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Chapter Text

"All I'm saying is that high school is way more bearable when you bring something else in a water bottle besides water," argued Grantaire, pushing his hair out of his eyes. "It's just common sense."

Eponine and Enjolras looked at him skeptically.

"When you bring water, you gotta refill it at the water fountain. And all of the water fountains here are warm and dumb."

With that, he took a long sip of lemonade. Leaning against an unused locker, Enjolras asked where he got his refills of lemonade at school. Grantaire simply pulled out another two empty reusable water bottles.

"I can't believe none of them get too warm," Eponine said. She fiddled with the scrunchies around her wrists. "Is your backpack filled with ice packs or something?"

"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe it's magic."

Laughing (but only a little), Enjolras pointed out that they were gonna be late for math if they kept talking about this any longer. Grantaire and Eponine followed him to their next class, which would have been everyone's least favorite except for the fact that they shared it with the rest of their huge friend group.

Combeferre, Jehan, Musichetta, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, Cosette, Marius, Bahorel, Bossuet, and Joly were in math with them too. And since it was kind of a small class, they were literally more than half of the students in there.

It was chaos, and it was great.

Their friend group had been going strong since middle school, hardly ever faltering except for that one disastrous game of dodgeball and the fight that followed it.

With thirteen people who each had different schedules and responsibilities, it was sometimes difficult for everybody to get together, but they all tried their hardest.

Everyone had their own unique role in the group:

Enjolras was the most proactive, always pressing for a solution that would benefit everyone, carrying on even when better judgement would say to give up, and usually getting himself in trouble one way or another for this. He had a sweet, almost dorky charisma. Being too caught up on rules and technicalities was his biggest flaw, and he was this close to being able to admit it.

Combeferre never noticed when his glasses were smudged and dirty, because he was too busy noticing everything else—when moths landed on his windows at night, when one of his friends was uncomfortable or sad, when sunlight shown into a room and lit a spotlight on the dust in the air.

Jehan, at any given time, had at least fifteen tabs opened on their sticker-covered laptop, most of which were usually the Wikipedia pages of their favorite cartoons. They were notorious for not understanding sarcasm and for choosing the weirdest, most hilarious clothing combinations ever. If their high school had a dress code, they would probably cry.

Musichetta considered herself the only one in the group who could pull off plaid. All of her flannels were special, particularly the tattered ones, and she liked to think of each as representing some distinct part of her personality, her random and jumbled life. Not that she would tell anyone, but she did this with books too.

Feuilly thrived under up-til-midnight, a-week-til-midterms conditions, to the point where he had accidentally turned himself into a procrastinator. Always taking the time to put in the extra effort his brain constantly nagged him about, and hardly putting himself first, he existed in a strange mishmash between stress and contentment. This paradox both amused and worried him, usually at the same time.

Courfeyrac couldn't let a conversation go without finding something to laugh at, or make everyone else laugh at, or turn from unfunny to just weird. If he was overly dramatic or ridiculous, oh well; he moved around too quickly to gather much embarrassment. As far as nicknames went, he had more than enough saved up for everyone.

Cosette loved learning things. Once she became attached to something, whether it was birds or Disney movies or music, it was hers forever. The only problem this had caused her was in spreading out her interests and talents in such a way that she didn't consider herself to truly excel at any one piece—and she had yet to figure out that that was perfectly fine.

Marius didn't think it was normal for someone to eat so much hot sauce and eggs without getting sick of it, or stumble while climbing trees so much without giving up already, or watch so much Game of Thrones without understanding it at all. But he was an expert at doing things wrong while hardly being aware of it, which was honestly pretty entertaining for him and everybody else.

Bahorel just wasn't one of those types of people who get excited about everything, with the three chief exceptions of math (when he understood it so perfectly that it actually became interesting), music (hip-hop and musicals, strangely, were his favorites), and getting to insult people who really deserved it. His jokes could be mean sometimes, but hey, what can you do?

Bossuet's constant bad luck confounded, frustrated, amused, and even amazed him. What was wonderful about it, though, was that every incident of laptops dying at 50%, glasses of water spilling after he barely even did anything, and clothes tearing when he tried them on at the store, had taught him that nothing was as catastrophic as it seemed.

Joly, when he was at his most confident, was totally different from Joly at his least confident. There was hardly an inbetween. He had a weird way of getting just as caught up in loving life and finding everything funny as he did in giving into his more nervous, hypochondriac tendencies.

Eponine tackled her irresponsible and ruthless parents, her annoying yet lovable siblings, and her great yet taxing friends every single day. It got tiring. A lot. With so much on her plate, it was easy to lose her temper or say something stupid, but that's where being awesome at damage control comes in. And being able to forgive herself came in handy, too.

Grantaire would probably object to some long, thoughtful paragraph about who he was and why he was complex. However, that didn't mean he didn't deserve one—it just meant he wasn't prone to digging into those things himself. He, for instance, wouldn't typically think about how his sarcasm, puns, and endearing annoyingness worked better than nearly anything to bring these thirteen teenagers together.

It was soon time for the first pep rally of the school year, so everyone came out of their classrooms and, in a crazy jumbled line, entered the gym. School spirit mixed with claustrophobia, but in a way that was actually cathartic and fun. And besides, if any of the friends had wanted to skip the pep rally and chill in the library instead, they'd miss seeing Cosette, Jehan, and Combeferre with the band, Feuilly with the swim team, Courfeyrac with the soccer team, and Musichetta with the dance team.

The rest of them—Grantaire, Enjolras, Joly, Eponine, Bossuet, Marius, and Bahorel—went upstairs to the second level of bleachers, where 11th graders were supposed to sit.

"Okay, I don't think we'll find a spot where all seven of us can sit right next to each other," guessed Enjolras, looking up at all the people who had gotten there before them.

Everyone nodded. "Hopefully there's something close enough," said Marius.

So the seven sat with three of them on one side of the steps going up the bleachers, and four on the other side. Bahorel squeezed onto the end of one seat because he was small, and Enjolras and Grantaire sat above him. Across from them were Marius, Eponine, Joly, and Bossuet, so tightly packed that they had to hold their backpacks in their laps. It was uncomfortable, but at least they all had a good view.

Down below, a teacher was shouting things nobody could hear about how the pep rally would start in a couple minutes. Cosette, Jehan, and Combeferre were getting restless just standing and waiting, and so were Musichetta, Courfeyrac, and Feuilly, on their parts of the bleachers.

"I wonder if the cheerleaders will go first, or if Chetta and the rest of the dance team will," Joly said to Bossuet. He fiddled nervously with all the strings and zippers on his backpack (crowds weren't his favorite).

"What?" The music was already too loud for Bossuet to hear anything, naturally. "What's that?"

Joly repeated what he said patiently.

"Well, whoever goes first, I hope they turn the music down some," he complained.

Eponine, who sat next to Joly, laughed. "Yeah, we don't want you to get hearing problems at 16! That'd be just your luck!"

With a shrug, Bossuet grinned.

Over on the other side of the steps, Bahorel was currently grumbling about being right next to Grantaire's apparently smelly feet. Grantaire brushed him off and drank some more lemonade instead of arguing, while Enjolras jokingly pretended to sniff his feet to see if Bahorel was right.

Marius looked over at this and got pretty confused, but when he tried asking Grantaire what was going on, they couldn't hear each other at all. Thankfully, the pep rally was just about to start anyway.

The band began playing their school's fight song, which everyone knew Jehan had been struggling to learn.

Combeferre seemed to be trying to refresh Jehan's memory of what to do with their oboe and play his flute at the same time. He ended up bumping into the girls next to him and making Cosette, who was a couple rows behind them toting a drum almost as big as herself, crack up laughing.

Even from all the way up in the bleachers, Marius could have sworn that Cosette's laughter floated up to him. He caught her eye for a moment, before turning away and staring at his backpack for a while.

It took Cosette a couple seconds to catch up to the beat again.

Meanwhile, Jehan had gotten into a rhythm, copying the person next to them. Montparnasse noticed this but let it go. The two of them had a weird frenemies dynamic, with Jehan berating him for being snotty but still generally following him around and asking for help with playing the oboe. Combeferre and Cosette always thought this was amusing.

When the song ended, everyone clapped and cheered. Next came the cheerleaders, and then more teachers saying stuff nobody could hear, and then Musichetta with the dance team. She wasn't wearing flannel, for once, but she was still grinning wider than ever.

The music finally softened, to Bossuet's relief.

By this time, Grantaire had regretfully finished his final bottle of lemonade. He complained about this to Bahorel and Enjolras, who thought of something.

"Hey," he said, "so if you don't like the water fountains here, why can't you just fill all your bottles with cold water at home? It doesn't have to be lemonade."

Grantaire rolled his eyes. "I know it doesn't have to be lemonade, I just like lemonade, okay?"

"Oh," said Enjolras. "Right. That makes sense."

They sat in awkward silence for the rest of Musichetta's team's dance, when Bahorel made a joke about some teacher with a ridiculous outfit and the three of them laughed really loud.

Now it was time for each sports team to walk across the "stage." Swim team went first, and as Feuilly and his teammates went past the band kids, he got a high five from nearly everyone in the front row. (Everybody loved Feuilly.) The football and volleyball teams went next, followed by soccer. Courfeyrac, to make the most out of his time out there, spun around in a circle while walking and waving to everyone he needed to wave to.

After twenty more minutes of stuff like this, the band kids were getting really tired of standing, and the pep rally had ended.

Musichetta, Combeferre, Cosette, and Jehan went to the locker rooms, to drop instruments off and/or change back into normal clothes. The seven sitting in the bleachers made their way down to the gym floor, following one embarrassing incident where Enjolras bumped into Grantaire, sending his backpack tumbling down the steps and nearly hitting a 9th grader. When they all got to the little hallway near the locker rooms, Feuilly and Courfeyrac were already waiting.

"Hey, guys," said Feuilly, with a big smile. "Fun pep rally, huh?"

His friends nodded, and Bahorel joked, "Good job making yourself dizzy waving to everybody, Courf. I think a yearbook photographer caught it, too."

Embarrassed, Courfeyrac crossed his arms and was about to say something—probably something suitably dramatic and ridiculous—when Cosette, Jehan, Musichetta, and Combeferre all came out of the locker rooms. He broke off to congratulate them on how good they did in the pep rally, and then everyone else did the same.

"Aww, thanks," Cosette said, quickly undoing her ponytail. "But we have something more important to talk about: we're going to my house to hang out. Jehan's never played Neopets before!"

"Is it really that big of a deal?" they wondered. "I mean, have all of you played Neopets?"

Most of them had, but Joly, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, and Bossuet hadn't, to Cosette's shock. The thirteen of them had already been planning to hang out at Cosette's house, because it was the closest to the school. Now, with her plan to introduce Jehan and the others to her favorite online game, they began heading over there.

Her dad, Valjean, was used to hosting his daughter's friends several times a month. It was hectic with everyone running around, but either he never really minded, or he did a great job of hiding it.

Grantaire and Courfeyrac liked to joke that Valjean wasn't just Cosette's adoptive dad, he was everybody else's too.

As everyone passed under the live oaks lining one side of the sidewalk to Cosette's front door, Spanish moss bumped most of them in the face. It was a very nice yard—lots of trees, lots of flowers and berry bushes, really homey.

Was it lame for Cosette's own front yard to be her favorite place in the world? Maybe, but she wouldn't dwell on that.

"Hey, Dad," she called, "I'm… we're home!"

Valjean, drinking from a tall mug of green tea, said hello to everybody. Everybody said hello back.

Soon they were in the living room, all looking at the computer. "Okay, how is this going to work?" asked Musichetta, crossing her arms. "Going on the computer isn't really the best group activity ever…"

She was right, of course, but Cosette didn't want to give up so easily, and Jehan was getting super curious about Neopets at this point, too.

"Could we just get a bunch of chairs over here and watch?" suggested Courfeyrac.

Combeferre agreed. "That's better than nothing."

Finally, Enjolras and Feuilly came up with a solution that seemed, in retrospect, ridiculously simple. Nobody needed to play Neopets with Cosette if they didn't feel like it; sure, these thirteen friends loved hanging out as one whole group, but they weren't codependent. Luckily, no one felt particularly weird about making themselves at home here.

Cosette excitedly launched into explaining Neopets—all the different worlds you could go to; all the Neopets and petpets and even petpetpets; and all the ways to interact with other players—to her five friends who were completely new to it, as well as Musichetta and Marius.

"Neomail?" Joly asked at one point. "So this website has its own emailing thing? That's pretty cool."

"It is, though," Cosette agreed, buzzing with happiness at getting to share this thing she loved with her best friends. The way she smiled made Marius smile; and, as everyone in this house did whatever they were doing, they all felt like it had been a pretty great day.

Chapter Text

A thirteen-person table was hard to come by at the public library, but through good luck (plus Eponine and Enjolras convincing a few people to move) they had found one. It was perfect for their morning study session, and was soon covered in papers, laptops, and the fruit snacks Feuilly had brought for everyone to share.

"I have to go to the bathroom," Bossuet announced, right when he sat down.

Musichetta raised an eyebrow. "Already?"

He shrugged, getting up to try and find the bathrooms. On the other side of the table, Eponine, Bahorel, and Joly were setting up their workspace. This past week, they'd been assigned to do a book report together on To Kill a Mockingbird. With Bahorel's off-topic jokes, Eponine's grumbles about what slides to use on PowerPoint, and Joly's typically ignored attempts at mediating, it was definitely going to be a long morning.

"The font doesn't matter," argued Bahorel. "Neither does the color, or the background, or the transitions! That's not what we're actually doing the book report on."

In response, Eponine flicked her purple scrunchie at him and cracked up laughing. Joly just sighed.

Marius passed Cosette the rest of his fruit snacks, and they exchanged a look. "Hey, guys," he said, "I think you have plenty of time to focus on the actual stuff and the PowerPoint stuff."

"He's right," Eponine told Bahorel pointedly. "Thanks, Marius."

After this, they all quieted down for a while, with everyone getting settled into doing their own thing. Combeferre, particularly, was super invested in his essay for a scholarship that was due this coming Monday. He was excited to finally finish it, and hoped that none of his friends would distract him too much.

Unfortunately for him, though, Courfeyrac was already trying to be a distraction.

Mainly out of being bored, he was telling him a bunch of lame Harry Potter puns that Combeferre pretended to not find hilarious. While Courfeyrac knew that his friend's essay was important, he also knew that Combeferre had been stressed over it recently, so maybe this would cheer him up instead of annoying him. Hopefully.

But Bahorel and Eponine weren't helping, and neither was Jehan, who was trying to write fanfiction instead of doing work. They wanted advice from Combeferre, because he was a generally good writer. But after a few vague pieces of advice, Jehan got the message and instead chatted with Cosette.

"I don't get it," she said, scanning a few paragraphs. "Are you trying to make it sound like poetry? Because I've never really heard of fanfiction poetry."

"It could happen," they insisted. "I could make my own genre!"

When Grantaire asked Combeferre if he felt like helping him search the library for a book he'd recommended, he was shot down quickly. So Grantaire asked if anyone else wanted to go with him, because he really didn't feel like doing work right now.

Putting down his fruit snacks, Enjolras wondered, "Why can't you go by yourself?"

"Y'know, the lemonade reason."

"What?"

Everyone else was similarly confused, and they still were when Grantaire explained that it wasn't something he absolutely needed to do, he just felt like having it this way. But Enjolras got it, so he backed off. Grantaire gave him a little smile.

A moment passed. Enjolras looked down at his math homework, which glared back up at him. "Um, I'll go look for the book with you," he offered. At this, Grantaire simply shrugged.

Things began to settle down. The two of them headed off towards the YA section, Grantaire trying to remember the title of the book; Jehan kept writing fanfiction poetry about Gravity Falls; Musichetta complained to herself about how hard it was to write an essay introduction; Eponine and Bahorel listened to Joly analyze Scout and Atticus Finch before jumping in with their own takes; and Combeferre found himself staring at the patterns of the library ceiling instead of writing.

As usually happened when there was comfortable semi-silence, Marius couldn't tell it was comfortable and fought for something to say.

He bumped Cosette with his shoulder. "Hey, look at this—I can juggle fruit snacks!"

Marius actually could do this, which Cosette thought was awesome. She giggled, and Feuilly asked where he learned how to do that.

"Either my grandpa taught me, or it was during gym class one year, or I learned it from TV," he said, shaking his head. "I literally have no clue. Ridiculous, right?"

Feuilly laughed. "Well, even if you don't remember, it's still pretty cool." He munched on some fruit snacks, leafing through his giant chemistry vocab packet. It was a beast, but it wasn't going to complete itself.

"You don't know what the book's called?" Exasperated, Enjolras leaned back against the side of a long bookshelf. "I guess that's why you wanted Combeferre to come with you."

Grantaire apologetically nodded.

"Sorry, dude," he said. "But I don't feel like going back and asking him—he seems kinda stressed about that essay thing."

"He does," Enjolras agreed. With a hint of awkwardness, they each looked around at the library, all the rows and rows of books in every genre. "Well… I don't feel like returning to my work yet, and I'm guessing you don't either."

So they decided to walk around, which was half nice and half weird. Grantaire and Enjolras didn't usually hang out on their own much, but in a thirteen-person group many of them could say that. Either way, there was a pleasant quiet to this part of the library.

The back area looked pretty abandoned and dusty, with nothing but a wooden table, a huge window looking outside, and a pathetic pile of magazines.

"Nice," said Grantaire, hopping up to sit on the table. After checking to make sure no one could see, Enjolras did the same.

There was a gazebo outside that they saw through the window, and also a crazy amount of… "Gnomes?" laughed Enjolras, incredulously. "Dude, there's a bunch of gnomes on the ground in this place's backyard! That's hilarious."

Indeed there were. While they laughed—probably too loudly for being in a library—Grantaire counted the gnomes, and he guessed that there were about thirty of them. And it was a small space, too. It was just gnomes and the gazebo and then woods.

Enjolras hugged his stomach, which was sore from laughing so much. "It's not like there's even a gnome theme in the actual library," he said. "Then it would kind of make sense."

"Do you think someone just dumped them here?" Grantaire wondered. "I mean… there's no good explanation."

Feeling restless, he laid down on the table, craning his head to look at the books behind him. Enjolras glanced at him curiously. "Oh cool, there's art books over there."

"You like art?" Enjolras asked.

"Haven't I mentioned that before?... Okay, maybe not to you, but I know I've told Cosette and Eponine." Thinking this was a good idea, Grantaire tried to gracefully roll off the table and land on his feet. Instead, he flopped and thunked. "Ow. I'm alright. Probably got some bruises, but alright."

Batting his embarrassment away, Grantaire got up and perused the art books.

Enjolras smirked. "Wow," he said. "That was so impressive."

"Shut up! Do you want me to throw this painting manual at you?"

Meanwhile, Bossuet had been gone for almost thirty minutes. What had happened what this: the door to the library bathrooms was one of those stupid ones that give some resistance and make it seem like they're locked. So he assumed someone was in there… and kept assuming… and after about ten minutes, he finally tried the door again. Nobody was in there after all.

"I make it so easy, don't I?" he muttered to himself, with a laugh. "Musichetta and Joly are never gonna let me live this down."

But things didn't get any better when he actually went to the bathroom.

For the first time in Bossuet's life, he had a toilet overflow onto him. The water only touched his shoes for a moment before he freaked out and jumped away, wondering what to do now. Like always, he kept a good sense of humor about it, but… what the heck?

Grabbing paper towels, he wondered if this happened often. And if he'd be able to find a janitor to tell about it.

Bossuet dried up the spill for a while, which was honestly quite a considerate thing to do for a bathroom that wasn't even his, before deciding that a janitor was desperately needed. Making sure his shoes were fully dry, he (finally) left.

Things were slowly becoming more hectic over at the main table. Marius, Feuilly, and Musichetta had decided to take a break from their work and go for a nostalgia run through the children's section, leaving just Combeferre, Jehan, Cosette, Eponine, Bahorel, Joly, and Courfeyrac. Everyone wondered a few times why Bossuet was taking so long.

"How long even is this book report?" asked Cosette at one point, breaking up an argument about the most major themes of To Kill a Mockingbird. "Seems like you guys have been doing it forever."

Joly counted on his fingers, and said, "Well, it only has to be fourteen slides or so, but yeah, it's pretty much been an entire eternity."

Finally realizing that they had been inconsiderate, Eponine and Bahorel shared a look.

"Sorry about being annoying," she told Joly.

Bahorel added, "Yeah, man. Our bad."

He smiled, and that was that.

Courfeyrac tossed a few fruit snacks into his mouth and asked Combeferre how his essay was going. "Pretty well," he answered. "But I wish I could make myself focus on it, like, completely. My brain just wanders when I hear people talking."

"Yeah, I get that," Courfeyrac said, nodding. "So you can't tune it out?"

"Nah, not really. I dunno why."

Around this time, Jehan had reached a tricky point in their fanfiction. Combeferre would probably know what made sense, but talk about bad timing when he was just saying how he couldn't focus. Not knowing what to do, they rocked back and forth in their chair, unconsciously making a little humming noise.

"What'cha humming?" asked Courfeyrac.

"Oh, nothing."

But that clearly wasn't the case, so Courfeyrac kept pressing, to the point where it became a game and they started chasing each other around the table. This was hilarious, and the other people sitting near them had left, so it was totally fine.

Combeferre knew it was fine, but he still groaned and said, "Hey, guys, could you be quiet?"

Courfeyrac knew he was stressed, but he still said, "Hey, we're just having fun! This was actually supposed to be a fun study session, y'know."

The other people at the table grew silent, watching this happen. Jehan stepped forward, without something to say.

Adjusting his glasses, Combeferre said, "Courf, I get it—oh!"

In his frustration, he'd broken his glasses. Broken them!

"Shit," he muttered. "How did I just do that?"

Everyone shrugged, exactly as confused as he was. Strangely enough, a wave of relief washed over them: Courfeyrac and Combeferre started laughing, followed by everybody else. He was upset about his glasses, but how often does something like this happen? Breaking your own glasses because you're having an argument? Pretty darn funny.

"Poor glasses," joked Courfeyrac, picking them up gently and examining the broken arm. "I think I have some tape in my bag, so you can at least wear them for now."

"Thanks." Combeferre watched him temporarily fix the glasses, a little lump in his throat. "Sorry for overreacting."

With a grin, he handed them over. "No problem. Me too."

"I used to read these books when I was in, like, third grade," Musichetta gushed, picking up a copy of Ruby the Red Fairy and beaming at it. "And I actually used to have this one."

"What happened to it?" asked Feuilly.

She shrugged, putting the book back and running her hand along all the others in the Rainbow Fairies Series. "My sister and I got in a fight, and she kinda accidentally tore the cover off. Then my parents wouldn't let me keep it."

Marius scanned the bookshelf next to him. While he didn't recognize any of the books, there was a stuffed dragon on top that looked exactly like one of his own. "Shoot, that must have been sad."

"Well, believe me, I made up for it with plenty of other books when they built that Barnes and Noble here."

The children's section of the library was the best part, in these three friends' opinions. Not only were there awesome nostalgic books, there were games and puzzles and even a place for kids to have puppet shows. All of this was too old for Feuilly, Musichetta, and Marius, though, so they just walked around wistfully.

"Hey, here's those Warrior Cats books. Cosette used to really love them," said Musichetta, watching closely for Marius' reaction. She smirked when he stiffened a little.

Marius saw the smirk. "Oh, cut it out, Chetta!"

"Not until you admit you like her," she insisted. "Come on, Marius, it's been so long since there's been fun drama!"

Groaning, Marius admitted it. Feuilly, who also liked the Warrior Cats series and had been searching for one he hadn't read before, gave Musichetta a high five. This annoyed Marius.

"Okay, so what was the point of that? You clearly already knew I liked her."

"I don't know," she said. "Does there have to be a point to everything?"

After this, they kept walking around, ignoring the looks from the librarian at the counter. Right before they were about to leave and go back to their friends, Bossuet showed up.

"Hey, guys," he said cheerfully. "You will not believe how complicated a simple trip to the bathroom became."

Marius, Feuilly, and Musichetta's eyes widened as they listened to Bossuet recount his harrowing journey. "And there's no janitors in this place, apparently," he finished. "Isn't that dumb?"

"Very dumb," Musichetta agreed, laughing at his story. "Maybe you can ask the lady over there."

When Enjolras and Grantaire came back to the main table, everyone had already gotten back and exchanged stories (and made sure the bathroom was taken care of). Combeferre and Bossuet couldn't decide who had had a funnier, unluckier day. But everyone could agree that this had been an unforgettable study session.

