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Much to the dismay of her father, Cosette bleaches her dark, dark hair to a bright blonde when she’s seventeen. After a few weeks, she grows tired of maintaining it and starts letting her roots grow in dark. Soon the dark roots are a few inches long, and she knows her dad doesn’t like it, but she doesn’t care.
Her friend Eponine takes her out shopping one day in March and she comes back with bags full of floral dresses and leather jackets. Valjean finds her formerly-favorite pair of red Vans tossed carelessly into the closet one day and it makes him sad, if he’s honest, like it’s a mark of time gone by. The Vans are replaced by a pair of chunky black leather boots that lace up, and he doesn’t like these as much, but if Cosette likes them, he’s fine.
Sometimes she comes home smelling like wine and he doesn’t say anything, just casts his eyes down at the newest parenting book he’s picked up and wonders if he’s doing the right thing. When he walks by the local café one Wednesday afternoon, he sees her there, in the front window, stretched languidly across two chairs, one of which is occupied by a boy whose flaxen hair is longer than Eponine’s, and is twisted into a braid. He has her right arm in his loose grip and he’s got a pen in his other hand, gliding the nib across the pale skin on the underside of her forearm. Cosette’s attention is focused on another boy, a darker one, who’s talking animatedly, a wine bottle swinging in one hand, the other gesticulating wildly. He says something particularly vehement and she laughs, throwing her head back like she used to when Valjean would make his “dad jokes”. She picks up a coffee mug and sips from it, now concentrating on what the other boy is drawing (or writing) on her arm. Valjean makes himself keep walking.
She comes home that night with her hair mussed and lipstick smeared. Her right forearm has a few lines of poetry on it, something about the woods in autumn and how the sparkling snow can never compare to her smile. Both of her legs are inked, too, but instead of poetry, flowers have been drawn here -- azaleas and roses and lilies and baby’s breath, all sketched with the care of an artist painting a masterpiece. Her collarbones, too, have been marred with beautiful dark calligraphy, reading “that’s the thing about pain -- it demands to be felt”. Valjean just stands up and sighs.
The next Saturday, he deliberately walks past the café again, and lo and behold, there they are. He can’t resist sneaking in and leaning casually against one wall, pulling his collar up. The group has expanded to encompass a brilliant blonde boy with blue eyes and an impassioned expression as he talks, a tall, dark-skinned man with no hair and an arm around a mousy young man who keeps sneezing, who is holding the hand of a wildly curly-haired woman, an exhausted-looking ginger bloke whose fingers are holding an origami crane, a tall, dark-haired man with bruises on his face and neck, the same dark boy as before, this time brandishing a water bottle and covered in paint, the flaxen-haired boy, Eponine, a nervous-looking boy in the corner with a textbook, a boy with brown hair and glasses, and a dark, curly-haired youth who is laughing loudly and flirting even louder. Soon the boy who drew on Cosette has his pens out again and this time the canvas is her left foot. Eventually, she gets up and laces up her boots, getting ready to leave. Valjean tenses -- if she sees him, she’ll kill him. She doesn’t see him, though. Before she leaves, the flirtatious boy speaks up.
“Cosette, wait! Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your lover?” He says it sarcastically, facetiously, like it’s a joke. She rolls her eyes, but nods. Valjean’s ears perk up. Cosette is dating one of them? Which? Would it be the boy with the wine? The all-too-bright blonde boy who’s finished ranting? The bruised, tough-looking one? The awkward student in the corner? God, he hopes it’s not the bald one, but by the looks of it, the bald one’s dating the sick one, who seems to be dating the curly-haired woman. But all of a sudden, Valjean’s heart stops.
Cosette is kissing Eponine. On the mouth. With her eyes closed. And one hand tangled in Eponine’s dark hair. The entire group wolf-whistles, and Valjean books it out of there, his jacket knocking over a display for postcards. He swears he can hear someone say “get it, Cosette!”
When Cosette gets home, Valjean is waiting for her. He doesn’t beat around the bush, but instead asks,
“When were you going to tell me you were dating Eponine?” She freezes. He simply regards her, his face impassive, as she turns slowly to look at him.
“Later than this,” is her short answer. He rolls his eyes but holds out his arms and she hugs him, knowing that as much as she exasperates him, he loves her.
One by one, her friends come over for dinner, and he gets to know them all individually, except for the bald man, the sick one, and the curly-haired woman, who are in a polyamorous relationship, apparently. And slowly, very slowly, Valjean starts buying Cosette combat boots for her birthday and Christmas, and he starts buying her poetry books and inviting her friends over for parties. Slowly they become the father-daughter duo they once were.