Work Text:
Éponine’s always really liked Feuilly’s hair. It’s curly, the red-orange of a bloody sunset, and threads through with yellow during the summer. Against skin that, defying the odds of gingerness, turns gold rather than pink in the sun and brown eyes that look almost black in shadow but in full sun are touched with amber, he looks like Lugh or Cuchulainn, an avenging angel who would be equally with gae bolga, musket, or hammer in hand. Added the fact that his shoulders are as broad as Combeferre’s, who’s five inches taller, and him shirtless would make Enjolras jealous if he paid attention to such things, Éponine won’t be caught dead complaining about virtually any aspect of her boyfriend’s body.
His hair, though…
She has no complaint about color or texture—the red makes him easy to find and it slides criminally smoothly through her fingers—but when it gets past his shoulders and he starts having to steal her hair ties to pull it back, it drives her a little bit nuts.
One, the hair ties. He never gives them back. Ever. When his boss starts complaining about his hair, her elastics start disappearing at an alarming rate and since she’s not too careful with them herself she inevitably finds herself with not enough time to straighten her hair and no way to pull it back—which, when one prepares coffee for a living, means that Feuilly’s favorite Red Sox cap is held hostage for a while. He does the opposite of object to that, however—he has an odd obsession with her hair, wrapping it around his hand as he kisses her, twirling it through his fingers as he does work on the couch and she reads, absentmindedly petting it when she leans on his shoulder during meetings. Coupled with the fact that he’s a typical guy who enjoys seeing her in his clothes, she’s usually late to work on ball-cap days.
(She doesn’t mind on the whole but she won’t make manager if she’s late too often, and manager pay could possibly start paying for business classes at the local community college.)
Right now her AM salary pays rent on her apartment, barely, and she thanks her lucky stars that she gets a check every month for taking care of Gavroche because it means they don’t have to share with anyone. It’s a welcome change from lean-tos with her parents and their associates—their apartment may be tiny, but it’s theirs. It smells like no one except Gavroche and Éponine (except her bed, which smells like Feuilly’s aftershave), and the clutter that crowds it is clothe and books, not trash or worse.
To return to the point: While she loves Feuilly’s hair, and even loves it long (brushing his collar), he occasionally starts to look like Jehan who is unquestionably gorgeous but really, really, really not her type. And since the growth comes from Feuilly’s own laziness rather than preference, she doesn’t feel bad about occasionally giving him a bit of a push to get it cut.
…and if it involves braids and ribbons while he’s asleep, well, he brought it on himself.
It gets particularly bad seven months after they’ve started dating. She starts small, just a few twists tied off with rubber bands, which he confusedly brushes out the next morning. Then it’s more extensive braids, which makes him give her odd looks but say nothing as he shaves and she applies eyeliner the next morning, sharing the bathroom mirror.
It’s the third day, when bright green ribbons show up in his now past-his-shoulder-blades hair, that he starts to get it. However, seemingly just to tweak her, he leaves them in all day, even to go to work. His fellow mechanics know him well enough to not do more than needle him about the silk in his hair, and if one of them posts a photo on Facebook captioned ‘whipped’, he isn’t tagged because the poster values the shape of their nose.
They don’t share a bed for almost a week after that—she doesn’t like messing with Gavroche’s schedule during the week and he knows, against his own preferences, that she’s right. She’s lucky, at twenty-one, to have gotten custody of Gavroche at all, and having a man who isn’t a roommate and doesn’t pay rent in her apartment on a regular basis is not the way to impress the social worker. His hair keeps growing because he pulls double shifts all week.
It’s the next Friday night when she breaks out the big guns. Courfeyrac and Bahorel tag-team to get him drunk so he sleeps like a rock, and Jehan puts his considerable experience to work. After an hour, Feuilly has better hair than a middle-class white girl on prom night. (Or Enjolras on a normal day).
He doesn’t wake up till ten the next morning, judging by when she gets the call. (Actually, it’s Bahorel who gets the call—something about drunk pranks resulting in sober consequences , namely losing one’s balls.) Bahorel hands her the phone, laughing so hard he makes no sound and tears form on his eyelashes. She holds the phone to her ear and informs Feuilly that he can either cut his hair or go to work with flowers in it—his choice. She then closes the phone and smiles sweetly at the room at large—or as sweetly as anyone can with that many teeth. Really, her smile’s as sweet as Bruce’s from Finding Nemo.
Fish are friends, not food.
Éponine’s at home, playing Parcheesi with Gavroche, when her phone rings. She answers it, and gets Feuilly asking meekly if she would mind coming over—he can’t see the back of his head. After a round of laughter, she agrees, and bundles herself and her little brother into the car and over to Feuilly’s apartment.
Gavroche lets out a whoop of laughter when her boyfriend answers the door, and sweeps between them, heading for the TV (or more importantly, the Xbox with his very own Call of Duty file). Éponine, laughing right along with him at both her handiwork and the look on Feuilly’s face, takes his ears and plants a kiss right on his pout. He clearly can’t pout for very long during that, and he’s in a marginally better mood when she drags him to the bathroom to begin combing out his hair.