"Joly, guess what?" Enjolras called. "Grantaire got himself sort of hurt—he can be your first patient!"

Excited, Joly came up and fished a few bandages out of his pockets, asking what had happened. Grantaire was quite confused but he recalled the whole falling-off-a-table incident for him anyway.

While this went on, Cosette nudged Marius to ask what he thought was going on. Marius explained that Joly's new thing was wanting to be a doctor, and Enjolras had agreed to help him out with this.

"Huh," she said. "Well, good for him, but bad for Grantaire."

In fact, Joly had already moved a bunch of papers and laptops off of one section of the table, asking for Grantaire to sit up there. He complied, sending Eponine a look that clearly said what the heck.

"You guys missed a lot," Bossuet told Enjolras. He and Combeferre filled him in, and then it was Enjolras' turn to tell them about all the gnomes.

As Joly slapped bandages on and rambled about ice packs and heating pads, Grantaire couldn't help letting his mind wander over to where Enjolras was laughing. He folded his hands in his lap, smiling to himself.

Chapter Text

"Come on, guys, it's the first swim meet of the school year," Feuilly complained, pouting. "I can't believe there's no band practice or dance practice or soccer practice, and still only three people aren't busy."

Everyone felt bad, but Eponine, Jehan, and Bahorel really were the only people who didn't have anything going on tonight.

The others had their reasons, which were: Musichetta had to babysit for a neighbor; Combeferre's older brother had a chess tournament over at the college; Enjolras needed to run errands with his mom; Marius and Cosette were getting some volunteer hours over at a local church, packaging meals for the homeless; Joly was stuck helping his siblings with homework while his moms had their date night; Bossuet was going out to Red Lobster with his parents; and both Courfeyrac and Grantaire were coming down with something, and needed to rest.

"I'll make the next one, I promise," Combeferre said with a smile.

"Yeah, I know." Feuilly pulled some fruit snacks out of his pocket. "Nice new glasses, by the way."

They really were, bright blue with no tape and certainly no broken arms. Courfeyrac had nicknamed them "Victim #2" and had been jokingly planning to hold a funeral for Victim #1 (Combeferre's old, broken glasses) before being told to shut up. Joly even offered to do an autopsy!

"And what are you guys doing, again?" Enjolras asked Cosette and Marius.

She said, "Valjean set it up a few weeks ago—it's at our church, putting meals together for homeless people. We're gonna get a bunch of volunteer hours."

Shielding his eyes from the sun, Grantaire slipped his backpack off his shoulders and leaned on it. They were all sitting on the bleachers in the football field after school, because everyone who could drive themselves home would carpool with those who couldn't. "So why could it only be you two doing this, and not more of us?"

He and Musichetta, who had been working together on this lately, shared a subtle high five.

Marius cleared his throat and stared down at his backpack for a while, and Cosette shook her head, trying not to seem defensive. "It's, well, they don't need that many people for it. There was just a small opening."

"Right," he said. But he shut up when Enjolras and Eponine both gave him a look.

To lighten the mood, Joly and Bossuet started telling everyone about their new Neopets accounts. Joly was especially happy about his username, jolllly123. They absolutely loved it—the games, the story behind everything, even all of the little cartoon food.

"Some of the food looks so good," Bossuet said, almost envious. Cosette nodded sympathetically.

She asked Jehan if they had been on Neopets again, and they had. "I really like it… hey Feuilly, could you toss me a fruit snack?"

With a nod, Feuilly tossed it over, and then Jehan tossed it into their mouth. Bahorel got one too. "Anyway, yeah, it's great."

"I'm so glad you guys liked it and didn't just think it was silly," said Cosette, curling some hair around her finger. "Means a lot to me."

Likewise, it meant a lot to Feuilly that three of his friends were coming to his first swim meet of the year. He would've wanted more of them to come, of course, but there was always next time.

The high school had a decently sized indoor swimming pool, with several rows of bleachers for people to sit on, and that's where Feuilly's swim meet took place. Eponine led Jehan and Bahorel onto an empty space on the highest bleacher, which she said was the best place to sit.

"What if we yell stuff to him and he can't hear us from up here?" Jehan pointed out, pulling their sweatpants up so they wouldn't drag on the dirty steps. But Eponine waved his question off and kept walking.

Bahorel gave Jehan a little shrug. "It's probably not high enough for that," he guessed. "And Eponine'll be plenty loud."

"Okay, I'm gonna do you a favor and let that go."

Jehan giggled, sitting down next to Eponine, who threateningly held her scrunchie towards Bahorel like she was gonna flick it at him. He grinned, ducking behind Jehan when he sat down. This made them all laugh.

Down below, the swim team was getting ready, and Feuilly kind of looked like a bug with his huge goggles. Jehan cheered to him, followed by Eponine and Bahorel. Feuilly sent back two thumbs up and a grin that was super clear, even from the highest bleacher.

"So what events are Feuilly in?" wondered Eponine. "It's not all of them, right?"

"Right." Bahorel fished around in his pockets for his phone. "He texted me about it a while ago, lemme see what it says… okay, there's something about a medley relay, and a few different freestyle races. I don't know how many meters long this pool is, so this doesn't really help."

Around this time, someone Jehan knew from band had come up the bleachers and sat down near the three of them. It was Montparnasse.

This was a rather complicated situation for Jehan, who already had trouble knowing what to do in many less complicated circumstances. If they waved to Montparnasse, that would be like saying that the two of them were friends outside of band, something which had been unclear for a while. In fact, Jehan and Montparnasse weren't even friends in band a lot of the time.

That was the issue with being frenemies, they supposed. Sometimes it was just impossible to not pick a side.

But all of their worrying seemed to be for nothing, as Montparnasse didn't even seem to notice them… at least until he turned around and said hi.

"Oh," they said, tugging on sweatpants. "Hey, Monty."

Bahorel and Eponine shared an amused look.

"Hey," echoed Montparnasse. "So where's the rest of your pack?"

"Well, Feuilly's down there." Jehan pointed to the pool, where everyone on the swim team was finishing their warm ups and the coach gave a pep talk. "But Combeferre and Cosette are both busy tonight, and I don't know if you know anyone else."

"I know Grantaire," Montparnasse said, shrugging and flopping his feet across the seat. "We had science together last year."

There was a lull in the conversation, before Jehan had the idea to introduce Eponine and Bahorel to Montparnasse.

Down below, the first freestyle race had started, but because it wasn't one of Feuilly's, the four of them kept talking. Apparently, Montparnasse was here because his twin sister Marie was in the swim team, too.

"A twin sister?" said Eponine, with a small smile. "My two youngest brothers are twins, cool."

"Yeah," Jehan mumbled, "I didn't know you had a twin."

Shrugging again, Montparnasse looked out at all the swimmers going across the pool in different strokes. "Why is it such a big deal? Get off my back."

This definitely irritated Eponine and Bahorel, who could both be protective of Jehan, just like everybody else in their huge friend group. But Jehan replied before either of them got the chance to.

"Monty, I don't appreciate your tone," they scolded. With a good-naturedly exaggerated sigh, Montparnasse apologized.

Soon, the first race was over. Feuilly's teammates climbed out of the pool, water splashing behind them and shining in the late afternoon sun that came through the windows. Bahorel accidentally kicked Montparnasse while clapping for the winner, but then it was fine when he got even by untying Bahorel's shoes.

The next swimmers, including Feuilly and Marie, got ready to get in the water. Jehan wished Montparnasse's sister good luck, and he wished their friend good luck.

By the time the meet had ended, Feuilly felt exhausted and exhilarated. Waving up at his friends, he told them to meet him near the locker rooms after he finished taking a shower and drying off.

Eponine, Bahorel, and Jehan had had fun too. There was hardly anything boring about the meet—Eponine only resorted to playing with her scrunchies once, and Bahorel managed to resist sprouting off jokes about the swim team members and references to his favorite songs. Even Jehan and Montparnasse found themselves chatting about a whole bunch of things.

"Okay," said Eponine, grabbing her stuff and standing up, "hopefully we'll be able to find that place."

Bahorel nodded, and Jehan glanced at Montparnasse.

"Do you wanna hang out with us?" they wondered. "Unless, uh, you need to go somewhere with Marie right now or something, or you just don't want to, or anything like that."

Nearly smiling, Montparnasse said he didn't really have anywhere to be and would want to hang out with them.

So the four of them made their way down the bleachers and over to the oddly large locker room/gym/janitorial building—Eponine and Bahorel questioning why Jehan had brought Montparnasse along, those two making awkward chit chat.

Turns out, giving a building that many functions inevitably made it super confusing. Because of the tight hallways, the unmarked rooms, and the fact that nobody had spent much time here before, it seemed impossible to find where Feuilly wanted them to go.

"This place is like a labyrinth," Montparnasse said to Jehan, shaking his head. "Ridiculous."

Jehan was just about to ask what a labyrinth was, when they heard people talking from a room up ahead. Very quickly, the four of them shushed and got into eavesdropping mode.

Someone said, "I know, he is kinda odd. At practice one time he was making a pyramid out of his fruit snacks."

Turning to Bahorel, Eponine mouthed Feuilly?

Worriedly, he shrugged.

Another teammate went on. "And Feuilly's always going on and on about geography and history and Poland. Like, who's obsessed with Poland?? Marie's the same way, y'know, just about all her clubs and stuff."

"Yeah, she totally is."

At this, Bahorel and Montparnasse were the angriest, with Eponine and Jehan close behind. Not wanting to listen to this anymore and needing somewhere they could talk privately, they all ran into a supply closet.

"Can you believe that?" whispered Bahorel, squeezing past a couple of brooms. "What's so weird about fruit snack pyramids and Poland?"

"And yeah," said Montparnasse in as quiet a voice as he could, "Marie is on the swim team and in culinary class and in art club, but that just makes her a well rounded person!"

Eponine nodded fiercely, standing snugly underneath a shelf. "Right! Do they even care about college applications?"

Within this bubble of frustration, Jehan was the only one trying to pop it. "Hey," they whispered, lightly placing a hand on Montparnasse's and Bahorel's shoulders, "what if it was out of context? Couldn't it be regular friendly teasing, and Feuilly and Marie were playing along with it, we just couldn't see?"

Montparnasse shook his head, jerking his shoulder away. "If Feuilly and Marie were there, those people would have been like 'you guys' instead of just saying their names."

"Plus we probably would have heard them say something," added Eponine.

Bahorel scowled. "And it wouldn't have been so darn rude."

"Okay, okay, forgive me for trying to calm you guys down, forget I said anything." Unable to pace, because of how tiny the closet was, Jehan settled for rocking side to side and humming. "I know they were just being mean. It's stupid and I don't like it. So what do we do?"

Nobody had an answer. For now, they had no clue if the people in the locker room would catch them if they left, and risking that wasn't smart.

With a little grin, Montparnasse turned to Jehan, leaving only a couple of cans of Clorox wipes between them. "Well... wanna talk about oboes?"

Only five minutes passed before the closet became unbearable, and consequences were set aside.

Thankfully, everyone could breathe again when they were back in the hallway, and they weren't immediately caught. But the problems of what to do about the people who were talking behind Feuilly and Marie's backs—not to mention how to get un-lost—still weren't solved.

Bahorel was fully prepared to go off on them, so Jehan and Eponine pushed him down the hallway in the opposite direction. If he got into a fight, that would overcomplicate everything.

"I can just figure out who they are," reasoned Eponine, "and at school we can tell them to stop being mean to our friends."

Montparnasse nodded his approval, but Jehan groaned.

"Guys, calm down. What if Feuilly and Marie don't want us to get involved in all this drama? And how are you even gonna find out who they are? There's like thirteen people on the swim team, Ponine."

They weren't used to being the voice of reason; this was getting frustrating. And their friends wouldn't budge.

"So they just get away with calling them weird?" Bahorel asked. "How's that fair?"

"I don't know! Okay? I have no idea!"

Looking back down the hallway, Montparnasse shushed the two of them. Eponine started walking faster, and so did Bahorel, visibly very frustrated. Hugging a wall, Jehan wiped away stupid arguing tears.

There was finally an exit door, out of which they left this labyrinth. Bahorel pulled out his phone and texted Feuilly about how lost they'd gotten.

Eponine, who was arguably even less used to being a mediator than Jehan was, looked around at her friends. (Yeah, she basically only met Montparnasse today, but getting stuck in a closet and bonding over being angry at mean people bridges the gap pretty well.)

"Okay, guys, I think we're all stressed out. We just need to calm down and forget about everything for a while," she said. "At least right now."

Everyone else agreed.

Soon Feuilly called, saying he was sorry for how confusing the locker room building was and also that Marie was coming with him, to get her brother.

When they got there, Jehan, Eponine, Bahorel, and Montparnasse spent a lot of time congratulating them on how well they'd done at the meet. Feuilly introduced Marie to his friends, and everyone laughed a little at the odd circumstances causing them to be hanging out in a random field at school when it was almost dinnertime.

Because they wanted to make it up to Bahorel for acting like they should let the whole thing go, Jehan was the one to tell Feuilly and Marie about the eavesdropping. Montparnasse stepped in helpfully when Jehan couldn't quite describe something.

"You guys heard people talking about us?" Feuilly asked, sharing a look with Marie. They were shocked… and then they just shrugged, leaving the others twice as shocked.

Eponine and Jehan each let out a confused laugh, and Montparnasse looked at his sister like she was crazy.

Naturally, Bahorel scowled again. "You don't care at all? We hid in a cramped closet for you guys… I bumped into like five brooms!"

"Oof," said Marie, sympathetically. "That sounds uncomfortable."

Running his hands through his damp hair, Feuilly said, "I get what you mean, man, but what's the point of being so angry about it? You didn't see who they were, we didn't hear them, and I'm not gonna act mean towards everyone on the swim team until I figure out who it was."

At this, Bahorel relented, and Jehan gave Eponine a pointed look that clearly said told you so. She rolled her eyes and laughed.

"I agree with Feuilly," Marie told Montparnasse, seeing that he was about to butt in.

"Okay," he said, "but obviously this changes if we do somehow figure out who it was. Right?"

Smiling at her brother's protectiveness, Marie nodded.

Jehan watched this, thinking about how different Montparnasse and Marie were. Going on this little adventure had changed their opinion of him, and as everybody strolled back to the school's parking lot, they elbowed him.

"Y'know, Monty, I think we're officially friends now," they remarked.

Montparnasse considered this. "Alright. Cool. Just no more hiding in tiny closets when we hang out, okay?"

"Sounds like a deal."

Chapter Text

While Feuilly's swim meet—and all of the craziness going on afterwards—took place, Valjean had dropped Cosette and Marius off at the church for their volunteering and said goodbye to both of them.

Pulling her dad in for a hug, Cosette said bye.

"Have fun," Valjean told the two of them, smiling warmly. "But not too much. You are here to work, after all."

"Alright, Mr. Fauchelevent."

"Alright, Dad."

With that, he got back into his old green SUV and started the drive home. Marius and Cosette tucked their community service hours sheets into their pockets, shared a smile, and walked inside the church. A lady who knew Valjean pretty well met them there, and led them to the room where they would be packaging meals.

"We have lots of food there already," she told them. "It's kind of like an assembly line, except you just go through it all yourself. That's what you guys will do for a while, until we need more food brought down, and then you can do that."

Absorbing all of this, they nodded.

Cosette pulled her hair into a bun, making sure no little strands were out, just like she did whenever she and Valjean would cook together. Right next to her, Marius took random papers and thingies out of his pockets and threw them into a nearby trash can.

"Okay, here we are." The lady smiled at all the other volunteers in this large room, already working on the meals. "Wash your hands, then you can start."

Heading over to the sink, Cosette and Marius chatted about stuff. "This place seems cool," he said, looking up at the super high ceiling and the one little stained glass window. "It's really great that your dad found out about tonight."

He stepped aside so Cosette could wash her hands first. "I know, right? I mean, it seems like school does nothing to bring up ideas for volunteer hours unless you're in a club for that."

"Yeah, seriously."

As she moved over a bit to grab a paper towel, Marius got some soap and water. It was a small sink. They were standing rather close to each other. And the moment didn't last long, but both of them still had tiny, secretive smiles after it was over.

Lots of kids their age, mid-to-late high school, were also volunteering. Cosette knew some of them, Marius knew less, and so they generally kept to themselves throughout the night.

A guy with awesomely curly blonde hair, around college age or so, handed them cardboard boxes for different meals to go into.

"Y'know," Marius whispered as they walked to the start of the food line, "he looks like Enjolras but like five years older."

"Whoa, you're right!" With a little laugh, Cosette set down her box and grabbed a label that said 'Main Dish Oatmeal'. "Wouldn't it be crazy if in five years we remember what he looks like and Enjolras actually does look like him?"

They both laughed a bunch at this, getting looks from other volunteers. Marius grabbed a spaghetti label for his box.

"And it'd be really crazy if there were a bunch of other people here who looked like older versions of our friends," he went on. "Maybe this is all legit for charity, it's just also an undercover thing for our clones to meet up!"

Giggling, Cosette scanned the people around her while picking snack foods up and also trying not to look too long and be weird. She gave Marius an exaggeratedly disappointed look.

"One girl kinda looks like Eponine, but that's it. I guess it's a no on the clones theory, then."

Remembering Valjean's instructions to focus on their work more than anything else, they settled into a rhythm of packaging meals. Each box had a main course, which would be heated up before being delivered, as well as several other snacks and drinks. It was important for everything to be relatively healthy, but Cosette and Marius made sure to put plenty of yummy stuff in their boxes, too.

Even though they had mainly wanted to do this for volunteer hours to help with scholarship requirements down the road, it felt really nice to do something like this. Something that would help people.

"Hey," he said after a while of no talking, "do you know if Jehan ever finished their Gravity Falls poetry fanfiction thing?"

Cosette grabbed a water bottle and a juice pack, trying to remember. "Well, I think they want to get all of it written before uploading. All twenty chapters! It was something about not wanting fans to have to wait."

Laughing, Marius tossed a little cracker pack between his hands. "I can't believe they have twenty chapters' worth of poetry fanfiction… hmm, do you think I'd get in trouble for juggling these?"

"Totally," she joked. "And then Valjean wouldn't let you do volunteer-y stuff with me anymore! That would suck."

Marius floofed his hair, a smile tugging at his mouth.

Noticing this, Cosette looked away and at the food she was picking for her box. But when Marius snuck a glance at her, she had another little smile too. She almost wanted to follow up on basically saying that she'd really miss hanging out with him alone with something else, something less vague, something that might actually—finally—lead to something.

Unfortunately, her nerve had left her, and then the moment was over already.

Working on their boxes, they talked some with other volunteers and mostly with each other. Despite their attempts to be quiet, everyone else in overhearing range still heard all the discussions about Combeferre's new glasses, what Bossuet and his parents would get to eat at Red Lobster tonight, and hopes for Courfeyrac and Grantaire to both get over being sick soon.

"Hey, could you guys be quieter?" the college Enjolras clone asked after a while. Embarrassed, they nodded.

And they were quieter, at least up until Marius suggested they race each other over to the bin for completed meal boxes. Cosette knew they probably shouldn't, but when he smiled like that she always had a hard time being a buzzkill.

It wasn't that long of a run, really. Didn't make a big scene or anything, this just wasn't the right time or place. The adults in the room crossed their arms at Marius and Cosette.

"Sorry," they both blurted.

Thankfully (for Valjean's sake), they weren't exactly punished. The same lady from earlier asked them to bring over the extra boxes in her upstairs office, which she had been planning for them to do anyway.

Marius and Cosette still knew it was a good way to get them out of the main room, though, and as they walked upstairs, they found the whole thing pretty funny.

"Did you see Future Enjolras' face?" laughed Cosette, trying to keep her voice down and hoping that noise from this stairwell didn't travel. "I mean, you can really see the resemblance."

"Yeah! I swear I saw actual Enjolras make that same exact face when our math teacher gave us all that extra homework last week."

After a quick laugh, she said, "Okay, let's stop being mean… we have to get all our giggles out now, 'cause if we keep doing stuff like that when we get back down there, someone's probably gonna tell Valjean on us."

"You're right," Marius agreed, tapping his fingers on the railing. "Sorry about the race—I should've known better."

"Eh, responsibility shmersponsibility."

Raising his eyebrows, Marius paused on the final step. "Shmersponsibility? Cosette, that's kinda lame."

He said it like a challenge, so she leaned back against the railing and crossed her arms. "Oh yeah? Well, you know what's not lame? The fact that I can identify a bunch of birds just by looking at them!"

"Okay, ya got me." Smiling, he opened the door to the office, and they both entered.

There were only two boxes of food for each of them, making Marius wonder why nobody had brought all of it down earlier. Cosette felt like home: holding the two huge boxes in front of her was kind of like lugging her drum around in band.

Since he had opened the door for her, she did it for Marius this time. Glancing over the top of his boxes at Cosette, he thought about saying something.

And then he did.

"Hey, um, do you want to go out with me?"

A grin lit up Cosette's face and made Marius shiver.

She was concentrating hard on not freaking out and not dropping her boxes from shock, so when she said yes, it felt like an hour had passed.

Just like that, something had finally happened. Neither knew quite how to feel, or if they even should be feeling anything drastically different. After all, they were still Cosette and Marius, still really great friends who happened to like each other a lot. Uncertainty mixed with relief mixed with excitement.

As they began walking back downstairs, Cosette popped this confusing bubble of emotions.

"Y'know, for all the times I've thought about that in my head, I never really pictured it happening at church, while we're carrying boxes of, uh, oatmeal mix and juice packs."

They laughed really loudly at this together. Hopefully nobody in the main room would hear them and get annoyed, but honestly, Cosette and Marius didn't care.

He couldn't keep a grin off his face. "Well, at least I didn't ask you out over Neomail!"

And that was so hilarious, they still had leftover giggles by the time they got back to packaging meals.

Meanwhile, as Joly helped his siblings with homework, Bossuet had dinner at Red Lobster with his parents, and Musichetta babysat her neighbor's daughter, the three of them had been texting:

jolllly

hey guys, what''s up

chetta

nothing much. the girl i'm babysitting asked to watch a barbie movie so at least that's fun

bossuet

things are good here. i ate 4 lobster biscuits already lol

chetta

are you texting at the table??

bossuet

i'm in the bathroom

and before you ask, no toilets have overflowed onto me

jolllly

lmao. and those biscuits are 2 die for, honestly

bossuet

dude you still use 2 for to? chetta help he's turned into a hipster

chetta

what have i told you joly?

i''m the only one allowed to be a hipster, i already have all the flannel!!

jolllly

pls stop bullying

jk i don't actually care

bossuet

and please don't become a hipster chetta, you're too much of a nerd (i'm joking)

chetta

i mean… you're really not wrong

jolllly

he's really not

bossuet

so joly, what are you teaching your siblings so far?

jolllly

well i tried to convince them i knew cpr but they saw right through that

chetta

and how would that even be relevant to their homework? lol

jolllly

oh... well i did explain punnett squares and long division

bossuet

i miss punnett squares

it was a simpler time, truly :(

chetta

aww, you sound like an old man, so cute

bossuet

chetta have i ever told you you're a lot more sarcastic on the phone than in person??

chetta

i'll take that as a compliment

jolllly

guys my brother and sister are fighting. i think they want to weaponize the succulents

what do i do

bossuet

"weaponize the succulents"????

jolllly

shut up you're not helping

chetta

joly wait come on, you dealed with eponine and bahorel at the library when they were arguing, you can handle your little siblings

(wait is it dealed or dealt? i never know)

bossuet

uh maybe it's dealt?

jolllly

okay thanks you're probably right chetta

okay me and my other sister got them to quiet down

chetta

coolio

bossuet

good job dude

also, how did that presentation go anyways?

jolllly

pretty good but we got 5 points taken off

i accidentally wrote the title as "how to kill a mockingbird" on one slide

bossuet

oh my gosh joly, that's horrible… and hilarious

chetta

like you mixed it up with how to train your dragon? oh wow

jolllly

yeah i know but at least eponine and bahorel could bond over laughing at me! lol

bossuet

oh crap i think i've been in here like 20 minutes now

my parents are gonna think i did the library thing all over again

chetta

aww, you should probably get back

bossuet

bye guys! this was fun

chetta

bye!!! i kinda gotta go too, the barbie movie's almost done and bethany wants me to show her my newest routine from dance

jolllly

bye bossuet! bye chetta!

Chapter Text

After her US History class with Grantaire and Enjolras (plus Montparnasse, who she talked to every once in a while now), Eponine went outside instead of through the hallway on her way to Trigonometry. She needed to call her brother and sister, Gavroche and Azelma, about their after-school activities and frustratingly complicated carpools.

