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The problem with being raised in the midwest was that people just sort of assumed that you’re okay with thunderstorms. Most of them even assumed you liked them. But Courfeyrac could never wrap his mind around those assumptions because yeah, he was raised in the midwest and yeah, that meant dealing with thunderstorms every summer and fall, but that also meant tornadoes. Thunderstorms were nothing more than portents of tornadoes and as far as Courfeyrac was concerned, when a thunderstorm started to roll in, you went and you fucking hid.
But people didn’t get that. His friends especially didn’t get it. The first big thunderstorm of during their freshman year of college, Bahorel and Grantaire had sat on the steps of the dorm and passed a joint back and forth while they watched the storm come in. After the worst of the storm had passed, Prouvaire had gone out and danced in it! (For some reason, whenever Courfeyrac mentioned that he wasn’t fond of thunderstorms, people looked at him and said, “Oh, you don’t really hate them. Your friend Prouvaire loves them!” And Courfeyrac would have to remind them that Jean Prouvaire was also known to frequent cemeteries at night and that he also liked chocolate covered jalapenos and therefore his opinion wasn’t to be trusted.) During that storm, Courfeyrac had done the logical thing and scrambled to hide under the covers of his roommate’s bed.
“What are doing?” Enjolras had asked the time.
Courfeyrac’s attempt to retreat to the haven of Under Enjolras’s Covers was hampered by the fact that Enjolras was actually sitting on top of the covers at the time. Of course this was a month into the semester and Enjolras had become accustomed to some of Courfeyrac’s more cuddly tendencies and Courfeyrac had learned that Enjolras could be convinced to cuddle on occasion but not when he was Working, and he was clearly Working now, so his disgruntledness at the intrusion was to be expected.
Courfeyrac was about to explain that it should have been obvious that he was hiding (or attempting to, at least) but a loud clap of thunder—the sharp kind that sounded like it was right in your ear and could shake your whole house—reduced him to whimpering. He didn’t understand how Enjolras could be so calm. It sounded like the world was ending out there.
“Are you afraid of the storm?” Enjolras asked, scooting over a little to make room for Courfeyrac, who promptly buried himself under the blanket.
He nodded. He wished he and Enjolras could swap places so that he’d be safely wedged between Enjolras and the wall, but he would accept this. He would accept being able to press himself up against Enjolras’s side and leg and let his roommate take care of him.
Enjolras rubbed his back. “It’s just a thunderstorm.”
Courfeyrac humphed. Just a thunderstorm. Thunderstorms were demon weather patterns, bringing with them scary noises and harsh wind and hail half the time. They were bringers of tornadoes. They were harbingers of death.
“It’s colliding pressure systems,” Enjolras said again. “A cold front is moving in, that’s all.”
“I know you’re trying to help,” Courfeyrac said. His voice was muffled since he had his face pressed up against Enjolras’s hips. “But knowing that it’s just colliding pressure systems does me absolutely no good.”
“Courfeyrac, you’re shaking.”
“I thought we already established that I’m scared,” he mumbled.
“Sorry,” Enjolras said, petting his hair a little. “Well, it’ll be over soon enough. In the mean time, do you want to borrow my headphones?”
Courfeyrac nodded and that was that.
Ever since that first thunderstorm, that was Courfeyrac’s preferred approach to handling storms. Step One: Find Enjolras’s bed. Step Two: Hide for the duration. It was a good system and Enjolras adapted well to it. For Courfeyrac’s nineteenth birthday, he even bought Courfeyrac nice noise-canceling headphones to help. He occasionally made jokes about getting those silly vests that you can get for dogs to comfort them during thunderstorms, but every single time a storm rolled in, Courfeyrac knew that he was welcome in Enjolras’s bed and that Enjolras would watch over him and keep him safe until the storm went away.
Courfeyrac also appreciated that Enjolras never asked why he was so afraid of storms, because it was obvious to anyone who saw Courfeyrac during a thunderstorm that this went far beyond a normal distaste or dislike of storms. Courfeyrac knew that his fear was borderline phobic and that he could probably benefit from some professional help.
But he had a reason.
* ~ *
He’d been two weeks from turning twelve and it was the first time his parents decided he was old enough to be left home alone for a few hours on Friday night. Really, Courfeyrac was pretty sure that it was part of a lazy scheme to get out of hiring a last minute babysitter. Normally, they made his sister Noel stay at home with him on Friday nights, but she was fourteen now and she wanted to go with their older sister, Ellinor—sixteen and still very proud of her two-month old drivers’ license—to the high school football game. Noel had resented being forced to stay home on Friday nights to watch her pesky younger brother and Courfeyrac resented being treated “like a baby” and eventually his parents gave in and Courfeyrac stayed at home, alone, while his parents when out for dinner and a movie and his sisters went to the football game.
