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Combeferre wakes up from a terrible dream.
It all started with him taking a shiny gold statue in a temple, which is a sign to him that he has to stop playing Temple Run. Then he was suddenly running through a volcano, being chased by something he couldn’t see but he could definitely hear. And then he fell through the floor and woke up in a cold sweat.
Shaking, he grabs his glasses and looks at his alarm clock to see if he can go back to sleep, but his stomach drops when he saw the time. 7:45—he definitely overslept. Cursing under his breath, he moves to call his roommate and ask why he didn’t wake him up. After all, they have the same morning class, and they always make sure the other is up on time for their 8:00am. However, he quickly sees what happened when he finds his roommate still asleep. Clearly, both of their alarms aren’t working.
“Enj!” he hisses, shaking his roommate. “Wake up! We’re gonna be late!” Enjolras doesn’t stir, and he curses under his breath again. Enjolras is a notoriously heavy sleeper, and if they’re in a deep sleep right now, nothing short of a miracle can wake them up. (Well, he’s found that ice cold water can do the trick, but he doesn’t exactly have access to that in his dorm.)
Thankfully, he doesn’t have to resort to such measures, because Enjolras wakes up after a second, harder shake. “Wha–what the fuck?” Before he can ask any further questions, Combeferre drags his covers off. They don’t have time to dilly dally and Combeferre doesn’t have time for his friend’s rant about how he disturbed their sleep.
“We’re going to be late,” he repeats, pointing at the clock. “Get up!”
Thankfully, Enjolras gets the memo. They jump out of bed and swear loudly, rifling through their closet to try and find something to wear that isn’t their boxers. Combeferre just stares at them before he realizes he should probably get dressed too.
Ten minutes and a string of curse words later, Combeferre is panting as he races towards the lecture hall with his heavy ass backpack, wishing he’d lightened his load the night before. Then again, there were a lot of things he wished had gone differently today. He looks behind him to see if Enjolras is catching up, which he is, albeit with much difficulty. “So . . fucking . . . heavy,” he pants as he catches up.
“You need to take some stuff out of there,” Combeferre says, shaking his head.
Enjolras scowls. “It’s all necessary.”
“It’s really not.”
“What if I need it when I’m studying?”
“Go back to the dorm and get it. You’re acting like this campus is 100 miles in length.”
Enjolras rolled his eyes. “Whatever. C’mon, let’s go.” Before he can start running, Combeferre notices that by some lucky coincidence, they’re right by the Musain. Thank the stars, he’s starting to get hungry, and he really wants their PB&J.
“Wait!” He points at the cafe. “We should get breakfast.” Already, he can hear the groan and complaints from Enjolras, who is a staunch hater of breakfast. (Which is ridiculous, because they always feel and perform better when they’ve actually had food and not just black coffee in the morning. Amazing how that works.)
“We’re already late. We can just get breakfast later.”
Combeferre shakes his head. “We both know that you are never going to get breakfast later. Let’s get it now.”
“We don’t have time.”
He’s this close to dragging Enjolras into the cafe. He loves Enjolras, really, but they are also the most stubborn person he knows, and it frustrates him to no end. Their staunch refusal to take care is frankly amazing, but also awful. The amount of times he has to tell them to go to the dining hall, or go to sleep at a reasonable hour, or take a break from their homework, is too much to count. He does it happily, of course, but he does wish Enjolras would stop pushing themselves so much. One day they’re going to stretch themselves too thin. In any case, breakfast is not optional, for him or for his roommate, so he walks in, whether Enjolras likes it or not.
Three minutes later, he’s out with two croissants (there were no PB&Js) and hands one to Enjolras. “Eat.”
His roommate wrinkles his nose. “I’m not hungry.”
“Yes you are, and in thirty minutes you will be complaining. Eat the damn croissant.”
Enjolras scowls, again. “You couldn’t have gotten coffee?”