Typically Eponine didn't mind the outside part of campus, especially when there were bees and dragonflies around, but the stupid downpour that attacked her kinda ruined the mood.

With her hair soaked—even worse, her scrunchies soaked—and her siblings laughing at her over the phone, Eponine stomped the rest of the way to math. The ground could tell that she really meant it.

Ms. Hutcheson didn't care that she was a few minutes late, and just told her to get into a group with Grantaire and Musichetta. They'd been doing group projects in math for the past couple of weeks, ever since Cosette and Marius told their friends they had started dating. Everyone was super happy for them; that was a pretty crazy day. Musichetta may or may not have actually screamed.

Eponine sat down with her group, and started complaining immediately.

"I mean, the sky's been blue all day!" she said, taking the green sweatshirt Grantaire offered to dry herself off. "What's up with that?"

Musichetta shrugged sympathetically, and at the next table over, Combeferre shared his own story of getting rained on at his brother's last chess tournament.

It lightened the mood, thankfully, getting laughs from his partners, Courfeyrac and Enjolras, and the three at the other table.

Across the room, Jehan and Cosette were chatting about band. More specifically, she critiqued how busy these past few weeks had been, and they rambled on about stuff Montparnasse did recently. Feuilly and Marius, who were in a group with the two of them, shared an amused look.

Bahorel, Bossuet, and Joly made up another group. They were getting on relatively well, since Bahorel, who really liked math he understood and who understood a lot of it, was actually more in the mood to do his work than make jokes.

"Okay, we're going to be making unit circle posters," Ms. Hutcheson reminded everyone (y'know… not just the thirteen main people). "Joly, can you pass out rulers? I have to grab more supplies from my office."

Always happy to have something to do, Joly got started on this right away.

The rulers came in practically every color—as elementary school-y as this was, nobody really minded. Grantaire got a red one, and Enjolras got a green one. This clearly wouldn't work so they switched after a moment.

"Hey, wanna sword fight?" Courfeyrac asked Combeferre, holding up his ruler.

Rolling his eyes but still grinning, Combeferre used his ruler as a sword too. "Duh."

The silly things they liked to do in class often caught on, and so was the case with ruler-sword fighting, since Ms. Hutcheson was in her office. Everyone knew their fun would end right when the teacher came back, but it was one of those situations where that doesn't really matter.

Unable to find an in with Combeferre and Courfeyrac's sword fight, Enjolras sat there and contently played with his ruler, flipping it up and then catching it.

"Guys, calm down, maybe?" Joly asked his classmates. "Well… it's not like rulers have pointy edges anyway."

He looked over to Musichetta, and then Bossuet, sharing a shrug with them both.

This lasted a little longer, with the loudest laughs coming from Cosette and Marius (who were basically poking each other with rulers but found it hilarious anyway), until Ms. Hutcheson came back into the room.

She sighed; this was what she had expected, pretty much.

Enjolras, having just flipped his ruler into the air, jumped a little when the teacher called for everyone to stop. He turned in his seat really quickly…

And then the ruler hit him on the head.

Joly was over before Enjolras even finished saying ow, and everyone else had quieted, including Ms. Hutcheson. Courfeyrac and Combeferre felt especially bad, because it was their whole sword fighting idea that had started this. One table over, Grantaire stared at the ground worriedly.

"Are you okay?" Bahorel called, from the other side of the room. He, along with Bossuet, Jehan, Feuilly, Cosette, Marius, and their other friends, had concerned looks.

"I'm fine," Enjolras said, eyes wide. "It was just a ruler."

Ms. Hutcheson stepped closer and looked at Enjolras' head for a bump. She couldn't see anything because of all his hair, but she said, "Still, you should go to the nurse just in case. Who wants to go with him?"

Immediately, Courfeyrac and Combeferre raised their hands. But Ms. Hutcheson shook her head.

"If I'm not wrong, you two started the whole playing with rulers thing," she said. They unhappily confirmed this. "I get that you were just doing something fun, but now you need to actually do your work."

Now she was looking around, probably about to pick someone randomly. Before he could overthink it too much, Grantaire volunteered to go with Enjolras.

"Alright. Take a hall pass."

He grabbed the hall pass, tucked it into his pocket, and made Musichetta and Eponine promise to not start drawing on the unit circle poster until he got back. Meanwhile, Combeferre and Courfeyrac apologized to Enjolras, who insisted that it wasn't their fault and that he was fine. Still, he couldn't help rubbing the spot on his head that the ruler had hit.

After a while of silent walking, Grantaire said, "So, first I fall off a table, then you let a ruler hit you on the head. I think this is becoming a pattern."

Enjolras laughed, looking around at the empty hallway and all its unused lockers. Everything echoed. "Yeah—and I doubt there's gonna be any gnomes at the nurse's office."

This made Grantaire crack up, and it occurred to Enjolras that this might have been the first time he'd ever made him laugh really hard. Yeah, he would say unintentionally funny things from time to time when they would argue with each other during history class, but not like this. It was nice.

"But anyway, that whole table incident must have been like a curse. I was sore for half a week, and then I had that stupid everlasting cankersore, and then me and Courf both got sick." Grantaire shook his head. "Hopefully I didn't just jinx you, ha ha."

"Right," Enjolras said, clearly not buying that. "I do have some advice for you about that, though. You should, I dunno, try to exit all tables the normal people way from now on."

Grantaire bit down a laugh. "Please shut up."

"Okay, yeah."

They kept making their way to the nurse's office, talking about stuff like Joly's funny but honestly endearing medical obsession (Grantaire was surprised that he hadn't completely taken charge after the ruler hit Enjolras) and the fact that Enjolras had recently applied for a job at the Musain, a tiny local Mexican fast food place not unlike Taco Bell, except for the fact that people were always confused upon their first time entering, having seen its name and assumed rather logically that it was some kind of 19th-century-esque French cafe. Grantaire offered him some waterfall-ed sips out of his bottle of lemonade, which Enjolras gratefully accepted.

Back in class, every group was chugging along, doing their project at whatever pace was best for them. Feuilly slipped fruit snacks out of his pockets and discreetly gave some to Jehan, Cosette, and Marius. The two of them were trying to hold hands and do math at the same time, but it wasn't working because, well, math.

Always an avid multitasker, Eponine texted Azelma and Gavroche under the table about new carpool problems and kept complaining to Musichetta about the rain she ran into earlier.

She frizzed her hair with Grantaire's sweatshirt. "The thing that really bugs me is, it already stopped. Isn't that stupid?"

"Super stupid." Musichetta wrote down more notes for the unit circle poster and tugged at her blue-green flannel, grateful Eponine hadn't needed it to dry herself off too. Honestly, she wished Eponine would get started on the project already, but the best thing to do in these situations was to let her complain herself out. "So you couldn't get under a tree out there?"

"Well… not really. It was closer to the door than to a tree and then a door." She gestured ruefully to her hair and clothes, which were still damp. "Not close enough, though."

At the next table over, Combeferre and Courfeyrac had been doing their work and chatting about The Office (their favorite show).

Courfeyrac cut into the girls' conversation: "You gotta sue the trees, Eponine. It's their fault."

This made his three friends laugh. "Seriously," Eponine remarked, "all those trees and all those leaves, and they couldn't protect me from the rain at all! What a total scam."

Almost on cue, some wind shook a tall sycamore outside one of Ms. Hutcheson's windows, and a bunch of branches came whirling by, looking very offended. Courfeyrac and Eponine both stuck their tongues out at the window, cracking up laughing.

Meanwhile, Combeferre was deep in thought, as he often was.

"Hey, guys, you ever wonder how many leaves there are in the whole world?" he asked, adjusting his glasses. "Like, I mean, for all the trees on our campus, maybe there's more leaves on them than students that go here. Wouldn't that be cool?"

"That'd be super cool," Musichetta gushed. "There really are a bunch of them on every tree, so I wouldn't be surprised."

Just like the sword-fighting-with-rulers idea had caught on quickly with the whole class, so did this wacky discussion about leaves. The people next to the four of them had overheard and added their ideas, and of course when their friends heard they had to take part. It wasn't like this would result in any rulers to the head, so Ms. Hutcheson pretended to ignore it.

Bossuet wondered if there was any country on Earth where the number of leaves was the same as the number of people. Someone else suggested leaf skyscrapers.

"What's that?" Feuilly asked, sharing a confused look with Jehan.

"If you stacked up all the leaves in the world," the other student explained. That would make a very tall stack.

Still hung up on her rain incident, Eponine brought forth the idea of tree clouds. They'd follow you around and protect you from rain, only occasionally dumping leaves and stuff. Understandably, nobody really knew how to react to this.

"Hmm… what would be more," mused Combeferre, "stars in the Milky Way or leaves on Earth?"

He'd meant this to be just him talking to himself, but everyone else heard anyway. Joly's eyes got wide, and Bahorel and Ms. Hutcheson, who hadn't been that interested in the subject so far, both looked intrigued. Everyone had thoughts on this.

"The Milky Way is super huge and there's a bunch of places without many trees, so it's definitely stars!"

"No, rainforests would totally bridge that gap!"

"Yeah, plus the Milky Way's only one galaxy in the whole entire Universe."

With people talking over each other and arguing, the noise was becoming too much. Ms. Hutcheson shushed the loudest ones and asked for someone to look it up.

"So much for only working on math," Courfeyrac whispered to Combeferre, with a grin.

Combeferre grinned too. He loved when other people actually thought his random ideas were interesting, and of course when they could all have some fun in class.

By this time, Cosette had looked up how many leaves there were on Earth. "According to Google, it's more than 120… um, is quadrillion the one after trillion?"

A few people confirmed that it was. "Okay, yeah, it's like 120 quadrillion leaves," she said, shocked. That was just an insane amount of leaves. Like, take a number that you can't even imagine, and this is a number that that one could never begin to imagine. "Does anyone have how many stars?"

"It's only 250 billion," Jehan answered. Then they laughed. "Did I just say only 250 billion?"

Everybody had to laugh at the absurdity of this. Bahorel made a joke about how "only 250 billion" was classic rich person logic, and then the next topic of discussion was how expensive it would be to stay in a leaf skyscraper hotel, if they could somehow exist. Also, given what they'd learned just now about all the world's leaves, would a leaf skyscraper hotel be tall enough to exit the atmosphere?

As if this were a legitimate question, they all mulled it over. Sadly, Combeferre gave the verdict that it was probably impossible to know.

Enjolras's head was checked out by the school nurse, and it was thankfully fine. Needing to explain the embarrassing circumstances of flipping a ruler into the air and having it accidentally fall onto his head was the worst part of it, actually.

On the way back from the nurse's office, he and Grantaire took the scenic route through the outside courtyard, not talking much but enjoying the breeze and the quiet. They fared much better than Eponine had: still no rain, just lots of pleasant wind. Decent mid September weather, in fact. Since it would be fall later this month, there was already a sizable pile of dead leaves forming in between the courtyard's trees.

Trying to think of something to say, Grantaire spotted this particular pile of leaves. He nudged Enjolras. "Hey, I dare you to go jump in that leaf pile!"

"What?" laughed Enjolras, pulling his hair back to keep the wind from making it flap all over the place. "Don't be silly."

Grantaire gave him a look. "I'm not being silly. Come on, I'll do it too." He rubbed his arms, wishing he'd gotten his sweatshirt back from Eponine before leaving. Maybe the leaf pile would warm him up a little.

It was Enjolras' competitive side that won him over, and the fact that he hadn't jumped into leaves in a very long time. Besides, as far as the two of them knew, math class was still uneventful and way more boring than this.

"Okay, here goes." Getting a running start, Enjolras catapulted into the leaf pile. And it was awesome!

Sinking in the leaves, a bunch of laughs bubbled up from him. Grantaire grinned.

After a while of rolling around in the leaves, he moved over so Grantaire could jump in. Once he had, they had a leaf-snowball fight that basically just devolved into looking up at the trees and talking about random stuff. This was nice, but eventually even Grantaire had to admit that they needed to get back to class.

Enjolras stood up, picking leaves from his clothes and his hair. "Did I get everything?"

"Nah, there's one up here." As he said this, Grantaire reached one arm out to pluck the leaf from Enjolras' curls. This action, and the fact that he might have let his hand hover for a little longer than necessary, made Enjolras blink a few times.

And as quick as the moment had happened, Grantaire looked away, letting the leaf fall down and trying not to seem too embarrassed.

The two of them started walking through the rest of the courtyard, thinking.

Not sure what to make of what had just happened or of the little blush he felt himself get, Enjolras instead wondered how far Combeferre and Courfeyrac were on the project. He almost asked for another sip of lemonade, but Grantaire had drunk all of it already.

Soon they were back at class, each happy that this unfamiliar awkwardness would be over. Enjolras knocked on the door, and as someone opened it, they heard something that sounded quite strange out of context.

"What if all of the leaves could cover the entire planet? Or even more planets than just ours!" Marius was saying, excitedly, while Cosette watched him with a fond little smile.

Then everyone noticed Enjolras and Grantaire, who were both equally confused.

"What does that have to do with the unit circle?" asked Grantaire.

Musichetta explained, and Joly asked how the nurse's office visit had gone. He was quite pleased with the answer.

"Another medical victory," he bragged to Bossuet.

"I hate to break it to you, buddy, but you didn't really do much."

Class carried on, consisting of more actual work and a few more mini leaf discussions. At one point, Grantaire glanced over at Enjolras. He had just turned away when Enjolras glanced over at him, with a tiny nervous smile.

Chapter Text

It had been nearly three weeks since Cosette and Marius started dating, and they hadn't had a real first date yet. (The rest of volunteering didn't count, especially since Future Enjolras split the two of them up for being so loud.) Why?

Because things were simply too busy. Band was wearing Cosette, Jehan, and Combeferre out, with Homecoming in nearly a month and a lot more preparation needing to be done in that time. And in a stupid series of bad luck, Marius always happened to have too much homework on the days she was free, or the weather was totally wack.

Another issue was Valjean, Cosette's dad.

He could be overprotective, and for some weird reason he wouldn't let Cosette and Marius go on a date to a restaurant without him there to chaperone. That would be super awkward. So, on the first non-rainy, hardly-any-responsibilities Saturday of seemingly the whole entire month of September, they were finally having a date. In Cosette's yard.

Though it was certainly unusual, Marius couldn't be mad at Valjean for the weird date restrictions. The guy was just too nice to hold a grudge against—he even made a special lunch for him. Scrambled eggs with extra hot sauce! His favorite!

And on Cosette's side, well, she did really love her yard, all full of trees and flowers and whatnot. She was just happy to finally spend some more alone time with her boyfriend.

"Thanks for lunch, Dad," she said, taking her plate of eggs covered in pesto and glancing down at her phone, which had just dinged. It was Grantaire on the group chat, with a few pictures of some abstract watercolor art he'd done.

She looked at Marius, who was eyeing his eggs hungrily. "Do you want to eat in here, or outside?"

"Um, outside." He turned to Valjean. "Can we?"

Standing over the sink, Valjean let out a hearty laugh. "Yes, Marius, you guys can eat outside," he confirmed. "I'm not that protective."

They all laughed at this, even Marius, who shoved his embarrassment to the side for the moment.

"Alright, let's go." Cosette elbowed him, tucked her phone inside her pocket, and waved bye to her dad. Obediently, Marius followed her out the door.

Spanish moss dripped from the oak trees outside, always ready for Cosette to reach a hand up and dangle it through. In her yard and beyond, birds chirped and insects buzzed. There was even a wonderful jasmine smell in the air, because the jasmine flowers hadn't wilted yet. Basically, Cosette's favorite place in the world was living up to its title.

"I'm glad you were okay with this," she told Marius. "Since, y'know, it's a pretty weird kind of date."

As they turned the corner around her house, headed towards the picnic table, Marius smiled and shrugged. "It's not that weird, actually." He walked around in a circle, gesturing to everything around them. "Yummy food, awesome scenery… and, well, we get to hang out. Just us. This is really nice."

That made Cosette break out into a grin. Before she could say something equally sweet back, she got distracted by her phone. Apparently, their other friends had seen Grantaire's pictures on the group chat and were responding now.

She and Marius set their plates onto the picnic table and sat down, each pulling out their phones. "Ooh, this is nice," he said. "He's definitely getting better at painting."

"Yeah, he is." Cosette scanned everyone else's texts.

enj

Good job!!

combeferre

yeah, that's really cool

ponine

very drippy. I approve..

jehan

whoa that's awesme, can i use that as like a profile pic for my gravity falls fanfic???

bossuet

jehan do u even know how to do that? also it looks super nice, r

jehan

yes obviously... okay no i don't

feuilly

awesome art! and jehan maybe there's a wikihow about it?

courf

Bro, wikihow is wack. they have this one article about different ways to pick your nose!

also the watercolor is super nice :D

combeferre

and why were you looking for an article about picking your nose?

jehan

ok i'll try that feuilly, thx

courf

i was simply living my life, ferre. i will not accept criticism for using the internet for it's intended purpose: super weird and random shit

enj

lmao

grantairrrrre

hey everybody, thanks!! gosh you guys like to digress

oh and jehan, if you're somehow able to do that, you can totally use my art for your fic

jehan

thx!!!!!!!!

Laughing as they read the conversation, Cosette and Marius added their compliments of Grantaire's art and set their phones aside. Joly, Musichetta, and Bahorel soon added some comments, but the two of them ignored it.

Hopefully the group chat would quiet down after this, so they could instead focus on their date.

"Seriously, you guys have such a nice yard," Marius said, after eating some eggs. He pointed to the gingko and the poplar, the blueberry bushes lining a pond and the roses lining the house. "Valjean should be a professional gardener."

"He probably could be," she agreed. "Well… gardening and fixing up the yard was a big part of how we bonded, after he adopted me."

Marius nodded, knowing that talk of her adoption was kinda serious. After her mom died, Cosette had actually been the foster child of the Thenardiers, Eponine's family. It hadn't lasted long, thankfully for Cosette, but it wasn't a pleasant time in her life. That's why she and Valjean avoided the Thenardier parents at all costs, but had obviously kept in touch with Eponine and her siblings. In fact, the entire huge friend group had sort of sprang up around their secret friendship.

Some heaviness left Cosette's face when a cute bird landed a few feet away from them, chirping and nibbling at the grass. They shared an excited look.

"Don't scare it," she whispered, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"I won't. I know this is your area of expertise." Marius squinted at the bird, which had a black and white head, a gray body, and a bunch of fluffy feathers. "Do you know what species it is?"

Cosette shrugged, watching it hop from bush to bush. "Might be a Carolina chickadee, or a warbler I forgot the name of. Probably a chickadee."

Though he thought that "chickadee" was a hilarious bird name, Marius kept his laughs quiet. Finishing up their lunches, he and Cosette watched the adorable bird prance around the yard. Being this close to it was something special.

But then, both of their phones dinged. It was Joly, with a video one of his moms had shot of him practicing CPR (very very carefully, of course!) on his younger brother. And the bird flew away.

"Darn it," Cosette muttered. "Come back! We're sorry!"

"Hey, it's okay." With a little smile, Marius bumped her with his shoulder. "Let's watch Joly's video, it looks funny."

They did, and they saw how impressed Joly was with his newfound medical knowledge. Also how much he and his siblings laughed when their other mom walked in on this, freaked out, and accidentally knocked a few succulents over.

Laughing, Marius replied that he hoped their plants would be okay. Cosette only giggled a little, still staring out into the woods and wishing the chickadee would come back.

Noticing this, he had a worried frown. But Cosette was reading everyone else's texts, and he didn't want to interrupt.

chetta

that's a big oof buddy

jolllly

yeah i know, but it's really funny right?

enj

Definitely funny! so you actually kinda learned cpr? cus that's super cool

jolllly

yep! I am totally awesome

combeferre

So did you take anatomy this year for science, since you wanna be a doctor?

grantairrrrre

And have you been watching extra medical dramas? lol

jehan

if u ever want to practice surgery, my sister has a broken cabbage patch doll!!

jolllly

jehan... what XD

i've been watching plenty of grey's anatomy and house, and no i'm unfortunately taking chemistry cus last year i still wanted to be a chemist

courf

you can be the world's first doctor chemist! a doctist??

bossuet

he's also surprisingly good at organizing and interior design stuff… a doctist designer? a desidoctist?!?

ponine

yep it's official joly's gonna be a desidoctist!!

jolllly

:D

bahorel

Wait guys i have a joke

okay how many careers is joly gonna have?

jehan

uh… three

bahorel

no

feuilly

Dude what is it then

bahorel

only 250 billion!

After that, the group chat erupted with ten different lmao's or XD's or things like that. Cosette and Marius thought it was a funny joke, referencing the whole discussion about leaves from last week, but they were becoming somewhat annoyed. Why did everyone have to be on their phones having hilarious conversations right now? Why not yesterday or this morning, when nothing important was going on?

"It's not their fault," Cosette said, "but still. We're on a date! It was supposed to be just us."

"Yeah, I know."

She looked through the trees another time. "Should we go leave our phones back inside?"

Marius said he felt too lazy, making her giggle. They chatted about their friends for a little while longer, and he noticed that Cosette kept watching for her bird. "Hey, do you need a distraction from the bird being gone? I can juggle berries. Or I can swing around on your guys' tire swing until I fall off."

"No, I'm good." Smiling softly, Cosette leaned her head on Marius' shoulder. "I mean, you can juggle whenever you want—I love that. But it was just a bird, and I'm okay."

"Awesome." He looked down at Cosette, her hair tousled and catching the light in the cutest way. His heart did a little flippity flop. "You're the best, you know that? You're so cool. You know so much about birds, and about Disney movies, and you're so good with that drum in band."

"Aww, thanks," she said. "You're so cool, too! You juggle, sometimes you climb trees—and I don't know anyone else who can tolerate as much hot sauce as you do."

This was becoming awfully sappy, but Cosette and Marius didn't really care. They laced their fingers together.

For the rest of the date, they did silly things like jumping over and into puddles, trying to catch berries in their mouths, and swinging around in the tire swing until they were dizzy. Plus, they talked a lot.

The group chat was still going strong: Combeferre told everyone the awesome news that he'd gotten the second place prize for that scholarship he was writing the essay for that one time at the library, and Enjolras had the awesome news that he'd gotten a job at the Musain. Everybody congratulated the two of them, including Cosette and Marius, but eventually they did just go back inside to drop their phones and plates off.

"Having fun?" asked Valjean, done with his dishes and now reading a book.

"A bunch of fun, Mr. Fauchelevent," Marius answered, smiling as widely as Cosette was. Valjean said he was happy to hear it.

Chapter Text

"This is an intervention." Defiantly, Courfeyrac stuck his spork upright into his mashed potatoes. "We haven't all hung out in, like, three weeks! That needs to change."

Joly pointed out, "We're all hanging out right now."

"No, the cafeteria doesn't count." Seeing Marius about to say something, he added, "And neither does math class."

The rest of his friends looked at their lunches, either from the cafeteria or brought from home, and considered their dilemma. Homecoming was in two weeks, which did seem like a long wait until the thirteen of them could actually hang out someplace fun. But with band growing more and more demanding for Cosette, Combeferre, and Jehan, the swim season still in full swing for Feuilly, lots of babysitting gigs for Eponine and Musichetta, and a new job for Enjolras, options were tight.

Always a realist, Musichetta told Courfeyrac that maybe they would just have to accept the fact that not much would work leading up to Homecoming. Hanging out outside of school in smaller groups, as well as having lunch and math class, plus the bleachers every once in a while, was way better than nothing.

"I know that, Chetta," he sighed, "but it's frustrating. I mean, there's no harm in trying to figure something out, right?"

She shook her head, and Bossuet said, "Of course not, dude."

"And there's gonna be no problems with Homecoming, we have everything planned. It's gonna be great," added Bahorel. He was right: Homecoming, the past two years of high school, had always been super fun for the thirteen friends. There was just something about Sweet Caroline, Take On Me, and the Cha-Cha Shuffle that would put anyone in a good mood. "Hey, maybe they'll finally play some Hamilton this year!"

"Is that really school dance music, though?" Feuilly wondered. "Like, yeah, I know it's really good, but I can't picture anyone doing a conga line to King George III."

Before Bahorel could argue with that, Enjolras nudged Combeferre and Feuilly on the arm. "That reminds me! We gotta play Paper Football Trivia, there's that history test on Friday."

Paper Football Trivia, invented by the three of them back in middle school, was their patented way to study for tests. It went like this: someone would be the goalie and make the football goal with their hands, and ask the other two a trivia question related to the class. Whoever answered right first could try to flick the paper football into the hand goal, and if they scored they got two points. Then they were the goalie, and so on.

