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Enjolras, smarmy git, was the first of the pair to turn eighteen. At the party that his parents had organised, he and Courfeyrac stole a bottle of champagne from the buffet table and ended up sitting on the balcony, trading increasingly rude jokes until Enjolras was drunk enough to show Courfeyrac his tattoo.
“Are you fucking serious?” he howled, having finally managed to decipher the scrawl at the base of Enjolras’ neck. “Your soulmate tattoo – the tattoo that determines who you end up spending the rest of your life with is a quote from Star Wars?”
Blushing, Enjolras pulled the neck of his shirt back around to cover the quote. “It’s not that bad.”
“It is so that bad! What did you tell your parents?”
“I told them that I’d rather not share it and they respected that. They don’t even know where it is. But,” Enjolras held a shaky finger up to Courfeyrac’s face, having drunk rather more of the champagne than his friend, “I disagree with the concept of these tattoos. You shouldn’t have to end up spending your whole life with someone just because fate says you should.”
“True.” Courfeyrac rubbed the back of his own neck, suddenly self-conscious. “It eliminates a lot of the guesswork, and I like the sound of that.” It had meant, for him, a childhood of writing down the first words he’d heard from his friends and storing them in a box he’d inherited from his father. All three of his sisters had a similar box, but none of them stored the words with the same care as he did. “After all, love is a serious thing, especially when it’s for the rest of your life.”
“But I’ve not even seen Star Wars!” Enjolras said loudly, attracting looks from the older partygoers below, milling on the lawn in black tie.
“We’ll have to watch it, then. You never know.” Courfeyrac tugged Enjolras to his feet, being careful not to let him get too close to the balcony and wrapping an arm around his friend’s waist. “It also provides us with twelve hours of protection from your parents and the fact that you are hideously hungover.”
“Twelve hours?” Enjolras protested weakly. “But I have schoolwork.”
“We’ll do it tomorrow, when we’re done. We can talk about Les Ami’s then as well.” They were the joint leaders of a social justice society in their college – the society hadn’t yet accomplished anything great, but they were slowly working up to it. Enjolras made the plans with his fearsome intelligence, and Courfeyrac had the nerve to carry them out, so together they made a good team. “Bahorel wants us to a do a campaign on equality for non-binary people, because the school still won’t provide a separate bathroom for Jehan and Cosette, no matter how reasonable xe or xer parents are in asking. It’s ridiculous.”
“Courfeyrac?” Enjolras said, going white. “I’m completely with you on all of that, and I think we should start that tomorrow, but I think I’m going to be sick first.” Pushing the French windows open, Courfeyrac hurried his friend towards the nearest bathroom and held Enjolras’ long blonde hair back as he disgorged the contents of his dinner into the toilet.
“Wow,” Courfeyrac said sardonically. “You are a remarkable lightweight.”
“Urrrgh,” Enjolras groaned from the toilet. “Star Wars…can wait.”
“Okay.” As soon as his friend looked a little less likely to projectile vomit, Courfeyrac stood him up and walked him carefully down the next flight of stairs. Enjolras’ huge house, rather than being stately and spread, was tall and narrow with a large garden behind, so contained six storeys with only two or three rooms on each floor, meaning that it was easy, despite the open-plan staircases, to hurry Enjolras from the bathroom on the sixth floor down to Enjolras’ room on the fourth floor without being seen by any of the partygoers or, worse, Enjolras’ parents.
Knocking the bedroom door open with his hip, Courfeyrac almost dragged Enjolras into the room, which was the smallest room in the house but contained what seemed to be a forest’s worth of paper. There were hundreds of books stacked in rickety shelves along all of the walls, with posters from marches and scraps of paper with notes written on them pinned on a huge noticeboard that inhabited the only free wall, which was above Enjolras’ bed. “There we go, buddy,” he said quietly, hauling his friend onto the double bed, which still had Harry Potter covers on them, and taking off his shoes. “I’ll go and get you some water, yeah?”
