Chapter Text
Whispers/of are you sure?/never have I ever before…
She should stop staring at Eponine.
It’s a thought Cosette has, something she can recognize is weird and off-putting and something she shouldn’t continue to do. And yet…she can’t pry her eyes away.
None of this is Cosette’s usual modus operandi. But these day’s, she’s all afloat, all a flutter.
“There are easier, more practical ways to undress Ep than with your eyes, darling.”
Cosette whirls around and reflexively - honest, she does not mean to do this - spills her beer all over Courfeyrac.
“What the fuck?!?” he gripes
“You what the fuck! That’s what you deserve and -and more for sneaking up on a girl at a party.”
Courf is unimpressed. “A house party? Hosted by your adoptive brother, with only his lame friends in attendance?”
“You just called yourself lame.” Haha. Two can play at that game, Courfeyrac!
“I am the exception to every rule.”
Cosette sniffs. It’s like Courf has a sixth sense for when she’s already rattled and he takes it as his civic duty to rattle further. Without fail. Every time. “Well. It’s also what you deserve for being profane.”
Courf raises a brow. “Profane?”
“How about crude?”
“I’ve heard worse from Enj on a good day.”
Cosette scowls - “Uncouth, then!” - but Courfeyrac remains unphased.
“Now you just sound like my grandmother. The conservative one”
She gasps in almost actual offense: “How DARE you!”
And then they giggle together, because being cross with Courfeyrac is impossible, and then Cosette might as well give in, because hiding things from him is almost as difficult.
“Wanting to kiss girls doesn’t make me very conservative,” she admits on a mumble.
“Sexuality and identity can have nothing to do with political ideology,” Courf says, in his voice that means he’s parroting Enjolras. And then: “AHA! I was right!”
Cosette rolls her eyes. “Of course you’re right. Have you ever been wrong about something like this?”
Her idiotic but somehow wise friend beams. “Nope! I was even right about R and your brother, and everyone said I was crazy.”
“I didn’t,” Cosette feels pride-bound to point out, but Courf gets her there too:
“Insider Enj knowledge. Doesn’t count.”
Eponine laughs across the room, it must be at something R is doing or saying, she doesn’t laugh much other than those times, and Cosette’s eyes betray her again by straying to her…friend. Against all odds, she and Eponine are friends now, and Cosette has loved that and so how can she even be thinking about…
“Do you think I’m crazy?” she quietly asks Courf. He’s not a true idiot. He can see where her gaze leads, where it always leads these days.
“No,” he says. “She’s smokin’ hot.”
“Duh. I mean, do you think I’m crazy for…” but valedictorian Cosette is having trouble articulating the maelstrom of emotions inside.
“For…hoping? For thinking you should shoot your shot?”
For seeing herself in the tense shoulders of the girl across the room.
For selfishly wanting to see more of the golden goodness that seeps out of the cracks in her exterior when Eponine is around people she deems safe.
For wanting, when Cosette didn’t think she could. For wanting, when she definitely doesn’t think she should now.
Cosette can only nod.
“No,” Courfeyrac says gently. “No. I don’t.”
Cosette can’t breathe.
And then, much less gently, Courf exclaims: “Wait a minute! I thought you were aroace and didn’t like anyone like that?!? Isn’t that what you told Marius?”
The words barely register over the patter her thoughts have taken (Courf’s never wrong about this stuff, he’s never wrong, he’s never…) but she can still respond to the dumb question with the bluntness it deserves:
“Obviously, I was wrong. About…some of that stuff, at least.”
“Maybe you just didn’t like kissing Marius!” Courf jokes.
“Maybe,” Cosette manages, but as her gaze hasn’t strayed from the other girl across the room, she watches Eponine open the patio door and step out into the fall evening. Before she thinks the action through, Cosette is grabbing Courf’s half-full can out of his hand and marching after her.
Eponine looks up from her drink when she hears the door open after her. She never quite smiles, not unless it’s mocking or at her little brother, or sometimes even at Grantaire, but her lips tick up in the corners in that soft way Cosette likes to think only happens around her. Maybe Courf thinks so too.
“Hey,” Eponine says.
“Hi, Ep,” Cosette begins, and then her throat dries and she loses all her words.
Ep gives her a longer glance, like she was expecting more of a conversation opener, but she doesn’t have that watchful look she sometimes gets when people weird her out. Cosette searches for words, but ends up taking a swig of Courf’s drink. She makes a face, thinking longingly of the drink she spilled over him. Hopefully, he has since gone to change or clean up after she abandoned him to talk to Eponine. Too bad she’s not doing any damn talking!
“If that’s the stuff Courfeyrac drinks, it’s bascially watered-down piss.”
Cosette makes an even louder face. “Why would you say that? Ew?”