It was around eight o’clock that the storm first rolled in, and Courfeyrac decided that it was a good time to turn down all the lights in the house and watch one of the scary movies that his parents didn’t want him watching. Since he wasn’t using cable, he didn’t get the normal Severe Thunderstorm Warnings that would have indicated that this was more than just a normal storm, nor would he get the eventual Tornado Watch and Tornado Warnings.
He’d find out later that his parents and his sisters heard the city tornado sirens, but the storm was too loud and the house too far away for him to hear the sirens at home. His parents and the other movie goers had all hunkered down in the bathrooms together where the pipes would help anchor them to the ground. His sisters had left the football game when it had gotten rained out about fifteen minutes into the second quarter. They had originally gone to a friends’ house for a makeshift party and it wasn’t until it started hailing that Noel began to worry about Courfeyrac and insisted that they drive home to check on him.
They were in the car when the funnel cloud touched down and they were so close to the storm that their car had literally been lifted off the ground and deposited upside down two streets over. Ellinor had to have two surgeries and spent nearly three weeks in the hospital for head injuries, but Noel came out with nothing more than scratches from the shattered glass of the windshield. Everyone who knew the family largely considered it a miracle that neither of the girls were dead.
They considered it a bigger miracle that Courfeyrac was alive too when they were shown pictures of the damage that had been done to the house.
As best as anyone could tell, around the same time that the tornado touched down two neighborhoods over, the power was knocked out completely back home and Courfeyrac was in the laundry room with a flashlight trying to mess with the power breakers when he heard the tornado. Everyone had always said that hearing a tornado was like hearing a train coming, but Courfeyrac didn’t think that was right at all. A train didn’t do the sound justice. It wasn’t all encompassing enough because when he heard that noise, he couldn’t hear anything else. He couldn’t hear the windows around him shatter. He couldn’t hear the roof being torn off. He couldn’t hear himself think.
All he could hear was the nothingness of the wind as it howled around him.
He has no idea how he managed it, but he did make it to the bathroom before the tornado did too much damage to the house. He remembered clinging to the toilet with both arms—screw that stuff they learned during tornado drills at school about using his arms to cover his head and neck, it wouldn’t matter if his neck snapped if he got sucked into the fucking tornado—and he remembered wind pulling and yanking at him and he remembered the ceiling collapsing and being buried under plaster and drywall and hiding under the rubble, too terrified to let go of the toilet, until his parents got home nearly an hour later.
He had sobbed uncontrollably when his dad unearthed him from the rubbish—half of their house was almost completely untouched, but the rest of it had been leveled down to the foundation. It was the worst tornado the town had seen in nearly seventy years. Courfeyrac was able to walk away from the rubble of his home with nothing worse than cuts and bruises and sore arms…and the beginnings of a life-long fear of thunderstorms.
* ~ *
But by the time Courfeyrac started law school, that tornado had been ten years ago and he liked to pretend that thunderstorms didn’t bother him all that much. Enjolras knew better, of course. They shared a dorm room through their sophomore year and got an apartment together with Combeferre their junior year when they were finally allowed to live off campus, and the first rumblings of thunder in a storm would find Courfeyrac huddled under the blankets of Enjolras’s bed. If Combeferre ever noticed the behavior, he didn’t mention it, and in the meantime, Enjolras became quite adept at helping Courfeyrac weather the storm.
They spent hours one stormless night compiling a playlist of songs that were loud enough to drown out bad storms but not so aggressive that they made Courfeyrac’s fear and anxiety worse. Enjolras learned what combination of blankets left Courfeyrac feeling the most secure during the storm and learned that it was always better if he was in bed with Courfeyrac instead of just in the room. He’d go about doing his work as usual—it’d take a whole lot more than a thunderstorm to get Enjolras to put down whatever pet project he was working on—but he remained sensitive to Courfeyrac’s shudders and whimpers and was always ready with a comforting touch when things got too bad. During morning storms, storms that came in before Enjolras’s first cup of coffee, Courfeyrac would snuggle into Enjolras’s bed and relax in the embrace of Enjolras Cuddles. Enjolras Cuddles were hard to get—he did not give away his cuddles as easily as Courfeyrac did—but Courfeyrac always felt extra loved and extra safe whenever he got early-morning Enjolras Cuddles.
Courfeyrac loved Enjolras for it and whenever he heard anyone complain that Enjolras didn’t care about people, only causes, he never hesitated to make it absolutely clear that Enjolras’s compassion for people was the entire basis of his passion for causes.
