Work Text:
Marius and Cosette had been having a Very Normal Day up until the moment Courfeyrac burst through the door of Marius’ room in the apartment the two of them rented together. He skidded to a halt (and before Cosette had met him, she hadn’t believed that people did that outside of cartoons) and stood for a moment, grinning widely at the two of them and no doubt enjoying the looks on their faces.
“I’ve got it, I figured it out!”
For a long moment, all they could do was stare (this was a common reaction to Courf’s outbursts and the fact that they were both dating him didn’t change that one bit) until Marius dared to break the silence with a tentative question.
“You’ve got… what exactly?”
“Our Halloween costumes, I know what we should be!”
The night of Jehan’s Halloween party, an event that all the Amis and assorted friends, siblings, and significant others had been anticipating for at least the last two months, Marius and Courfeyrac were running around the apartment in a last-minute frenzy, exactly as Cosette had predicted when Courf had come up with the ideas for their costumes. She was ready, having been working on her outfit since they had decided what they were going as, but naturally the two of them had left things until the very last minute and were now paying for it. They were dressing as Raoul and the Phantom from the Phantom of the Opera, with Cosette as Christine, inspired by one of Courfeyrac’s sisters having left her cassette of the original cast recording in the car when she let Courf have it. Marius was Raoul, looking quite handsome in a green military jacket with gold braid covering the front, while Courfeyrac contrasted him in the Phantom’s ‘Red Death’ costume. Cosette’s outfit was mostly assembled of pieces from when she danced in a local ballet corps, with embellishments added to the bodice and hairpiece to match the theatricality of the boys’ costumes. Finally, Courf found his mask and Marius his shoes and they were ready to go.
The costumes were a roaring success, the three of them receiving compliments at every turn for their originality and talent in pulling the characters off convincingly. Cosette spent easily a third of the party being good-naturedly carried over Courf’s shoulder as Marius chased them around the house and garden, much to the amusement of the other guests. Towards the end of the night, when everybody had settled down a bit, Courfeyrac sang “Music of the Night” and Marius and Cosette sang “All I Ask of You.” Cosette made sure to even things out by sitting in Courfeyrac’s lap while she sang, not wanting to give anybody the impression that she chose one of them over the other, because she didn’t, and that was important.
At the end of the night she drove them all home (technically, the apartment was still just Marius and Courfeyrac’s, but she had a drawer in each of their dressers and really it wouldn’t be long until her lease was up and she knew where she planned to move next) and roused the two of them from where they were curled around each other in the back seat, costumes half on and half dragging on the floor of the car. Courf had the biggest bed and they all ended up in it, shuffling and rearranging until everybody was comfortable and warm in darkness of the cool October night. As she began to drift to sleep, Cosette considered the boys she had fallen so terribly for and smiled, for she loved them and that would never change.