“Love you, Courf,” Enjolras said, sleepily, turning over and burying his face in his pillow, exposing his tattoo again as he did. Courfeyrac carefully reached forward and covered it again, just in case Enjolras’ parents came in, before leaving the room and descending the final four floors to where the kitchens were. He’d spent a lot of time at Enjolras’ house as a child, given the busyness of his own house – with himself, his parents, his grandmother and three younger sisters in a four-bedroom semi in the suburbs, there had barely been any room for him to breathe, and so had begged his money for the bus fare into the city almost every weekend, which his mother had given him simply to get him out of her hair. Enjolras would then meet him at the bus stop and they’d stop at the corner shop on the way back to his house, where they’d be affectionately yelled at by the shopkeeper as they picked out the biggest croissants to take home for a mid-morning snack.
They’d played in this house ever since he could remember – had raced each other up and down the spiral staircase, despite the butler’s attempts to stop them; had begged sweets off the cook in the kitchen and climbed out of the roof window to eat them as they looked out over Paris; had gone running through the cellars, shrieking every time they saw a rat. Courfeyrac knew every panel, every tile, and ran his finger affectionately down a long scratch that they’d made accidentally while riding Enjolras’ bike through the halls as he made his way to the back of the house. Enjolras’ parents had never minded, as long as they didn’t make too much noise, but had they known about the damage, they would have skinned both boys alive for sure.
Luckily, they had never noticed the scars of two childhoods intertwined.
“Can I have some water please, Marie?” he asked, wandering into the kitchen, which was a mass of steel and metal. “Enjolras has a headache.”
She smiled knowingly at Courfeyrac over a saucepan of something hot. “I’ll bet he has a headache. I saw you guys make off with that champagne earlier, oui?” When Courfeyrac shrugged nonchalantly, she sighed and said, “He’ll need something stronger.” Going to one of the cupboards, she pulled out a first aid kit and took out a plastic sheet of tablets. “Two of these now, two in the morning, with water. I assume you’re staying here, chérie?”
When he nodded, she reached over to ruffle his hair. “Take two yourself in the morning, then. I’ll make you both bacon if you get down here looking relatively normal.”
“Thanks, Marie,” Courfeyrac replied, smiling, as she handed him a glass. “You’re the best.”
“I know,” she said airily, going back to her saucepan. “Take care to avoid the parents, yes?”
“Yes,” he confirmed, giving her a quick peck on the cheek and heading back out of the kitchen, balancing various things in his hands and beginning to clamber up the stairs again, almost missing the landing that led to Enjolras’ room in his woozy state.
Enjolras was lucky, he decided, as he set the hangover gear on the bedside table and got Enjolras to sit up and swallow two of the mysterious tablets. At least the other boy knew who he was looking for. He had no idea, and wouldn’t know for six months.
Toeing his own shoes off, he climbed into the other side of the bed and pulled the duvet over both of them. They’d slept together ever since they were children, and had grown to continue the trend as teenagers too. Neither of them had ever seen anything wrong with it – they were like brothers, after all.
But now, with the tattoo that stained Enjolras’ skin, everything had changed. Courfeyrac rolled over to face the wall, knowing that nothing would be the same again.
oo
Courfeyrac’s eighteenth birthday was nowhere near as ostentatious as Enjolras’. Enjolras’ parents had offered to host a party for Courfeyrac, but Courfeyrac had refused in favour of having a barbeque in his back garden with his family and friends. Enjolras, his shirt open-collared and loose, was eating a double cheeseburger with the ketchup he loved, letting drips of red sauce fall to the ground as he laughed with Grantaire. The pair had met in the Starbucks queue, where Grantaire had ordered a ridiculously complex arrangement of coffee (hot, wet, double macchiato with Ethiopian coffee beans and a caramel shot) and Enjolras had snorted a little behind him, only to have the surprise of his life when the short man with the big nose and paint splodges all over his cheek had turned to him and sniped “Laugh it up, fuzzball.”
Enjolras had immediately come back with, “I’m not the one ordering a hot, wet, double macchiato with Ethiopian coffee beans and a caramel shot,” before realising what the man had said. Both of them simultaneously turned bright red while the barista at the station gasped in recognition.
“I’m – I’m Grantaire,” the man had said, holding out his hand, which, in contrast to the rest of his body, had long, slender fingers. “And you are?”
“My name’s Enjolras,” Enjolras had replied, almost in shock. “Wow. Um, can I get you that coffee?”
“Well, I haven’t had a fucking teenage girl coffee order written down my thigh for the last three years to refuse the drink when it comes, so, yes,” Grantaire said, flashing a quiet smile, “that would be great.”