He didn’t realize just how dependent he was on Enjolras until their first year of grad school together. It was October, nearing the end of tornado season back in the midwest, and a storm of cataclysmic proportions had rolled in late night, thunder jolting him awake and out of bed. Out of instinct, he scrambled into Enjolras’s room and diving into his bed.
His cold and empty bed.
He couldn’t really help his tears when he realized that this was the first storm he’d have to weather alone since that tornado ten years ago.
~ * ~ * ~
To be fair, Enjolras was normally much, much better at keeping track of the weather. Sensitive to his best friend’s crippling fear of storms, he’d always check the weather in the morning during storm seasons and on days when the weather app on his phone predicted bad weather, he checked it hourly to make sure that he’d be with Courfeyrac during the storm. He supposed that some people would find this aspect of his relationship with Courfeyrac unhealthy and co-dependent, but Enjolras didn’t think so. Courfeyrac gave so much of himself to his friends—and even to complete strangers—and he asked for so little in return that Enjolras didn’t think being there for Courfeyrac when Courfeyrac needed him was any sort of burden.
But tonight, well, tonight Enjolras dropped the ball. He knew that a storm was predicted to hit tonight, and in his defense, he’d planned to be home hours ago. In fact, he’d been planning to do this work at their apartment, but Courfeyrac had pulled an all nighter the night before and wanted to go to bed early and, well, Enjolras was working preparing case notes for a mock trial with Grantaire tonight, and everyone knew from nearly five years of experience that allowing him and Grantaire to work on anything together would inevitably get loud. But Enjolras did his best thinking with Grantaire there to push his mind towards places where it wasn’t naturally wont to go, and that sort of feedback was invaluable to him.
Besides, he rather liked the utterly exasperated look Grantaire got on his face when Enjolras refused to back down on one matter or another.
So he had relocated to Grantaire’s apartment to let Courfeyrac get some sleep and Enjolras had gotten his notes for tomorrow’s mock case all taken care of and he would have gone home then, but it was then that Grantaire had gotten distracting.
Distracting in the best possible way, really.
And a half hour later, Grantaire had him pinned to the couch and Enjolras had somehow lost his shirt in the encounter and his hands were in Grantaire’s pants and Grantaire’s tongue was in his mouth and Enjolras hadn’t felt this good, this right in a long time.
But then he noticed the thunder. He had no idea how long it’d been going on, no idea how long he’d been so lost in exploring every inch of Grantaire’s body that he’d been completely oblivious to the outside world, but all he could think was that Courfeyrac was at home, probably alone, and definitely petrified.
“Oh, shit,” he said, sitting up abruptly and accidentally pushing Grantaire off him and onto the floor. “Shit.”
Grantaire sat dazed on the floor as Enjolras patted down his pockets and then scrambled for his hoodie to find his cell phone. He looked back at Grantaire when his fingers brushed against his phone, and it was impossible to mistake the look of self-doubt on Grantaire’s face. “Stop that,” he said, fumbling to unlock his phone.
“What?”
“Thinking whatever it is you’re thinking,” he said. “Just stay there and…and stop thinking.”
He dialed Combeferre’s number and he couldn’t help but smile a little at Grantaire’s flabbergasted expression. He supposed it was a fair reaction—normally Grantaire was the one telling him to stop over thinking things, not the other way around.
Combeferre picked up on the fifth ring and his voice was slurred with sleep. “Enj’ras?”
“Are you home?” he demanded. He had been at the library when Enjolras had left for Grantaire’s apartment, and this wouldn’t have been the first time that he dozed off at the library.
“I’m in bed,” he said. “Aren’t you?”
“I’m…I’m out,” he said. “I need you to check on Courfeyrac for me.”
“Courfeyrac?”
Enjolras choked back a sigh. Combeferre was normally a bit quicker on the up-take. “Just check on him for me, okay? Check my room first?”
“Check on Courfeyrac,” he repeated. “Got it. Anymore ridiculous requests for me?”
“No,” he said, smiling a little. Combeferre would take care of Courfeyrac. “That’s all.”
When he hung up his phone, he turned back to Grantaire, still sitting on the floor and still not thinking. He set his phone down on the table.
“Courfeyrac’s terrified of thunderstorms,” he said, explaining himself. Grantaire deserved the explanation. “I normally stay with him through the worst of it, but, well…” He cleared his throat. “I just wanted to make sure he had someone to look after him.”
Grantaire got to his feet and closed the space between them. He canted his hips towards Enjolras’s. “You’re a good friend,” he said. “I think you deserve a reward for that.”
Enjolras pulled Grantaire back onto the couch and happily accepted his reward.
~ * ~ * ~
Going into his fifth year of friendship with Courfeyrac, Combeferre had long since learned to just not ask questions when weird and seemingly bizarre demands came his way. It was a necessary survival mechanism for dealing with his friends. Courfeyrac needed him to come pick him up at the zoo at three in morning? Done. Enjolras needed two of his left shoes brought to him on campus? Combeferre would take care of it. Bossuet needed someone to take his photo ID and social security card to the police station? Okay then.