Enjolras wasn't in the same history class as Combeferre and Feuilly, but they happened to have their next test on the same day, so it all worked out.

While they tried to remember who had kept the paper football from last time, Grantaire pulled out his sketchbook over on the other side of the table. He flipped past awkward but improving sketches of cartoon characters, Marius' stuffed animals, and Bossuet as different dinosaurs to a blank page.

"Okay, I'm gonna try thinking of different places for us to go," Courfeyrac said, stirring around his mashed potatoes and staring at them like they'd give him some answers. "Well… there's always the library, there might be a few restaurants we can all afford that also have large enough tables—also, hanging out at the Musain during Enjolras' shifts, that's an idea—and we could try the park. Haven't been there in a while."

Cosette and Marius, each with PB&J sandwiches, nodded. "Yeah, the park's really nice this time of year," she said.

"And there's enough of us who drive now so that we don't need any parents to bring us," Marius brought up. "I guess that applies to anywhere we go, not just the park, though."

Bossuet was about to say that at least October weather had been nicer so far than September's rainy weather, when he bumped into his water bottle just the tiniest amount. And of course, it spilled and ruined his little plastic baggie of cookies.

Those were his last snack, and he was still kinda hungry, so he looked over to Joly's and Musichetta's lunches, in hopes that they had something extra. But Musichetta was wolfing down all of her macaroni, green beans, and cornbread, and Joly's home lunch looked pretty small.

"Hey, Feuilly…" Bossuet called, feeling somewhat guilty because this happened a lot. He had bad luck with snacks. Half the time, practically, they ended up lost, spilled on, or accidentally fallen on the floor.

Feuilly already knew the drill, and he didn't mind tossing Bossuet a pack of fruit snacks at all. Bossuet gave him an appreciative thumbs up.

Once Combeferre found the paper football buried in his backpack, he set it in the middle of the table and made the goal with his hands. "Alright, guys, what were some of the reasons the US won the Revolutionary War?"

Each thinking hard, Enjolras and Feuilly ate some lunch.

"Home territory, they had more to lose, and all the guerilla warfare," answered Feuilly. "There could be more, I dunno."

"Those are the main ones, so I think it counts," Enjolras said. Combeferre agreed, and so Feuilly sized up the paper football, flicking it with a lot of power. The thing hit Combeferre in the face, but that still makes a goal. (And at least paper can't break glasses!)

He said sorry to Combeferre, and then broke out in a grin, high-fiving Enjolras. "Boom! First two points of the game."

As they carried on, Grantaire struggled to find something to draw. Jehan and Eponine had an idea after he asked them for advice.

"Okay, one of us comes up with a category of stuff for you to draw," Eponine said.

Fiddling with their bright and wacky jacket, Jehan went on. "And then you draw as much of it as you can in however much time we give you! Sound fun?"

"Sure, I'm up for speed sketching."

Bahorel, who sat by the three of them, asked to play the game too. He, Eponine, and Jehan would take turns suggesting the category, and would all judge Grantaire's final work.

The first round was various animals in hats, as proposed by Jehan. "Alright, that's pretty cool," Grantaire told them. And with that, Eponine set a timer on her phone, and he started drawing.

Other students bustled around the table, feet shuffling and plastic trays falling into the trash. Harsh lights shone overhead.

Because his three judges were doing nothing except having some food and watching, the minute and a half felt excruciatingly long to them and like barely any time to Grantaire. On his sketchbook page was a scribbly manatee in a baseball cap, a hardly symmetrical butterfly in a beret, and an unfinished gator in a top hat. Overall, pretty darn good.

"Very creative," said Bahorel. "I think we need to pass it around the table, don't you guys?"

To Grantaire's embarrassment, Eponine and Jehan immediately agreed. He tried to shoot this down, but he couldn't come up with a decent enough reason.

Honestly, it was different showing his art to everyone in person than it had been on the group chat. Additionally, the perfectionist in him (which didn't come out much) didn't quite love these sketches as much as the little watercolor pieces he'd been doing.

But the sketchbook was passed around, and everyone did pretty much love it. At a concerned look from Musichetta and Bossuet, Grantaire let his shoulders untense and instead grinned at his friends' compliments.

When it reached the opposite end of the table, Enjolras took his hands out of the goal formation and really looked at it.

"Awesome!" he called back to Grantaire, handing it over to Feuilly and Combeferre with a smile. Pathetically, that was enough to make Grantaire feel all warm and fuzzy for the rest of lunch. He ignored this and focused on Eponine's choice for next round.

"Okay… really bad Halloween costumes!"

This made Courfeyrac pipe up. "Hey, that reminds me," he said, "what are we doing for Halloween? We can totally do something then."

"What about a party?" Wiping her mouth on her flannel sleeve, Musichetta turned to Cosette. "Didn't you and Valjean always want to host one of those?"

Those at the table who were paying attention to this discussion murmured amongst themselves; Enjolras, Feuilly, and Combeferre kept playing Paper Football Trivia and woo-hooing when one of them made a goal.

Cosette loved the idea. "That would be perfect! I know Dad's been looking for an excuse to Halloween-ify the yard."

"So is everybody gonna be free on Halloween, as far as you guys know?" Marius wondered, trying to get his question to reach all twelve of his friends. The Paper Football Trivia bunch were still in their own world, so Joly gave Feuilly a nudge and repeated the question.

Everyone would be free, thankfully. Cosette leaned to look over Musichetta and Bossuet's shoulders, and asked Eponine, "Do you think your siblings would be able to come, too? I know you'd all have to lie about where you're going… it's just been a while since I've seen them…"

Eponine's eyes widened a little. "I think they would, if they feel like it's better than trick-or-treating," she said. "And don't worry about us, we lie to our parents for fun sometimes."

This may have been somewhat bigger of a deal than she made it seem, if her awkward laugh was anything to go by. But the look she sent Grantaire, whose expression was worried, meant that whatever it was, it didn't matter too much. At least not right now.

After some silence, Courfeyrac clapped his hands and grinned. "Okay, so that's a plan! Thanks, Snow White."

"Yeah, you're welcome, Snow White," Cosette teased. This was an inside joke; Courfeyrac had a tendency to give people nicknames that got thrown back at him.

For example, Cosette was Snow White because she loved animals (specifically birds) and Disney movies, but then, as she had pointed out, so did he. Another instance was when Jehan shared their Gravity Falls poetry fanfiction Google Doc with everyone. Courfeyrac had commented "nice work Captain Poetry", and Jehan had written "nice work Captain Nicknames!" back. One day, after they binged a few episodes of The Office, Courfeyrac called Combeferre Dwight just to get on his nerves, so he got his revenge by saying Courf was Kelly.

This one hadn't gotten thrown back at Courfeyrac, but it was one of everybody's favorite nicknames: Enjolras, after giving one of his classic "you can do it, but either way, once it's done it's done, and you won't have to worry about it" pre-test motivational speeches, was now Our Fearless Leader. Enjolras pretended to find this obnoxious, but in reality he liked it.

As lunch carried on, every mini group at the table did their own thing.

Grantaire drew horrible Halloween costumes while Jehan, Bahorel, and Eponine watched; Combeferre accidentally said that Michael Jackson was the 7th president of the US instead of Andrew Jackson, and face-palmed while Enjolras and Feuilly cracked up laughing and comforted him; Marius ate his sandwich, watching Cosette and Courfeyrac talk up a storm about the Halloween party; Musichetta caught the fruit snacks Bossuet dropped while trying to throw them into his mouth, and offered a few of them to Joly, who didn't have any snacks left because this morning he'd forgotten to pack as many as he usually did.

"Do you think you should buy something extra?" she asked him. "That lunch looked pretty small."

Joly shrugged. "Maybe I should, I dunno."

Finishing the last of his fruit snacks, Bossuet suggested the double chocolate chip cookie, which was super yummy and just 50 cents.

"That does sound good," Joly said, "but I'm always kinda scared that cafeteria food is gonna be secretly gross."

A few people pointed out that, yes, plenty of cafeteria food wasn't the best, but the last thing that would ever be gross was a double chocolate chip cookie.

"Okay… well maybe I just don't like going up to order things by myself!"

Everyone softened a little, now understanding. Enjolras, Musichetta, and Bossuet all offered to go with him to act as a confidence booster. Then Courfeyrac had an idea.

"We're all going!" he declared.

Understandably, everybody was confused.

Having none of this, Courfeyrac stood up and made motions for his friends to do the same. "Come on, it's two weeks to Homecoming and Halloween's another week after that. This is an excursion—sort of—so let me have this."

It was certainly strange for thirteen people to go all the way across the cafeteria just for one of them to buy a cookie, but he did have a point.

Kind of.

Sometimes silliness was a good enough reason to do things. And so, each of them got up and walked over to the cookie stand.

"Do we have to all be in line with him, too?" Combeferre asked, with a little smirk, when they reached the place.

Courfeyrac was somewhere in between glaring and laughing. "No, we don't. Please, and I cannot stress this enough, shut up."

While Joly got in line with Musichetta and Bossuet, Grantaire wandered over by the trash can, right near a large window. He tucked his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt while looking out at the outside courtyard, and jumped a little when Enjolras appeared next to him.

The rest of them—Cosette, Marius, Bahorel, Eponine, Jehan, and Feuilly—were reading through all of the snack options listed on the cookie stand's board, debating what their favorites were.

Suddenly, there was a yelp from near the trash can.

Somebody's rolled up tinfoil ball of lunch garbage had hit Enjolras in the head. Everyone rushed over to see what had happened, except Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta, who stayed in line. Then they heard someone coming and apologizing.

"Shit, sorry about that!" said Montparnasse, with Marie trailing behind. His eyes widened when he looked around Enjolras to see his friends from band and his friends from the whole spying-on-mean-people-at-the-swim-meet incident, plus the people in their group that he knew of but didn't quite know.

This was awkward. "Well… I guess now you know why I'm in band and not, like, basketball."

He and Marie stood to the side while everyone checked on Enjolras, who picked up Montparnasse's garbage ball and threw it into the trash. "Guys, I'm completely fine," he insisted, turning to Grantaire and shaking his head.

"Gosh. One ruler falls on my head, and now I'm like a fragile little baby." They shared a laugh.

Grantaire suggested they start calling him Our Fearless Baby, and this made both of them crack up, until they realized all their friends were sort of staring.

Glancing at Marie and Jehan, Montparnasse said, "Again, really sorry. I was aiming for the trash."

"Well, yeah, I hoped so," Enjolras joked awkwardly. "Um, it's okay, dude."

With this now over, Jehan introduced Montparnasse and Marie to everyone they didn't already know. From near the front of the cookie line, Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta waved hello. Only Courfeyrac and Marius seemed a little apprehensive, at least of Montparnasse, given that he'd just hit their friend in the head.

"Anyway," said Jehan, "what did I tell you about throwing things, Monty?"

"That real life isn't always a game of catch—wait, are you talking about the water bottle incident?" he asked, crossing his arms. "It was just one time. Stop bringing it up. I've suffered enough."

Cosette and Combeferre giggled a little bit. The others, including Marie, were getting curious.

Ignoring Montparnasse's groans, Jehan recounted the incident, which had taken place during band last August. "It was a dark and stormy night… and I was passing out the water bottles after practice. This was a normal thing, but Monty was caught by surprise for some reason. I tossed the water bottle to him, and in the worst game of Hot Potato ever, he threw it over to the bleachers… and it burst open and splattered everywhere!"

This made everyone laugh. Even Montparnasse had to admit that it had been hilarious.

"Did that really happen?" Bahorel asked, amazed.

"Well, it was actually the middle of the afternoon and there was no rain at all, but yeah." Montparnasse gave Jehan a brief sideways look. "Pretty ridiculous, I know. I got… possessed by stupidity. Is that a thing?"

Jehan defended their weather lie, claiming artistic license. Combeferre gave Montparnasse a sympathetic shrug, saying, "A few minutes ago I said Michael Jackson was the 7th president, so I get what you mean."

Marie and her brother laughed at this, although they were quite confused at why he would be talking about presidents in the first place. Soon, Joly had successfully ordered his cookie, and the three of them were back.

"Hey, lunch is almost over," Enjolras pointed out, looking at his watch. "Should we get back to our table?"

The group wasn't sure. As Eponine and Feuilly glanced over at Marie and Montparnasse, they saw some disappointment. The two of them exchanged a look.

"Let's stay a little longer," she said. "Screw getting to class on time, right?"

Chapter Text

Two weeks passed, not too eventfully but still pleasantly. There weren't too many chances for the gang to hang out outside of school, besides small groups visiting Enjolras at work or having mini study sessions at the library.

Montparnasse and Marie began showing up at their lunch table to chat most days, usually for no longer than ten minutes (which was when his social battery ran out). Even though Montparnasse wasn't the easiest person to warm up to, they all mostly did after a while.

Everyone loved Marie, of course. She was interested in pretty much everything, which was great in this group of friends who all had different interests.

Sometimes she talked to Joly about anatomy facts he'd Googled, sometimes to Grantaire about art, sometimes to Cosette about Disney movies, sometimes to Bahorel and Courfeyrac about her culinary class, and on and on and on.

Classes came and went, with everyone antsy for Homecoming weekend to arrive. People wore face paint and school spirit shirts, posters decorated empty lockers, the band practiced more and more.

Finally, it was Saturday evening.

Laughing and chatting, the thirteen of them made their way to the long line of students waiting to get in the building.

Shadowy trees and blurred street lights overhead, along with just a hint of a chill in the air, made for the perfect kind of Homecoming atmosphere.

Enjolras smoothed his sleeves and turned to Musichetta. "Chetta, I can't believe you're wearing flannel to Homecoming and you're still the best-dressed person here."

Her dappled gray flannel, worn almost as a cardigan with a kaleidoscopic and colorful dress, did look super nice. Certainly better than whatever Jehan was wearing (as far as everyone else could tell, they had somehow mishmashed several completely unrelated outfits into one confusing outfit), and definitely better than Bossuet's crocs (which were actually Joly's, hastily borrowed because of a freak shoe-loss accident).

Grinning, she did a little curtsey. "Do you mean best out of the thirteen of us, or every single student here?" she joked.

They all laughed. Jehan pretended to be incredibly offended that they weren't considered best-dressed, prompting even more giggles.

Feuilly, walking at the front of the group, turned around and took several packs of fruit snacks from his pockets. "Okay, I don't know if it's really not allowed to bring food from home," he said, "but just in case it is, I should give these out now. My pockets look kind of stuffed and it'll be easier if everyone gets their own out here."

Everybody appreciated his smart thinking, and the fact that he brought his friends some food literally everywhere. He tossed the packs out.

"Hey, Combeferre," Feuilly called. "Want a fruit snack?"

Combeferre turned around. "Oh, yeah. I was just looking at these moths down on the sidewalk."

Like birds were to Cosette, moths were to Combeferre. Not all of his friends liked them as much as he did, but they did enjoy seeing the cool things he always noticed. Trying to not startle the moths too much, the thirteen friends watched them for a minute or two. When more people came up behind them on the sidewalk, they started going again.

Walking shoulder to shoulder, Marius and Cosette held hands. Even though they were going to hang out with everyone else most of the time, it was still their first Homecoming together as girlfriend and boyfriend—they were excited.

Grantaire looked over at them and asked, "So are you two gonna be one of those mushy couples who spend the whole night dancing and staring into each other's eyes?"

"Oh, shut up," Cosette laughed, shoving him.

"Yeah, we don't even do anything like that," Marius said. "We don't, right?"

His friends all mumbled something or turned away, leaving Marius to pout at Cosette. She shrugged, and he let it go.

By now they were coming up to the front entrance to school, joining the rest of the crowd. When they got inside, it was time to start having some fun!

All dark and purple, with music bouncing off the walls and thumping through the crowd, the cafeteria looked completely different now than it normally did. Courfeyrac and Bahorel led them all into the fray—only Joly, who wasn't crazy about crowds, seemed reluctant—as Party In The USA died down and was replaced with Dynamite.

For a while, they danced at various degrees of confidence or awkwardness. There were older songs and newer songs, but everything was pretty much a bop.

When Bossuet tripped into a dance move and hurt his ankle a little, the gang decided to take a break and go sit down at a table. After they set their things down and tried to have a conversation over the music, Montparnasse and Marie spotted them.

"Hey, guys!" she called, waving.

"Hey!" Feuilly called back. "You guys can bring a couple of chairs over here if you want!"

The others said hi to the two of them, while they dragged two more chairs over to what was already the biggest table in this part of the cafeteria.

Take On Me thumped in the background. A jumbled mishmash of conversations flitted across the table, including but not limited to: the pros and cons of doing the macarena to Hamilton songs (Feuilly and Bahorel); which nursery rhymes to jokingly ask the DJ to play (Eponine, Joly, and Marie); the best of the streamers and balloons in this particular part of the cafeteria (Cosette and Musichetta); funniest recent moments of playing Neopets (Courfeyrac, Bossuet, and Jehan).

Montparnasse listened to the latter conversation—full of words like Yurble and Puppyblew and Maraqua that sounded like total nonsense to him—for a few minutes before asking what the heck they were saying.

"Oh, it's Neopets," Jehan helpfully provided, while also not-so-helpfully giving no further description of what Neopets was.

Legs crossed and sleeves uneven, Combeferre took his glasses off and tried to clean them on his shirt.

"I wish I still had my old ones," he complained. "They went a lot better with what I'm wearing, these are completely the wrong color—and they're even blurrier now that I tried to clean them, so that's great."

Next to him, Courfeyrac raised his eyebrows. "What are you talking about? They look fine, you look great."

Combeferre took a second to put his blurry glasses back on, with a tiny surprised smile. Then he joked, "Oh wow, guys, it finally happened—he's hitting on me."

Everybody laughed, and then the group discussion turned to plans for Halloween, like whose younger siblings would be coming and all that. Excitedly, Cosette asked Montparnasse and Marie if they would like to attend the party.

He looked to his sister. "If you wanna go, I'm cool with it."

"Yay, we're going to a Halloween party!" Marie exclaimed, getting cheers from everyone.

In the middle of Enjolras and Eponine's Bohemian Rhapsody sing-off, something happened that began a little rift in this group of friends. Most of the people from the swim team came by, to say hi to Feuilly and Marie.

It was an instant mood-killer. Eponine, Bahorel, and Montparnasse had still been hung up on the people who were gossiping meanly at the swim meet all this time, even though nothing had come of it. Jehan was somewhat more willing to let it go, but they still turned away and crossed their arms when the swim team members said hi.

Annoyed, Feuilly and Marie ignored the hostility from the four of them, and Enjolras carried on singing even though Eponine had stopped. Concerned looks passed between everyone who hadn't gone to that first swim meet.

The swim team people themselves didn't know what they had just walked into. No explanation was given, so they awkwardly left.

Tension bubbled around the table, mixing quite oddly with the echoes of Fergalicious overhead.

Instead of making a big thing about it, Marie and Feuilly didn't say anything. Slowly the dynamic came back to normal.

An hour or so into the dance, Grantaire's stomach started hurting. It wasn't bad enough for him to go home, just to go sit in a different area with stools that were more comfortable than the chairs at the main table.

Small groups, mainly Eponine, chatted with him while others went and danced in the area that was much too crowded and loud for his upset stomach. Cosette and Marius, ignoring their friends' teasings, went outside to enjoy the cool, quiet air and peaceful night time vibes.

Everything was going pretty well, but that soon changed once again.

The incident earlier really had annoyed Feuilly and Marie, so it was only a matter of time before that needed to actually be discussed. His and Bahorel's bickering about Hamilton gradually transformed to much less pleasant bickering about the swim team.

When she came back from Grantaire, Eponine and Montparnasse got into this whole bit about conducting a CIA investigation to figure out the identities of the gossipers. Marie didn't take it well.

She looked to Jehan, but they didn't know what to say, which side to pick. It was a tricky situation.

"Guys, why can't you let it go?" she said tiredly. "I don't understand the logic behind being mad at every single one of them when only two people were saying those things. They're our friends, I wish you could just give us the benefit of the doubt that it doesn't matter. And the whole thing happened more than a month ago anyway!"

Feuilly nodded emphatically, and this set off a slippery slope of annoyed reactions.

It was basically the same arguments from that day of the swim meet, repeated: the four of them took those comments personally because they were mean, and it would feel wrong to let that go so easily, even if it seems unlikely that they'll ever figure out who it was. Eventually the six of them grew tired of going back and forth on something that was apparently a much bigger deal than had seemed previously.

So they sulked and didn't talk about it, which probably wasn't a great solution.

As for everyone who was more-or-less neutral on the subject, it was difficult to know how to resolve this. Fights honestly didn't happen much in this group of friends, and on Homecoming of all nights, it was unprecedented.

Enjolras really wanted to come up with something, but his friends were being frustratingly unresponsive. Maybe it just wasn't the right time. He tapped a foot on the ground, making a decision.

This was supposed to be a good vibes night, so he was going to find some better vibes.

It was fortunate that Grantaire honestly didn't mind being alone with his thoughts, because none of his friends had come up to talk to him for several songs. He thought it was a little odd, but at least the lights were pretty where he was.

Never Gonna Give You Up had just started playing when he spotted Enjolras out of the corner of his eye, carrying two cans of some drink that might have been lemonade.

"Hey," said Enjolras, leaning on the counter/table thing. His hair looked messy and defiant, like it always did in history class during a particularly heated discussion. "Everyone's in sort of a funk back there, about what happened with the swim team. It's a bummer, but it didn't seem like anyone was going to try to resolve it, so I wanted to get away from all that."

"Oh. That stinks." So that explained everyone's absence.

Remembering the lemonade he was holding again, Enjolras laughed a little. "Just in case you were wondering, I'm not gonna drink both of these by myself like a weirdo," he joked, kind of awkwardly but still getting a laugh from Grantaire.

"Eponine told me your stomach was upset—I know ginger ale is usually the thing for that but, uh, yeah—this is for you."

He handed it to Grantaire, who said thanks. Both tried to put the little brush of their fingers out of their minds, because duh, that always happens when you hand someone something, obviously. Totally doesn't mean anything.

Enjolras sat down on a stool, and started talking about their friends' argument again.

He was obviously upset, and that wasn't good, so Grantaire tried to come up with a subject change. The music overhead gave him the perfect topic.

"They really play Never Gonna Give You Up every year," he said, shaking his head. "I can accept it as a meme, but why does it need to be Homecoming music?"

"I dunno, I kinda like it," Enjolras said, shrugging. "It's catchy."

This was too good. "You unironically like Never Gonna Give You Up?"

"I sort of thought it turned from just a meme into a classic song people actually liked." Not sure if he was right or not, Enjolras scratched the back of his neck. "Courfeyrac and Jehan unironically like it too, though."

"And since when do they have high standards for music?" Grantaire asked, both sarcastic and delighted. "90% of Jehan's music is cartoon theme songs and Courf's alarm is still the Gummy Bear Song!"

Both of them laughed at that—really laughed, like how it was with the library gnomes.

There was a spark in Enjolras' expression as he downed some lemonade and set his shoulders back. (Combeferre called this his argument mode.) "I'm telling him you disrespected the Gummy Bear Song. You can't stop me. He is going to be so disappointed in you."

"Tell him then," Grantaire volleyed back, eyes bright. "I don't care."

After this, they enjoyed a while of comfortable silence, sipping lemonade and humming along to songs and just generally enjoying the vibe of the place. With a fond little smile, Enjolras watched Grantaire swing his legs back and forth under the stool, and with his own small smile, Grantaire watched Enjolras fiddle with the cuffs of his sleeves before finally giving up and leaving them uneven.

Grantaire did not dwell on the fact that they were sitting together, alone, at Homecoming; he instead focused on the lyrics of songs playing and on telling himself stupid distracting puns in his head. This mostly worked.

There were still no updates from their friends by the time each had finished the lemonade. Grantaire nudged Enjolras.

"I think the lemonade worked," he said, "or it was just a coincidence. My stomach's feeling better."

Enjolras sat up a little straighter. "Great! I don't know if everyone's back to normal yet or not, but do you wanna go check?"

Nodding, Grantaire folded his hands in his lap and glanced towards the crowds of people dancing. A Whitney Houston song was playing, and it looked really fun over there.

"Um… well actually, do you maybe wanna d—"

His question was interrupted by Musichetta, Joly, and Bossuet, who had just happened to run up to the two of them right then. "Hey guys! We have a plan to cheer everyone up, let's go!" she called.

"Awesome!" said Enjolras, already getting up from his stool. "You ready?"

Grantaire blinked a few times. "Yeah. For sure."

