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Jehan’s breath tickled the back of Combeferre’s neck in a way that was incredibly unpleasant in spite of the fact that it was warm and soothingly rhythmic and somehow reminded him of cinnamon.
“You think … you think you could maybe, oh, I don’t know, proofread this when I’m not still typing?” He usually didn’t mind and that was for the best; personal space was a mythical concept in the cramped room their tiny student literary magazine used as office space, but today just wasn’t Combeferre’s day.
“I’m so sorry,” said Jehan with a genuine, albeit perfunctory pat to his shoulder, “but the next installment of your story has a deadline, you’re going to be late for that deadline, you asked me for this, and I don’t think spell-check caught that rite is not the opposite of left … yeah, two lines up, where Eugene’s on that abandoned house analogy … there you go.”
“Wouldn’t have fucked that up in the first place if you like, maybe, moved, it’s so distracting – oh shit. “ Ferre grumbled when a message from his mom suddenly popped up on the screen. He winced and moved to close the window before Jehan could read it any more closely than necessary.
“Oh, that’s why you want me out.”
Someone had once told Combeferre that his blushes were terrifyingly visible even on someone with his skin tone, which, well, sucked, because right now he felt a hot flush creeping up the back of his neck, and when it spread to his cheeks he’d look like someone took his own red editing pen to his face.
“Hey, speaking of, those two words? What do they mean, translated?” asked Jehan conversationally, apparently still hung up on the issue of Combeferre’s mother's terrible timing.
“Pet names,” Combeferre muttered under his breath. “One of them means doll, and the other one, I … it’s from when I was little, I think my dad made it up during my baby talk phase.”
“Aw…” Jehan was probably smirking, Combeferre thought as he swiveled his chair around.
Correction – Jehan was not at all smirking, rather, Jehan was pensively regarding Ferre while twirling a loose strand of hair around a fountain pen which appeared to have been pulled out of thin air. “Gosh, it’s cute. Your mom’s cute. I mean – “
“Nah, I mean, it’s weird. Terms of endearment are weird, believe me, I know.”
Jehan inhaled deeply. “I wasn’t going to say that, Combeferre, I was going to say that you should let her go on for a while and copy-paste it all into the story; y’know, have her scold you a bit and change the names, let her go on about – “ Jehan squinted at a new message on Ferre’s screen – “how your dad burned one of her shirts with the iron by mistake?”
Combeferre made an inarticulate squeak of embarrassment into his hand.
“Oh, now she’s talking about a television show I can’t pronounce – oh my god, she’s hilarious, I wish my mom was that funny, or actually talked to me at all, for that matter – oh fuck, Ferre, are you reading this, you need to get your mom into stand-up comedy as soon as you can swing it – “
“Jehan – “
“Yeah, I really think you should copy this; it’s comedy gold. Because you have an hour to get it in and so far you’re at the impressively grand total of … two hundred words. And you of all people know there's no harm in recycling dialogue, it'll never leave this room, but none of us, literally none of us, have failed to notice - ”
“Two hundred and five, excuse you," Combeferre snapped back, a few seconds too late.
“Two hundred and four, you made anybody two words by mistake … no, go down, end of the para … yep!” Jehan popped the p in an inordinately cheerful fashion.
“Honestly,” Jehan continued, “I’m going to get back to where I was going before you two-hundred-and-fived me, which is that none of us have failed to notice – “
“Two hundred and five isn’t a verb.“
“Poetic license!” cried Jehan, accompanying it with a few choice and vehement hand gestures.
“You can’t play the poetic license card for everything like that, and like, I have a license too! I’m the serial novelist here – “
“Serial novelling – novelling serially? – does not a poet make.“
“Besides,” Combeferre sighed, “like, anyway, last time you pulled the ‘poetic license’ shit it was with Montparnasse, when he was all yeah and I have a license to kill, and I actually typed out the conversation between you two, verbatim, ver-fucking-batim, don’t know if you read issue 13, but it was in there word-for-word – and it ended in a makeout scene, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to kiss me – “
“Drumroll please, there you have it, Combeferre, you’ve given us all alter egos in this thing – “
Combeferre broke through what would shortly turn into one of Jehan’s speeches where every word dripped with italics, as if the very concept of italics was going out of style. “And we were talking about my mom, weren’t we, I can’t reuse any of our conversations anyway because nobody in the story could have turned out the way they did with a mom remotely like mine – “
“Ferre, but you forgot to put anyone like yourself in the story– well, probably not forgot, I bet you did it on purpose, and we all - “
Jehan looked around the room for an eavesdropper to back up this claim, but the two of them were being relatively ignored.
“We all,” Jehan began again, glaring at Ferre, as if challenging him to deny it, “think it’s time for you to dip a toe into the water of self-insertion – “
“ – Jehan Prouvaire using the most clichéd metaphor in existence, who’d’ve thought it – “
Jehan pressed a finger to Combeferre’s mouth. “And you need an outlet, look at you.”