And now he’s this close to strangling his friend. Enjolras’ coffee habit (Well, they call it a habit. He calls it a caffeine addiction.) drives him mad to no end, and he has tried to no avail to curtail it, because it’s led to many a sleepless night where Enjolras is pacing back and forth in their dorm, muttering loudly to themselves. It also makes them jittery, unable to sit still, and unable to string together a coherent path of thought. He fears the day they discover energy drinks, because it’ll be the day he needs to call 911. There is no way a heart can keep up with that, though clearly his roommate loves testing the boundaries of the human body. Just as now he’s testing Combeferre’s patience, cultivated over many, many, many years.
After counting to ten, he takes a deep breath and says, “You can get coffee later.” He’s not stupid enough to deny Enjolras of coffee completely; after all, he’s not their doctor and cannot give medical advice. Besides, Enjolras is an adult, and what they do to their body is only somewhat none of his business. Somewhat. What is his business, though, is his education, and he really wants to be in the lecture hall right now. He prays to whatever is out there that no one will pay attention to them when they walk in, especially the professor. (It can’t be that hard. It’s a 300 person class.) “C’mon, let’s get to class,” he says, after a few more seconds of divine bargaining.
Amazingly, they are only 10 minutes late, but Combeferre swears the professor gives them a dirty look as they walk in. He brushes it off and looks around to see if he can spot a friend. His heart sinks when he realizes they’re sitting at the very front. He hates the front. His neck is never going to recover. Grumbling under his breath, he makes his way down there, along with Enjolras, until he reaches the spot.
“Morning, Courf,” he says as he sits down.
Courfeyrac does not say “Good morning” back, like any polite member of society would. Instead, she says, “Where the fuck have you been?”
“Not here,” Enjolras replies, yawning, but Courfeyrac seems determined to learn more.
“You’re never late,” he says, pointing at them. “Not even a minute late. And yet here I am, earlier than you. So where have you been?”
Combeferre sighs. Courfeyrac is right, they are famous for being chronically late to class. He can’t remember a time they’ve ever showed up on time. Yet it seemed they’d arrived on time for once. Maybe miracles are real, he thought for a fleeting second. “We overslept,” he replies, hoping this placates them. It does not.
“How the fuck do you oversleep? You have a million alarms set, you’re telling me not a single one went off?”
“Nope.”
“No way.”
“Yes way.”
“How? What happened.”
Combeferre shrugs. He wishes he knew. He’s going to have to investigate after class. But right now, he has bigger problems to worry about. The professor is talking about related rates, and he’s not quite following along. Another thing to study, he tells himself, which is scaring him a little. His list of things to study is already a bit big, and now he has to add this?
About an hour into the lecture, the professor lets them take a break, and Combeferre takes the opportunity to stretch and ask his friends if they understand anything. He thinks he’s got the hang of it after several different practice problems, though some of them still trip him up. However, it’s clear they will be no help after he realizes Enjolras has been napping for the past twenty minutes and Courfeyrac hasn’t been able to make a coherent note. He begins his divine bargaining once again, hoping and praying that he will be able to understand this by the time finals roll around.
Finally, after what seems like an eternity, class ends, and they sit on a bench near the building to debrief. There’s not a lot to actually debrief, since only two of them were actually awake, and neither of the two are fully grasping the topic at hand.
“I just don’t understand how to set them up,” Courfeyrac says, groaning. “What the fuck is she even doing?”
“I think it’s a matter of listing out variables and unknowns,” Combeferre responds, though he’s not completely sure himself. He’s not sure what’s wrong, surely this is something he’d be able to grasp. Maybe he’s too sleep deprived to understand.
Enjolras yawns. “If you ask me, it seems really easy.”
Courfeyrac scoffs. “Easy for you to say. You weren’t even listening! You were conked out for half the lecture!”
They hold their hands up. “Hey, I was really tired. I still caught something! I think . . .”