Eponine snickers. “It’s not like the pink shit you doused him in tastes any better to me.”
Cosette flushes. “You saw that?”
“He sure shrieked loud enough to draw attention.”
“He’s Courfeyrac, that’s his specialty.”
“Mhm.” Eponine takes a sip of her own drink, a much daintier sip than Cosette’s. They lapse into companiable silence. Cosette isn’t itching to fill it. Eponine can wield a silence like a pointed weapon, and Cosette has been on the receiving end of a few of those a time or two, but not for a long time, now that she reflects. This certainly isn’t one of them. It’s warm, like the dying summer light around them.
“Did you need a break from the party?” she finally asks, even though that’s not what she really wants to say, because she is curious as to why Eponine came out here instead of just leaving. Most of the Amis sleep over when Enjolras hosts these kinds of parties, but Eponine never does.
Eponine glances at Cosette again. She’s still mostly looking out at the trees preparing for fall when she says, “I came out here to look at the trees. Why do you ask?” There’s something a little more watchful in her stance now, not quite yet wary, but prepared to be if necessary. Eponine always makes being prepared for anything look like an Olympic sport.
Her almost-wariness makes Cosette want to back off and avoid any possible conflict, but she’s also quite sure her skin is flaying off and if she doesn’t give voice to some of Courf’s thoughts that he put in her head she will explode.
“I know you don’t like parties,” is what she finally settles on saying, and she takes a step forward to set her drink down (to get closer to Ep’s patio position). She doesn’t want to be holding watered-down piss for this conversation. “I wanted to be sure you were alright.”
“I’m alright.” It’s said like a knee-jerk response. “I like looking at the trees for a moment of quiet – I grew up in an apartment complex smack dab in the center of the city with no trees or parks around.”
“I remember,” Cosette whispers. She takes the chance to step even a little closer. They’re almost side-by-side.
Eponine turns to fully look at her then, and if she’s surprised that Cosette is a little closer than before, she doesn’t show it. Something complicated flickers across her face, but it softens in a way Cosette has never seen before. It makes her heart ache.
“Of course you would,” Eponine says. It washes over Cosette like one of those benedictions her dad is so fond of.
Cosette swallows. “Eponine,” she begins on a breath, but she doesn’t get very far.
“Why do you care if I’m alright?” the other girl asks, watchful and intense, but harbouring something bright in her black gaze.
“Because…I care,” Cosette rasps back. “Because I care about you, and I didn’t think I could care about people this way.”
Eponine’s face gives nothing away, except the brightness in her eyes grows. She takes one step forward, and then she takes both of Cosette’s hands in her own. Her palms are calloused. Her black nail polish is chipped. She must have put her drink down at some point too, Cosette has no clue when. She’s just fighting not to close her eyes and embarassingly lose herself in the sensation of skin already.
“I only go to parties I know for sure that you’ll be at,” Eponine intones.
Cosette stops breathing again. She clutches at Eponine’s hands even harder, but Eponine doesn’t flinch.
When she gets enough air to speak once more, Cosette whispers, “I would like to kiss you now. But I should warn you, I’ve never kissed a girl before.”
Eponine’s bright eyes are very wide. “I haven’t either.” If you’re paying close attention, and Cosette is, especially as Eponine draws closer, you can see the short, quick breaths Ep is having to take. It makes Cosette’s head go stupidly fuzzy to know she has an effect. As does Eponine stepping even closer, making her head or so of height advantage even more pronounced.
She brings one of her warm, calloused hands up to Cosette’s cheek, and Cosette could just die. Simply perish, right here and now. She doesn’t want to before she gets kissed, however.
“Are you sure?” Eponine murmurs. She’s looking right into Cosette’s eyes, searching for any hint of hesitancy.
They’ve talked about it before, once, after Cosette and Marius broke up, about how Marius meant well, and always asked before kissing her, but how he couldn’t always tell Cosette wasn’t into it. And maybe that’s not fair to put on him, Cosette herself couldn’t tell she wasn’t into it for the bulk of that relationship. But it did make knowing whether she didn’t like kissing anybody, or kissing Marius, that much more difficult.
If the way her body is singing right now is any indication, Cosette doesn’t think she has a problem with being physically close with people. She would like to carve a hole in her chest and carry Eponine safely away inside it. Which isn’t a normal thing to think about your friend whom you’ve been crushing on for ages, nor is it particularly sexual, but it does seem like the kind of metal, unhinged thing Eponine would go for.
“I’m sure,” Cosette declares. “Please kiss me.”
And so Eponine does.
Cosette doesn’t see Eponine’s first full smile directed entirely at her. Instead, she feels it crash against her lips like the inevitable tide, and thinks that Courfeyrac is going to be insufferable about being right this time too.