“I don’t need, what? An alter ego as an outlet – but – I mean – “ Combeferre’s voice cracked before he could get to the I mean, I know, fuck, I’ve been an asshole, I’m so sorry, I can explain –
“Hey, hey, it’ll be okay,” said Jehan, tone changing instantly to a concerned bedside manner as the steel in Combeferre’s voice splintered into half-swallowed shards. “I’m going to steal Bahorel’s stress ball for you and I think I saw R with Enjolras, I’ll get him and the stress ball and you’ll be fine; tell you what, I’ll get them both and the stress ball, yeah?”
Combeferre tried to laugh, because it was funny, the image of Enjolras and Grantaire mother henning him now . He really did try, but his eyebrows just crinkled when he found he couldn’t find any air, and they stayed knotted even after he caught his breath again.
“Shit, did the USS Enjoltaire sink again?” Jehan asked worriedly.
“Oh, that’s going fine, but the USS Ferretaire – did nobody tell you? God, I don’t think anybody knows yet, but like, we sank like the Titanic this morning, it was 10:43, I remember, I think I’ll always remember – like, that’s – fucking, that’s it – partnership dissolved, I’m going it solo, and I can’t – “
Jehan, quite frankly, could piece absolutely none of that into comprehensible sentences but didn’t ask, just held him as he curled up into his chair and sobbed silently. There was a small ping as another message from Combeferre’s mother blinked on the screen and then faded into nothingness, and a larger ping as the clock struck two.
They’d called it Reading and Composition. It had hit twenty-three installments before Grantaire jumped ship.
The title was a joke, you know - (R and Combeferre, R and C) - them being partners in crime and all that jazz, with crime in air quotes.
Granted, the serial novel thing they had going on wasn’t actually about reading or composition, it was a little grand-scale epic – not an oxymoron, they both insisted.
It was what Combeferre termed “our mess” and Grantaire unironically called “Combeferre's masterpiece," and followed more people than the average author should be able to keep track of, through a ridiculously sweeping time frame, and had no plot of which to speak of. No plot, that is, besides the mundane, the ordinary – perhaps the most beautiful of all, Combeferre thought, but then again, what did he know? – he was no Jehan or anything.
The whole thing started with a conversation between Grantaire and Joly, one of those things Bossuet called a “brainstorming sesh” even though there wasn’t actually much brainstorming done at all, but to be fair, it probably took a lot of mental energy to juggle freshly sharpened pencils without poking anybody’s eyes out.
“So, Joly, parallel universes, huh?”
“I mean, I – I don’t know, R, it’s like reincarnation and all, or at least the way my parents tried to explain reincarnation – I like it in theory, just as an idea, but then I actually start to think about it and my head starts spinning.”
“There’s a parallel universe in which you don’t catch this pencil, and one where you know how to tap dance and are tap dancing while juggling, and one where we all live in the nineteenth century and I fucked the morbs out of Lord Byron … “
Combeferre had pulled out his notebook at that point.
“And a different one where we live in the nineteenth century except we all died, and – catch, ‘Ferre, you look like you need a pencil – “
“See what I mean? It’s like multivariable calc,, but calculus makes more sense than this.” Joly leaned out of his chair to snatch the remaining pencil mid-arc, then set it down on the nearest flat surface.
“But in a cool way, right? Combeferre, oh man, you should – you should totally write this down, make a short story of it, you know – name me Antonio or something and nobody’ll know the difference – Antonio goes universe-hopping and teaches his friends to tap dance and maybe jumps into the bed of one or two historical figures, I’m not picky – hey, hand me that pencil, let me sketch this out for you, plotwise … “
Combeferre ended up writing down the whole conversation, elongating it slightly and making Grantaire’s character (Antonio, actually, because Combeferre was terrible at coming up with names on his own) less glib and more desperately -- painfully human in his speech, not just in his eyes like the real Grantaire, and well, it worked enough to make Enjolras cry when he read the first draft.
Or maybe Enj was crying tears of mirth instead because Grantaire’s little side comics were just that ridiculous, not like he’d admit it if that was true.
Okay, and yeah, Enjolras could tell that Combeferre was replacing his own role in everything with a noticeably Jehan-esque character with a french braid who took pronouns like morning walks or naps in the middle of the day, which is to say, none at all – but Enjolras said nothing about that to Combeferre’s face, knew Ferre well enough to know that he couldn’t write himself like he could write his friends, and primarily, Enjolras knew these friends well enough to know that Combeferre had started something magical.
Enjolras never brought up the word magic out loud, but by installment three, after Combeferre and Grantaire pulled an all-nighter under their half-dead lightbulb and expanded the cast of characters by eleven, people had actually started buying Enjolras’ literary magazine. People besides Cosette’s dad and Bahorel’s extended family. People with small smiles on jaded lips, who for the first time threw around words like diversity and representation without a bitter scoff, who thanked Enjolras with sincere half-whispers when they bumped into him on campus.