So really, getting woken up at one in the morning and having Enjolras demand that he go check on Courfeyrac—in Enjolras’s bedroom, of all places—wasn’t the strangest thing he’d ever been asked, and it wasn’t nearly the most onerous thing he’d been asked to do. He just had to shuffle down the hall, and really, even if he had been asked to drive across town in this torrential downpour, he would have done it. Not necessarily because Enjolras asked, but more so because it was about Courfeyrac and there was very little Combeferre wouldn’t do for Courfeyrac.
He cared about all of his friends, of course, but it was…different with Courfeyrac. It was different because of Courfeyrac, because while Combeferre was affectionate with all of his friends, Courfeyrac was the one who acted like he needed that sort of affection like he needed air. And at first, it was just gratifying. He’d ruffle Courfeyrac’s hair as he passed and Courfeyrac would practically purr like a kitten or Combeferre would rub Courfeyrac’s shoulders at the end of a long day and Courfeyrac would melt, and Combeferre liked those reactions. He liked knowing that Courfeyrac appreciated whatever small gifts of affection he had to give.
And over the course of their friendship, they’d become incredibly tactile with each other. It wasn’t uncommon for Courfeyrac to sit on his lap when they were out with friends or hold his hand when they walked across campus together. In fact, most people outside their group of friends assumed they were dating, but Courfeyrac always laughed off the assumption and assured everyone that they were just friends—and Combeferre never had the heart to suggest to Courfeyrac in private that maybe they should be more than just friends.
The fact of the matter was that he was more than a little in love with Courfeyrac and had been for more than a year now. But he didn’t want to pressure Courfeyrac into anything he didn’t want. He didn’t want to act like some sort of ass-hat who complained about the non-existent “friend-zone.” Courfeyrac too often put other people’s needs ahead of his own and it was an admirable trait, but Combeferre didn’t want to put Courfeyrac in a position where he perceived Combeferre’s feelings as some sort of need and tried to pursue a relationship that he didn’t necessarily want out of a misguided attempt to help a friend. That was the very last thing he wanted. So instead, he pined in quiet and let his heart pound whenever Courfeyrac casually sat on his lap or held his hand or kissed his cheek and he acted like the kind of friend Courfeyrac deserved to have—the sort of person who was more concerned with Courfeyrac’s needs than his own.
And now those needs had him shuffling down the hall to Enjolras’s room—seriously, though, why Enjolras’s room?—to look for Courfeyrac.
Except Enjolras’s room appeared to be empty. He tried turning on the light, only to discover the power was out. Which didn’t surprise him, not with the storm raging outside. The blinds over the window were drawn back and let in the faintest amount of ambient light from the street—not much, though, since it appeared that the street lamps didn’t have any power either. A flash of lightening, followed several seconds later by booming thunder, illuminated the room just long enough for Combeferre to see the large lump on Enjolras’s bed.
He waited a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness in the room, before he shuffled over to the bed and sat down. He rested his hand on what he assumed was Courfeyrac’s back.
“Fey?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
Courfeyrac didn’t answer but he seemed to tremble against Combeferre’s hand. Combeferre shifted a little so he could pull up the covers and see Courfeyrac properly. Or at least as properly as he could manage in the near total darkness. His eyes had adjusted to the lack of the light, but there was only so much good that did. Courfeyrac was curled in a tight ball, his head tucked between his arms so that all Combeferre could really see was his curls.
“Fey,” he prompted again. “Could you look at me, please?” Holding the blanket up with one hand, he used his other hand to gently scratch Courfeyrac’s scalp.
It took some persistence to get Courfeyrac relaxed enough to unwind, but when he managed to look up at Combeferre, it was obvious he’d been crying. His eyes were wide in the dark and he looked impossibly young. Combeferre was utterly unprepared to see him like this. Courfeyrac was normally so bright, so alive. His spirit was indomitable, and it broke Combeferre’s heart a little to see him like this, so small and so afraid. No wonder Enjolras had wanted him to check on Courfeyrac, if this was Courfeyrac’s normal reaction to thunderstorms. He wanted to scoop Courfeyrac into his arms and kiss him till this all went away, but he settled for petting his hair.
“Is Enjolras okay?” Courfeyrac asked.
“Is Enj—yeah, Fey, he’s fine. He called me and asked if I would check on you for him. He was really worried about you.”