Unfortunately, none of the friends had taken an acting class during high school. (Marie did in freshman year, but she obviously wasn't part of the plan, so it didn't matter.) Joly assured everyone that it was fine, they could all act natural and say what they need to.

Feuilly and Marie still sat away from Eponine, Jehan, Bahorel, and Montparnasse, not happy about this situation but also not yet willing to be the ones to give in. The two of them were nice people who typically chose being reasonable over being petty—this was just different.

"What's been going on?" Grantaire asked his friends, pretending not to have been filled in.

Hands on his hips, Bossuet took a deep breath. "A terrible tragedy has occurred: six of our friends have gotten into a little fight. The Homecoming spirit has been dampened."

He got weird looks from everyone, because since when was this supposed to be Shakespearean?

At Joly's decisive head shake, Bossuet hastily revised what he had said. "Uh, I mean there was a fight about the swim team stuff, and now they're all upset." Seeing the opportunity for a little joke, he added, "Sorry, I got possessed by stupidity."

Montparnasse raised his head. "Well, when the water bottle incident happened, at least I wasn't like 'a terrible tragedy has occurred'."

This got a few laughs. Grantaire went on with the performance, making a big show of waving his arms around and gesturing to those involved in the swim team incident. "Are we really going to let this ruin Homecoming for us?" he asked dramatically. "We can't be in a bad mood for when they finally play the Cha Cha Slide!"

It was pretty obvious what they were doing at this point, but nobody stopped them because it was kinda funny.

Musichetta, trying extremely hard not to laugh, said, "Everyone should put their differences aside for the Cha Cha Slide." (Joly had insisted on the rhyme—Jehan appreciated it but Bahorel groaned.)

"If you put yourself in each other's shoes," said Enjolras slowly, needing to remember what he had to say, "you can… um… slide to the left and slide to the right, in terms of… relating to other people."

Absolute flabbergasted silence from the audience.

He looked pleadingly at Joly, who offered a sympathetic smile, and Grantaire, who was literally biting his tongue to keep from cracking up.

"And then," he finished miserably but loyally, "when you reach a compromise, you can… cha cha real smooth."

No group of fighting friends could have resisted bursting into laughter at this hilarious atrocity of an analogy, so when a tidal wave of laughs came bubbling up across the table, it was to be expected. Enjolras hung his head in shame, but at least it had had the intended effect.

By complete coincidence, the Cha Cha Slide came on at that exact moment. Obviously this moment of laughter didn't resolve everything; it mainly just relieved the tension. But before they all got up to go to the main dance area, Feuilly and Bahorel exchanged a little nod. The same happened between Marie, Eponine, Montparnasse, and Jehan.

A "we'll talk about it later" olive branch, which was much better than nothing.

Meanwhile, through this whole entire rollercoaster of ups and downs, Cosette and Marius were enjoying their alone time.

Not many people were outside in this part of the courtyard, so they could gaze up at the stars and loudly recite inaccurate lyrics to songs in private. It was a much needed moment of stress relief, a break from homework and everything for band at the Homecoming game last night.

Their favorite spot in the courtyard was this weirdly large ten foot tall chair that administrators sometimes sat in to keep an eye on students. Checking that nobody would spot them, they climbed it. There was an awesome view of the roads out past the school, even possibly to Cosette's house.

With a content sigh, Cosette laced her fingers with Marius'.

"This has probably been my favorite Homecoming out of all three," she told him. "You're my best friend, you know."

"Whoa, I passed Chetta?"

She reconsidered, laughing a little. "Well, maybe you guys are tied, but you get what I mean."

"Yeah." Marius took a moment to brush a few strands of hair out of her face and kiss her on the forehead. They smiled at each other, and she kissed him, feeling warm and excited and safe. "I do."

Chapter Text

With a quizzical expression, Musichetta examined the orange and black streamers, styrofoam tombstones, and cat-themed candy bowls lined out in front of her. Cosette and Marius held their breath, waiting for the verdict. It was only half an hour til people would start arriving for the party, so final decorations were crucial.

"It's definitely cheesy," she decided. "But that's what you guys were going for. Right?"

"Not really, but I'm good at adapting." She adjusted her binoculars, the stars of her birdwatcher costume. "Cheesy is better than nothing."

Marius, who had tried and failed to dress up as Yoda, picked up the streamers and looked around Cosette's living room for the best places to put them. The girls joined in setting things up, talking about their hopes for the party.

"Hopefully nothing like at Homecoming happens," said Musichetta. Her costume was essentially just a remix of several outfits from dance, which meant that she was very, very sparkly. "I mean, nobody else from the swim team's gonna be here, duh, but still. I don't think any of them have really talked about what happened since then."

Cosette nodded seriously. "Yeah, they should talk about it—not tonight, of course, but sometime. Those things aren't good to let build up."

Taking a step towards the kitchen, she glanced over at Valjean, still incredibly absorbed in finishing the prep for his quesadillas and other party snacks. Then Cosette turned back to Musichetta and Marius, and said quietly, "Speaking of that, you know how Eponine's siblings are coming tonight?"

Both nodded, knowing how this had been a tricky subject and wondering why she seemed to not want Valjean to hear.

"I dunno, I'm just feeling kinda guilty about all that," she explained, staring at the punch bowl on the kitchen table. "She said it was fine… but lying is stressful, and they had to work everything out with getting Grantaire's mom to take them, and--and what if their parents find out they still know me and Dad? What if they get in trouble all 'cause of a dumb Halloween party?"

"Hey, it's gonna be okay." Marius put care into sounding as soothing as possible. "You guys have stayed friends for this long, and the Thenardiers have never had a clue."

Musichetta ruffled one of her tutus. "I'm sure if this really was stressful, Eponine would have told you," she added.

"Okay." Sighing, Cosette looked back towards the kitchen again. "But another odd thing is that Dad and I never, like, completely talk about everything with them. You know? I know everything was weird before and after my adoption, but I forgot so much about back then, and sometimes I get that feeling like there's something else I should know. It's weird for us."

None of them were sure what to say about this, which was just as well, because Valjean called them over to taste test his appetizers. Before long the first guests arrived.

Jehan (dressed as Rapunzel from Tangled) and their little sister (dressed as Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time) were all smiles and ghost puns and pretending the fruit punch was blood for vampires. That certainly took Cosette's mind off her worries.

They dragged Valjean's dusty set of speakers out and connected it to someone's phone, blasting a playlist composed of Halloween songs and non-Halloween songs (because it would have been a relatively short playlist otherwise), right before Feuilly came. He tipped his Woody-from-Toy-Story cowboy hat at the music, making everybody laugh.

Everyone chatted, even Jehan's little sister, but she mostly just ran around and complained about Azelma not being there yet. Next to arrive were Montparnasse and Marie.

None of the friends had put much effort into coordinating costumes, which suddenly seemed like a bad idea.

"Monty," asked Jehan, clutching at their Rapunzel dress, "why are you Flynn Rider?"

Instantly everyone but the two of them burst into laughter at the fact that Jehan and Montparnasse had accidentally done a couple's costume. He awkwardly explained that he hadn't had any costume ideas, so Marie picked this for him.

"I swear, I didn't know you were going as Rapunzel," Marie said, stifling a giggle. "Hey, wait—Feuilly, are you Woody from Toy Story? I'm Buzz Lightyear!"

They high-fived their coincidence while the other coincidence was simmered over and finally laughed about. "Well, your costume looks nice," Montparnasse said, hands in his pockets. "Definitely makes sense for you."

Sipping punch, Jehan smiled a bit. "Thanks. Yours does too, I think."

As the party grew and developed, more people came and joined the fray.

Valjean's quesadillas were a hit, which was more than could be said for his costume: dressed in all pink, he would make a flamingo pose whenever someone asked what he was. It was supposed to go along with Cosette being a birdwatcher, but results were… questionable, at best.

To Cosette's horror, Bossuet showed up without any costume at all. Classic bad luck had led to him forgetting to plan one, but because Cosette was a great improviser, she rounded up all of her plastic flower leis and let him basically bury himself in them.

It looked pretty funny—Jehan's sister startled everyone by laughing so loud. "Azelma needs to finally get here, so she can see you," she giggled. "She'll get a kick out of this."

Bossuet beamed, happy to provide a few laughs. Jehan rolled their eyes and said, "Azelma will get here when she gets here. Stop being so impatient."

"I'm impatient? You're the one who already caved and published the first chapters of your fanfic, the one you were gonna wait to finish before putting it online," she retorted. This resulted in a lot of laughs from the crowd, high-fives from Cosette and Bossuet, and a confused look from Montparnasse. He asked what she meant by a fanfic.

"Oh, it's nothing." They took a few awkward sips of punch, because telling Montparnasse about the Gravity Falls poetry fanfic was a little too embarrassing to deal with right now.

Luckily, a distraction popped up. Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and his little brother showed up, and their costumes were immediately the talk of the party.

Based on their inside joke of comparing each other to characters from The Office, Courfeyrac and Combeferre had decided on being Kelly and Dwight without a question. Because he hadn't been able to think of anything else, and because he was naturally drawn into most of their shenanigans, Enjolras was Jim. (It was hardly a costume, just basic clothes and a tie, but at least he kind of tried. Also, Courfeyrac had attempted to turn Enjolras' costume into a variation of his nickname, but Our Fearless Paper Salesman just wasn't as catchy as Our Fearless Leader.)

But all of that paled in comparison to Courfeyrac's little brother, who had only needed one accessory to create the best costume ever. It consisted of this: the most ridiculous, bushy, enormous fake mustache of all time.

There was just something about a little ten-year-old kid with a gargantuan mustache that would make anyone laugh.

"See, Courf—I told you everyone would like it," he told his big brother, very pointedly. "And it's not stupid."

"I never called it stupid! I just said that it's literally just a mustache, and that hardly makes it a costume." Courfeyrac looked to Combeferre and Enjolras for support, but they just shrugged. The two of them had encouraged his little brother on the mustache costume despite Courfeyrac's disapproval, so they couldn't really help. "It's a great mustache, buddy, but still."

About a half an hour later, Bahorel—dressed, to nobody's surprise, as Alexander Hamilton—looked out the window and turned around, washing down a few bites of quesadilla with some punch. "I see Grantaire's mom's SUV, guys! They're here," he called. Everyone cheered, especially Jehan's sister and Courfeyrac's brother, who knew the Thenardier siblings well from school.

It was hard to pick who to focus on, costume-wise, when the six of them came inside.

Grantaire went as Every Holiday Ever, decked out with a Santa hat, cheesy jack-o'-lantern knee high socks, a glittery pink Valentine's shirt, turkey-patterned pants, and even an old Easter basket filled with plastic eggs that he got one year and forgot to throw out. Azelma was Connie from Steven Universe, and Louis and Felix (her two younger twin brothers) were Superman and Batman, respectively. And for some mystical reason, Eponine and Gavroche had both dressed up as Grunkle Stan from Gravity Falls.

After everyone said hi, Musichetta asked what that was about. Eponine crossed her arms and explained.

"Well, Jehan said that after they decided to be Rapunzel, they realized they should have been a character from Gravity Falls," she said, "so they asked me to do it. I said only if I could be Grunkle Stan."

"And I took that as a challenge to be an even better Grunkle Stan than her," added Gavroche. Behind him, Azelma scoffed and shared an eye roll with Jehan's little sister.

This explanation, albeit a little weird, honestly tracked for Eponine and Gavroche, who were known for being super competitive. One of Cosette's clearest memories of living with them was a tournament for who could clean the bathroom better. From what they'd each observed at the Thenardiers' house, Grantaire and Marius agreed that being overly competitive was how those two showed affection.

There was a lull in the conversation after Courfeyrac's little brother said hi to Louis and Felix, the three of them laughing about how his fake mustache looked like their teacher's real one.

Fiddling a bit with her binoculars, Cosette asked, "Hey, do you guys want some snacks? My dad made quesadillas and cookies, and there's punch, too."

"Sure," Eponine said lightly. "Where is Valjean, anyway?"

"I think he's in the bathroom—" she trailed off, seeing her dad come back down the hall. Valjean's face lit up when he noticed the new guests, and he held out a hand to high-five them. It'd been a while since he and Cosette had seen Eponine's siblings.

Azelma, Gavroche, Louis, and Felix all gave Valjean high fives, and he asked them how school had been. The topic of their parents didn't come up, because it didn't need to.

Exchanging a smile, Cosette and Eponine watched this and felt the worries they had each had about awkwardness fade away. It was a nice moment, quickly ended by Grantaire's sudden laugh at noticing Jehan and Montparnasse's costumes for the first time. "So Cosette and Marius didn't even do a couple's costume, but you two did?" he joked, delighted.

"I wanna spend the rest of the weekend watching some romantic comedies—the best ones, the ones where I can just totally picture love and marriage and babies," rambled Courfeyrac, in his best impression of Kelly from The Office. "Do you think that'll happen for me, Jim? Do you? Do you??"

He had to cut himself off, because he was so close to laughing; Combeferre, trying to stay in character as Dwight, nearly spilled his punch from having to hold his laughter in.

"Jim" (aka Enjolras) simply shrugged, certainly not enjoying this little game as much as his two friends were. Essentially, they kept one-upping each other with how much they could act like their character, through direct quotes and improvised impersonations.

As Combeferre launched into his own monologue about Dwight-related topics (pretty much just bears, beets, and Battlestar Galactica), Enjolras glanced across the room.

Only for a moment, he shared a little knowing laugh and eye-roll with Grantaire, who was pouring himself punch.

But by the next second, Marie had pulled Grantaire into a conversation about ranking all the best Halloween candy, and Azelma and Jehan's little sister had raced right past Enjolras, leaving him out of breath from backing up so fast. He regained his composure, focused again on what Combeferre was saying, and told himself that the only reason he felt so jittery was almost being run into by two pre-teen girls.

"You okay?" asked Courfeyrac.

"Yeah, totally." Enjolras adjusted his clothes and started blinking at a more normal pace, sneaking another glance towards the punch table. "Nothing weird with me, uh, ever."

They both gave him a look, but Combeferre decided not to comment on that. Instead: "You broke character!"

"Dude, how do you know Kelly would never ask Jim if he's okay? I mean, it wouldn't be the first thing she'd bring up in a conversation, but she's not heartless."

Dragging Louis and Felix by the hand, Eponine wandered past the three of them and caught the tail end of that argument, which sounded hilariously strange out of context. Soon they found Montparnasse and Marie, who were chatting with Grantaire about candy bars.

"You guys haven't met Monty and Marie yet—they only really officially joined the group a few weeks ago—but they're twins too," she told her little brothers.

"Cool!" said Louis. Felix went for a simple nod.

Marie introduced herself, Buzz Lightyear wings bobbing up and down. Although he had less clear excitement than she did, Montparnasse did smile when Louis asked them who their favorite superheroes were.

"I've always liked Aquaman," he answered easily, standing somewhat taller. Struggling over having to pick just one, Marie settled on Spider Man, Wonder Woman, and Thor.

"And it's pretty obvious who ours are," joked Felix, gesturing to his Batman costume and his twin's Superman one.

Laughing, the four of them got into a conversation about superhero stuff and twin stuff. Eponine and Grantaire communicated in their own silent way of looks and gestures about how well her youngest brothers and their newest friends were getting along. He made a mental note to ask her later if Montparnasse actually was okay letting her call him Monty, since usually Jehan was the only one allowed to do that.

Speaking of Jehan, they had started a game of Simon Says (weird choice for a Halloween party, but who are we to judge?) over by Cosette and Valjean's nicest, comfiest couch. Unfortunately for their sake, the game had already been halted by the fact that Bossuet was laughably bad at it.

For whatever reason, Gavroche and Courfeyrac's younger brother thought this was the funniest thing they'd ever seen, and that only opened up a bigger can of worms when Bossuet started diving into his best moments of his worst luck. His greatest hits of being an unluckiness magnet, as he liked to say.

Having a new audience for all these stories was so amazing for him, and when he really got into it, Bossuet was an entertaining storyteller.

So the game faded into the background as everyone who had been playing (even his friends who'd heard all these stories dozens of times before and witnessed most of them) settled in to listen. Eventually, though, just the kids were left—joined by Jehan's little sister, Azelma, Louis, and Felix.

Snacking on cookies, Musichetta and Joly both watched Bossuet fondly, knowing he was in his element. Feuilly made a comment about how Bossuet had become a hit with everyone's younger siblings.

"Yeah, he definitely has," agreed Joly.

Musichetta fiddled with her tutus, smiling contentedly. "It's good for him. I know he's mentioned a lot how he always wished his parents had more kids than just him, but they didn't, so this is nice."

It was nice—the whole party was, so far. Old friends reconnected, new friendships made, and a lot of fun had by everyone.

Chapter Text

"Anybody wanna play Neopets?" called Cosette, shoving fallen and tattered orange streamers off of the desk chair.

A few people came over, including Feuilly and Joly (who, crazily enough, had only been introduced to the game a couple months ago, though it felt longer). Bossuet's storytime was beginning to break up, so Gavroche and Azelma bounded over to the computer desk too.

"Alright, I don't want to hog it—how about everybody can play their favorite game?" suggested Cosette. "Feuilly, you're really good at Hasee Bounce, right?"

He eagerly took the seat and put his cowboy hat in his lap, so he could see the computer screen without a problem. "Yeah, I almost got a trophy for it a few weeks ago!"

They congratulated him, and as Feuilly clicked to the Game Room page and scrolled to find Hasee Bounce, Azelma asked Cosette about her favorite Neopets. Of course, she couldn't decide, and neither could Azelma, so they just happily chatted about how cute all of them were.

Pretending not to be totally invested in Hasee Bounce, Gavroche feigned a sigh. "This is alright," he mused, "but Poptropica is so much better."

Azelma shoved him a little. "Do you really have to tease Cosette like that every single time we see her?"

"It's okay, I'll just tell Eponine you think her scrunchies are tacky and girly," she joked, getting laughs from everyone.

When Feuilly had played enough, Joly took over and thought about what his favorite game on Neopets was. Maybe Kass Basher? Or Turmac Roll? But what about Meerca Chase II, Faerie Bubbles, Extreme Potato Counter—

"Just pick one already," said Azelma, impatiently but not unkindly. "How about Snowmuncher?"

"Sure. Thanks." Feeling somewhat sheepish, Joly clicked on that one and started playing it. Never one to have much talent on the first try, he always got better when he practiced, and this was a game he'd gotten plenty of practice at. Having a bunch of people cheering him on certainly helped.

Over at the punch and snacks table, Louis and Felix were having a brainstorming session, and they called Courfeyrac's little brother over to show him their creation.

"It's a cookie and pretzel sandwich," Louis gushed, while Felix held it out like it was a precious piece of treasure. (Which, of course, it was.)

"Whoa," said Courfeyrac's little brother, eyes wide. He twirled his fake mustache. "You guys are geniuses."

Bahorel was getting punch at the time, and he was kind of full from all the snacks he had earlier, but this sounded too good to pass up. As they boys watched, he made his own cookie and pretzel sandwich. It looked spectacular. He offered a toast, and they all clinked sandwiches, laughing a bunch.

By the window—out of which could be seen an especially Halloween-y full moon covered by wispy clouds—Musichetta and Jehan's little sister had gotten into a whole trivia match about Adventure Time.

On Jehan's little sister's side: a Princess Bubblegum costume that made her feel incredibly confident, an impressive knowledge and love for cartoons that rivaled even Jehan's, and the fact that she had just watched Adventure Time last night. On Musichetta's side: an highly selective but excellent memory (limited almost exclusively to shows she loved, lyrics from songs she hadn't heard in years, and her friends' birthdays) and a stubborn competitive streak that only came out once in a while.

Enjoying herself possibly too much, Eponine had pulled up a comprehensive Adventure Time trivia quiz from Tumblr and was reading the questions and answer choices like she was an actual game show host. (Her Grunkle Stan suit worked well for this.) They were almost halfway through, and basically tied.

When everything flowed like this, it was the sign of a great party. Valjean checked on everyone, chatted when people wanted to chat, and most of all enjoyed the fact that his daughter and her friends were having fun—and had all loved the quesadillas.

"Hey, Marius, let's chat," said Montparnasse, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. This was sort of weird—they only ever really talked after band practice, the times when Marius would pick everyone up and bring them to the Musain.

Being a naturally curious person, Marius went along with him. Across the room, Marie asked Grantaire the same thing.

To the disappointment of Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras, who Grantaire had been playing the Dwight vs Kelly game with, he and Marius met up with Montparnasse and Marius in a part of the house that wasn't crowded. It was the chilly porch, made even worse by the huge freezer they were standing next to.

"Hey, so what's up?" asked Grantaire, shivering a bit.

"Well, this is sorta awkward," began Marie, "but we were just wondering about some things. Like how it seemed like Cosette and Valjean knew Eponine's little siblings really well, and she was talking about remembering how Louis and Felix were adorable when they were born? I guess their families have just been friends for years?"

Exchanging a look, Grantaire and Marius wondered what to say to that, which was coincidentally the exact opposite of the real situation.

They didn't exactly think that Cosette or Eponine would be so opposed to the two of them knowing she used to be the Thenardier's foster daughter, but still.

When they still hadn't said anything, Montparnasse added that if it was too personal or just none of their business, they didn't have to say anything.

"No… I mean it is personal, but it's also pretty important to our whole friend group," said Grantaire. He and Marius started summing up the whole complicated and messy web between Cosette, Valjean, and the Thenardiers, leaving out the worst of how Eponine's parents had treated everyone but still saying enough to fill in the blanks.

Montparnasse and Marie just looked at the ground or each other for a little while. Finally, she said, "We really had no idea… I feel bad for bringing it up."

"Don't." Grantaire shrugged. "Like you said, you didn't know, and you couldn't have."

"And it's not like this is something that's always weighing on everyone's minds or making situations complicated. Sometimes it is, but Cosette and Eponine staying friends led to them bringing the whole group together," added Marius.

"Okay." Fiddling with his costume, Montparnasse asked, "And what's this about Jehan having some Gravity Falls fanfic? I could tell they're trying to hide it from me."

Everyone giggled, and with admirable grace and silence, Montparnasse accepted the onslaught of teases about him and "Rapunzel", why he cared so much about Jehan's fanfic, etc. etc. He didn't know why the accidental Rapunzel and Flynn Rider thing was still so funny, but objecting would probably make it worse. Grantaire eventually took pity on him and explained about the fic, like how it was a weird prose/poetry style and how it was probably going to be the biggest thing on AO3 since forever. Captain Poetry (as Courfeyrac had started calling Jehan) would change the fanfiction game forever.

Satisfied, Montparnasse put his hands in his pockets. Marie hesitantly asked what a desidoctist was, and that got the laughter started all over again.

"Oh yeah, I forgot that was Joly's costume tonight," Marius managed to say between laughs. "That was an inside joke from our group chat one day—what was it a mix of?"

"Designer, doctor, and chemist. It's like Joly's top three career choices, we just mashed the words together."

"Huh, interesting." Marie had an inspired look on her face. "Wow, I should do that—how would you mash up swimmer, chef, and artist? Swimcheftist? Chefartimmer?"

Those were not working, but as Montparnasse pointed out, the second one had fart in it, and that was absolutely hilarious.

After some hushed scheming in the corners of rooms, the six kids grabbed Bossuet to talk in the now-empty porch. Jehan's little sister was still beaming from winning the trivia game by two points.

"What's going on, guys?" asked Bossuet.

Gavroche reached into the deepest pocket of his Grunkle Stan suit, and secretively pulled out a baggie of fake cockroaches. This only confused Bossuet more.

"One day after STEM club, me and Gavroche were waiting for Eponine to pick us up near the dollar store," Azelma began explaining. "We went in there that time, and there was a whole Halloween section, so we bought these."

Bossuet blinked. "Um, why?"

"Because they were only a dollar," she said. "Anyway, what's the one Halloween-y thing this party doesn't have?"

"I don't know. Bobbing for apples?"

Felix raised an eyebrow, and Louis asked what bobbing for apples would have to do with fake cockroaches, ever, in any universe. Embarrassed, Bossuet admitted he was bad at coming up with ideas under pressure.

"There's no scary prank," Azelma continued. "I brought a tape dispenser here because I put it in my pocket for school yesterday and my Connie skirt just happened to be my school skirt. So we can use the tape to stick the cockroaches to the walls, and then it'll be fun when people see it and get scared!"

"We told you about it 'cause we wanted you to help us with it," Courfeyrac's little brother said.

Bossuet had to admit that that would probably be a good prank, and he was incredibly touched that they would pick him out of everyone else, but he wasn't sure what to say. For one thing, it would be awkward to be the only one out of all his friends to be pulling a prank on them. He voiced this concern.