By installment eight, there was a fansite – okay, more like a bulletin board outside the rooms they took up to work and print and pull all-nighters in, but – “holy fuck, holy fuck, Grantaire, look, someone wrote a post-it note fanfic – “
When Combeferre looked back, he remembered it only in a haze of warmth and yellow-gold sunlight even though they found the bulletin board at nine in the evening, remembered not sleeping that night, smiling into his pillow so hard there was probably an imprint for weeks.
And today, the day twenty-four was going to be sent to print, Grantaire had pulled Combeferre aside, and sat down at Enjolras’ desk, which was not a good sign.
(Any conversation that Combeferre had ever had at Enj’s desk went horribly, but half of that was because his desk was just a swivel chair with a folding table attached, for mobility’s sake. The problem was that whenever you talked to him he wouldn't stay still - meaning you had to keep pace with him in another swivel chair, and Combeferre’s worst attempt to do so led to an incident last year that put Feuilly on crutches for three days.)
Point being, Grantaire sitting at Enjolras’ desk was pretty ominous, even though Combeferre was standing in front of him instead of sitting down this time.
“Look,” he’d said. “Okay, maybe starting with look was a bad idea, it sounds like there’s something wrong – and there isn’t, I promise, I just want to get that out that before saying anything, because there’s nothing wrong with you, ‘Ferre, I just – I just.”
And like, it wasn’t even a “there’s too much on my plate, I just can’t” because Combeferre could have dealt with that, he knew that feeling, but this was different.
This was Grantaire pressing Combeferre’s hands in his, Combeferre falling to his knees to get at eye-level, Grantaire nearly sliding off the swivel chair.
This was Grantaire more serious than Combeferre had ever seen him, this was –
“So, this is destined to get big, bigger than bulletin board fanfiction – hell, the actual campus paper’s asked Enjolras to give the story up for them, give you up – and so, so many people love it, see themselves in it, and it sounds clichéd, but you make people smile and it’s fucking magic.”
“It’s half yours, the magic’s half yours,” Combeferre had managed to stutter out, and Grantaire had blinked twice, and at that moment Combeferre could guess the what but not the why.
“Like, okay … um … okay. Um. So – “
“Grantaire, don’t – “
“So I think it’s time for you to drop the stick figures and get, like, a real artist, Combeferre, as in, not me – and I’m always here for you and it, don’t think that I’m not, but it’s all yours now, and I’m not martyring myself on any altar, I’m just – a parent letting go, you know?”
“B-but R, R you – you can’t, I - “
“I mean, ‘Ferre, imagine it with real art, real fucking live art – “ Grantaire’s eyes were shining and the floor was falling from under Combeferre’s feet.
“But it was actually born with the stick figures, they’re as much a part of it as the words – “
“Stop it, stop it, you keep selling yourself short, nobody reads it for the fucking stick figures, it’s not two halves of a whole, nobody’ll care if they’re gone – “
Combeferre wanted to scream, half thought he was screaming, even though his voice was coming out in a hoarse whisper, “You don’t understand, if I have to lose you to make it more, what? – legitimate, I’m not doing that, I’d never compromise my own integrity – “
“But you have a responsibility to your readers,” started Grantaire; it sounded rehearsed to them both and he shook his head to clear it. “Like, to the people; I mean, you’re the one who can go on for hours about how important representation is, and I dare you to try and deny that you don’t want a larger audience for this, that you don’t want to change lives – “
“I did it for us,” cut in Combeferre brokenly, knowing without looking up from his hands that Enjolras would be perched on the arm of Feuilly’s chair, and Joly would be shooting rubber bands at Cosette, and Bahorel would be dictating something to Musichetta while knitting a scarf with this week’s skein of yarn (which was baby blue). Because these were things you just knew if you loved a group of people enough – and you took it for granted that they felt it to too, that they wouldn’t fucking leave you –
“I’m not leaving it!” blurted Grantaire.
Combeferre didn’t realize he’d been speaking out loud until then.
“I’m not leaving it, I’m just backing off, oh god, I’m not – Enjolras knew you’d take it like this, I should have fucking listened – “
“Yeah, I mean, it’s okay, it’s fine, like, whatever. Whatever. It really is fine.” Combeferre looked at his watch. 10:43.
Installment 24 of Reading and Composition was released to the public on time, after a last-ditch effort by its sole author – and with no typos, after an equally impressive rush job by its long-suffering poet-turned-proofreader.
It was generally regarded by the fanbase to be short, gloomier than one of those cartoon rainclouds with a glowering face, and a textbook example of a filler chapter.
It was also published without any accompanying artwork, and just as Grantaire had predicted, there were no complaints at its absence.
