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Combeferre’s car felt bigger than ever. It was one of those vehicles designed for big families with a taste for camping. He was so used to driving all his friends around – to protests in other towns, to fair trade fairs, and to the hospital, in some cases - that now that only two seats were occupied he felt there was too much space around him. Courfeyrac, sitting next to him, was texting someone. A strange feeling crept through his spine, as if the air had solidified. He tapped the steering wheel to the fluttery beat of his thoughts.
He checked the mirror to his left and saw something weird on one of the windows behind him. He turned around for a second to see what it was – the traces of a doodle, probably drawn with a finger on the steam - a curly head surrounded by a halo. He sighed. Grantaire would be the one to wash the car next time.
“What time does the flight arrive again?”
“Seven. But I bet he’ll have lost his bags or something.”
Combeferre chuckled. Bossuet had had his flight destination changed with little warning and he seemed to have spread his notorious bad luck without even being present. Of course Joly had come down with the flu. Of course they were all so very busy, except for Bahorel, but of course Bahorel would have to spend a couple of days in custody. So Combeferre and Courfeyrac it was.
It was a bright, warm morning, and the roads were empty. The clouds flew about them and the car hummed. Or maybe Courfeyrac was the one making that low, purring noise. There was no way of knowing for certain, but he did have a sort of feline air under the sunlight that filtered through the glass. Combeferre sighed behind the wheel, feeling that he was beginning to sweat. He moved about, uncomfortable. They had left the city little more than half an hour ago and they seemed to have run out of small talk already.
Three hours to go.
“Well.”
“Well.”
Courfeyrac seemed more at ease than him, but then again he always did. He smiled at him behind his sunglasses. His lips were a bit chapped. He looks like summer, Combeferre thought, a bit absurdly.
“What about some music?”
“Go ahead.”
He bent down looking for his bag, which he was holding between his feet. He stayed there for a few seconds. The humming kept on going. It must have been the car, Combeferre considered. He could see the short soft hairs at the nape of his companion’s neck and the trail of warm tawny freckles that continued under his shirt. A bright red car sped past them, startling him awake. He focused on the road again and tightened his hold on the wheel just a tiny bit.
“Belle and Sebastian” Courfeyrac’s head popped up again. He held an album proudly. Combeferre smiled.
“Sure.”
There was no need for conversation then. Combeferre enjoyed driving, watching landscapes pass him by while still keeping his mind and eyes on the road, which looked vast in its emptiness. He could hear Courfeyrac singing. He did not always get the lyrics right.
They were half through the album when Courfeyrac turned towards him.
“It’s weird that we don’t get along that well.”
Combeferre did not look at him, but he nodded to acknowledge what he had heard. Had this been said by anyone but Courfeyrac to anyone but Combeferre, the following hours would have been awfully awkward.
“We are friends, though.”
“Of course we are. I’m just saying, it’s weird that we’ve known each other for so long but we’ve never even had a real conversation.”
It was true. Courfeyrac was like the magnet that kept their friends together, but now that he thought about it they had never met on their own. Combeferre was about to answer that their personalities were simply too different to click when Courfeyrac started talking again.
“We do have things in common. Not only a group of friends. Like, we both like going to the movies on Thursdays and we like the same brand of beer.”
“We do?”
“We do. Also, we are both social beings.”
“I’m not sure if I’d call myself that.”
“But you are. Okay, yes, you are a complete introvert, but you sort of… get people. Am I making sense? I feel like I’m not making sense.”
Combeferre nodded again.
“No, you do.”
A minute went by in silence, but it didn’t feel tense at all. In fact, Combeferre felt the air around him grow less jelly-like in texture, more breathable. Soon Courfeyrac was needling him with questions, trying to find out what else they had in common. Combeferre would have liked to have dinner with Darwin, Courfeyrac with George Harrison. The Social Network had been snubbed at the Oscars. Some things were pretty obvious: Courfeyrac was a dog and chocolate person, Combeferre was the cat and coffee type. Some things, on the other hand, were unexpected. Courfeyrac declared himself a Tully bannerman (“they genuinely like people!”) and he almost choked when Combeferre announced his preference for the Greyjoys. Both of them were lactose-intolerant.