“This is why you have to go to sleep earlier than 2 o’clock,” Combeferre says, shaking his head. Enjolras rolls his eyes in response.
After a few more minutes of banter and morning recap, Combeferre has to leave for his lab. He bids his friends farewell and hopes that the lab will go a lot better than calculus has.
~*~
Combeferre is not so lucky to have his hopes fulfilled.
As he leaves the lab building, he replays the last hour and a half in his head, wondering where it all went wrong. Maybe it was when someone broke three pipettes in the span of five minutes. Or perhaps it was when the rotavap machine stopped working. It could have even been right when he entered the room, which had been turned up to an unbearable temperature. However, it definitely took a turn for the worse when the fume hood exploded. Or got set on fire, he’s not entirely sure, because their TA told them to evacuate as soon as it happened and he’s not stupid around to stick around for something like that.
He’s also not sure how it happened, since they aren’t working with particularly volatile chemicals, but maybe someone mixed something wrong. Although he’s not sure how that happened either, but he supposes anything can happen in the lab. Including not getting any recovery, apparently, which he is still fuming about. 0% recovery! It’s ridiculous. Not even a thousandth of a gram, or even a ten-thousandth! How am I supposed to explain the loss? Maybe I’ll just say it was because of the fume hood.
He makes his way to the nearest dining hall, alerting his friends to his plans, and hopes and prays that the food will at least be good. Unfortunately, the day has not been going his way so far, so he’s not particularly optimistic, and his pessimism is vindicated when he discovers that they’re serving ramen. Normally, he’d be fine with ramen. He loves a good ramen, and he’s made his fair share of instant cup ramen when it’s late and he needs a pick-me-up snack. But the dining hall ramen is none of that. It’s evil and wrong, and he cringes at the thought of having to eat it. How do you even fuck up ramen? It’s so easy to make. Then again, maybe he’s overestimating the culinary prowess of their university’s dining halls, because none of them are able to cook decent rice, which is still baffling. How do you fuck up rice?
Thankfully, he is rescued from his ramen woes by the arrival of Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Eponine. It seems that Eponine’s day has been going a lot better so far, evidenced by the fact that she is beaming and also by the fact that she has a lipstick stain on her cheek.
“Yeah, I’m doing good, I was hanging with Cosette before this. She’ll come here once her class is done.” She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, not the ramen again. Can’t they make something different? Anyways, how have your mornings been?”
All three of them groan, and Combeferre begins with the tale of how he and Enjolras slept through their alarm, with Courfeyrac adding on how their calculus class was hard to follow. Eponine shakes her head. “You guys are crazy doing an 8 am. I could absolutely never. I’d be asleep in class within the first three minutes.”
“Enjolras did just that,” Courfeyrac says, which makes Eponine laugh.
“Yeah, that sounds about right. I could never. So what happened after that?”
Enjolras shakes his head. “I forgot to do my politics reading. I’m so glad I didn’t get called on to share my thoughts in section, that would’ve been embarrassing.”
Courfeyrac laughs. “Oh man, I would’ve paid to see that. Just see you bs’ing your way through a politics discussion. Anyways, I slept through history.”
Combeferre shakes his head. “Courf . . .”
“It’s not my fault! Okay, maybe a little. I just wanted to take a quick power nap.”
“You are physically incapable of quick power naps,” Eponine points out. “They always take at least an hour.”
They groan. “I wish I could conk out for 15-20 minutes like everyone else. Why must I be cursed?”
After more ribbing, Combeferre recounts what happened in his lab, much to their shock. “What do you mean the fume hood exploded?” Courfeyrac asks.
“Okay, I’m not completely sure, it could’ve also just been set on fire.”
“That’s not exactly better,” Enjolras says, frowning.
“How did it happen?” Eponine asks.
He shrugs. “I have no idea.”
Courfeyrac scowls. “You’re no fun. Where’s the speculation? This is why I can’t ask you about gossip either. You don’t give details. You don’t snoop.”