“He wasn’t here,” Courfeyrac said, turning his face away and burying it against Combeferre’s hip. Combeferre could barely hear him over the rain, but his voice was thick like he was trying not to cry even now. “He always here, only this time he wasn’t, and I got scared because what if something happened—nothing has ever stopped him from being here before—and I couldn’t call him because I’d left my stupid phone in my room and I didn’t want to leave because normally at least I feel a little safer here but it wasn’t the same without Enjolras so I tried to listen to the playlist on my iPod—” With his face still buried against Combeferre’s hip, he freed one of his arms to gesture towards the wall, where Combeferre could barely discern an old, cracked iPod Touch and Courfeyrac’s sound-canceling headphones. “—but the stupid battery was dead and I had nothing to distract myself and I was all alone and I know it’s pathetic because I’m twenty-fucking-two years old and I shouldn’t be afraid of thunderstorms, but—”
“Shhh,” Combeferre said, rubbing Courfeyrac’s back again. The poor thing was still trembling against him. This was more than being scared of thunderstorms and more like being petrified by them. “You’re not pathetic, and everything is fine. I’m here now and you’re not alone. I’ll keep you safe. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, okay?”
Courfeyrac nodded against his hip.
“If I’d known that you didn’t like storms this much,” he said, “I would have come much sooner.” He didn’t stop rubbing Courfeyrac’s back or petting his hair and he continued to talk, filling up the silence between them with mindless chatter. He talked about his day and how his classes were going and that racist thing one of his professors said and he complained about Enjolras leaving half-empty coffee mugs in various places in the apartment (Combeferre once found one of Enjolras’s coffee mugs in the fridge and he could only assume that Enjolras accidentally put his coffee in the fridge instead of the milk, which had been left out to spoil on the kitchen counter). When he exhausted those topics, he talked about moths—which he could always talk about for hours, but didn’t because he knew that moths were under appreciated by the general public—and he catered his moth commentary to things he thought would amuse Courfeyrac. Like the fact that you could attract moths with a paste made out of beer, mashed bananas, and brown sugar or that the Luna moth spent its entire life just trying to get laid.
At one point, he was pretty sure he heard Courfeyrac chuckle and call him a nerd.
He thought things were getting better and that Courfeyrac was beginning to calm down—honestly, his body was so tense that Combeferre worried he was going to hurt himself—but when a flash of lightning was immediately followed by the loudest clap of thunder Combeferre had ever heard, Courfeyrac actually whimpered and burrowed himself deeper in the blankets.
This time, Combeferre didn’t resist the urge to bundle Courfeyrac into his arms. He pulled Courfeyrac into his lap and wrapped his arms around him, doing his absolute best to make Courfeyrac feel completely safe and secure. Courfeyrac clutched at the fabric of his shirt, holding on as though it was the only thing keeping him grounded.
“It’s okay,” he said again, whispering into Courfeyrac’s ear this time. “You’re okay. You’re safe. I won’t let anything happen to you. I’ll protect you.”
He kept up the litany of comforting nonsense until he felt Courfeyrac relax a little in his arms. When he thought Courfeyrac had calmed down enough to respond to him, he said, “Hey, Fey.”
Courfeyrac grunted acknowledgment that Combeferre felt more than he heard.
“What’s Beethoven’s favorite fruit?”
Courfeyrac pressed himself closer to Combeferre as though to say Really? You’re doing this now? But Combeferre smiled and continued to rub his hand up and down Courfeyrac’s back at a steady pace.
“Banananaaaa,” Combeferre answered his own joke to the tune of the opening chords of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
He felt Courfeyrac smile against his chest. He leaned back against the headboard, pulling Courfeyrac with him, and plied him with silly little jokes and puns, knowing that Courfeyrac would appreciate them and the distraction they afforded. He held tighter with every flash of lightening and kept talking through roll of thunder that would follow. He didn’t care that his voice would be raw and hoarse in the morning. He didn’t care that he had an early class the next morning. Holding Courfeyrac in his arms like this, being able to take care of him and watch over him like this, it was worth whatever price he’d pay for it in the morning. When the thunder gentled into a distant rumbling and the worst of the rain let up, Combeferre laid Courfeyrac out on the bed.
“Please don’t go,” Courfeyrac muttered.
Combeferre curled up behind him and wrapped and arm around Courfeyrac’s waist to pull him close. He kissed the back of Courfeyrac’s head. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised. “The worst is over. Let’s try to get some sleep.”
~ * ~ * ~
Enjolras spent the night at Grantaire’s apartment and after his mock trial in the morning, he went home with Apology Coffee for Courfeyrac. The streets were a mess—minimal flooding, but plenty of trash and debris from trees and turned over trashcans and dumpsters. A block away from his apartment, he saw a stop sign that had been ripped free from it’s post and he knew for certain that his Apology Coffee would be necessary.