Time seemed to take flight. Their surroundings were becoming more and more picturesque and the clouds were peeled off by the breeze. The midday sun was heavy and Courfeyrac made a fan out of an outdated map. They cheered for the return of Arrested Development and Combeferre somehow found himself making an Enjolras-as-Lucille Bluth impersonation that had Courfeyrac howling with laughter. The album had started again, but they didn’t realize until the fourth song. Courfeyrac turned the radio on.
Two hours left.
“They keep using education as a political tool!” Combeferre felt his hands moving around wildly like they always did when he got carried away. “How are we supposed to advance as a country, to truly achieve equality, if they cut the budget for schools?” Courfeyrac listened carefully until he had to take control of the steering wheel, putting his hand over Combeferre’s to keep them on the road. Combeferre started. It felt too hot, like an electric shock, but when it was gone Combeferre missed it, his own hand feeling cold and clammy. They went back to silence after that.
It lasted about two full seconds.
“Holy shit, is that blood?”
Combeferre followed Courfeyrac’s stare.
“Eh… yes. Bahorel’s probably. From that time at that alley? I thought I’d have to change the upholstery.”
“We’ve got interesting friends.”
“Indeed.”
They agreed that the news were too much of a safety hazard and played the Belle and Sebastian album again. The sun was utterly merciless and the humming noise seemed to grow louder and louder. Combeferre felt the sweat dripping down his back. Courfeyrac’s shirt was clinging to his shoulders, drenched. He went back to tapping the wheel. Everything was too bright.
Courfeyrac started to sing along and this time he got the lyrics right. He made scrunchy faces when trying to hit the higher notes, distorting what were usually rather nice symmetrical features. Not that he had thought about it. He really hadn’t.
One hour and a half.
“I went to my parents’ place a couple of weeks ago.” He heard his own voice saying. He hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, not even Enjolras, but it came out all the same. Courfeyrac turned the volume down and hmmm’ed, inquiring. “It was...” He swallowed, trying to find an adjective.
“I thought you got along with them.”
“I do. I just…” He shook his head, wondering why on Earth he had opened his mouth. He didn’t know how to explain himself without looking like a terrible person. “My parents, they looked… Small.”
Courfeyrac kept looking at him, waiting for him to make up his mind.
“It sounds terrible, doesn’t it? But that’s what came to my mind. That they were getting older, and smaller. It struck me and I couldn’t sleep. And I thought - I thought, I’m going to become just as small. I will grow old eventually and die.” His brain and his mouth weren’t connected anymore. “And I felt this thing in my throat? Something cold and tight and I swear, Courfeyrac, for a moment I thought that I couldn’t breathe and that I was going to die there and then. And I got so angry, because I thought I had not lived at all.”
He didn’t dare look at his friend, but he felt his keen stare.
“I wanted to do something dramatic, some big gesture, you know? So I took my mother’s china vase and I thought that I should smash it just to hear the noise it’d make. I didn’t even understand why, I just had to do it or I’d rip my skin off. Selfishness, I guess. I’ve been protecting that vase from my spawn-of-Satan cousins since I can remember.”
There was a pause.
“Did you do it?” Courfeyrac’s voice was calm, as if that were a normal conversation.
“That’s the funny thing. I fucking couldn’t. I just left the vase back in its place, took the car and went back to Paris. I haven’t called them yet.”
His voice cracked in the middle of the sentence, going up an octave. It reminded him of teenage awkwardness and intoxicating summers, and it made him laugh. It sounded like a bark. He gripped the wheel until his knuckles went white. Courfeyrac’s left hand moved, as if to cover his own again, but it settled on his knee instead. Combeferre blinked furiously, but his eyes were dry.
“Can you… the sunglasses.”
Courfeyrac took his sunglasses from the glove box and closed it carefully. He seemed at a loss about what to say for the first time in his life.
“Here.” He turned and offered the sunglasses. Combeferre put them on and, after doubting for a moment, put his hand on Courfeyrac’s, trying his best to ignore the electrifying feeling it produced. He was in no state of figuring that out.
“I’m fucked up.”
“Who isn’t?”
“Tell me something. Distract me.”
Courfeyrac seemed to ponder for a while, starting a couple of sentences but then finding they were not right. He talked of his roommate’s latest culinary disaster and of how his date had saved the day by appearing at their place with pizza. He talked of the guitar he wanted to buy and of how he needed to find a job. And then -
“I went to see my parents too, a month ago.”