“I’ve found you a new artist. We-ell, artist, partner, whatever you need,” introduced Enjolras two months later, after an equally mediocre 25 had been released. “Be nice.”
Combeferre extended a contemptuous hand before glancing up, prepared to be as frigid as possible, on principle, you know.
Unfortunately, he was met with wide dark eyes and an impish grin, and he then decided his principles could go fuck themselves.
“So, I guess … well, I’m Courfeyrac but Courf is cool. Professional catastrophe, pronouns are he/him/his, and is there an extra chair anywhere around here?”
“Ferre, but Combeferre if I’m in trouble or grounded, which happens a lot more than you’d think; the far left corner’s actually the time-out corner – yeah, over there, I’m banished there a little more often than Enj but definitely less than Montparnasse – have you met them? Other end of the room, leather jacket, give ‘em hell attitude, shooting bedroom eyes at Jehan?”
Courf shook his head and smiled, and – holy shit on a pinwheel, someone needed to run their thumbs along those dimples, they were made for thumbs and tongues and oh god.
“Amateur catastrophe because I don’t get paid for it; tragic, I know,” Combeferre continued with a slight hitch in his breath now, “ditto on the pronouns but subject to change, and um … no, I think the chairs are all taken, but I think you can share mine if I scoot over a bit? I mean, only if you’re comfortable with that, I genuinely don’t want to – “
“I’m going to cut you off right there,” laughed Courfeyrac, plopping himself down next to Combeferre and inadvertently spinning them both around a bit, because, newsflash, Ferre, that’s how physics works.
Physics and aesthetic attraction happened to be the two things that made Combeferre dizziest of all.
“You probably get this a lot, Ferre, but wow,” he exhaled, a little shuddering sigh. “I’m a huge fan. Enjolras gave me the advance copies of every issue of the mag since five, I think, and there was a month where I ripped out your pages in fifteen to keep them under my pillow, it was so – crap, I’m sorry, I told myself I wasn’t going to come on too strong like this – “
“Hey, no, ‘s okay,” Combeferre incredulously responded. “Nom de plumes are nice and all, but it means I’ve never gotten feedback like this before, you know? It’s … like, I’m … I’m honored.”
“Don’t be,” and then Courf was nudging Combeferre’s shoulder as if he’d known him for decades, and suddenly his entire left side was tingling like television static and his goosebumps had goosebumps and Courfeyrac shifted against his side and oh, they weren’t touching and it’s not like Ferre particularly needed them to because this was more than enough, and he hadn’t remembered being this warm since summer.
“Advance copies, though?” asked Combeferre. “I kind of assumed Enj picked you off the sidewalk or something; that’s his style, I think that’s how we got Grantaire and Joly, actually – but you know him? Huh, I could have sworn all the friends he cared about were … were us, really – “
“I’m … actually his roommate. Roommate by proxy, more like.”
The rest of the room was chaotic as ever; Bossuet had apparently knocked one of Bahorel’s snowglobes off their table, and it had just ended up in the claws of one of R’s cats. In Combeferre’s corner, however, you could have heard a pin drop.
“Oh fuck,” he gasped. “You.”
Courf’s smile would have been the most beautiful example of a shit-eating grin Combeferre had ever seen under any other circumstances, being considerably warmer than Enjolras’ and considerably less likely to get him punched than Bahorel’s. “Yeah, me. I mean, Enj was thinking about warning you upfront, but oh my god, your face.”
“He never told me you could draw!” Combeferre finally managed to splutter back.
Eugene Francisco from San Francisco was intended to be a one-off character in R and C, except Combeferre endowed him with the blessings of charisma, charm, wit, and some really great hair – and after that, couldn’t seem to let him go.
It was a while ago when the Eugene debacle started – around installment seven. Early evening, Friday evening, actually, because the strains of laughter and raucously relieved whoops were floating in through the open window the way they could only do on Fridays. Ferre and R were lazily bouncing ideas off each other, sitting back to back on the floor, elbows entangled to make a support brace.
“So get this,” Combeferre had said through a yawn, and Grantaire had groaned loudly, because Ferre’s ‘so get this’es consistently spawned tangents that weren’t worth pursuing in the least. “So get this – what if we have a dream sequence – like an alternate universe within our alternate universe – World War One or something – everyone dies, someone gets romantically punched in the face, but like, that’s before they all die, evidently, and wait, here’s the good part, we title it ‘Trench Warfare is the – “
“Please don’t say ‘Trench Warfare is the Pits,’ that’s the third-worst pun I’ve heard in my life,” Grantaire had sighed, and Combeferre took the bait more willingly than he would have if it wasn’t Friday evening and he was fully awake.
“What were the first two?”
“Well, they both involved your name.”
Combeferre shoved Grantaire in the back with his shoulder, they both fell over, and it took five minutes to sort out the tangles and find R’s shoe, which had somehow skittered under Ponine’s desk on the other end of the room in the chaos.