He felt awful for forgetting Courfeyrac like he had and he hoped he hadn’t imposed too much on Combeferre by waking him up and having him look in on Courfeyrac. He knew that Combeferre wouldn’t mind, really, but no one liked being woken up in the middle of the night. Before he left, Grantaire had assured him over and over that everything would be fine and that neither Courfeyrac nor Combeferre would bear him any ill will, but Grantaire didn’t know the extent of Courfeyrac’s fear. Grantaire had never seen Courfeyrac curled up underneath the covers, practically quaking as a storm raged on.
When he let himself into the apartment, he heard the shower going and there was a note on the counter from Combeferre.
Had to leave for class. Courfeyrac was still asleep. I’ll be back around five. Call me if you need anything.
Knowing Combeferre, he probably left Courfeyrac a similar note. Combeferre was nothing if not thorough. He was tidying up the kitchen when Courfeyrac emerged from the bathroom. He was drying his hair with a towel—a red towel, one of Enjolras’s, and Courfeyrac knew how possessive Enjolras was of his things and Enjolras supposed this was a petty little revenge for not being here last night—and he was wearing a blue bathrobe that was clearly too big for him.
“Is that Combeferre’s robe?” he asked.
Courfeyrac nodded as he took a seat the table. He had to roll the sleeves up to have proper use of his hands. “Maybe,” he said. “Is that a hazelnut latte that I smell?”
“Apology Coffee,” Enjolras said, placing the cup in front of him and taking a seat across from him. At this angle, it was easy to tell that Courfeyrac hadn’t slept well last night. The dark cirlces under his eyes were a testament to that. Considering Courfeyrac hadn’t slept at all the night before, Enjolras felt even worse. “For not being here last night.”
Courfeyrac took a sip of his coffee. “Did you spend the night at Grantaire’s?”
“I got stuck there because of the storm,” he said.
Courfeyrac snorted.
“Okay, I got distracted because we were making out and then it was storming. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Yes,” Courfeyrac said with solemn humor. “I’m glad to hear that a little bit of action is enough to distract you from your best friend’s time of need.”
“But I sent Combeferre in to take care of you and I bought you an Apology Latte. That counts in my favor, doesn’t it?”
Courfeyrac blushed and looked down at his coffee. “About that,” he said slowly. “I think we might have a problem.”
Enjolras raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“I think I might be in love with Combeferre.”
“Oh,” Enjolras said. That wasn’t what he was expecting to hear.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, okay?” Courfeyrac said in a rush. “I know. I’ve known Combeferre for more than five years and if I were really in love with him, I should have figured it out before now. But—but he was so perfect last night. I mean, you’re good too,” he added quickly.
“Thanks,” he said.
“But we’ve had years and years together to work out our system, you know? I thought you were going to punch me the first time I crawled into your bed during a storm, but Ferre…he just came right in and saved the day! He didn’t ask what I was doing, he didn’t tell me to man up. He just held me, and he petted my hair, and he told me bad jokes, and did you know that there’s this one kind of moth that only lives for a week and it doesn’t even have a mouth, it just flies around trying to get laid before it dies?”
“And now you’re in love with him?”
“Well, when you say it like that, it just sounds stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” Enjolras said. He’d been sworn to secrecy about Combeferre’s feelings for Courfeyrac months ago. That secret was much easier to keep when Courfeyrac had no reciprocating interest. “It took me ages to figure out this stuff with Grantaire.”
“Yeah, but you’re you.”
“I’m going to pretend that’s not an insult.”
“I just mean that you’ve been known to be a little…out of touch with your feelings. No one has ever been able to make that claim about me. I just—argh. I don’t know. I mean, he’s always been hot. You’d have to be blind not to notice it, but he was always just been Combeferre to me, but now he’s Combeferre—” He said this with a sort of robustness that made Enjolras snort. “—and I don’t know what to do. I just know that I might go crazy if he never holds me again like he did last night.”
“You should just tell him,” Enjolras said. Surely nudging Courfeyrac in the right direction wasn’t violating the trust Combeferre put in him.
“What?” Courfeyrac squawked. “No! I can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“Do you even have any idea how awkward that would be? He’s one of my best friends. You can’t just tell your best friend that you’re suddenly in love with him. Not to mention, after last night, he probably thinks I’m some sort of emotional basket case who needs professional help. Having me shout my undying love at him out of nowhere would do nothing to help that. And then things would just be awkward and our friendship would be ruined because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.”
No. Absolutely not. Enjolras was not going to put up with both of them pining after each other and being too afraid to say anything. He couldn’t handle it. “And how will you feel keeping secrets from him? Won’t that feel like lying to him?” It was a sneaky hand to play—he knew how much Courfeyrac detested lying to people he cared about—but he’d do what he had to.