Combeferre waves his friend off. “I don’t have time to snoop. Besides, none of the gossip is interesting enough to learn more.”
“Not interesting enough? Ferre, you told me yesterday that Terry and Olivia broke up! They’ve been together since middle school, and now they’re not? And you couldn’t even bother to find out why?”
“It’s none of my business,” he says at the same time as Eponine saying “They broke up?”
Courfeyrac nods. “Yeah, check this out. Terry deleted her highlights of Olivia.”
Eponine’s eyes widen. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah.”
Combeferre rolls his eyes. This has never been interesting to him. He only ever found out through Marius, when he was trying to find something and happened to stumble across Terry’s page. Then he found out that the Olivia highlight wasn’t there anymore. That was it. He doesn’t need to know what happened or why it happened. He doesn’t even know Terry or Olivia personally; he only knows them because Courfeyrac and Eponine know them, and tell him about them.
After they finish their lunch, they make their way to the library, with Cosette joining them, sandwich in hand. “I don’t want any of that ramen,” she says by way of explanation, and Combeferre cannot fault her at all. They quickly settle in, and Combeferre opens his laptop, groaning inwardly when he remembers everything he has to do.
Courfeyrac seems to feel the same, because he opens and then instantly closes his own laptop. “I don’t wanna do any of this,” he declares, which Combeferre feels on a deep level.
“Hey, don’t forget about that party we’re going to later,” Eponine reminds him. “Do your shit before we pregame.” She checks her watch. “You’ve got . . . about five hours.” This cheers Courfeyrac up, and he can’t blame them. It’s been a long week. He’s looking forward to the party himself, since it means he can let loose for once after a grueling two weeks. It also means he can spend time with friends, some of which he hasn’t seen in days. Of course, he still has to do his homework, which crushes his spirit a little bit, but he reminds himself that in five hours, he’ll be watching his friends attempt a keg stand (which they have still yet to successfully do) and it will all be worth it.
Two hours in, he wonders if it really is worth it. He’s staring at his screen, trying to make sense of the words on it, but it’s not clicking, none of it is. It’s definitely because of lack of sleep. Or something like that. Cosette and Eponine had excused themselves since they both had class fifteen minutes ago, and he’s still stuck on the same damn paragraph. Is being a doctor actually worth it? The answer is yes, but every day he asks himself the same question. It’s going to be a long 8 years.
At least he’s done with things that are due in the near future, so now he can get started on studying and reviewing. (Is he? There’s something at the back of his mind that’s bothering him, but he can’t quite place it, and it’s probably not that important.) Except now he has to turn back to related rates, which he doesn’t want to do quite yet.
He’s torn from his concentration by Courfeyrac’s grumbling. “What the hell even is this? What the fuck is a dV over dt? These aren’t even words!”
He can’t help but laugh. It feels so ridiculous that none of them can get it, or that Courfeyrac is complaining about variables, but it just feels right to laugh. He doesn’t know what it is. The response from Enjolras only makes him laugh harder.
“You don’t even have to take this class.” Which is true, it’s not required for Courfeyrac. However, apparently she decided to take it “for fun.” Whatever that means.
“I just thought it’d be a fun class,” she says, scowling.
“Math stopped being fun in middle school,” Enjolras argues, and Combeferre is too busy laughing to ask why they’d chosen to major in math if they hate math. He can’t argue with that logic though, math really hasn’t been fun since they moved beyond basic algebra.
6 o’clock comes and goes, and Combeferre is tired of studying. He’s about to ask his friends if they want to dip, when he looks outside the window. It’s raining. Hard. Thankfully he’s brought an umbrella, but man, he wish he wore something other than his loafers.
“Hey, do y’all wanna get dinner?” Courfeyrac’s voice jolts him out of his thoughts.
“Yeah,” he says. “Dining hall or outside?”