The kids nodded, then Jehan's little sister reasoned, "But what if we tell them you knew about it, and then you were the only one out of all of them to know about it?"

"Shoot." His flower leis were getting scratchy, so he took some of them off. "You've got a point there. I still don't know, though."

"Come on, it's just putting fake cockroaches on walls!" Gavroche pointed out.

"Right, but I told you guys how clumsy I am—how do you know I won't blow the whole operation?"

Muttering amongst themselves, the kids considered this, coming to the conclusion that while Bossuet wouldn't do anything he could mess up through clumsiness or bad luck, he could be a lookout to keep people from catching on to the prank. Wondering what he'd gotten himself into, Bossuet agreed to this, and they went back to the party.

"The music Cosette picked is really good," Courfeyrac remarked, with a nod from Grantaire. "This is like second Homecoming."

"Except with costumes," smirked Eponine, "and it's at Cosette's house." She and Enjolras high-fived.

Rolling his eyes but not bothering to give that any more of a response, Courfeyrac went back to watching Grantaire's dance moves, which exhibited an impressive lack of self-consciousness. "I wish there was a stage or something you could stand on—I would totally dare you to dance in front of everybody!"

Laughing, Grantaire turned around and examined the empty spot on the snacks and punch table. "It seems sturdy enough to sit on, do you think Valjean would mind if I got up there and danced?" he wondered.

"Dude, maybe don't, even if he wouldn't mind," warned Eponine. Enjolras agreed.

"I was just joking." Here, Grantaire and Courfeyrac made eye contact (and that was never good news). "Unless…?"

As far as Eponine and Enjolras knew, this couldn't really lead to much actual harm, even if it was weird and unnecessary. So they didn't say anything when he handed Courfeyrac his Easter egg basket and sat up on the table. His sit-dancing turned out to be a let-down anyway, not particularly exciting and not even getting any spectators.

None of the kids were watching him, which he hadn't expected; usually Eponine's siblings loved to watch (and make fun of) him, but for some reason they were all looking more towards the walls and trying to be quiet.

"Well, this was anticlimactic," Grantaire sighed. "Oh well."

"Wait, don't get down yet, I have an idea." Taking a few steps back, Courfeyrac picked up a plastic Easter egg and tossed it to Grantaire, who caught it no problem. Nobody was close enough to the table for there to be a risk of hitting them, so this was fine.

Grantaire loved this idea, and got really really into it, whereas Enjolras and Eponine were less amused.

This was all well and good until Courfeyrac messed up his aim and sent an egg flying way past the punch bowl and other snack bowls, on the other side of Grantaire's empty space on the table.

Too caught up in the game, Grantaire misjudged the throw and leaned all the way over.

As these things often do, everything happened quickly and slowly at once.

Grantaire went way too far to maintain his balance. As Courfeyrac, Eponine, and Enjolras all cursed under their breath, he fell off the table… taking most of the food and punch with him.

A clatter of crashes and an unpleasant silence grabbed the room, peppered with confused and concerned looks.

Everyone started talking—mainly Joly asking Grantaire if he was okay, and Valjean asking what was going on. Lifting his head with a troubled expression, Grantaire confirmed that he was fine, relatively speaking.

Pressure and guilt welling up in his chest, Courfeyrac burst into rambles about the game of toss, how it was entirely his fault, and how it was completely stupid.

Any desire to say 'I told you so' vanished from Eponine's mind when she saw how guilty her friend looked. "I should've been more insistent on telling you guys not to do it…" she started, trailing off when it didn't sound like enough.

This was such an unexpected and unlucky thing to have happened, nobody really knew what to do with it.

Joly, ever a dutiful desidoctist, broke the silence again. "Do you need any ice packs, Grantaire?" he asked kindly. Still on the ground and trying not to wince in pain, Grantaire nodded. A few feet next to him, Enjolras fiddled with his tie worriedly.

"Okay." Joly turned to Valjean and Cosette, who had been understandably grave and quiet this whole time. "Mr. Fauchelevent, do you mind if I look through the ice packs you have?"

He shook his head. Cosette pointed to the freezer out in the porch, and Joly headed back there immediately.

"I'm really sorry, Mr. Fauchelevent," Grantaire blurted. "That was so dumb of me… even for me, it was dumb."

More heavy silence.

Chapter Text

"None of the bowls are broken, at least," said Enjolras after a moment. "I guess the punch bowl was plastic too?"

His words snapped everyone out of the weird funk they'd been in—there was punch running through the carpet, pretzels and cookies scattered in crumbs across the floor, and bowls that needed to be washed. Courfeyrac felt like he should obviously be the one doing the most, but his nerves got the better of him and he fumbled just picking up pretzels.

Just like Joly had risen to the crisis of Grantaire getting hurt, Feuilly naturally and without any second thought assumed leadership of the cleaning task force.

Along with Bahorel and Musichetta, he quickly figured out what were the most important things to do and how many people needed to do them. This was a lifesaver, because with everyone around, it could have gotten chaotic quickly.

Tense, murky silence hovered over the room until Jehan started singing "When Will My Life Begin" to themselves out of anxiety. Their singing relieved some of the tension in the room.

Small groups chatted while cleaning, and it started to feel a little more normal.

Spraying the biggest punch stain on the carpet while Courfeyrac rubbed at it with a towel, Combeferre waited for it to become loud around them to ask him if he was okay.

"Of course I am." Courfeyrac flipped his towel around to a clean section. "I'm not the one who fell off a table or had stupid kids spill all my snacks."

They were quiet a moment more.

"You know it was just an accident, right?"

When Courfeyrac didn't respond, Combeferre adjusted his glasses and went on, speaking frankly but still sympathetically. "Really, you don't need to beat yourself up about it. I know you do that sometimes."

"Yeah, but I still feel bad whenever something like this happens," he admitted. "There's this, there was the thing when we were arguing at the library and you broke your glasses, and when that ruler fell on Enjolras' head 'cause of our sword fighting thing… and last week I spilled my soda all over the table at the Musain and the person who saw it wouldn't let me clean it up. Even though I asked to. Several times."

Combeferre couldn't help giggling at that, because it was awfully funny, in an endearing way.

It made Courfeyrac laugh too, if just barely.

"It doesn't help that Feuilly didn't do anything but he's still so good at cleaning and organizing everyone," he whispered, half-joking, as he gestured to Feuilly giving Azelma and Louis things to do.

Although he still felt terribly guilty for messing up the party in such a dumb way, Courfeyrac was certainly less stressed after getting to joke about things.

He nudged Combeferre with his damp towel. "Y'know, obviously Dwight has his nice moments and isn't a jerk all the time, but you're definitely a lot nicer than him overall."

"Aww, thanks. Kelly has her nice moments, too, but you're way nicer than her."

It wasn't how they had expected their game to end, with actual sincere compliments instead of more competition. Despite this, neither really minded.

This whole time, Grantaire had stayed in his spot on the floor, out of the way of everyone cleaning. Even though he felt terrible about not helping, he felt almost as terrible physically from his fall. Already super sore, naturally. Plus, once Joly brought back a diverse selection of ice packs from Valjean's freezer, he wouldn't let Grantaire get up and do work.

"You need to rest," Joly insisted.

Grantaire just rolled his eyes, but it wasn't mean. "Yeah, yeah, you're the best doctor ever, I'm lucky to have you as a friend, blah blah blah."

Beaming like he'd been given the best compliment ever, Joly swapped ice packs around.

Around them hovered Marius, who had been trying to perform damage control while not being sure exactly how much was needed or what to do. It was still difficult to gauge Valjean and Cosette's reactions, and this was worrying. Marius was certainly annoyed at Courfeyrac and Grantaire for being reckless, but it was obviously an accident. He'd never been good at holding grudges anyway.

Of course, he knew that Valjean and Cosette understood this too, even if it would take them a while to come to that conclusion. That made perfect sense because it was their snacks and bowls that had been spilled everywhere, their party disrupted when everything had been going so well.

So, based on that, would it simply make things worse for him to butt in and ask his girlfriend and her father how they were feeling? Or was more immediate action needed?

Sometimes Marius wished he weren't so good at dissecting situations like that, because it left him with no clue what to do.

While he stewed, significant progress was being made with one of the largest piles of cookie crumbles on the floor. Carrying dustpans, Marie, Feuilly, and Bahorel went into the kitchen, where there were still a couple quesadillas left on the counter.

Dumping her crumbs in the trash, Marie sighed.

"Gosh… is there always something ruining a fun night in this friend group?" she joked awkwardly. "First there was Homecoming, now this..."

To keep it from being too weird a moment, Feuilly teased her. "Nah, I think it's a new thing—you and Montparnasse are bad luck."

She giggled, and that could have been that. But Bahorel hesitated, wanting to say something to the two of them.

"Um." Avoiding eye contact with Feuilly and Marie, he threw all of his crumbs away. The dustpan got caught when the trash can lid fell down, so of course he had to mess with that for what felt like five minutes before finally talking again.

"Well, me and Jehan have been talking a bunch this past week about what happened at Homecoming—can't believe that was only a week ago, ha ha," he said, somewhat ramble-y.

It wasn't an understatement to say that Bahorel did not ramble often, so Feuilly and Marie were both listening intently.

"And, y'know, I am really sorry about what happened. We all are." He tapped his fingers on his dustpan. "I mean, I still don't completely get acting like there's not two people on the swim team who have been talking behind your backs for who knows how long, but you guys are on the team and we're not. Besides, it was Homecoming. We were out of line to act like that."

"Thanks, man," said Feuilly, smiling along with Marie. "That means a lot. We forgive you, don't worry."

Marie gave him an affectionate punch on the arm. "It was a weird situation," she reassured Bahorel. "Obviously we get why you guys didn't want to let it go."

Never one to let himself get sappy, Bahorel simply smiled and did some finger guns. Sometimes that wasn't enough for his friends to know that he really did care, but sometimes it was. Crumbs all in the trash, the three of them made their way back to everyone else.

In the middle of the room, Azelma and Cosette were working on a punch stain. "You know what this whole thing kind of reminds me of?" asked Azelma, nudging her on the arm. "When we broke my mom's vase 'cause we were playing with that toy bus on the counter. You remember that, right?"

"Um, I'm not sure exactly, Zelma." Cosette had a preoccupied look on her face. "Must have been a while ago."

As she worked on the stain and thought about it, and Azelma tried not to look embarrassed for bringing it up, Eponine subtly slipped closer to them. "Maybe she doesn't really wanna talk about all that," she told her sister, who nodded. Even without the stress of what had happened tonight, talking specifically about Cosette's time as their foster sister wasn't always the best idea for fun conversation.

"No, it's fine," Cosette said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "I think I do remember that—I was so clumsy, it was ridiculous."

Giggles erupted from their little group, because it was incredibly true.

No one held a candle to Bossuet's unluckiness or clumsiness, but everyone had their own perfected brand of mishaps to share. Cosette always used to drop or break things at the most hilarious and tragic moments; Feuilly sometimes spilled his fruit snacks all over his lap; Eponine went on the weirdest tangents until nobody knew what the heck she was talking about. (And it seemed like falling off of tables was becoming Grantaire's thing.)

This ushered in a whole conversation about epic fails, starting with Louis and Felix's suspenseful tale of one day in school when they accidentally ruined their teacher's huge stack of sticky notes and had to cover it up.

Then Jehan told the band practice story of Montparnasse hitting a water bottle into the bleachers and making it explode, which was a total hit with the kids.

"Okay, I guess you're never going to stop bringing that up," he grumbled to Jehan, who gleefully shook their head.

"Can you really blame them?" grinned Marie.

With a surprisingly heartfelt amused look at Jehan, Montparnasse shrugged. "It's comedy gold, so, y'know, it'd be a waste not to use it."

"Thanks, Monty." Jehan hummed to themselves for a moment before looking back up. "And hey, if everyone's gonna be laughing at you—or with you, I dunno—at least it's finally about something else besides our costumes, right?"

"Yeah, but now you brought that up again. Quick, who has another epic fail story?"

While Musichetta was in the middle of talking about the time she spilled a cup of water and it became a cascading waterfall going off the table, Enjolras finished cleaning up in his area. There honestly wasn't much left to do now with everyone working together.

He glanced, hopefully not too obviously, towards where Grantaire was still sitting near the wall by Joly. Then he glanced back towards everyone else.

After a few more cycles of this, Courfeyrac noticed what he was doing. Their noiseless conversation went like this:

Courfeyrac gestured to Grantaire and raised his eyebrows.

Enjolras shrugged, with a sheepish smile.

Hands on his hips, Courfeyrac put on his best "talk to him!" expression, which pretty much settled the matter. There was a reason he won most of their silent arguments.

So Enjolras sidled over to where Grantaire and Joly were talking, which was more like Joly in full rant mode about some niche medical topic from the depths of Wikipedia. It was clear after a minute that Grantaire just wasn't in the mood, despite Joly's good intentions.

"Hey," Enjolras interjected gently, "maybe ancient splinting methods for broken bones isn't the best thing to talk about right now?"

"Oh. Well, it is in the injury arena, so I guess that makes sense. Kind of too soon." Joly gave Grantaire an apologetic look. "Sorry, bud. I'll stop info-dumping."

"It's okay. I love your info-dumping usually," Grantaire told him (which may not have been the entire truth), "but yeah."

Soon after this, Joly got up to go talk to Musichetta and Bossuet, taking Grantaire's ice packs with him, because they'd been on for a while. Enjolras slid down the wall to sit next to him, taking a deep breath.

The heaviness of everything that had happened hit them, especially Grantaire, whose holiday-themed clothes seemed less cheery now than they were earlier. Moving his arm a smidge so that it almost touched Grantaire's, Enjolras said, "I know you already said you were fine, but how are you now?"

"I'm doing just great." Grantaire sighed. "Gave myself brand new versions of the bruises from last time, which I'd been beginning to miss, ruined the party, and made two of the nicest people in the world mad, at least for a little while if not the whole night. How 'bout you?"

Several beats of silence passed as Enjolras told himself not to correct Grantaire or say that things weren't that bad, because that probably wasn't what he needed.

"The whole thing was so dumb of me—who even sits and dances and plays catch on tables anyway?"

"I don't really know," Enjolras answered truthfully.

After some waiting, Grantaire bumped him on the shoulder, pretending to be annoyed. "Dude, you're supposed to say I'm not dumb, that's the nice thing to do."

Now Enjolras sighed. "Of course you aren't."

Something in the earnest way he said it made Grantaire's eyes go wide, but thankfully Enjolras went on before he could dwell too long.

"Joly's definitely never gonna let you sit on tables again, you know," he teased, looking down with a smile and fumbling with his tie, "after this and what happened at the library. It's becoming a serious problem."

They laughed, and Grantaire considered something he hoped didn't sound too strange.

"Hey, don't you think it's weird how the main things we bond over are gnomes, lemonade, you getting hit on the head with stuff, and me falling off of tables?"

It had totally been intended as a joke (or, at least, intended to be interpreted as a joke), but the way Enjolras said, "I don't think it's that weird," certainly didn't make it feel like one.

There was something Grantaire couldn't describe in his expression, something that made him feel dizzy enough to have to look away.

Side by side, they watched everyone else tidy up and chat about who knows what, feeling like ticking time bombs.

Clearly, something was going on between them, and had been for a while. There'd been a vibe at Homecoming, there obviously was one now—even all the way back in September, there weren't too many ways to interpret Grantaire plucking that leaf from Enjolras' hair and the awkwardness following it. Eponine knew all about the whole situation, Courfeyrac knew some, and maybe their other friends had picked up on things here and there. As far as both Grantaire and Enjolras knew, this most likely wasn't just a one-way thing.

But that was scary as heck, because acting on this realization was something entirely different from the comparably simple task of realizing it. Neither could bring themselves to actually cross that line, not right now.

(Which was for the best, honestly. Could this party really handle two of the friends getting together, on top of everything else going on?)

Still, there was a ridiculous and embarrassing amount of tension right then, and something needed to be done about it.

One moment later, they started talking over each other.

After a little laugh, Enjolras asked, "What were you saying?"

"Oh, nothing." Grantaire pointed to the punch stain on his horrible tacky Valentine's Day shirt. "Just that one of the hearts got stained."

"Wow," he said. "That's a real shame. Tragic."

It was a truly terrible shirt, and bets had been going around the whole night about who could convince Grantaire to donate it to Goodwill after this. Hardly as offended as he wanted to be, Grantaire laughed. "Please shut up."

Smiling to himself, Enjolras went on. "Anyway, do you want to go sit in an actual chair? You've been on the floor for a while."

"Yeah, you're probably right." Slumping, Grantaire watched everybody who was finishing the last of the cleaning. "Still feel crappy for causing this whole mess and not helping with it at all, though."

"I get that, but you did really kinda hurt yourself," Enjolras pointed out. "I don't think anyone's blaming you for resting."

That meant a lot to Grantaire, who showed it by smiling everywhere but at Enjolras and by getting up without any more argument.

He moved around— "Crap." He stopped.

It wasn't as simple as just getting up, because sitting down for so long only exacerbated how sore he was.

Eventually, with Enjolras’ help, he could stand.

He let his hands fall away from Grantaire's shoulder and elbow once he was steady, but soon moved one up again to barely graze his back, just in case. Grantaire proceeded to pretend that that hand wasn't the only thing he was paying attention to at the moment.

This Halloween party had been a bunch of ups and downs, emotion-wise, for Grantaire. Right now he was a Magic 8-Ball being shaken too many times to know what was actually going on, getting re-calibrated over and over. Just one of those nights.

But this was nice. Really nice. And collapsing into the comfy recliner was even better.

When Combeferre, Eponine, and Marius exchanged notes about the state of things between Courfeyrac, Grantaire, Cosette, and Valjean, they started making progress. Through somewhat subtle maneuvering, the four of them had been placed together and were now talking by Grantaire's recliner.

"Again, we're both so sorry about what happened," said Courfeyrac. "It was a stupid game we were playing, we'll never do anything like that again."

"Yeah, of course," agreed Grantaire. "I don't know what we were thinking."

Cosette and Valjean exchanged a look that was a little tired, a little forgiving, and a little amused. "Believe me, I don't know either," she said, getting small laughs from the two of them. "But it was an accident—and you got all bruised up from it, Grantaire, poor thing. So of course we forgive you! Right, Dad?"

"Yes. I just hope you two are serious about not doing things like that at other people's houses again, because it's a serious thing," he advised.

Keeping their relief from being too visible, Grantaire and Courfeyrac nodded. And with that, it was better.

While they kept chatting, Bossuet and the kids had formed a group across the room. He'd been trying to talk to all of them since the table incident happened, but there hadn't been a good time.

"So guys, I think maybe the prank isn't such a good idea anymore," he whispered. "Even though things have cooled down some. Might just be too soon."

"You should've told us that earlier! We were putting them up before the table thing happened," complained Azelma, "and then we were all cleaning, which would have been the perfect time to sneak up against the wall and take them down."

Her siblings and friends nodded sagely. Bossuet suppressed his annoyance.

"So none of you thought that the prank was a bad idea after what happened? It didn't occur to you guys at all?"

"Maybe," admitted Gavroche, "but you're the adult here."

He raised his eyebrows. "I'm not an adult, I'm still only 16."

"Fine—you're the brains of the operation," Felix suggested, getting supportive nods from Louis and Courfeyrac's little brother.

"How am I the brains of the operation when you guys are the ones who came up with it?"

When they couldn't give a good answer, Bossuet calmed himself down. It didn't matter that they hadn't thought to take down the fake cockroaches themselves. Now was fine, because luckily no one had noticed them yet.

After he proposed the solution to just go around and stealthily remove the fake cockroaches, there was an awkward silence.

Jehan's little sister pointed over to Grantaire's recliner, where Courfeyrac, Cosette, and Valjean still stood.

"Please tell me the cockroaches aren't all over there," Bossuet groaned, starting to wish he hadn't been dragged into this. "Because that stinks."

With a short sigh, Azelma crossed her arms. "Yep. Right behind them. I can't believe Courf hasn't seen it all yet."

So this wasn't the best situation, with only a matter of time before their prank was discovered and no way for them to stop it from happening without people noticing. All they could hope for was that everyone thought it was more funny than obnoxious, more of a stress relief than a stress booster.

Pretty soon, it happened.

In the middle of explaining his Kelly Kapoor costume to Valjean, Courfeyrac just happened to look towards the wall.

And he saw them: at least fifteen cockroaches, totally real as far as he knew. (The room was kind of dark and he was stressed from the whole night; plus, hey, maybe fake cockroaches were one thing the dollar store could make really well. Who knows?)

"What the heck?" he said, stepping back with wide eyes. "There's cockroaches all over the wall!"

Confusion and fear swept through the room quickly, while Bossuet and the kids watched in exasperation. The expressions on their faces were basically "we saw this coming and it could've been avoided but wow, look at it happening now". He was about to stop the madness when Cosette's voice rang through the crowd.

"Wait, they're fake!" she yelled, needing to yell it a few more times before it sunk in. And it was still a minute after that before everyone could actually process what had happened.

Now that they knew the cockroaches were fake, it was pretty darn hilarious… especially Jehan and Montparnasse's reactions, which had been to grab each other's hands protectively. To stop the laughter about this, Jehan changed the subject.

"That was a great scary decoration, Cosette," they said. "I can't believe nobody noticed it until now!"

Bossuet swapped shocked looks with the kids.

"Yeah," she said in a confused tone of voice, and turned to Marius. "Did we put those up?"

"No, we definitely didn't," he confirmed.

Before the situation could drag on any longer, Bossuet finally raised his hand and explained about the prank. It was a mixed reaction, which he had expected. On the one hand, it had really worked well, so they got respect for that. But on the other hand, all of their little siblings pulled a prank on them, with Bossuet's help? Sorta weird.

"It is weird," he said with a laugh. "Eponine, I just gotta say your siblings are really good negotiators. Courfeyrac and Jehan, yours are too."

His accomplices beamed at the compliment, as their older siblings wondered whether to be proud or worried.

After this, everything finally cooled down for good. For the rest of the party, people played games and laughed themselves silly about how crazy the night had been. No more tables were fallen off of, nor any more fake cockroaches discovered. The only person still having some issues was Grantaire, who needed to practice how to explain his bruises to his mom.

"She won't be mad," Eponine promised, though she honestly didn't know if that was true. "Yeah, she'll say it was dumb, but that's what we've been telling you all night, so you're already used to it."

Grantaire groaned. "Maybe I can say the party got crashed, and I had to beat the guys up because they were trying to rob us? Or something?"

"In that situation, nobody besides Valjean would be able to do anything actually helpful. Well, maybe Louis and Felix would've, 'cause they're superheroes tonight," she joked.

"Yeah, I'll just tell her the truth. It won't be so bad."

Sighing, he happened to catch Enjolras' eye from across the room. One sympathetic smile later and everything was butterflies and stupid, ridiculous jitters.

Yeah—not such a bad night, after all.

Chapter Text

Having a job was alright, in Enjolras' opinion. Yes, the Musain wasn't the best place ever—the fast food industry as a whole had too many issues for him to want to think too much about it while he was actually at work, didn't want to put himself in that agitated state—but the extra money and arguably helpful experience were worthwhile perks. At least, he liked to be positive about it overall.

An unintended benefit of him working at the Musain was that it had become the most common spot for his friends to hang out, besides school.

It certainly made his shifts more fun for one, a few, or a whole bunch of his friends to pop in pretty often. He could tell his managers thought it was weird, but they couldn't really complain, given the clear and steady spike in sales ever since he started working there. Plus, Enjolras was freakishly hard-working.

One night after practice, the band kids (along with Marius, who was everyone's ride, and Courfeyrac, who had recently started soccer practice) were basically the only ones in there.

"Okay, who thinks I can eat this whole thing without stopping to drink water?" asked Marius, brandishing a burrito he'd just poured several packets of hot sauce into.

Montparnasse raised his eyebrows. Jehan gasped like this was the height of drama. Cosette looked a little concerned.

Only Courfeyrac and Combeferre rose to the challenge, goading Marius on and wondering aloud exactly how spicy that burrito must be.

Clearly loving this, Marius turned to Cosette. "Alright," she said, hands folded, "you can eat your burrito, just be careful."

"'Course I will, don't worry."

After a quick kiss on the cheek, it was burrito time.

Personally, Enjolras thought this situation was rather reminiscent of Icarus from Greek mythology, but since he was technically only eavesdropping on the conversation, he didn't say anything. Despite that, he couldn't help paying particular attention to Cosette and Marius.

