Work Text:
Courfeyrac was having a particularly awful work day, slaving over a coffee maker at the Musain, when his phone buzzed in the custom vibration Jehan had set for himself rather than a ringtone. Weird. “Hello, my darling poet, and what can I do for you on this specifically cold and cloudy day?”
Jehan’s flowery giggles crackled over the line, and Courfeyrac grinned.
“Well, my brave soldier of the coffee shop, you could bring me some tea and watch the rain from my quite cozy window seat.”
The brunette glanced up at the clock, deducting that there was only ten minutes left of his shift. “That sounds perfectly lovely. What say we meet in about twenty minutes?”
“My door shall be unlocked.” Jehan replied easily, and Courfeyrac could hear the sound of rain pattering against the window.
Courfeyrac smiled to himself, balancing the phone between his shoulder and his eat. “I shall see you then, my beautiful poetic friend.”
----
It took a moment for Courfeyrac to get Jehan’s door open without dropping their teas, but managed as he kicked the door shut behind him. “Jehan,” he called, briefly setting the cups down to remove his coat and shoes. “Oh poet, oh poet, oh where must you be?”
Jehan’s peaceful voice came to his ears after a moment. “By the window, staring at the damp rain, is me.”
Courfeyrac laughed softly, taking up the teas again and moving further into the flat. “Isn’t rain damp by nature?” He asked conversationally, pausing when he caught sight of Jehan.
His red hair was unbraided and hung past his green eyes, which were transfixed on the rain outside. Said rain was gently pattering against the window pain, the window open just enough to let out the smoke from Jehan’s cigarette. Every so often a raindrop would slip through and land on Jehan’s cheek, before sliding down his face like tears that the poet wasn’t shedding.
Contorted to take up less than half of an already-cramped window seat, Jehan himself looked beautiful. He was in a pair of plain pajama pants and what could only be described as an alarmingly pink sweater, and he brought his cigarette to his lips in all the knowing excellency of an extremely sophisticated smoker.
Green eyes flickered over Courfeyrac’s decidedly less-graceful form, and a smile spread on Jehan’s lovely lips.
Said smile only grew when his gaze lowered to the tea in Courfeyrac’s hand. “You’re an absolute angel,” He told the brunette dreamily, resolutely ignoring the damp rain comment as he reached out for Courfeyrac. Or, more realistically, his tea.
He may have grasped his tea, too, if it weren’t for the ludicrous amount of papers strewn out on the floor between them.
Looking down, Courfeyrac regarded lines upon lines of verses, mixed between both full-color and color-lacking sketches. From his angle, Courfeyrac could make out a doodle of Enjolras, clearly by Grantaire, left out in a book. “Method writing, are we?”
Jehan looked extremely pleased with himself, and nodded. “We are. Careful not to step on anything, I haven’t taken pictures yet.”
Obeying, Courfeyrac took a big step over the chaos, and Jehan set down his cigarette to take his tea eagerly.
“Two sugars, the way you like it.” Courfeyrac supplied in a gentle voice, and watched captively as Jehan took his first sip.
The first sip was always the most beautiful.
Jehan, as he always did, wrapped his long fingers (stained with ink, as usual) around his cup to warm them, and as the warmth replenished him it was as if, in Courfeyrac’s eyes, the room had brightened tenfold.
Then, as carefully as holding something made of glass, he lifted the tea up, finally coming to rest just next to his lips. He blew carefully on it, delicate and lovely, before bringing the taste to his lips.
His eyelids fluttered in tea-induced bliss, and Courfeyrac had to look away before he was caught staring.
Even still, though, Courfeyrac’s ears picked up Jehan’s tiny sigh as he pulled away from his tea, and he could almost feel his friend’s smile from where he was still standing.
“Thank you,” Jehan murmured, and patted the other side of the window seat with his foot. “Sit down. I’m certain the rain doesn’t look quite as lovely up there as it does down here.”
As obedient as a dog, he carefully situated himself into the too-small space with Jehan. The poet smiled at him with a carelessness of a relaxed rich man, as if he had no debt to the world and it owed him.
Perhaps it did.
Jehan was constantly behaving in this manner, a melancholy writer with nothing and no one, save the clothes on his back and the world’s debt to him.
He turned and continued to watch the rain, though Courfeyrac couldn’t bring himself to take his eyes off of the artpiece that was Jehan Prouvaire.
An ink-stained hand came up to push a strand of red hair away from his face, and Courfeyrac received a rare chance to look closely at Jehan’s beautiful hands, if only for a moment.
They were nearly covered in ink, all impermanent save the gray watercolor stain on the side of his middle finger. He’d asked Grantaire to make him something to tattoo onto his finger, and Grantaire had delivered with an intricate, colorless watercolor that blended well with the rest of his general appearance.
His fingers were long and certainly built to hold a pen. Connected to a thin wrist, they looked breakable as glass, though Courfeyrac had witnessed the sorts of damage said delicacies have wrought on those deserving of it.
And then his hands have gone, tucked back into the pink sleeves of his sweater and hidden to Courfeyrac for what will seem like an eternity.
“I love you,” Courfeyrac muttered, and he wasn’t aware he’d said it until Jehan’s eyes changed.
A small blush settled over the small man’s face, and he carefully leaned down to set his tea on the wooden floor. “What?”
Courfeyrac snapped back into real life, before feeling the creeping realization of what he’d just said struck him.
Oh.
“I . . . well. . .” He started, before making a possibly-disastrous decision to be utterly straight-forward. “I’m in love with you, Jehan Prouvaire.”
Jehan’d sat up in his place, his green eyes wide. A strand of red hair obscured them slightly, and Courfeyrac longed to push it away. He didn’t though, only waited in quiet horror for Jehan’s “I don’t love you,” to ring through his ears.
It didn’t come.
Instead Jehan suddenly lunged at him, all long limbs and red hair, and when Courfeyrac’s back hit the wall Jehan was already lavishing kisses over his face and neck.
“Courfeyrac!” Jehan jumped back, his smile wide and revealing pearly white teeth. His face was flushed and beautiful, and Courfeyrac could do nothing but lean up and press his lips to Jehan’s.
They were softy, save a small area chapped from being habitually chewed on. HIs eyelids fluttered shut as if they were butterflies, and his soft hands rested on Courfeyrac’s biceps like feathers from a bird.
When they pulled apart after what felt like years, Jehan smiled at him with soft eyes and an appropriately bashful blush. “I love you, too.” He told the stunned brunette, leaning his head against Courfeyrac’s chest and breathing serenely against him.
The movement of carefully lacing his arms around the poet and keeping him there felt flawless to Courfeyrac, as if they were born to sit together in a cramped window seat while the rain patterws against the roof and drippws down the side of the building.
Looking down, Courfeyrac regarded the young man with every possible fondness. His red hair was pillowed easily against his chest, and though he couldn’t quite see his eyes Courfeyrac was positive that they were bright and lovely.
Warm fingers tangled with his, tentative and kind and covered in ink, and Courfeyrac squeezed it reassuringly.
“I love you,” he murmured, just to say it, and Jehan murmured an affirmative reply.