And here they were now, Courfeyrac thought, smiling as Grantaire reached up to lick away some tomato sauce that had landed on Enjolras’ check, making his friend giggle and push his boyfriend of three months away. “They look happy,” his mother observed as she leaned in to hug him. “Are you going to tell me what your tattoo says, or do you want to keep it to yourself?”
“I’d…I’d rather keep it to myself,” he said quietly. “If that’s okay.”
“Oh, hon. Of course it’s okay.” She smiled gently. “I never told my parents what my tattoo said, but your dad wasn’t so lucky. They both turned to smile at Courfeyrac’s dad, who was manning the barbeque and had the words, “Is that a flag in your trousers or are you just happy to – oh, no, wait, it’s an actual flag,” printed along the line of his chin. The two had had the unfortunate luck to be destined to meet at an anti-Vietnam rally, and had been together ever since.
“Thanks, mum,” Courfeyrac replied, giving her a hug as his elder youngest sister came running up. She was eleven and dreamt of getting her tattoo, spending nights (which Combeferre heard in painstaking detail, given that he shared a room with her separated only by a curtain) fantasizing with her friends about what their tattoos would say.
“Hey, Soph,” he said as the younger girl threw her arms around his waist. “What’s up?”
“Can I see your tattoo, Courf?” she asked, looking up at him with the startlingly blue eyes that matched his own, a legacy from his French mother which, paired with the Latino colouring they’d all inherited from their father, made a very interesting combination. “I bet it’s really romantic.”
He smiled sadly, crouching down – he was a full foot and four inches taller than Sophie – and taking her hands. “I know I promised, Soph, but I’d really like to keep it private for now. Maybe some other day.”
“Okay.” She smiled hopefully. “But is it romantic?”
He could almost feel tears in his eyes. “Yeah, it’s very romantic. It’s beautiful.” Standing up, he held out his arms for her to jump into, which she did with a squeal. “And one day, you’re going to get a beautiful tattoo too, my beautiful girl.”
“Thanks, Courf,” she said quietly into his ear, wrapping her legs around his waist. “Can we go and talk to Enjolras?”
“Sure,” he replied, and, leaving his mother talking to some distant relatives or another, he set off across the lawn with Sophie screeching as he pretended to drop her. Enjolras and Grantaire were standing on the steps, watching them approach with amusement tangible in their eyes.
“Alright there?” Enjolras asked, laughing, as Courfeyrac arrived. He could feel Sophie nodding vigorously, and laughed as well.
“Enjolras?” his sister asked hopefully. “Can I do your hair?”
“Sure, Sophie,” Enjolras said, sitting on the steps and motioning for Courfeyrac to put the girl down. “Have you got your hairclips?”
“I’m going to go and get them,” she replied happily, bouncing away into the house. Grantaire made the excuse of going to get more food, leaving the two friends alone for a few minutes. Courfeyrac sat down beside Enjolras and silently, wordlessly, rolled up one of his long sleeves to reveal the writing along his arm.
Enjolras read it for a second before frowning. “I’m sure it doesn’t mean what you think it means. It could be anything.”
“What if it isn’t, though?” Courfeyrac said, trying not to let his voice wobble. He’d managed to hold it together ever since the tattoo had appeared, in neat, precise handwriting, along the basilic vein. “What if –“
“I got them!” Sophie yelled, coming bounding back out into the garden. Courfeyrac quickly rolled his sleeve back down and moved over as Grantaire came wondering back over, holding another couple of burgers, one of which he handed to Courfeyrac. “You haven’t eaten, I don’t think? It’ll do you some good, anyway.” Handing a beer each to Enjolras and Courfeyrac and keeping one for himself, he raised the bottle to Courfeyrac. “Happy birthday, mate. And may there be many more to come.”
Courfeyrac took a long gulp from his bottle, which did nothing to soothe his nerves as Grantaire joined them on the step and they chatted away about the football in the summer air.
Because now he had his tattoo, and he would spend his whole life living in anticipation of the moment he would find his soulmate. He suddenly realised why Enjolras had initially been reluctant to subscribe to the theories of fate – because the whole thing was pretty damn scary. Now, he’d be listening for those words – those particular words that weren’t romantic, that weren’t beautiful, everywhere he went.
And that was a terrible feeling,
oo
It took four years.