Half from Grantaire and half from Eponine, he'd been filled in on something that originated during the Halloween party.

Basically, Montparnasse and Marie were curious about why Valjean and Cosette seemed to know Eponine's siblings so well, so they asked Marius and Grantaire, undeniably the two people who knew Cosette and Eponine the best, respectively. They couldn't have known anything about the full story of Cosette's former status as Eponine's foster sister or about Eponine's terrible parents (Enjolras himself had always had a nagging feeling he didn't know the full story, either, especially since he knew Cosette in elementary school but didn’t learn about any of that until well into middle school), of course, so it was a relatively harmless situation.

Still, after filling those two in on the basics, Grantaire and Marius had felt the need to tell Cosette and Eponine sooner rather than later.

From Eponine's own account, she hadn't minded much. But according to Grantaire, who Enjolras knew observed and deducted a lot more than he usually let on, it was kind of more complicated than that.

Either way, it'd definitely affected Cosette. She appreciated that they told her right away, but everything from that time of her life was touchy. It was bad luck that so much of that had been relevant recently.

Eponine had mentioned to him that she thought it might be smart of her to give Cosette some more space than usual. Both Enjolras and Grantaire felt like that might not have been the best solution, but neither knew how to tell her that.

Thankfully, though, the whole thing seemed to not have put any kind of rift between Cosette and Marius.

It was harder to tell with her and Montparnasse. As far as Enjolras knew, he and Marie weren't going to be told about Cosette and Eponine knowing what happened on Halloween unless they asked, because if they forget about it then it clearly wasn't a big deal. Based on this, Enjolras figured it was safe to assume Cosette was overall okay with things.

(Also, another follow-up from the Halloween party: Grantaire was still taking it easy and recovering from his fall and his bruises. Joly had been over at his house several times to check on him, and had coincidentally became friends with Grantaire's mom and stepdad, although not his older brother.)

After Enjolras cleaned the countertops again and helped a random customer with a to-go order (who gets Mexican takeout at 10:30 at night?), Courfeyrac came up to give him updates on the spicy burrito situation.

"Poor Marius," he confided, "it's too much for him—to be fair, it'd be too much for anyone—but he really wants to eat it all."

"Yeah, he's only human."

As Marius finally accepted defeat and downed most of his water, Cosette gave him comforting pats on the shoulder and Combeferre and Jehan got into an animated discussion about something that had happened during band practice, with Montparnasse interjecting a few sarcastic comments and raised eyebrows.

Content to talk by themselves, Courfeyrac and Enjolras chatted about random stuff until it was finally time for the restaurant to close and everyone to head home.

Enjolras offered to give Combeferre and Courfeyrac a ride, which they certainly appreciated, because four people squeezed into the back of Marius' car shouldn't have been possible, even though it technically was.

Customer service was not for the faint of heart, as Enjolras had learned in his time at the Musain. So many people were rude or stubborn or, he hated to admit, just dumb. It got the better of him more times than he liked.

His saving grace in dealing with horrible customers, of course, was Bahorel.

Always one to call people out on their crap, Bahorel took pure delight in telling rude customers what Enjolras and his coworkers couldn't say themselves. He didn't mind always spending his whole time at the Musain up by the counter, because eating standing up was fine with handheld food and he and Enjolras had plenty to talk about. It was mostly music and school stuff, but still.

"This is why high schoolers need to be trained more before getting jobs they aren't prepared for," one man had remarked, after being politely apologized to for being given diablo hot sauce instead of mild.

Enjolras gritted his teeth, and Bahorel stepped forward, a gleam in his eye.

"And it's also why people could stand to be nice every once in a while," he said, "y'know, for the sake of human decency?"

It didn't get much of a response, unfortunately, but Bahorel was satisfied anyway.

"Thank you," Enjolras said, trying not to laugh.

"Don't mention it." Bahorel took a generous bite out of his quesadilla. "One of the few great pleasures in life."

Putting her sticker-covered wallet away, Marie scanned the kitchen and everything behind Enjolras. "Hey, do you know if this place is hiring?" she asked him.

"I'm honestly not sure." Then, because there was no one behind her in line and he was genuinely quite curious, "You want to get a job? Aren't you already on the swim team and in the art club and doing a bunch of other stuff?"

Marie shrugged, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. "Swim season's almost over, and I'm expecting to be kinda bored over winter break, so getting a job would help." She glanced back over at Montparnasse, who had already sat down at the table while she ordered. "And I want to get my brother a fish tank for Christmas—he wants one of those, for some reason—and that's pretty expensive."

"Cool. Really, that's impressive, how busy you are already and then wanting to add a job to that," Enjolras said honestly. "I can see why you and Feuilly are such good friends, he's the same way."

"Aww, thanks!"

While she was talking more about how Feuilly had also started job-hunting and it might be weird if they applied to the same places, Enjolras glanced over at Montparnasse for himself. He didn't hold a grudge against him for the whole hitting-him-in-the-head-with-garbage situation or anything, but sometimes he just didn't know what to think about the guy.

One part of it might have been that he, Grantaire, and Eponine now sat with Montparnasse during history class, and sometimes they talked to Enjolras slightly less as a result. But that was petty, so it didn't actually matter.

Another thing definitely was all of the jokes everyone made about if the garbage thing happened again. They were funny, but still.

Even though Montparnasse wasn't the friendliest, Enjolras reminded himself, some people are just like that, and it's not necessarily anything bad about them.

After all, if Jehan thought he was friendship material and Marie thought he was a good brother, that was enough for him.

"... and another reason I want a job is I've always thought the uniforms were kind of interesting," Marie had been saying. "Like, I dunno, it's cool to have clothes you wouldn't wear in any other context."

Enjolras looked down at his unimaginably boring uniform and laughed, incredulous. "You want one of these?"

"I bet you wish your uniform was red."

This was how Grantaire's orders always started out when there was no one else in line and they had time to talk—either that or something about the hat covering up his hair, or the stained countertop, or the sounds of traffic outside.

"Yeah," he admitted, playing along. "Red is more my color."

"Definitely more than this is," Grantaire joked, holding in a laugh. Enjolras tried to replace his smile with a glare and basically failed. Oh well, he was only human.

After a couple more rounds of their… well, what would you call it? Back-and-forth, banter, flirting?

Not that either of them would go that far and actually call it flirting, even with everything that happened on Halloween. Yes, it kept seeming clearer and clearer that they both liked each other, but frustratingly enough, that realization alone wasn't enough to bridge the gap of this being scary. Enjolras felt pathetic. Talking to Courfeyrac about it would only make things worse overall, although it might help in some ways. The sympathetic advice was nice, but being called Our Fearless Coward again and again wasn't.

Anyway, after this had gone on for a while, Enjolras suggested Grantaire go ahead and order. Not because he wasn't enjoying this, but because another customer could come in at any moment.

Someone did come in once they were almost done, cutting Enjolras off in the middle of his sentence.

A little flustered, he forgot what he was saying and instead stared at the register. "Um… do you want a receipt?" Which was something he didn't usually ask his friends, because he knew they wouldn't want one.

Grantaire seemed flustered too, or at least caught off guard by the question. "Should I?"

"I don't know, maybe it's something for you to draw on," he suggested. Whenever Grantaire was there by himself, which included today, he liked to sit and sketch.

"Dude, I have so many papers I've drawn on, it's just gonna be something else to throw away." At Enjolras' slightly disappointed expression: "Well, maybe I will. I can show you after."

This got him a smile and a receipt, and soon he went to go sit down, food in tow.

From behind the counter, Enjolras tried to keep busy, but every once in a while he'd glance over there anyway. Over where Grantaire was bent over his sketchbook—hair fallen in his eyes, green sweatshirt comfy and a size too big. Enjolras always stumbled the most on his words while talking to customers when Grantaire was here.

Later, Grantaire came back, receipt in hand. There was nobody else at the counter.

"That looks really cool," said Enjolras, leaning forward to see it better. A cute bird in a scarf and hat, flowers next to a burrito, and manatees under a disco ball. "Seriously."

"It's silly." Running a hand through his hair, he leaned forward some too.

"No, it's not."

He'd said it automatically, and when Grantaire's eyes went wide, he backtracked. "I mean yeah it's silly, um, but like in a good way," Enjolras rambled.

Around them, the hum of the Musain ebbed and flowed. It might have started raining outside.

Before he could overthink it, Grantaire handed him the receipt and mumbled something about how he could have it, if he wanted. "You like it, and I'm just gonna throw it away, you know?" Hopefully that wasn't totally weird.

Taking it with a smile, Enjolras said thanks.

From then on, it became basically an unspoken thing for Grantaire to get a receipt while he was at the Musain, draw or scribble or write random stuff on it while he ate his food, and then give it to Enjolras.

By the end of the week, he had smudged and folded pictures of cats in funny clothes with funny puns, trees on the Moon next to some kind of bear-like alien, and dinosaur portraits of everyone in their friend group. As much as he loved the drawings, his favorite receipt might have been the one where Grantaire just wrote down all the ridiculous things he'd overheard in the hallways at school, on the bus, and in the Musain that day, along with his extensive opinions on everything he eavesdropped.

It was nice to have their own little inside joke, if you'd call it that. The receipts burned holes in his pockets.

"I'll have a Baja Supreme Jalapeño Freeze Blast Nacho Cheese… uh, Twister," said Feuilly, grinning at Enjolras and trying not to laugh.

Next to them, Musichetta, Joly, and Bossuet had identical horrified looks.

"And what," she said, "is that?"

"You can try it if you want," Feuilly offered, as Enjolras handed him a simple water cup. After a few more seconds, the three of them put two and two together. "Just water. It's our inside joke."

Joly shook his head, looking very relieved. "Good, because if I had to watch you drink something with jalapeños and nacho cheese, I would've… well, I won't say it."

"Yeah, please don't," Musichetta joked, making a face. Bossuet nodded emphatically.

From there, they got into a little discussion about caffeinated versus non-caffeinated drinks, because Bossuet had a story about his parents accidentally drinking a bunch of tea before bed that they had thought was decaf. "So they barely got any sleep, and then my mom almost ran a red light driving me to school, and my dad kept falling asleep at work," he finished. "Seems like my bad luck wore off on them."

Everyone laughed. "Something like that kind of happened to me once," said Musichetta. "I was super tired but I had dance practice that evening after school so I got a couple sodas and then could barely sleep that night."

"Hey, Joly," mused Bossuet, "in your professional medical opinion, is caffeine worth it?"

"Um, I dunno. I always hear conflicting things about it, a lot of stuff is like that." He shrugged, looking thoughtful. "For me, I feel like being dependent on coffee would make me all nervous and jittery, but I kind of got myself dependent on herbal tea, so what do I know?"

Enjolras and Musichetta shared a slightly confused look, and Feuilly said, "Isn’t herbal tea decaf? I thought it was."

At first, Joly had the same disappointed expression he always did when realizing he was wrong about something. But then he got really excited.

"I placebo-effected myself!" he told them, gesturing with his hands. "'Cause, y'know, I thought the tea had caffeine and it didn't but it kinda had those effects anyway. Cool."

His friends agreed, remembering how happy Joly had been the first time he realized he'd been Pavlov-ed.

"All that science stuff is actually pretty cool when you think about it," Musichetta remarked.

She had worn her personal favorite outfit that day, and maybe some people would've been scoffed at putting so much effort in just to go to the Musain, but Musichetta wasn't like that. A simple graphic tee, nicely worn jeans, and her dappled gray flannel from Homecoming—it boosted her mood significantly.

In comparison, Joly wore dinosaur pajamas disguised as regular clothes, Bossuet had a shirt that had been stained over and over again (he kept it for sentimental reasons, and the fact that he always forgot to go clothes shopping), and Feuilly just had school clothes. And, of course, Enjolras' uniform was nothing special.

They made for an odd-looking group, but you could say that about all of the friends. That might have been their charm.

Before the Musain became the friends' default place to hang out, birthdays were always poorly planned and all over the place. One year, they floated so many birthdays that they had to combine about eight of them into a single party! Everyone could agree that while the Musain wasn't the nicest venue, the lack of hassle in choosing somewhere to go would be worth it.

Today was their first birthday party since he'd started there, for Marius and Eponine, because they were born less than a week apart.

It was decided that every party would be at 9:00 PM or later, so as not to have to worry about many other people being there. Even when it wasn't busy, Enjolras still technically had to stay at the counter the whole time, but his coworkers clearly had a soft spot for him and his friends and he figured they'd let him sit with everyone else part of the time.

Montparnasse and Marie couldn't make it tonight—they had some family thing, sounded boring—and Enjolras found himself disappointed, because he'd really grown to think of Marie as a good friend this past month or so.

To make up for that, however, were four welcome additions to the group: Azelma, Gavroche, Louis, and Felix.

Eponine's siblings had worked together to convince their parents to let them come, naturally by implying they'd be super rowdy and annoying otherwise. (As for the Thenardier parents, this was something everyone was grateful for—they absolutely hated the Musain.) In an even bigger streak of good luck, Eponine was actually able to borrow her mom's car and drive herself and her siblings there, instead of needing a ride from someone.

"It's ridiculous," she'd complained many times during history class. "I have my license but I can't use it to get to school or basically anywhere fun, and I have to drop whatever I'm doing at any given moment to do all the stupid chores my parents dump on me."

Enjolras seriously felt for Eponine, so he was glad things had worked out tonight.

While he worked extra hard to clean stuff in an attempt to compensate for hopefully getting to relax later, his friends began coming in. Marius and Cosette were the first ones there, Eponine and her siblings the last. The transition into a party was clear from their arrival, because everyone loved the younger Thenardiers, even if they could be pests.

Bossuet, who had become friends with them (plus Courfeyrac's little brother and Jehan's little sister) at the Halloween party, was particularly looking forward to this.

The reunion, as seen by Enjolras from the front of the kitchen, was touching.

Azelma affectionately punched him on the arm; Gavroche immediately made a dozen jokes about his shirt, which was still the unfortunately stained one; Louis and Felix recounted their latest adventures in failed pranks and even more ruined teachers' supplies. It was a lot for Bossuet to take in at once, so Eponine shushed them.

"Nah, it's alright," he told her. "I don't really mind."

When Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Bahorel came up to get food for everyone, Enjolras took their order. And that was totally what he was focused on doing, of course, not glancing over at Grantaire, doodling something on what might have been a card for Marius or Eponine.

Food was eaten, small yet thoughtful or funny gifts were exchanged, many laughs were had, and eventually Enjolras did get to join them, when there hadn't been new customers in over thirty minutes. Courfeyrac tried to start up another group hug now that he was there, and when Eponine refused again they got into even more bickering. But Combeferre smoothed that out and things were chill again.

Slipping his hands in his pockets and easily fitting into the ensuing conversation about Jehan's hilarious outfit, Enjolras sighed contentedly.

Yeah. This whole job thing was okay, at least when he had his friends there with him.

Chapter Text

"And then Courfeyrac saw the fake cockroaches on the wall, but he totally thought they were real, and everyone freaked out, Aunt Clara!" gushed Azelma, criss-cross applesauce at the Thenardier's dinner table. Her plate of lukewarm turkey and soggy stuffing sat forgotten as she recounted the events of the infamous Halloween party prank.

Cutting her off, Gavroche continued. "Pretty soon they realized it was all fake and Combeferre and his parents had us take them all down, but it was so great."

Prodding at cranberry sauce across the table, Eponine pursed her lips carefully.

Valjean and Cosette had hosted the Halloween party, not Combeferre, of course. But since the Thenardiers didn't know their children still secretly kept in touch with the two of them, they'd had to make up a lie about the party. Eponine had told Combeferre it was going to be him, based on the fact that he was reliable and that, as far as she knew, her parents had never run into his parents at the store or something.

She didn't think they would be that weird and actually ask about the party if that ever happened, but in any case, she found it helpful to be prepared.

Sometimes it grew exhausting to put so much effort into dealing with her parents.

It wasn't just this particular situation—honestly, they found themselves having to cover up the Valjean and Cosette stuff much less often than you might think. But there was still so much else, from being made to do every single chore and having to carefully finesse her way into getting permission to hang out with her friends to worrying about her siblings in all kinds of ways.

Don't let this suggest for a moment that Eponine wasn't great at balancing everything, at using how well she knew her parents to her advantage at every possible moment. But every once in a while she felt like whining about how she shouldn't have to be so great at it.

Now, Louis and Felix were entertaining Aunt Clara—an overall nice lady, except for the part where she infuriatingly had no idea what Eponine's parents were actually like—with stories of their latest adventures.

Eponine had a sudden feeling of staleness, of wanting to get away from family Thanksgiving dinner as soon as possible. Usually this meant she was lonely for her friends.

Her friends that she'd barely seen since break started. Her friends that were probably all on the group chat right now.

But how to sneak back into her room and join them?

That was what she thought about, half-heartedly eating potatoes and paying enough attention to not be caught off guard if someone asked her a question. In the end, the answer was simple.

"I think my stomach just started hurting," she said, looking mainly at Aunt Clara, who was always sympathetic to these kinds of things. "If I lay down for a bit it'll probably feel better."

Her aunt bought it, which meant her parents would play along too. (They were always careful to put up a nice facade when company was over.) She figured her siblings saw through the whole thing, but there were certain things the five of them never crossed each other on, and stuff like this was included.

With that settled, Eponine hurried off to the room she shared with Azelma, littered with school papers and scrunchies and tattered stuffed animals. A little messy, for sure.

But still, it had her phone. Which was blowing up, just like she'd thought.

Apparently most of her friends had eaten hours ago, so they were free to text now while they hadn't been when Eponine had nothing to do except listen to Gavroche drone on and on to Aunt Clara about STEM club.

It was pathetic, the way her mood immediately lifted once she started reading everyone's conversation. And after getting caught up, she hardly even added to it, just watched. That was comforting in itself, reading everything without being obligated to do anything herself. Maybe that was weird; Eponine didn't really know.

courf

so anyone doing anything exciting for the holiday??

Or like fam coming over, stuff like that

chetta

my sister's back from college and we've been arguing over like the stupidest shit all day

jolllly

aww that stnks

chetta

noo ive missed it! text arguing just isn't the same

grantairrrrre

lmao

jehan

me and my sister are binging cartoons!!!!!!

yknow instead of watching the dumb parade

cosette

whats dumb about the parade?? the 4 of us are watching it right now

chetta

oh right, u and marius are hanging out with both your dads today, forgot about that

cosette

:D it's been really nice

jehan

i'm sorry cosette cartoons are so much better than the parade omg

jolllly

yeah, theyre definitely right

enj

I mean i always kind of like it, there's cool floats and they have music and stuff

grantairrrrre

the floats are really cool tho

enj

:)

Rolling her eyes, Eponine thought (not for the first time) that these two would be the death of her. It was no use talking to Grantaire about it, because the increasingly obvious fact that his crush was requited had clearly sent him into a spiral of denial she found hard to deal with. Even worse, he'd sworn her to secrecy when this whole thing had started a few months ago—definitely excessive, by her standards, but Eponine could sleep at night knowing she at least kept her promises.

That didn't mean she and Courfeyrac never exchanged exasperated looks when the two had little moments, like in math class one day when Enjolras made a whole big deal out of grabbing a green ruler for Grantaire. If she couldn't even do that, she'd just about go insane.

From the dining room, her dad called something about how it'd been nearly twenty minutes, was she feeling better? And the answer, of course, was no.

bahorel

Hey guys guess what

my oldest sister and her husband are here for thanksgiving, apparently she's like pregnant!

im gonna be an uncle

jolllly

whoa that's amazing

feuilly

yeah man, congrats for your sister

bahorel

thx bro

bossuet

wow... i''m jealous :0

chetta

hey bossuet how's maine??

bossuet

it's alright, i spilled ginger ale on myself on the plane ride but i mean that's to be expected

kinda bored cus my aunt and uncle don't have any kids so it's just a bunch of adults talking about adult stuff

combeferre

that stinks, yeah my brother's been going on and on about chess and it's like i literally don't care anymore

courf

:(

enj

aww that sucks, for both of you

okay guys my mom is telling me i need to get off my phone for a while, since it's only us we need to actually spend time together lol

cosette

bye have fun

courf

bye enj, tell your mom i say hi

also bossuet i know you mentioned when your getting back from maine but i forgot

enj

i will, i'll tell her everyone says hi

bossuet

i'm getting back the second to last day of break

I'm free the day after, is everyone good to hang out then????

Eyebrows raised hopefully, Eponine said she would be free and watched basically everyone else say the same. (Enjolras seemed to have left already, but from what she'd picked up on his schedule at the Musain, she assumed he'd be free too.) That was great—would they actually get to hang out somewhere?

Before turning back to the unfolding planning discussion, she had to answer her dad again. "Still not feeling great, sorry!"

It had been years since Eponine felt guilty about lying to her parents like this, wondering whether that somehow made her as bad as them. Obviously, it didn't. Right now, the one thing causing her to hesitate was the thought that she might have thrown her siblings under the bus by being the only one to get out of dinner. If they feigned stomachaches too, even Aunt Clara would get suspicious.

However, a subtle look towards the dining room showed Azelma and Louis laughing over a stupidly simple knock-knock joke, really quite happy. Next to them, Gavroche and Felix were engaged in a fork sword fight that their parents surprisingly hadn't stopped.

They seemed alright, and for a moment Eponine wondered if she wanted to go back and join them after all. But then she started reading everyone's texts again.

courf

okay guys that's awesome, we can all hang out!!!! (finally lol)

grantairrrrre

so what do we wanna do

bahorel

maybe the park??

combeferre

That would be great, i love the park

cosette

yeah me too there's soooo many birds

courf

sounds great, if anyone objects to the park speak now or forever hold your peace lmao

alright we can work out details later i don't feel like it

feuilly

so jehan, you heard from montparnasse and marie right

what are they doing for thanksgiving?

jehan

yea their in pennsylvania visiting family

monty's been hugged more times than he can count

grantairrrrre

aww poor guy, i feel for him

marius

whoa cool,, my grandpa and aunt on my mom's side live in pennsylvania

chetta

that's cool, do you ever go up there for the holidays?

marius

nah

they used to come down here but my mom died a long timw ago and my dad doesn't get along with my grandpa, eventually it was easier not to

chetta

sorry to hear that, that really stinks

marius

it's alright, i get to go up there a few weeks every summer so thats good

they basically live in a mansion with acres of forest behind the house

its AMAZING

courf

wouldn't you always go up on the roof and use a branch to sword fight??? didn't you tell me about that

marius

um yes i did

jolllly

that sounds fun, i'd be scared of falling off the roof lol

bahorel

I mean if anyone's gonna fall off it'd be grantaire, cus yknow the table thing lol

bossuet

oooh lmao

grantairrrrre

ha ha very funny

Eponine laughed to herself, quickly growing quiet when she heard her mom's irritated voice: "Eponine, are you really still not feeling great? You've been in your room for over an hour. What are you even doing in there?"

"Reading!"

Possibly a second too late, Eponine grabbed the Harry Potter book on the floor next to her bed.

Her mom stepped out of the dining room, able to see into Eponine's room. There was no way of knowing if she'd seen the mishap, or if she thought Eponine actually had been reading.

But either way, this was going to keep happening until Eponine faced it. She knew when she needed to bail.

"Um, I was kinda reading and texting my friends at the same time," she confessed, still not entirely truthfully. Out of view of her parents and Aunt Clara, Gavroche rolled his eyes, obviously knowing there had been no reading. Eponine tried to telepathically tell him to stop.

"It's Thanksgiving. You need to spend time with your family."

Her mom kept her voice even, daring Eponine to talk back.

"Well… I am," she said confidently. "As much as I love you guys, um, I love my friends, too. They're also like my family."

Wow, that was shockingly heartfelt. Was she just laying it on thick for sympathy points from Aunt Clara, or did she actually feel that way?

“You should tell them that, Ponine,” Gavroche called from the table, sounding a bit sarcastic. “I wonder if they know.”

Still criss-cross applesauce, Azelma sipped some water and nodded emphatically. "Yeah, seriously."

This confused Eponine so much she genuinely put her guard down, forgetting about the pretense she'd adopted while explaining things to her mom. Where did that even come from?

Sure, her siblings had hung out with her friends more often lately than normal—the Halloween party, her and Marius' joint birthday party at the Musain, even one Saturday when they tagged along to the library and caused lots of havoc—but she never assumed they would pick up on so much. Certainly not on the fact that she apparently never told her friends how she actually felt, something which Eponine now had the frustrating, nagging suspicion might have been true.

"Um… I mean, it's been implied," she said, almost wincing at how pathetic of an excuse that was.