Hell, if he knew that having Combeferre stay with Courfeyrac during a thunderstorm was all it would take, he would have done this ages ago.
Courfeyrac groaned. “I can’t lie to him.”
“Then you’ll have to tell him,” he said. He checked his watch. “Combeferre’s getting home at five, and I’m doing dinner with Grantaire tonight—”
“Dinner with Grantaire?” Courfeyrac said, waggling his eyebrows. “Things went that well last night, did they?”
“That’s none of your business,” he said. “But the apartment will be empty. You two can have dinner in tonight and you can tell him how you feel.”
“If this blows up in my face, you realize I’m going to hold you personally responsible, right?”
Thankfully, Enjolras already knew how things were going to work out because Courfeyrac had a tendency towards pyromania when it came to things that made him angry and Enjolras had a lot of flammable paperwork in his room. “Things will be fine,” he said. “You’ll see.”
~ * ~ * ~
Initially, Courfeyrac figured that he would make a simple Thank You Dinner for Combeferre and they could sit down and he could talk about his feelings then. He liked cooking and he was good at it—and if a nice meal doubled as a reminder to Combeferre that Courfeyrac had great boyfriend potential because he could also act as a personal chef on demand, well, then, he certainly wasn’t going to complain. But then he decided that a simple dinner wasn’t going to be enough because this was Combeferre and Combeferre certainly deserved a lot better than cheap chicken parmesan. So he’d been forced to go grocery shopping to get what he needed for the chicken, garlic, and sundried tomato pasta that he knew was a favorite of Combeferre’s.
The concerned looks he got by his fellow grocery shoppers made him realize that he looked like death warmed over because he was operating on not one, but two nights of minimal sleep. Which meant that instead of going to his afternoon class, he stayed home and did what he could for the bags under his eyes before he needed to start working on dinner. Courfeyrac was man enough to admit that he used make-up when it was necessary and the concealer did do wonders for the circles under his eyes. Of course, once he was in front of the mirror, he noticed how utterly out of control his hair was and had to spend an inordinate amount of time (and hair gel) wrangling his curls into submission. He liked to think that he wasn’t being vain. It was just this dinner was important. Combeferre was important.
He still felt a little foolish about all of this. He and Combeferre had been friends for years and it had never once occurred to him to think of Combeferre as anything more. But last night had been different. There was a sort of tenderness to Combeferre that he hadn’t really noticed before and Combeferre had been so in-tune with what he needed. Courfeyrac had never felt safer during a storm.
And the more he thought about it, it wasn’t that he was all of a sudden in love with his best friend, it was that he all of a sudden realized he was in love with his best friend. Because what happened last night wasn’t that different from how Combeferre normally acted. He’d been affectionate and calming and he’d acted like a great big nerd with his puns and his moth facts, and those were always things he'd loved and admired about Combeferre before. The feelings of strength and security he felt around Combeferre had always been there. He just didn't know what they meant before now. Courfeyrac didn’t know how long he’d been unaware that he was slowly falling in love with Combeferre, but now that he realized it, he didn’t want to spend a single minute more without Combeferre than he had to.
That said, he was nervous when five o’clock rolled around and Combeferre was on his way home. His palms were sweating—great, no one wanted to hold hands with the guy with sweaty palms—and he kept fidgeting with the lights (should he opt for mood lighting or would that be too weird?) and the place settings to give himself something to do.
Combeferre was home at 5:07, just like he always was.
Courfeyrac grinned at him from the kitchen. “Surprise!” he said.
“What’s all this?” Combeferre asked, looking to the table, which Courfeyrac had laid out with the nice table cloth (not the ancient red one Enjolras always tried to use for holidays) and their nice plates (not the ones that were chipped and stained with paint from that one time Courfeyrac and Grantaire decided that what Enjolras really needed for his birthday was a massive, hand-painted banner). He’d even splurged on good wine at the grocery store.
“It’s a Thank You Dinner,” Courfeyrac said. “For everything you did last night.”
“Oh, Fey, you didn’t have to go through all this trouble. I was happy to help.”
“I know,” Courfeyrac said. “But I wanted to. I wanted to do this for you.” He stared at Combeferre for a bit longer than was appropriate—how had he not noticed that Combeferre’s eyes were the perfect shade of grey-blue before?—and he busied himself with straightening some of the silverware. “So, shall we eat?”
“Right, of course,” Combeferre said.
They both took a seat and Combeferre poured the wine as Courfeyrac served them both food.
“How are you feeling?” Combeferre asked. “I wanted to be here when you woke up, but I couldn’t afford to miss class and I wanted you to get as much sleep as you needed.”
“I’m better,” he said. “Exhausted, but that’s what two consecutive nights with little to no sleep will do you. Sorry for, uh, freaking out on you last night.”