Four years of turning up to parties and functions where all of his friends had found their soulmates, where he was forced to suffer their pitying looks and ended up drinking himself into a stupor to dull the pain of still being alone. Four years of returning home at Christmas, with Sophie, Ellie and Mollie coming running out of the door with shrieks of delight, which subsided as soon as they saw that he was getting out of the car, once again, by himself, loaded down with presents for the girls but still without a soulmate.
Four years of initiating conversations with strangers in the hopes that their words would match the ones on his arm. Four years of trying to connect, four years of listening intently, four years of utter desperation that had resulted in precisely nothing.
It was his twenty-second birthday. Both he and Enjolras had finished their degrees the year before – Enjolras in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and Courfeyrac in Classics with English Literature – and were working in offices on opposite sides of Paris. Courfeyrac had managed to get himself a job at the Louvre, working in the archives far below the city – a job he loved, for its solitude and the beauty that he surrounded himself with daily. Enjolras, however, was interning at the Hôtel de Ville as one of the mayor’s staff, and was really enjoying the work he was doing there. That, of course, meant that the two of them barely had any time to see each other, having had to take apartments in their respective areas of the city to minimise their commuting costs.
They still made the effort to meet on each others’ birthdays, though. And so, that’s how it was that, on his 22nd birthday, Courfeyrac was sitting in a tiny bar in the Marais cradling a pint of beer with Enjolras beside him, nursing a single shot of absinthe.
“Where’s Grantaire tonight?” Courfeyrac asked after a long pause.
“He couldn’t make it.” And neither could Courfeyrac miss the tightening of Enjolras’ jaw as he said the words. “But tonight is about you and me, buddy, and we’re going to keep it that way. How long has it been since we met up?”
“It’s been roughly four months – since your birthday, anyway.” Courfeyrac smiled briefly. “Have you seen –“
“Surprise, motherfucker!” someone yelled, grabbing Courfeyrac from behind and pulling him into a hug. He knew that voice.
“Bahorel?” he yelled, spinning around to hug his college friend. “What the hell? Why are you – Enjolras!” he shouted, spinning again. “You planned this!”
“Of course I did, you arse,” Enjolras said, grinning and standing up. “Happy birthday, Courf.” All of their friends were crowding around them, Bahorel, Jehan, Marius, Cosette, Feuilly, Bossuet, Joly and Musichetta – the members of Les Amis who had gone to different parts of France for university and whom they hadn’t seen since.
“This is amazing!” Courfeyrac yelled, diving from one person to another and ignoring the questioning looks that were being directed at Enjolras. He knew what they were thinking – where is his soulmate? They all had one, after all – Bahorel and Jehan had only realised a couple of days after Jehan’s tattoo had appeared because Bahorel hadn’t bothered to go through his box; it had been no surprise when Cosette had turned up to her eighteenth birthday party toting a confused boy in a large sweater who looked absolutely terrified; Bossuet, Joly and Musichetta proudly showed off their double tattoos to everyone they saw and Feuilly was here, even now, with his Polish girlfriend, Paulina. But he ignored their stares because he was feeling, for the first time in forever, truly happy.
Enjolras dived forward at some point in the evening, holding a tall man by the back of his collar. Courfeyrac didn’t get to see the man’s face. “This is Combeferre. He lives in the flat next door to me.” Before Courfeyrac could say anything, even “hello,” the man had disappeared back into the crowd.
“You’ve never told me about him,” he told Enjolras sadly. “I feel like I’m missing out.”
“You are definitely missing out on Combeferre. He’s a doctor, he’s got two cats and a cactus and he loves Star Wars. I’ll introduce you two later.” But the conversation was rapidly forgotten by both parties as the night wore on.
Shot after shot was downed. Courfeyrac paid for everything, aware that his job had a better salary than those of all the others, and, god, he felt like giving for once when he spent all his time searching and searching. Tonight wasn’t a night to approach random strangers with a hopeful “Hi, there.” Tonight was a night to get stupendously drunk, to help Enjolras through whatever was going on with Grant- but that wasn’t really needed any more. Courfeyrac sighed as, at a distance, he saw the tiny artist enter the bar and wind his way onto the dancefloor to find Enjolras, only for the pair to hurry back towards the door, hand in hand, a couple of minutes later. When Enjolras turned, seeking Courfeyrac in the crowd, Courf simply raised his beer in a sign of goodwill. Enjolras’ forehead, lined from years of stress and schoolwork, lifted as he smiled and exited the bar.
