra: giving him the former but setting the latter on the floor. "Here. I'll warm you up."

When Adrien went to hug her, a few of the towels fell off his shoulders. Claudia swore she'd never been hugged this hard in her life—maybe that even most people would never been hugged this hard. He seemed to wrap his body around her, clinging on by every means he could, shaking and heaving and yet still holding on however he could. But Claudia was stable, and her skin felt like dew-kissed stones in a riverbank. Not cold, but just.. a little less warm. The good kind.

"D-do you ever feel like you want your mom," he asked, the words breaking against his tears, "...But you— But you know that she'd only make it worse?"

Claudia knew that if Adrien's mother had still been alive, this would have been the moment Claudia planned to kill her.

"...Every day, Eddí," she said, shifting to kiss the top of his head. "Every day."