“You have to admit it’s a little funny though … trenches … pits … come on … “ Combeferre wheedled through shallow gasps, lying on the carpet to catch his breath.
Grantaire had responded by yelling, “Enjolras! Arbitrator needed!”
“Sorry, guys, I’m out early, but if it’s about a pun, then Combeferre, you’re wrong.” Enjolras appeared in the field of Ferre’s vision upside-down, which was only natural given Combeferre’s position on the floor. He was smiling beatifically while buttoning his jacket to his chin, a feat that Combeferre mused would be rather fascinating to see if Enjolras really was upside-down. “My roommate and I are going to have a Jane Austen movie marathon at six and he said he’s starting with Sense and Sensibility – “
“Isn’t your roommate the frat boy who’s never even in?” cut in Combeferre with consternation.
“Got a new one. Roommate by proxy, really.”
“It’s the middle of the semester!”
“Yeah, I mean, that's why it’s not official or anything, but he’s in my polisci class and he was asking around for a roommate, because he doesn’t think coming out as trans will go over well for his current – and I like him a lot, so I just gave him the asshat’s bed and closet and that’s that.”
“Um … Enj … but what if the asshat … comes back, what’ll you do then?”
“Oh, I kicked him out already. Showed him the picture of me with Bahorel and Parnasse from the paintball fiasco last year and said that we were all dating and that they’d beat him up if he didn’t clear out. It worked wonders.”
“You said what?” cried Grantaire, Feuilly, and Jehan in tandem.
“Well, it did work,” Enjolras shrugged. “Can I leave now? I’m going to be late.”
And then Ferre had uttered the fateful words of, “Yeah, forget the trenches, we’re writing this down instead – R, make up a first name for me, quick.”
“Bob.”
“Fuck you – Feuilly, go.”
“Eustace. No, wait, Eugene, I like Eugene.”
Combeferre turned and pointed at Joly. “Last name?”
“… Francisco?”
“Bossuet – give me a place.”
“San Francisco! Wait, no, shit, Freudian slip, this is why you don’t make me talk after Joly, I didn’t mean – “
“It’s okay, it sounds real and raw and all, and it’s not like he’s going to show up that much anyway,“ reasoned Combeferre in a distracted mumble, opening his laptop with a snap.
Unfortunately, Enjolras kept coming back with roommate stories, and Combeferre kept writing them down, and he was becoming Pygmalion with a sad little crush on his own creation, a creation who Combeferre couldn’t manage to give a love interest, and somehow it never registered that Enj’s roommate was a real person too.
There was the time he ran into the office in a rainstorm in just a t-shirt, because supposedly his roommate took his coat – “Well, I gave him my coat, it’s the one that’s two sizes too big, and dysphoria’s an ass and the coat’s just huge and seemed to help him, and he offered it back but I couldn’t take it back – and also walking in the rain is fun, I mean – but shit, I think I have the sniffles now – “
And there was the morning Enjolras greeted them all with, “Nineteen,” the dark circles under his eyes less prominent than his grin.
“Nineteen what?”
“Someone burned their popcorn one floor up and set the fire alarm off, and our whole building was waiting outside the whole night and he and I got to nineteen in Slide.”
“Slide, like the clapping thing we all learned when we were in third grade?”
“Yeah. Nineteen.”
And Combeferre wrote it down, wrote it all down, and Eugene Francisco was standing in front of him in the flesh, except his name was Courfeyrac, and Combeferre was going to sink into the floor, and his last words were going to be holy motherfucking shit on a pinwheel.
“Wait, hold up,” Combeferre started to say as the utter harlequin-romance-tinted horror of his current situation finally struck him, “so how much has Enjolras told you about me?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Oh my god – “
“Nah, you’re fine, it’s the good stuff mostly. I mean, I know you hit Feuilly with a chair that one time, and that you like bad puns, and that Grantaire ditching the story hit you harder than anyone really expected – “
“I almost can’t explain it myself, you know.” Combeferre looked at his hands folded in his lap with a sigh.
“Shit, no, you don’t have to, we don’t have to talk about it – “
“No, it’s like – okay, so like – god, it’s not even like I have a tragic backstory to go with it. Nobody’s ever left me before, and you know, maybe that explains it, because I’ve grown up knowing that family doesn’t let go, and everyone in this room is - Grantaire was - is family and he left me anyway, and I know you can draw, like really draw – but it wasn’t the art that mattered to me, it was his presence, it was someone – and I don’t know, I feel like a single dad or something now, it’s ridiculous, I’m a clingy brat when it comes to my friends, to anything I love, because – “
“That’s what family means to you, huh?”
“Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. I don’t – ”
And then Courfeyrac was holding one of Ferre’s hands in two of his, and the words were coming out in a rush, “So I don’t want to try and replace him, because that would be a shitty thing to do, and I don’t want to overstep my bounds since we just met – but I think you should write this all down. The story needs more heart, installment 26 needs a new character to tie everyone together, and I need a piece of paper.”
Combeferre slid a notebook to the left side of the desk. “What for?”
“Drawing you, obviously,” he said with an odd sort of smile, pulling a pencil from behind his ear. “You start typing; pretend I’m not here.”
“Give me a list of feelings.”
“Hold up, Ferre, what?” Courf ‘s eyes darted up from his sketch as he turned, and Courfeyrac’s actions were fluid and gloriously full-bodied to such an extent that the whole chair turned around too.
Even a week later, Courfeyrac had expressed no urge to get a chair of his own at Combeferre’s desk, and Combeferre, for his part, never brought up the subject.
Combeferre kicked his foot against the floor, turned them both forward-facing with an air of practiced ease. “Shit like this is half of what Grantaire did, y’know, for inspiration and things – humor me Courf, go on.”
“Um … love, lust, hate? Jealousy? Greed? Pride? Did I already do lust?” His eyes dramatically dropped to Combeferre’s mouth and he just sighed, and god, they were so close that Combeferre could feel the hot rush of breath against his neck, and then Courf’s tongue’s darted out in a seductively quick flash – or was Combeferre imagining it? He was imagining it, he had to be – this was how the sex scenes he never wrote always started out before he backspaced them and spent five minutes thinking of things like Marius in a hooded parka doing tax returns to clear his head.
Combeferre swallowed. “You … yeah, you already did lust.” The word sounded foreign and deep and husky in his throat and he coughed, an incredibly fake-sounding cough, which made the whole situation fifty times worse.
As Courf’s lips twitched upwards in a half-realized ghost of a grin, Combeferre turned to his screen again. Marius in a parka doing tax returns. Marius. Parka. Tax returns.
“So, Combeferre, feelings.”
“Huh?” he mumbled wittedly.
“You asked me for feelings.”
“I … oh, yeah, but I didn’t actually mean it like that.”
“So the lust didn’t satisfy?” Courfeyrac’s smile was full-blown now and atrociously obscene.
“Um … ?“
“No, oh my god I’m sorry, go on.”
“Like … flicking on the lights in the early evening, and they all look kind of pale and washed out because it’s not dark enough outside for them to do much good, and it’s just profoundly – “
“ – sad.”
“Mm. Exactly. Things more in that vein.”
“Okay, let me try … how about … crap, um, start me out, would you?”
“Regret.”
“When … when you realize there’s a plugpoint closer to your laptop than halfway across the room, and you’ve been contorting yourself in weird sitting positions while it charges for no good reason?”
“Happiness?”
“Oh, that’s easy, the glow-in-the-dark star constellations on my ceiling.”
Oh em gee you have those too?! was on the tip of Combeferre’s tongue, but with a great effort of willpower he violently suppressed it. “Loneliness,” he said instead.
“Um … opening a book, a thick one, something you’d never read in a million years, and finding flowers you pressed in them years ago and then forgot about – and it’s all just been waiting for you, and you just … moved on … “
“And what of love, Monsieur de Courfeyrac?” asked Ferre after he trailed off into silence.
“Paper airplanes,” he responded without hesitation, but sparing an eye roll for Combeferre nonetheless. “Looking out over something, high window, sunny day, no clouds, and realizing that if you threw a paper airplane right there at that second, it could go wherever you wanted it to, it could hit … the horizon.”
“Oh,” Combeferre breathed in response.
“And you?”
“You mean love? I don’t know … “
“Try.”
“Honestly? Well … it’s ... it’s probably pretty close to that feeling when you hear a metaphor – a new metaphor for a concept that’s always made sense to you but then, then it gets twisted on its head, and then … and then oh.”
Installment 26 of Reading and Composition was phe-fucking-nomenal, in the words of its (brilliant, absolutely brilliant) new artist, but he was right.
Courfeyrac was always right about things like this.
He also happened to be an almost flawless barometer by which to measure public opinion.
Phe-fucking-nomenal, thought Combeferre for what seemed to be the millionth time that day, and full-on grinned into his sleeve.
Enjolras knew something was up when the two of them met him at the room door first thing one Monday morning.
“Twenty-one,” said Courfeyrac, bouncing up and down on the soles of his feet.
“What on earth?”
“Slide. We got twenty-one.” Combeferre still sounded awed.
“Beat that!”
“Yeah, Enjolras, beat that.”
When retelling the story to certain persons afterward, most specifically Feuilly and Cosette, Enjolras ended it by stating that he realized then that those two were meant for each other, that he laughed, pecked them both on the cheek, and fled before he had to hear the number twenty-one once more in voices that sounded like they were about to try for a twenty-two right there on the spot.