At the end of the evening, when the smoky lines had settled over the bar and couples danced with their foreheads touching in the haze, Courfeyrac slammed his last ten-euro note on the bar and went wandering out of the double doors and into the street, his vision unclear as he stumbled in the direction of the nearest taxi rank. He heard footsteps behind him and relaxed, thinking it was one of his friends, and turned to greet them but was instead met with a punch in the face as he was grabbed from behind and pulled into a side alley.
“Please,” he said in a garbled fashion, “I don’t have any money, please, no,” but all there was was a sliding sensation underneath his ribcage and his jacket being torn open as someone rummaged through his pockets. “My phone’s in my right pocket, you can have that, please don’t hurt me…”
And, suddenly, he was slumped against a wall as it started to rain, with two black-coated figures sprinting towards the dark end of the alley and a sudden sharp pain in his stomach as he tried to stand up, so sharp that he stopped breathing for a second from the pain. Reaching down, he blanched as his hand came up covered in blood and his world suddenly sharpened beyond reality.
He couldn’t die. He’d never met his soulmate, and he wouldn’t live to see Sophie meet hers, or Ellie, or Mollie. He wouldn’t be best man at Enjolras’ wedding. He wouldn’t. Oh god.
Then, he was slumped on the floor, on his side, because his back had just given out. Weird. Laughter bubbled up through his lips. Strange, what you think about when you’re dying. The laughter had a thick, salty quality to it. Blood. He was coughing up blood. Retching some of it onto the ground in front of him, he watched as his own life streamed away into the gutter.
And then, on the main street, somebody walked by. Oh, god. “Help,” Courfeyrac croaked in as loud a voice as he could, “please, help me!” But the person didn’t hear him, or didn’t care to listen. Courfeyrac’s head hit the floor. “Please, help me,” he said again, quieter this time, and spitting more blood.
The sound of running footsteps, and then a bright light – the LED off someone’s phone – as the feet splashed closer to him and a tall body crouched down next to him. “Oh shit. Oh shit. I’m going to call an ambulance.” Looking up, Courfeyrac saw the blue collar of the man he’d been shown earlier. Combeferre, his memory said dimly, and he smiled faintly. “It’s probably a bit late for that.”
“Holy crap.” The light turned off, and the face illuminated in the gentle light of the streetlamps was kind. That, Courfeyrac could tell. “I’m Combeferre.”
“Courfeyrac,” Courf groaned weakly as a spasm of pain rolled through him. “You know Enjolras?”
“Yeah, I know Enjolras.” The man seemed to spur into action and rolled Courfeyrac onto his back, muttering a combination of swear words and medical terms. “Stop the bleeding, get gravity to work for us, oh, shit.” Taking out his phone, he dialled three digits and spoke rapidly into it for a couple of seconds, with one hand compressing the wound, before tossing the phone to one side. “Don’t worry, Courfeyrac, you’re going to be okay. You have to be okay. We have a lifetime to live together, you silly arse.”
Even in the darkness, Courfeyrac could see the fear in Combeferre’s eyes, and started coughing again. By now, black spots were beginning to dance in front of his eyes as his muscles began to spasm and fail. “I’m so sorry, Ferre, so sorry. All my fault. You don’t – you deserve –“
“I deserve you, and you’re going to get better, we’re going to get you to the hospital and – oh, god.” Combeferre began to cry, hot, choking desperate sobs, as he grabbed one of Courfeyrac’s hands with the one he wasn’t using to compress the wound. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I’d only just found you.”
“Don’t – don’t brood on it,” Courfeyrac replied, thickly and slowly, smiling as gently as he could in the dull pain that was throbbing throughout him. “There’s someone else, there’ll always be someone else.”
“But I can’t save you. And – I – oh my god.” Combeferre leaned down, still crying, and touched his forehead to Courfeyrac’s, his eyes squeezed shut, before kissing him on the cheek. “I’m so sorry, love. And I won’t forget you.”
“Nor I you.” Courfeyrac choked one last time, his limbs turning to ice from the inside out. “I – I love you,” he managed to force out, using his last reserves of energy to lean up, wanting one kiss, wanting the feeling of completion before