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Courfeyrac comes across her entirely by accident.
She’s in her Introduction to World History class, being drilled through the basics of this year’s curriculum, and she is bored. Her professor, some dull old white man, is deeply tedious in both tone and appearance, and she resigns herself to spending this lecture doodling triangles and intricate little shapes all over her notebook. Grantaire, next to her, is asleep.
The class, though only an hour long, feels as if it lasts at least a day, and as Courfeyrac trudges out after everyone, she hears a voice.
“Well, forgive me if I’m not thrilled by the idea of learning about my own country through the eyes of white Europeans.”
Courfeyrac perks up immediately, her interest piqued by the idea of finding someone else to bemoan the teaching diversity of the university with, but she turns too slowly to see who was speaking. She pouts for a moment, until Grantaire comes sloping out of the lecture hall behind her, takes her by the arm and drags her away for coffee and complaining.
“I don’t understand why you’re in this lecture class,” she muses, holding a Starbucks cup with a frankly miserable attempt at her name scrawled on the side. “You’re an art student.”
“Art needs context,” they explain, holding the door for her as they exit on to the high street. “Dull though that context may be.”
Courfeyrac laughs at them, linking their arms together and leading them back towards campus.
She forgets all about the mysterious dissenting voice in their World History class.
The next week, she settles herself in for another hour of boredom and thinly veiled racism, and finds her spot shared with two others. One of them is exceedingly tall, blonde curls twisted up into a messy, swirled bun atop their head, and the other is slightly shorter, wearing a bright blue hijab and a thick grey coat. Courfeyrac doesn’t say anything as she sits down a seat away from them, only offering them a small smile in greeting. Grantaire arrives late and slumps heavily into the adjoining seat, immediately settling themselves for a nap on the desk in front of them. Courfeyrac rolls her eyes affectionately, and lazily makes notes for the rest of the hour. As she leaves, she scoops up her bag without looking and makes a beeline for the restrooms.
It’s not until she’s home, collapsed on her back on her bed with her shoes kicked off, that she realises something’s wrong. She picks up her bag and rummages around for her phone, intending to whine at Marius about the fact he still hasn’t asked Cosette out, when she realises.
The phone in her hand is not her phone.
She frowns at it, confused, but the blue iPhone with the Ravenclaw case is very much not her bright green one with the cute rabbit ear case Cosette had bought for her birthday. She glowers to hide her panic and slides to unlock it, swearing when she discovers there’s a passcode.
She throws herself on her back again, pulls her laptop up from the floor and half-heartedly messages Marius, and waits.
After an hour, the phone beside her starts to vibrate angrily, and she picks it up anxiously. The caller ID reads Enjolras, and is accompanied with a selfie of who she assumes is the person in question, and the cute person in the hijab she’d been sat beside in class today.
“Hello?” She says, pressing the phone against her ear.
“Hi,” a breathless voice says down the line. “Are you the one who has my bag? I think we must’ve switched in class. Are you Courfeyrac?”
“Yes!” Courfeyrac exclaims, relieved, and quickly rummages through the bag in front of her in search of anything with a name on it. “And you must be Combeferre?”
She flicks hurriedly through the notebook she finds, quietly awed by the neatness of the writing in front of her.
“That’s me,” she can hear the smile in the other voice. “We definitely have the wrong bags, then. Are you free to meet up today at all, so we can switch back?”
“I’m free now,” Courfeyrac says, getting to her feet and stumbling to get her shoes on. “I can meet you in the library coffee shop in fifteen minutes?”
“Excellent, I’m there now,” they laugh fondly. “I hope you don’t mind, but I used your access card to get in.”
Courfeyrac laughs broadly.
“Don’t worry. I’ll see you soon?”
“Yes, you will. Thank you, Courfeyrac.”
They hang up, and Courfeyrac smiles dumbly to herself. She stops off in the kitchen on her way out, Combeferre’s bag over her shoulder, and picks up a few pieces of the halwa her mother had made for her as a leaving present, as a peace offering.
She arrives at the library ten minutes later, and uses Combeferre’s ID to let herself in (from this, she deduces that Combeferre is the cute one with the penchant for adorable patterned hijabs) and walks awkwardly into the café.
Combeferre approaches her first, luckily, and gets up from the table to come over to her.
“Courfeyrac?”
“Yes, hi,” she extends a hand for a handshake. “You must be Combeferre. What pronouns do you prefer?”
“She and her are lovely, thank you,” she smiles brightly, shaking Courfeyrac’s hand and leading her back to her table. “And yours?”
“She and her, please,” Courfeyrac responds, setting the bag down on the table. “I suppose you’ll be wanting this back.”
“And you this,” Combeferre pushes the other bag over the table at her. “Thank you, for being so prompt with this. I have a lot of work due, and without my notes it’d have been a nightmare.”
“Don’t worry,” Courfeyrac beams at her, before she remembers she’d brought food. “Oh! Here, I brought some of my mum’s halwa, just to say sorry. Since I kind of stole your bag because I wasn’t paying attention.”
She hands Combeferre the box, and the other girl takes it with a curious expression on her face.
“You’re African?” She says after a moment, opening the box and taking a piece out with delicate fingers. She breaks it into a few pieces and takes a tiny bite.
“Well, half, technically,” Courfeyrac explains with an offhand shrug. “Mum’s Algerian, Dad’s English. Arabic’s my first language, though.”