“I know.” Combeferre smiled in spite of himself and the knot on his throat relaxed a bit. “You told everyone. You made us have a farewell party when you were leaving for five days.”
“Oh, come on. It was on a Monday, I had never had an excuse to go partying on a Monday before. Anyway, I went to Provence. Have you ever been there?”
“When I was little, I think.”
“Can you remember it?”
“Not really.”
Courfeyrac sighed.
“The town where I grew up is pretty small, the sort of place where everyone knows everyone. And it’s beautiful. There are no landmarks, nothing, really, but there’s something to it. I remember an afternoon when the earth was so warm I could smell it. It got into you, a bit like a drug. The sun took a hold of everything and you could taste it.” He looked around, as if he could find the proper words in the signs up the highway, but his left hand stayed under Combeferre’s. “Jehan would explain it much better, I guess, but it is my place.”
The album looped to the first song again.
“So I went back last month to spend some days there, but - I don’t really know how to explain it. It felt a bit off. Like when you get home and you just know that someone else has been there. Everything was all wrong. The bar had changed owners and my neighbours had moved away. And then I realized I had dreamed it all. The town was not what I remembered and it probably never had been. It was cloudy and the earth didn’t smell like anything.” Courfeyrac took off his sunglasses. His eyes were glassy. “Sorry, this is the most pointless story ever.”
Combeferre squeezed his hand, letting his fingers weave through his friend’s.
“What if everything is sort of pointless?”
Courfeyrac looked at him with a red-lidded look.
“That sucks. You are as bad at cheering up people as I am.”
“No, but listen. We have all these goals, right? We want to change the world. We want to build things and learn and fight and fuck knows what else. But in any moment a lorry might go the wrong way and push us off the road. Then what? What are we supposed to do? We’d die and everything would be the same as if we had never lived. We just - We go through life making up stories about things that never were and call them memories. We hold on to objects that don’t mean a thing. Logic says what we do with our life shouldn’t matter, but it does, doesn’t it? Why is that?”
“There’s always the tiniest chance that it does, though. That what you do goes together with what someone else does and it all… builds up to something?”
“So… building?”
“Living.”
“I’m pretty sure we are not making any sense right now.”
Courfeyrac shook with something that was halfway between a laugh and a sob.
“I have no idea what I’m saying.”
“I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Courfeyrac looked pointedly at their entwined hands.
One hour.
“Combeferre?”
“Yes?”
“Pull over there. I feel awful.”
The highway was still deserted. Combeferre obeyed and stopped the car on the right shoulder of the road. He took his sunglasses off and rubbed his eyes. The trees and signs looked blurry with the heat. Courfeyrac rolled the window down, never mind the air conditioner, took a deep breath and wiped what was left of his tears away with the back of his hand.
Combeferre felt the need to say something. His heart was stammering and his head was spinning and he was high with summer.
“This sun is going to be the death of me.”
“Road trip movies are not like this, I think.”
“It’s been two hours. Road trips last longer than that, Thelma.”
“Jesus. We’d end up in a pit of misery.”
“I feel quite good, actually. Tired, but in a good way.”
Courfeyrac conceded with a nod.
“We do get along, don’t we? Mid-twenties crisis and all?”
Combeferre raised their joint hands and tried to turn around. His seatbelt made it uncomfortable. He didn’t care. He closed the distance between them, bumping his forehead against Courfeyrac’s. His friend’s brown curls were dark and damp from the heat, and they stuck to his skin. He didn’t dare move. He let out a ragged breath and tried to look at his friend’s eyes, but he was too close and they had morphed into one. He bit his lip trying to hold back his laughter.
“You’re the worst.” Courfeyrac whined, right before grabbing him by the hair and finally kissing him. Courfeyrac was not careful. He did not worry about awkwardness in conversation, and he was even less shy when kissing the life out of someone. There were fighting lips and sweat and tongue and clashing teeth and tongue again, and Combeferre would never doubt that he was alive again. He followed the trail of freckles on Courfeyrac’s nape with the tip of a finger and someone whimpered – he had no idea who. He had no idea what to do next and that fucking seatbelt was on the way and he needed to breathe but he didn’t want to, not with Courfeyrac sucking on his lower lip like that.
“I think”, beamed Courfeyrac, “that we are the best of friends.”
Bossuet would have to wait.