“Dining hall,” Enjolras says. “I don’t think we have time to eat out and get to Jehan’s apartment in time for the pregame.”
They all share a moment of silence when they find out what’s on the menu (Pho, which would’ve been amazing had the dining hall also not found a way to screw that up), and then they head out. Instantly, there is an air of regret, as Combeferre realizes that neither of his friends have brought umbrellas or have worn a jacket with a hood. He opens his umbrella and tries to have it cover both of them, to no avail. They can’t fit under his tiny umbrella meant for one.
“Think we can run for it?” Courfeyrac asks.
“No,” he and Enjolras both say, but they have to try.
Combeferre has never wished he was wearing sneakers more than now, when he’s running on slippery pavement and through puddles of mud, but at least he’s faring better than his friends. Courfeyrac is trying to fend off the rain with his backpack, Enjolras with their flannel, and they are both failing. He can’t help but laugh, it’s a ridiculous sight. All the luck in the world has definitely deserted them today, but at least he can laugh at this. He doesn’t stop laughing when they reach their destination and his friends are both soaked. They’re going to get him back at some point, but he doesn’t have to worry about that right now.
Halfway through dinner, Combeferre gets a text from Joly. party cancelled, i think someone called the cops. His heart sinks. The one thing he was looking forward to the entire week, and it’s been cancelled. Before he can break the news to his friends, another text comes in. feuilly says we can still hang at his apartment tho. His heart soars. At least he still gets to hang out with friends. And maybe they’ll get even get that keg stand right.
The bus is running late, so he texts Joly to let them know that they’ll be running a little late. The rain has gotten worse, and he’s not psyched to be braving both the rain and the wind, which has kicked up a notch since they entered the dining hall.
“Your umbrella is gonna turn inside out,” Enjolras points out. “Just don’t use it.”
“But my shoes—”
“Are already dirty.” He can’t argue with that. They’re caked in mud, and he has another pang of regret. Why didn’t he look at the weather report? Begrudgingly, he closes his umbrella. It’s probably for the better anyways.
~*~
“Nevada!” Courfeyrac crows triumphantly before reaching over to punch Enjolras in the shoulder.
“No fair,” they complain. “I saw it first.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t say it first,” Courfeyrac replies with a smug grin.
Combeferre is too busy scanning the lines of parked cars to really weigh in, but he can laugh when Enjolras starts chasing Courfeyrac down the block, only stopping to laugh even harder when Enjolras slips. “Are you okay?” he asks, running after them.
“Yeah, I’m fine, don’t worry, don’t worry—Arkansas!” he says, tapping his knee. Combeferre can’t even be mad. He didn’t even see that one.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Courfeyrac says, in between fits of laughter. “I think we’re a little lost.” He tries to pull up Maps, to no avail.
“I think Feuilly’s apartment is down that way,” Enjolras says, pointing to their left. “C’mon, or Bahorel is going to steal all the good alcohol.”
After a few wrong turns, more slips, and more license plates spotted, they finally make it to Feuilly’s apartment. For the first time, Combeferre thinks that today isn’t actually so bad after all. Yeah, he slept through his alarm, and his classes weren’t great, and his clothes are ruined from the rain, but he’s with friends, and they’re all going through it together, which makes it better in a funny sort of way. He smiles and shakes his head. What would he do without them? And the day’s going to get a whole lot better, since now he’s going to hang out with even more of his friends. He can’t wait.
~*~
“I don’t want to hear it,” Combeferre grumbles, sitting crosslegged in front of Joly’s laptop.
“You have fifteen minutes,” Bahorel says by way of encouragement, which is not helpful and does not alleviate his stress. He can’t say much, though. This is all his fault for not checking his assignments carefully. It doesn’t stop him from being mad.
At least his friends are here, even if they’re being incredibly unhelpful. It would be ten times worse to go through this alone. Despite his situation, he can’t help but smile. He loves his friends. He wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.