The truth of the matter, as certain other persons, most specifically Grantaire, Joly, Jehan, and Montparnasse, forced out of him, was that Enjolras went green with envy, completely and utterly lost his shit, and dragged Combeferre into a slightly darkened broom closet to get to that twenty-two first.
And once Combeferre stopped protesting through his giggles, it was perfect – it was tangibly perfect and beautiful and fiery, Enj’s hair flying, Combeferre’s eyes flashing, keeping count in hot whispers and god, their hands hurt but they could have gone on forever maybe –
But they both dropped their hands at eighteen. Ferre seemed to lose heart, or maybe it was Enjolras who only then realized that they’d be okay even at eighteen, maybe it was both, maybe neither.
“We gave up at eighteen,” Enjolras confessed to Courfeyrac later. “He’s yours – fair and square, whenever you’re both ready.”
“Um … Grantaire?”
He looked up from a comic he was inking; his dry irony and unprecedented talent at drawing, well, stick figures (and nothing but stick figures) hadn’t gone to waste, it just wasn’t Combeferre’s anymore. “Hey, Ferre, it’s … been a while.”
It hadn’t really been a while – they still spoke every day, usually in passing, sometimes shared a small joke and bumped shoulders, but something was different now, the something that made Combeferre’s voice crack and Grantaire’s brow furrow.
“I just wanted you to know that … that I’m okay. We’re okay.”
“I know, I figured. You two are honestly the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Grantaire – “ complained Combeferre, flushing slightly.
“Combeferre – “ he mocked gently, smiled at Ferre like he hadn’t in months, and he found himself grinning back and reaching for R’s hand.
“I missed you. I missed this.”
“…Me too.”
“And it’s not like Courf’s replaced you, it’s – “
“You don’t have to explain, shhh, I know.”
“No, but I want to,” the words tumbled out of Combeferre’s mouth in a rush. “Look, can you do that later?“ He plucked the pen out of Grantaire’s hand gently. “We both need fresh air, and it’s been months since we ... talked. Like this.”
“Months,” Grantaire repeated. “Yeah, I’d … I’d like that.”
Combeferre only realized they had linked elbows when he was halfway out the door, and wondered vaguely why he was even shocked.
Combeferre knew somewhere in the back of his mind that anything he typed at one in the morning would end up meeting a rushed end at the hands of the delete key when he was more awake, without a chance for the words plead their case, to say goodbye at all, but he didn’t want to walk back to his dorm on the other end of campus at such an ungodly hour, and he physically couldn’t bring himself to close his laptop.
He was probably going to crash here tonight; he’d take the second beanbag, the one that wasn’t occupied by Enjolras and Grantaire entangled, half-covered with one of Bahorel’s hand-knitted blankets he’d slipped over the pair of them on his way out.
But that could wait – just one paragraph more, and then he’d sleep, he promised himself.
“How’s it going?” asked Courfeyrac over the top of his head. He was staying the night too; they had ample provisions and a few spare toothbrushes and heating, glorious heating here, and going home to his room alone when Enjolras wasn't there was a miserable prospect.
“Terribly. I can’t even bring myself to reread it, it’s just fucking bad, but – ”
“Let me try. I mean, you can backspace it all afterwards, but hey, it’s one in the morning, if I’m ever going to have any talent at this kind of thing, it’ll be now.”
“Knock yourself out,” Combeferre said, collapsing onto the beanbag on the floor next to his chair. “Wake me up when you’ve got something, ‘kay?”
He slipped into sleep almost instantaneously. Go figure.
“Combeferre? Ferre?” Courfeyrac shook him awake with a whisper, lips nearly touching his right ear.
“Mmmph, don’t – oh god, how many hours have I been out?”
“Fifteen. Minutes, I mean. Fifteen minutes.”
“Didn’t feel like – “
“I know, I know – but read this, okay?” Courfeyrac left the computer on the edge of his beanbag, its brightness settings at a ridiculous level, and holy fuck, ow.
Ferre was seriously contemplating faking it, skimming through while uttering a few noncommittal murmurs of hm, yeah, that’s nice because he was having a really lovely dream that he wanted to get back into as soon as humanly possible, but he couldn’t really remember the details of the dream anyway, and the dream might have actually been about Courfeyrac himself, in which case going back to bed would be pointless because Courf was awake and at this point, and one in the fucking morning, Combeferre was sure he’d do anything for that boy, and this? This was nothing.
“See, the thing is, I think I’m in love.”
Combeferre very nearly called out for Courfeyrac, eyebrows knotted, lips pursed, because he didn’t remember writing anything before that would make the line flow in context, but then again –
“I’ve never known someone as human as you, as beautiful – someone who cares so much about anything and everything that it shows in every glance, every half-smile – and god, that half-smile of yours will be the death of me, and when you really, honest-to-goodness smile, it could cause the death of nations, I mean it.