“Don’t mention it,” Combeferre said. “I wasn’t lying when I said I was happy to help.”
Combeferre looked at him with such warmth that Courfeyrac had to quickly change the subject. “How were your classes today?”
Combeferre talked about his classes—it was Friday and Combeferre had Tuesdays and Thursdays off and full class schedules on Monday, Wendnesday, and Friday—and Courfeyrac loved listening to him talk, even about something as mundane as classes, loved the cadence of his voice, loved how bright his eyes looked when he got to something he was passionate about, and all he could think about was how much he wanted to kiss Combeferre right now.
But no. Interrupting Combeferre with a kiss was a bad idea. A very bad idea. Very, very bad. Bad Courfeyrac. Bad brain. He couldn’t just kiss Combeferre without any sort of warning. He had to offer some sort of build up. I want to kiss your face wasn’t so bad of a thing to say. A little odd, perhaps, but he’d certainly said stranger things. But I think we should try dating was bit less…abrupt, but then Combeferre licked his lips and Courfeyrac’s brain short-circuited, so he shouted the first thing that came to mind.
“I think I should be dating your face!”
The silence that followed such a bold declaration would be comical if Courfeyrac weren’t so mortified.
Combeferre looked at him with wide-eyed shock and Courfeyac’s stomach churned. He knew this was a bad idea. He knew it.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “Just…just forget I said anything, yeah? And eat your food, it’s probably getting cold. Don’t mind me. That’s all.”
“Did you say you think we should be dating?”
“More or less, yeah, and it was obviously a stupid thing to say,” he said, forcing himself to laugh. He felt sick. “Sleep deprivation and wine—it’s a bad combination, you know? Anyway, you were saying something about your class this morning?”
But Combeferre wouldn’t let him change the subject. “You think we should be dating? Honestly?”
Courfeyrac looked up. There was something he couldn’t place in Combeferre’s voice. It almost sounded like…hope. “Yeah.”
“You’re not just joking?”
“Why would I joke about something like this?” Courfeyrac said. He didn’t mind pranks, but never at the expense of people’s feelings and a prank like this would be in particularly bad taste.
“I just…you have no idea how many times I wished you’d say something like this.”
“I—you what?”
Combeferre laughed. It was an utterly delighted sound. Courfeyrac wanted to know what he had to do to make Combeferre laugh like that again. He could get addicted to the sound. Combeferre reached across the table and took his hand. “Courfeyrac, I’ve been a little bit in love with you for more than a year now!”
“You—what?”
Shit, he sounded like an idiot. Great impression he was making.
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to feel pressured to do anything,” Combeferre said. “I didn’t ever think you’d actually be interested in me.”
“How could I not be interested in you?” Courfeyrac asked. “Notwithstanding the last five years where I was just…stupid, I guess. I don’t know if anyone ever told you, but you’re kind of perfect.”
“You’re not stupid,” Combeferre said. “And I’m not perfect. You’re far braver than I am—I don’t think I ever could have told you how I felt.”
“I didn’t want to feel like I was lying to you,” Courfeyrac admitted.
Combeferre blinked at him. Blinking had never seemed so sexy. “I’d really like to kiss you right now.”
“Please,” Courfeyrac said.
Combeferre stood up and he tugged Courfeyrac to his feet, pulling Courfeyrac flush against his chest. Courfeyrac felt a flood of that same security and warmth he had last night. He’d always figured that true love was the giddy, light-headedness he’d had around other partners over the years, but none of that compared to the sturdy arms wrapped around him or the feeling of invincibility that swelled in his gut. He didn’t think he could live without this feeling now that he knew it existed.
Combeferre put one hand against the side of Courfeyrac’s face and Courfeyrac leaned into the touch. He could definitely get used to this. Combeferre’s thumb brushed against his lip as a brief prelude to the kiss that followed.
It was the best first kiss Courfeyrac had ever had and in that moment he hoped it’d be the last first kiss he ever had, too. Combeferre’s lips were warm and dry, but not chapped, against his and their mouths moved together in perfect synchronization, as though their bodies had been designed to move in tandem together. Of course they had. Of course they were made for each other. He opened his mouth, allowing Combeferre to deepen the kiss, and Courfeyrac lost himself in the taste of the other man’s mouth.
He wanted to know every inch of Combeferre’s body like this.
Eventually, Combeferre pulled away, chuckling a little when Courfeyrac practically whimpered. “That was amazing,” he said.
“We should do it again,” Courfeyrac said firmly. “And often.”
Combeferre laughed again—that same delighted sound from earlier that made Courfeyrac’s heart soar. “I think that can be arranged,” Combeferre said and he pulled Courfeyrac in for another kiss.