“Mine too,” Combeferre smiles, trying desperately to hide her excitement. “I’m from Egypt, though. I moved here when I was about four. I haven’t had halwa this good since my grandmother used to make it for me when I was little.”
Courfeyrac grins across the table at her.
“I always wanted to go to Egypt, when I was younger. The history’s fascinating,” Courfeyrac says, shrugging off her jacket as she intends to settle in. There’s something magnetic about the other girl, about her easy chatter and her warm smile and gentle laugh.
“Oh, Egypt’s gorgeous,” Combeferre hums wistfully. “I mean, I know I’m biased, but my older sisters moved back there and when I visit them, I’m awestruck. And I know London is equally remarkable, but there’s nothing like a summer in Cairo.”
“You’re from Cairo, then?”
“The outskirts, technically. Nasr City.” Combeferre explains, picking up another piece of halwa and pulling it apart. “Are you from Algiers?”
“Born there,” Courfeyrac elaborates. “We moved over here when I was tiny, though, so I don’t remember much of it.”
“A shame,” Combeferre muses, looking at her curiously. “Algeria always seemed rather beautiful whenever I’ve visited.”
“Oh, that’s what my mum always tells me. I want to go back, when I’ve finished with university, go visit my mum’s side of the family.”
“That sounds lovely,” Combeferre smiles at her, readjusting her hijab after she wipes her hands on the napkin in front of her. “Can I buy you a coffee? As a thank you for the conversation, and that delicious reminder of home.”
Courfeyrac’s lips quirk into the tiniest smile, and she nods.
“That’d be nice, thank you,” she says, fiddling absently with a spare napkin so as to stop the blush flushing already dark cheeks darker still. “I take it black, two sugars.”
“A woman after my own heart,” Combeferre laughs, and disappears off to the counter. Courfeyrac takes in a long, slow breath and tries to quell the nervous excitement twisting in her belly.
Combeferre returns after a moment, setting a large mug down in front of her with a fond look on her face.
They while away the rest of the afternoon like that, swapping stories of their childhoods and their siblings, and their lovely if at times overbearing Muslim mothers.
Eventually, it reaches five o’clock, and Combeferre’s phone starts ringing, vibrating furiously across the table.
“Enjolras, hi,” she says, distractedly straightening her skirt. Courfeyrac makes a diligent attempt not to listen, and instead sits and reads through all of her missed emails until Combeferre is finished talking.
“Was that your…?” She starts cautiously, when Combeferre sets her phone down on the table again.
“No, no. Enjolras is my housemate and quite possibly the platonic love of my life, but that’s all. Ey just wanted to know if I’d be home for dinner, is all.”
“Oh. Oh,” Courfeyrac blushes, the tops of her cheeks showing a tint of pink. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Combeferre laughs fondly, touching her hand over the table. “But I should go. Ey won’t be pleased if the huge serving of moussaka ey’s made goes to waste.”
“Oh, I understand,” Courfeyrac replies, getting to her feet as Combeferre starts to gather her things together. “Grantaire’s probably worried, too, I didn’t tell them I was going out.”
“You should get home, then,” Combeferre says with an affectionate nudge to her side as she pulls on her coat and picks up her bag –the right one, this time. “I’ll see you in class next week?”
“Of course,” Courfeyrac pulls her into a lazy, one armed hug. “It was lovely to meet you.”
“And you,” Combeferre returns the hug with her free arm, squeezing around Courfeyrac’s waist and accidentally brushing her hip, fingers sliding over the skin between her crop top and her jeans.
They say their goodbyes outside of the library and leave in opposite directions, Courfeyrac to her flat just off campus and Combeferre to her little house down the high street.
It’s not until Courfeyrac is at home (and after she’d dealt with nothing short of an interrogation from Grantaire on her way in) and settled in her room that she notices a suspicious addition to her contacts.
She’d been looking for Cosette, intending to call her and bemoan the fact that she spent the afternoon flirting with an incredibly attractive woman, when she notices that Combeferre has added herself as a contact.
She clicks it, out of curiosity, and notices that not only is there a phone number, but an email address and an ID image, which turns out to be an adorable selfie she’d obviously taken in the café while waiting for Courfeyrac to arrive.
She grins to herself, and types out a new text.
[Courfeyrac]: So I see I’ve impressed you enough to get your number. And to think, I didn’t even have to do anything except accidentally steal your stuff.
[Combeferre]: Enjolras told me to change all your contact names to Dumbledore just to fuck with you, since you don’t have a passcode on your phone, but I thought I’d be nice and humour you.
[Courfeyrac]: Thank you, oh wise and noble Combeferre.
[Courfeyrac]: Was it worth it? Humouring me and not vandalising my phone, I mean.
[Combeferre]: Yes.
[Courfeyrac]: I thought so too :)
[Courfeyrac]: Sorry if this is forward, but would you like to get coffee tomorrow? Or dinner. Whichever. I don’t want to wait a week until I see you again.
[Combeferre]: Nor do I. Dinner sounds lovely.
[Courfeyrac]: Great. It’s a date.
[Combeferre]: <3
Courfeyrac’s phone vibrates in her hand again, as she sits and stares at the heart Combeferre’s sent her, and she buries her blush-burning face in her hands and giggles.