Chapter Text
Enjolras just didn’t get women. It wasn’t due to dislike, precisely; more like disinterest. He didn’t know enough about women for there to be any distinct impression for him to dislike. Attending an all boys school had resulted in all of his friends being boys, and unlike his friends, the absence of any major non-familial feminine presence in his life never resulted in knee-jerk fascination with every young woman he ever met.
He was too busy to care about things like girls, at any rate; busy studying, busy organising meetings and protests, busy getting detention after detention for arguing furiously with his teachers during class. He found himself indifferent to the whole topic of sex, finding it not so much awkward or embarrassing as boring and ultimately pointless — growing up alongside a hormone-crazed Courfeyrac left him with more knowledge on the subject than he’d ever really cared to have, and none of it piqued his interest. At an age when a whole conversation could be derailed at a moment’s notice by the mere mention of girls, Enjolras was left to sit in increasingly frustrated silence, completely at a loss as to what all the fuss was about. Only Combeferre seemed similarly disinclined to waste his breath gossiping about the so-called fairer sex. Enjolras wasn’t sure that this indicated a genuine lack of interest so much as an unwillingness to engage in what could be perceived as disrespectful discussion, but he was prepared to take what he could get. So it went, right through high school and on through the first year of university.
And then he met Cosette.
Marius introduced them, of course. He had been persuaded to bring his fabled lady love to a meeting at the Musain — mostly in hopes that he would cut back on the gushing if they all knew her. She was, surprisingly, every bit as gorgeous and charming as Marius had claimed — petite and very pretty, blue-eyed with golden brown hair and a disarming smile. Cosette was, as it turned out, the kind of girl who smelled sweet and wore stockings and knew the names of individual boy band members. She was also the kind of girl who had been on the debate team in high school and had well thought-out opinions on social and political issues. She was kind, clever, and incredibly difficult to disagree with.
Enjolras liked her.
That isn’t to say he didn’t like Éponine or Musichetta, both of whom he knew reasonably well and saw with increasing frequency since they had decided as a group to begin holding official meetings; but he’d never clicked with either of them the way he did with Cosette — effortlessly and unexpectedly.
Enjolras did not, in truth, make friends easily. He had no trouble drawing people’s interest — he was beautiful, and charismatic without trying at all; it was just the way he was — but most of his acquaintances remained at arm’s length, intimidated by his intensity, or thrown by how little he cared about things like ‘hanging out’. Cosette had no such trouble. She listened patiently and offered feedback when he talked for hours about the flawed structure of society or the latest attempt to infringe on the people’s rights; and when he fell off the map entirely for more than a week at a time she would simply show up unannounced at his apartment and check that he was still breathing. He decided that there really wasn’t anything all that different about being friends with a girl, after all.
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When Courfeyrac’s 20th birthday came around, of course, he had to throw a party. Being Courfeyrac, he wasn’t content to celebrate such an occasion with just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill gathering involving wall-to-wall people and obscene amounts of booze. No, it had to be a dress up party.
“Why?” Bahorel groaned in response to this dire announcement.
Courfeyrac’s face fell. “Because it’s my birthday and I say so, that’s why. C’mon, it’ll be great!”
“What’s the theme?” Jehan asked cautiously.
Courfeyrac shrugged. “I have a few ideas, but I can’t settle on one, so I thought we could all write something down and throw it in a hat and randomly pick one. Seems fair, right?”
In the end the only hat to be found was Grantaire’s beanie, which he clamped to his head with both hands and adamantly refused to be parted from; so they begged a soup bowl from one of the baristas instead. After a brief flurry of debate over who should be the one to draw the theme from the bowl, it was decided that Enjolras should do it. He rolled his eyes, but obliged without complaint.
“Well, what is it?” Courfeyrac asked excitedly.
Enjolras peered at the slip of paper he’d picked out of the bowl and frowned slightly. “Quentin Tarantino.”
There was a moment of silence as everyone processed the words. Courfeyrac broke it by shouting, “That is genius!” Joly and Bossuet looked at each other with identical grins on their faces and Éponine hissed, “Yes,” under her breath.
“Whose idea was it? I don’t recognise the handwriting,” Enjolras said, looking around the room.
“Guilty!” Grantaire singsonged from the back of the group.
Enjolras repressed a sigh. Of course. “What does a Quentin Tarantino themed party even consist of? Isn’t he a director?”
“He is,” Grantaire agreed pleasantly.
“Obviously you are all hereby expected to dress up as a character from a Tarantino film,” Courfeyrac interjected.
“That does sound kind of awesome,” Feuilly admitted.
“Does Planet Terror count as a Tarantino film?” Musichetta wondered aloud.
“It wasn’t directed by him,” Bossuet objected.
“But he was heavily involved in its production, and it was released as part of a double-feature under his name,” Combeferre argued. “Courfeyrac?”
“I’ll allow it,” Courfeyrac said magnanimously. “The more variety the better.”
Enjolras remained quiet for the rest of the discussion, which was slightly unusual; but if anyone noticed they chose not to comment, for which he was grateful.
Two days later, he bit the bullet and texted Cosette.