I don’t know how to explain it, I don’t know what it means – all I can really say is that, well, I tried to make a paper airplane last week and I sat with my legs dangling out the window, and yeah, if the RA caught me, I’d have gotten written up for defenestration, but screw it. Did you know that defenestration is actually something you could get in trouble for? Because I didn’t, but I was willing to risk it, and I made that paper airplane and threw it, and it didn’t really hit the horizon, it bumped into a street lamp and started to go into a tailspin and almost hit someone on the sidewalk in the eye. They ducked in time, but then they saw me and gave me the finger, which, to be frank, kind of sucked, because I was just testing a hypothesis.
But the conclusion? Basically, I can’t throw paper airplanes for shit. But if airplanes are really a metaphor, I’d learn for you, I’d learn from you; we’d do it together.
I’m hoping that you won’t remember this because it’s one in the morning, Combeferre, and I know that Eugene Francisco is much more eloquent than I am, so please just backspace this, replace it with something … nicer. I’m so sorry – I’m so sorry, and I’m deathly afraid that I really, really love you.”
Combeferre couldn’t think, didn’t know what to think, and started to type instead, his fingers moving of their own volition.
“Okay. Um … okay. Oh my god, Courfeyrac, you can’t just say something like that and expect me not to kiss you, because holy shit, I’m going to kiss you and it’s going to be hot and fast and absolutely atrocious, and I’m not entirely sure about the mechanics of all of this but I’m pretty sure one of us will end up against a wall, or hell, even on the floor, because everything about you makes me dizzy except it’s so fucking natural – you normalize dizzy, I don’t know how you do it – and I promise I’m going to kiss you when I’m awake because I want to remember everything about it, all the pornographically intense noises that you’ll probably make and the middle schooler-esque squeak that’ll probably be mine, and I want your hands on me and your lower lip between my teeth and I have never wanted anything this badly in my life, but – rain check.
Okay? Rain check.”
“Um, Courfeyrac, I … I kind of added a bit, can you look it over?”
A few minutes later, Ferre felt a faint press of lips on his forehead, his cheek, and then a warm body curl up next to him on the beanbag, with arms a solid weight against his waist.
(Correlation doesn't imply causation, yeah, but he still didn't think he'd ever slept that well in his life.)
They didn't talk about it when they woke up. Fingertips lingered longer than before in the morning, eyes lingered even longer than that, but the words seemed to slip away from them in sunlight.
With all that taken into account, Combeferre was almost sure he imagined the kisses in retrospect, but he’d like to think that he didn’t.
“Courf? Could you get Jehan over here to edit? I mean, take your time, I still have to legitly finish this paragraph kind of, so, like, just – “
“Slow walk? On it, Ferre.”
Combeferre glanced furtively behind him and at Courfeyrac’s appropriately slowly retreating figure before switching tabs on his browser.
Hi Mom, he started to type, and he could change his mind any second, he could just ask how she’s doing, ask about his aunt’s job, whether his grandfather did that day’s crossword puzzle, he could back out, he could, but –
So before you go off about something - like how I didn't call you last night - and about that, I'm sorry, you can yell at me soon, but first - I think I met someone and I also think I might really /really/ like this person, and I just wanted you to know that it might be real … but I kind of don’t know what to do now.
“Hey, Ferre?” Courfeyrac was sitting on the desk, dangling his legs, sketching what looked like Enjolras and Feuilly either doing the tango or imitating a two-human ball of string.
“Hm?”
“Tell me, I know what you write, but what kind of stories are your favorite to read – the ones you go back to the most, the ones that speak to you?”
Their eyes met, and suddenly the last piece of the puzzle fit into place, and Ferre just knew.
“I’ve … I’ve tried empty. Empty poetry, empty irony, things like wisps of smoke that make you feel something but you don’t know what – and, I can’t do that, you know? I guess, the ones I reread are things with … with heart, with warmth, with – “ Courfeyrac’s eyelashes were impossibly close and impossibly long now, his nose was almost touching Combeferre’s – “with the best hair I’ve ever seen, with a fucking awful sense of humor, and ridiculously sexy piano playing fingers. Um … stories … that have dress shirts in the worst colors I’ve ever seen, but still manage to pull them off, and speaking of pulling off, holy fucking shit on a pinwheel, I really want to pull that shirt off – “
“Ferre, we’re in public, please, have some dignity,” Courfeyrac whispered, eyes dark and sparkling, lip between his teeth, and what the hell, that was Combeferre’s job, he should be doing that, and so – and so he did.
And it was, they both agreed, worthy of at least twenty repeat performances, by the end of which Courfeyrac was straddling Combeferre on their – (their!) – swivel chair, and when Combeferre rubbed at an impressive bruise on his neck and gasped out a, “You, Courf, are unprecedented, and dare I say, phe-fucking-nomenal,” Courfeyrac was inclined to agree with that too.