It takes her a really long time, and she feels kind of bad by the time all of the flowers are out. She’s tried to be as gentle as possible, but her brush is full of the red hair she loves so much and Feuilly is rubbing his hairline by the time she’s done. She apologizes with kisses where his fingers rub, to both eyes, and (when he starts rubbing them, smirking) his lips. She settles herself in his lap where he’s perched on the toilet seat, and they kiss leisurely for a while before he steals her hat (his hat) and flips it backwards on her head. She retorts by tugging him towards the kitchen, where she opens her purse and points with a pair of scissors towards his kitchen table.
“Have you ever cut hair before?”
“Mine, Gavroche’s, ‘Zelma’s…even Grantaire’s once. It’s easier if you wet it first.”
“You just want to get my clothes off,” he teases.
“It’s not exactly off the agenda, but—“
“HEY!” Gavroche yells. “I can still hear you! No funny business!”
“—Gavroche is here.”
“Killjoy,” he murmurs as he strips off his shirt and, spinning a chair to straddle it, leans his head into the sink. He yelps at the cold water, then relaxes as his girlfriend adjusts the temperature to the way he likes it and begins to rub at his scalp.
“…feels good.”
“I know.” He can hear the smile in her voice. “Mom used to do this for me, when I was really little. She and Dad owned a motel, and it was…it was really good. She would buy things for my sister and I, everything we wanted. She’d cuddle us at night and—and it was wonderful when she wasn’t angry.”
He can’t look at her because the water’s running over his face, but he reaches a hand back to stroke her wrist. Gavroche’s Call of Duty is a hum in the background, and he’s glad the little boy can’t hear what they’re talking about. The eleven-year-old never knew his parents, not really—Éponine makes it pretty clear they had basically ditched by the time he was four or five, so while he’s certainly known hardship, he’s never known abuse, thank God. He knows Éponine hates herself for abandoning her brother for nearly a year in favor of the streets, and how Gavroche survived on the streets and still is able to call himself a relatively normal pre-pubescent boy is really beyond Feuilly’s comprehension.
He realizes he’s been silent while she cuts his ponytail off, and it’s only when his head abruptly falls forward from the sudden lightness that he realizes it’s gone. He feels the metal of the scissors slide past his ears, and hair begins to fall into the sink, landing on his nose and making him want to sneeze. He only whuffs, though, trying to get the tickling strands off his protruding bits, making Éponine laugh and rub his head with her other hand. He presses into her touch, gentle yet firm, savoring the feeling of her fingers in his hair.
“Out of curiosity…how did you get in?”
“Jehan let me,” she replies. He can hear her blushing. “I really am sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was funny. And it got you here, so I really just don’t have any problem with how this turned out,” he says, honestly. He’ll deal with worse than flowers in his hair if it means he can have Éponine around all the time, preferably scratching his scalp like she’s doing now.
“Speaking of, I should give him back his key.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll just make him another.”
The words are out before he can think them through—this impossible, mad girl makes him say more than he ever has outside these months put together, and when her hands still in his hair, the scissor blades perilously close to his eye, he stutters, trying to backtrack.
“I-If you want.”
She says nothing for what feels like an interminably long time but is probably only a few seconds, then resumes her cutting.
“I do want,” she says shyly, and he barely keeps himself from huffing out a sigh of relief. “I can get you a copy of a key to my place too…if you want.”
“I do want,” he echoes.
“Close your eyes,” she replies, and he does as water comes cascading down around his face again. Hair bits fall off his face, and when she turns the water off and hands him a towel, he scrubs his face and hair briskly.
“Go check in the mirror, make sure it’s okay.”
He’s not particularly vain, and he trusts her, but he supposes he would like to know if his sideburns are even so he wanders into the bathroom—and this is probably the best haircut he’s ever gotten; he tells her so. She follows him into the bathroom to snag another towel, and he pulls her in for a deep kiss. The scissors in her hand clatter against the counter and she hums into his mouth. Her hands dive into his newly cut hair and his wrap around her waist, pulling her nearly on top of him as he leans against the counter.
If Éponine had to choose a single occupation for the rest of her life, “kissing Gael Feuilly” would certainly be a finalist. Now that his hair’s gone there’s less to hold on to, which she sort of misses, but his beard stubble is the same and so is his mouth, tasting like cigarettes (too bad she can’t put flowers in his mouth), toothpaste, and brown sugar. They get lost in time there, leaning against the counter, and it’s probably a good five minutes later that she finally releases him and buries her face in his shoulder. His hand slides up her back and into her hair, and she leans in with more pressure, until he plucks his cap off of her head.
“Mine.”
She pouts, and he kisses her again, but keeps his hand firmly on the hat’s bill. “If my hair gets long again, you can have it back.”
Her pout lessens. A resounding boom echoes from the living room.
“YES!”
She turns to Feuilly, smile and scissors glittering.
“All right, Gavroche, your turn!”
“NO!”