Louis and Felix shared a look and made tsk tsk sounds. Not over her confusion but also growing irritated, Eponine crossed her arms. Her parents seemed just as frazzled, which may have been why they failed to say anything more about Eponine coming back to the table. Aunt Clara ate gravy-splattered turkey in somewhat intrigued silence.

Once she'd jumped back in bed, tossed the Harry Potter book onto the floor again, and turned her phone on, Eponine considered whether or not her irritation was an overreaction.

Yes, her siblings had seen her refuse several group hugs and laugh whenever Courfeyrac started getting all sappy, but…

The sound of Gavroche saying he needed to go to the bathroom, then running and giggling past her door, took her out of these thoughts. She figured he must be up to something, but when she snuck a glance out of her room, it was just Gavroche beside the twins' bunk bed, grabbing his phone and hastily texting someone. Probably meant nothing.

In the end, the message that popped up a minute later on the group chat was one she should have seen coming:

grantairrrrre

guys, gavroche just texted me and said eponine told her family she loves us or something??

and thinks of us as her family too????

i don't know the context but aww

The flood of messages afterwards—from Courfeyrac's "yay now you finally can't pretend you're not a big softie like the rest of us!" to Musichetta's "thats so sweet, we love you too!!!"—made Eponine's face grow warm.

Most surprisingly, she wasn't even particularly mad at Gavroche for telling him that without her permission.

Well, maybe she was; everything that had happened these past several minutes was too bizarre for her to be able to properly gauge how she felt. But she quieted those thoughts and texted her friends back, wondering how exactly she'd gotten in this situation.

Once the weirdness of admitting she loved her friends and being bulldozed with even more love back was over, she walked over to Gavroche's room.

"Thanks," she said. His eyebrows shot up. "Um, I think."

"Whaddya mean?"

Was he really going to make this so difficult? "Because maybe you were right about me with my friends, and I still don't even know you guys picked up on that—maybe too much Steven Universe. But them saying they love me too was nice," she added, addressing Louis' prized (and ruined) Superman figurine instead of her brother.

"Oh. That's good. I guess I expected you to be really mad."

Eponine had just said "oh" when Azelma came careening down the hall, already talking a bunch. "Mom and Dad told me to check on you, Gavroche, were you even in the bathroom?"

He explained everything that had happened with texting Grantaire, and as Azelma's smirk grew, Eponine went over to sit on the bottom bunk, Felix's. The "I told you so"s hung in the air like fog, but thankfully her brother and sister didn't actually say them.

"Gosh," Azelma said instead, "so now they finally know you have a heart. Miracles really do happen every day."

"I will throw this pillow at you, I don't care that it's Thanksgiving." Feeling more in her element, Eponine tossed Felix's prized (also ruined) Batman pillow towards Azelma. This was only the beginning.

Dodging more pillows, Azelma frantically called for Gavroche to grab the fallen ones for her. And when he did this, leaning precariously off the bed, he almost fell on his face.

The last time she'd cracked up like that with Azelma and Gavroche, their parents had put them in time out for making so much noise. She got a flash of déjà vu when Louis and Felix appeared, asking why they were being so loud.

"Pillow dodgeball fight," she explained, breathless. "Come on, Mom and Dad won't throw a temper tantrum about it with Aunt Clara here!"

Shrugging, Louis and Felix joined in.

And that was how they stayed for the moment, throwing pillows and hurting their stomachs from laughter, not caring about who heard.

Chapter Text

Blue skies overhead without a single trace of clouds, it was the perfect chilly day for the park. A certain thirteen teenagers were thrilled to take advantage of it.

With Enjolras at the front of the jumbled line, chatting to Courfeyrac and Combeferre about the latest crazy stories from the Musain, and Grantaire and Eponine in the back discussing the dreaded return to school, they made their way along the park's winding sidewalk. Luckily, there weren't many people there today.

"Okay, update," Jehan announced to everyone, trying to spin around as they talked and ending up dizzy. "Monty and Marie are on a layover now at some random airport. They'll be back from Pennsylvania tonight."

Everyone said they were glad, and also that they hoped the twins wouldn't be too exhausted at school tomorrow after flying all day.

Bossuet, who'd only gotten home from Maine the day before, was pretty much exhausted but pretending he wasn't.

"Hanging out with you guys gives me all the energy I need!" he claimed, covering a yawn. Musichetta and Joly gave him sympathetic amused looks.

One topic of discussion was the Thanksgiving Declaration of Undying Friendship and Love (as Courfeyrac and Bahorel had begun calling it), much to Eponine's chagrin. However, after enough teasing, she lightened up and accepted it. Still fresh in her mind was the humbling she'd received from her siblings about telling her friends how she felt about them.

Secretly, Grantaire was happy that his falling-off-a-table incident from the Halloween party had become less of a conversation topic, in favor of what happened on Thanksgiving.

(And Bossuet felt the same way about his prank collaboration with the kids at the Halloween party—so did Jehan, about the whole thing where they were Rapunzel and Montparnasse was Flynn Rider. That had been brought up enough for a lifetime.)

The first week had been brutal for Grantaire, feeling so incredibly sore and always bumping into things right where he was bruised. When their math teacher, Ms. Hutcheson, had asked how everyone's Halloween went, Cosette went into great detail about the party, including his fall. He could appreciate the humor of the situation, but he hadn't enjoyed that.

Despite all that, one pleasant part of it had been everyone helping him avoid things that would have made him more sore, or just being really nice in general.

There was one day in trig when Enjolras had gone all the way across the classroom to get a green ruler especially for Grantaire—who had only mentioned wanting one quietly, to himself—and yeah, that was pretty great.

Anyway, he was ready to put the embarrassing fall behind him, and thankfully he felt alright today.

While Marius juggled some of the fruit snacks Feuilly had brought and talked to him about the best ways to eat Thanksgiving leftovers, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Something tree-like… but also super colorful?

Stopping to get a better look (and dropping the fruit snacks in the process), he wondered aloud, "What's that tree covered in?" Then he picked the fruit snacks up, with Feuilly's help.

Cosette held up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, looking intently towards the tree. "A bunch of kites? That's weird."

Since this was the most interesting thing they'd seen so far, everyone stepped off the sidewalk and made their way towards the tree, which was indeed completely covered in colorful kites. Nobody knew why this particular tree had been the end of so many unfortunate kite-flying adventures or why everyone had given up on their trapped kites forever, but it was fun to speculate.

"This is like something from the Peanuts comics," muttered Combeferre. "Wasn't there a kite-eating tree that Charlie Brown would always get his kites caught in?"

Next to him, Courfeyrac shrugged and watched Jehan run up to the tree, standing on their tippy toes to touch the lowest hanging kite. They looked super excited.

"It's so cool," they gushed. "There's so many colors!"

"Yeah, my eyes are burning," Eponine quipped, just to get a rise out of Jehan, who simply waved her off.

After they spent a few more minutes hanging around the tree and commenting on how cool or weird or colorful it was, Bahorel made a suggestion. He dropped the large cooler of picnic supplies he'd been carrying onto the grass. "Do we wanna stay here?" he asked everyone. "At least for lunch?"

Jehan nodded excitedly, and the others didn’t have a reason to say no. The tree gave off excellent shade and was something to talk about—not to mention they could never really deny Jehan anything.

Nestled in between the two largest roots was a roomy and surprisingly comfy patch of grass for almost everyone to sit in. They settled into a rhythm, chatting as much or as little as they wanted to and enjoying the vibe of the park.

Even though it was still Thanksgiving Break, Enjolras, Feuilly, and Combeferre had planned the day before to play a game of Paper Football Trivia. They wanted to review stuff from history in hopes that it would cut down their study time later in the week.

"Okay, let's all check our pockets one more time," Enjolras said, somewhat anxiously, after their paper football didn't show up for any of them.

Grantaire watched the three of them search and come up empty, eventually looking down at his sketchbook. He'd wanted to play speed-sketching with Eponine and Jehan today, but the inspiration wasn't coming. With a little smile, he ripped a section out of the last page, folded it up into a paper football, and nudged Enjolras.

"Here ya go," he said. "Made you guys a new one."

"Oh." The delight was clear on Enjolras' face, and it might have panicked Grantaire had he not been in such a good mood. "Thanks! You didn't have to do that."

Trying to ignore Combeferre and Feuilly staring curiously, Grantaire shrugged. "It was just half a page, no biggie."

While they smiled at each other, things carried on elsewhere under the tree: Marius, Musichetta, Cosette, and Courfeyrac tried to spot animals hiding around the park; Eponine rated Joly's and Bossuet's best knock-knock jokes, impressions, and puns on a scale from 1-10; Jehan tried their best to dislodge a bright teal kite while Bahorel looked on with concern.

After one particularly aggressive throw by Feuilly, Combeferre took his hands out of the football goal formation and went to find the paper football.

"Sorry!" Feuilly called, opening a packet of fruit snacks to share with his two game partners.

There was no reply for a moment, because Combeferre had found something wonderful on the ground right next to where the paper football had fallen. A large and beautiful luna moth with pale green wings—how lucky she hadn't gotten crushed. But then, when he took a second to rethink, why was she on the ground in the first place? (The moth seemed like a she; Combeferre couldn't explain it, she just did.)

He'd seen moths on tree trunks and windows before, and sometimes chilling on the ground, but no, it seemed like this particular one was injured and couldn't find the strength to fly away.

By now, Enjolras and Feuilly had joined him, perplexed by the sad look on his face. Combeferre explained.

"Poor moth," said Enjolras. "It's really pretty, though."

Shoving the fruit snacks in his back pocket, Feuilly asked if his paper football throw had injured it.

"She's a she," Combeferre couldn't resist saying, "and no. It definitely didn't land on her, so something must have already happened a while ago."

They knew how much he loved moths, and so they gave him some respectful silence.

Pretty soon, everyone else noticed the three of them staring at the ground and gathered around to see for themselves. Although they all appreciated how beautiful the luna moth was, the news that she was injured was certainly saddening.

One hand light on Combeferre's shoulder, Courfeyrac suggested they name her.

"Sure," Combeferre said. "Anyone have any ideas?"

"You said she's a luna moth, right?" asked Jehan gently. Combeferre nodded. "So what about Luna?"

Simple, but fitting. Nods of approval were passed around the huddle, and she was officially named Luna.

Crouching down to examine what had happened, Joly muttered to himself. "Looks like she got caught on some Spanish moss that fell off a tree. Maybe one wing is torn? I don't know what luna moths usually look like, but this doesn't seem symmetrical."

Musichetta and Eponine agreed, while Combeferre stared at Luna worriedly. "Do you think you can carefully pull the Spanish moss off of her?" he asked Joly.

"I can try," he said with a smile. "I've done surgery on my sisters' Barbie dolls, so… well, that might not actually be helpful."

With low but supportive cheers from Bossuet and Musichetta, Joly began the procedure, which was thankfully simple. Everyone else looked on, tense but hopeful.

It didn't take long. She was free, but still weak.

They watched her crawl forward the tiniest bit, which was a relief because it proved she was, at least, alive.

During this, Enjolras and Feuilly had gone on their phones, trying to do some research on luna moths and coming up short of anything particularly helpful. "Apparently the adults don't eat at all, so we can't even find anything to give her like that," Enjolras told everyone, sharing an incredulous look with Marius and Cosette.

"They only live for a week once they're not caterpillars anymore," added Feuilly. "And, like, the only thing they do during that time is mate?! Evolution is wack."

"Seriously." Combeferre gave Luna an amused look which then turned sad. "So I guess there's nothing we can do for her?"

There wasn't. No one needed to agree with him out loud—it was clear on their faces, as well as from what Enjolras and Feuilly had found online. In this group of friends who had known each other so well for so long, things often went unspoken.

Out of everyone, this had obviously had the biggest effect on Combeferre. He loved moths and thought they were super cool, also underrated compared to butterflies. (When he was a little kid, the "weird" animals had always been his favorite. This had led to several now-embarrassing obsessions over hippos, vultures, and pythons, which people teased him for in elementary school. Moths were the obsession that stuck.)

While it seemed weird to him that he'd become so sentimental so soon over one little moth, maybe that was a reflection of how much he loved them overall.

There were still small signs of life from Luna over the next hour or so, as things went more or less back to normal.

Sprouting out jokes and references to songs so energetically it was obvious he'd gotten lonely over break, Bahorel passed out the lunches his dad had graciously prepared. Including: one of a few different sandwich varieties (PB&J, chicken salad, or salami with pepper jack cheese), an easy-to-peel clementine, and a small Tupperware of leftover rice and beans. Everything was great, and they all gave Bahorel dozens of compliments to tell his father.

"Wow, that's all he's gonna be talking about for the next week, you guys loving this so much," he said, lying down on grass and tossing clementine pieces into his mouth. "Like, my sister just told us she's gonna be a mom, but no—Dad made food for all my friends. That's the real news."

After some laughs, Eponine asked about his sister, because all that had been too quickly glossed over on the group chat on Thanksgiving. Bahorel went into detail about what had happened and how happy his family was for her.

As lunch finished up, Feuilly threw the rest of his fruit snacks out to people, who cheered. He couldn't help grinning.

Laying in the sunshine, Jehan took out their phone, snapped a long string of photos of Luna, and texted them all to Montparnasse. When he replied with "????", they explained, and he gave airport updates.

This whole time, Grantaire had kept his sketchbook in his lap, as if it was waiting for him to finally find some inspiration.

And with calming chatter all around him, the way the dappled shade from the kite-eating tree fell onto Luna was suddenly just what he needed.

Most of the time since he'd decided to really get into art this school year, he didn't draw directly from reality, because that could get frustrating. He liked how forgiving it was to make mistakes on things he was only imagining—easier to fill in the blanks that way. But as Luna and the small patch of grass, leaves, and dandelion fluff around her covered the page, he found this wasn't so bad.

By then, he and Combeferre, along with Courfeyrac, Feuilly, and Enjolras, were the only ones still right by Luna.

(Jehan sat in the sun, texting Montparnasse rapidly; Cosette and Marius played some random game with the dislodged teal kite that was hilarious to the two of them and confusing to everyone else; Bahorel, Eponine, and Joly chatted about the weirdest stuff that had happened in their English class before break; Musichetta and Bossuet traded Thanksgiving stories, her arguments with her sister and his attempts to not be so bored by all the adults in Maine.)

In the middle of laughing at a geography joke from Feuilly, Combeferre happened to look over and see Grantaire's drawing of Luna. So naturally he and the rest of them fawned over it, and it had to be shown to everyone.

This was met with the usual sighs and protests.

"Well, if you don't want us to freak out about your art," reasoned Courfeyrac, "stop being so good and improving so quickly!"

Grantaire couldn't argue with that, so he let them parade his sketchbook around without complaining. It was kinda nice.

But after they came back, it didn't take long for a nagging voice in Combeferre's head to tell him that Luna hadn't moved at all for a long time. The others agreed when he mentioned it. And while there seemed to be no real way to tell for sure if she had died or not, the truth was that it had been inevitable.

Wind rustled the kites over their heads, almost sadly.

"I'm alright," Combeferre said quietly, before anyone could ask. He'd rather say it himself than as an answer.

Courfeyrac kept a tentative hand on his shoulder, which Combeferre appreciated. Everyone else offered comfort in their own little ways, too—Feuilly told more geography jokes, Eponine ragged on herself about Thanksgiving, Jehan hummed calming songs.

"Hey," said Marius, cutting in on some silence, "did I ever tell you guys about this cat I befriended last summer? When I was up in Pennsylvania with my grandpa and aunt?"

Cosette knew about it, but most never did or had forgotten.

"Well, she was super aloof at first, but I kept just staying by her and eventually she warmed up to me. Got to pet her and everything! It was great. I miss her now. But, y'know."

Nodding, Combeferre asked what color she was.

"Multiple colors," he said, looking thoughtful. "Orange and brown and white and stuff. Isn't that called calico?"

"Yeah, it's calico if she was more white with patches, and tortoiseshell if she's just all mottled colors," said Feuilly. He knew random stuff like this all the time; his friends just went with it.

Apparently, Cosette knew about cats too, because she said, "Yep, exactly. And you showed me pictures of the cat, Marius, she's definitely a tortoiseshell."

This bizarre specimen of conversation sat there for a few moments before Bossuet blurted out, "Okay, how do you guys know that??"

"The Warrior Cats books," they said at the same time, getting a bunch of laughs.

It was quiet for a moment after that.

Grantaire looked from Combeferre, to Luna, to his sketchbook, and made a decision. "Hey, dude, do you want the drawing I made of Luna? You can have it. Because, I mean, I have so many papers with stuff already and you really liked her."

Surprised, Combeferre took a moment to respond. A smile grew on his face. "Sure! Thanks. That's very nice of you."

"Oh, y'know," Grantaire said with a laugh, not wanting to contradict him (not accepting compliments was just difficult for everyone involved) but still not sure how to respond to that. "I kind of want to paint it first—watercolor, probably—but then I can give it to you at school or something."

First giving Enjolras the receipts he'd drawn or written on at the Musain, now this. Grantaire rather liked the feeling.

Speaking of Enjolras, he had a small, slightly surprised smile on his face, and looked like he might have wanted to say something, but then Cosette and Musichetta started talking about going over to the swing sets and the moment had passed.

"Yeah, it's getting stuffy over here. I feel like walking around again," Bahorel said. Jehan, Joly, and Feuilly nodded; Combeferre felt like it, too.

When Eponine said she wanted to go see the duck pond, which was on the opposite side of the park from the swings, the group faced a small dilemma. Eventually, they decided splitting up was the smartest decision.

Chapter Text

Grantaire had never been good at skipping stones—his mom taught him how when he was like five, but if he wasn't able to pick it up then, there was no way he could now. Still, it was satisfying to try.

Around him, the distant conversations between Eponine, Feuilly, Bahorel, and Courfeyrac were little more than background noise. He felt like exploring.

"Hey, where ya going?"

Turning around faster than his brain could catch up, Grantaire saw Enjolras. "Oh," he said, "just exploring. Gonna go in the woods and stuff."

"Cool." Enjolras tucked his hands in his pockets. "Can I come with, or…?"

"Of course," Grantaire laughed, and they set off, walking close to each other. As was the usual for the two of them, comfortable silence colored the walk alongside the duck pond. Pine trees climbed up and pierced the sky; their reflections dived deep through the water. It was nice.

And if they snuck glances at each other here and there, maybe even at the same time once, that might not have been something to panic about anymore.

"That was really nice of you, to give Combeferre your drawing of Luna," said Enjolras out of nowhere.

They'd crossed into the woods on the edge of the park and were walking over the roots of a wonderfully huge sycamore tree. Leaning back against the trunk, Grantaire gave Enjolras a curious look.

"Thanks. I mean… you heard what I said, about already having so many papers I've drawn on." He crossed his arms and stared up through the trees, at the scattered wisps of blue sky. "Combeferre liked that moth a lot. It was sorta obvious to give the drawing to him."

"Still," Enjolras insisted, elbowing him. "You don't have to always downplay everything, you know."

A delicate kind of silence settled between them. Just like at the Halloween party, Grantaire smiled everywhere possible besides Enjolras, who pretended not to notice.

Although he might have wanted to say something more, Enjolras went back to the drawing and how nice that had been.

"Oh my God, stop," Grantaire said after a minute of this, embarrassed but laughing. Rolling his eyes fondly, Enjolras defended his rant. This, of course, just led to Grantaire teasing him more and more.

Surrounded by the wind, trees, and tangled undergrowth, they fell into banter that was reminiscent of history class, except for the obviously different subject.

After Enjolras went on a whole exaggerated tangent, his curls defiantly messy, Grantaire looked at him with admiration. "You've clearly been thinking about this a lot," he joked. "What, do you like me or something?"

Instantly, the smiles drained from their faces. That had been meant as a joke, obviously, but nope. Not even close.

"Shit," Grantaire said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way."

At this, Enjolras' eyes went wide. This was the first time they'd ever actually outright acknowledged anything, and it'd been a month since the Halloween party already. They flirted at the Musain and Grantaire gave him receipts he'd meticulously doodled or written on, receipts that Enjolras reread when he couldn't fall back asleep in the middle of the night.

He'd taken care to hold the door open at school for Grantaire all the time since his fall on Halloween, and was rewarded each time with a smile that just about jumbled everything in Enjolras' brain. Even the paper football Grantaire gave him earlier served as a sign that he needed to do this.

It was time to stop being afraid.

Right before Grantaire could say something else, Enjolras cleared his throat, feeling jumpy and antsy and strangely at peace.

"No, no, um… I mean yeah… I do, actually. Like you."

Alright, so maybe that was way more awkward than he always pictured it being, but whatever.

About a billion things were going through Grantaire's brain, so naturally he picked the bluntest one to actually say. "Holy crap." How smooth of him.

"Is that a good reaction?" Enjolras asked hopefully.

"Yes, obviously, are you kidding me," Grantaire said, exasperation quickly fading into a laugh. The sheepish smile he was given in response basically killed him. Grantaire was dead; this was an exaggeration; that did not matter. What a way to go.

Still laughing a little, both took a deep breath. "Okay, okay, I couldn't tell. Holy crap can mean lots of different things."

"Yeah, I know." Despite all signs pointing to the contrary, the world kept spinning like normal. The trees stayed upright. "Wow. I guess I figured you did based off of a bunch of things, but you know me, always second-guessing myself," admitted Grantaire.

Rocking back and forth on his feet, Enjolras laughed. "I think I was the same way."

Grantaire shook his head emphatically. "You don't even know how many times Eponine’s called me a coward for not asking you out already."

"Courf said the same thing!"

At this, they both laughed, but something about it was definitely different. Nice—stomach dropping, focus jumbling nice—just different.

"I feel like this would be a great place for stargazing," said Jehan to Combeferre, shivering in their oversized jacket and sweatpants that were still somehow too thin. "Don't you?"

They were laying down in the grass while Cosette and Musichetta swung to their hearts' content and Marius, Joly, and Bossuet chatted by the swing sets. Relying on their limited (but growing!) abilities to mediate and pick up on subtext, Jehan had assumed Combeferre needed a more relaxing activity.

"Definitely."

A second later, they both turned their heads to face each other, getting grass in their mouths in the process. "The sleepover in eighth grade!" Combeferre shouted with delight. "I'd forgotten all about that."

Jehan nodded and giggled, clapping their hands. Their sweatpants were definitely getting grass-stained, but on the other hand, that only added to the charm.

"We stayed up all night learning astronomy facts on Wikipedia, right?" they wondered.

"Yeah," Combeferre said, "and, wait, didn't we go out in my backyard and try to find all those constellations after learning them, and it was way harder than my mom's astronomy book made it sound?"

The two of them laughed, happy to reminisce. It was easy for everyone in the group to forget sometimes that they'd all known each other since at least middle school—some, like Eponine and Cosette, for many years before then. After all, so much had happened since then, and high school pretty much felt like a different universe.

But yeah, it really had been that long. Combeferre shook his head, incredulous.

"We never have sleepovers anymore," Jehan complained thoughtfully. "Not just talking about the two of us, but the whole group. No sleepovers for years if I remember correctly. Why aren't sleepovers a high school thing? That's dumb."

"Very dumb. Maybe we should bring that up, once we're all back at the kite tree."

Over by the swings, Joly and Bossuet were asking to get their turns while Cosette and Musichetta pretended to not hear them, the wind was too loud. Marius leaned against a rusting metal pole, content just to juggle some acorns he'd found on the ground.

Craning his neck off the ground to look at his friends, Combeferre felt a sudden rush of sadness he hadn't been expecting. Maybe that was still left over from Luna.

"Y'know, the other day Courfeyrac was telling me about how he's worried about it being our junior year, just this and our senior year left," he mused. "And I told him that obviously our group might have to split up at some point… that's life… but that it certainly wouldn't be happening soon. That it wouldn't happen without a fight."

Smiling, Jehan said they agreed with that. Combeferre turned back towards them, the worry clear on his face.

"But right now I feel like it all really is that delicate. And like one day we'll look back on stuff that stopped happening just like sleepovers stopped happening." He sighed, taking his glasses off and cleaning them on his shirt, just for something to do. "Do you think I'm just emotional because of Luna?"

"Well, I think that's probably natural? I mean, both—being upset about Luna and worrying about our group."

This was not a topic that came up very often between everyone, for obvious reasons, so this conversation was fairly odd to think about. Despite this, Jehan kept going. "And this is probably one of those things that's, like, easier said than done, but I think all we can do is try not to let that make us second-guess what we have now. If that makes any sense."

Laughing, Combeferre assured them that it definitely did make sense. "Thanks," he mumbled, smiling up at the sky and feeling more content than he had since before Luna the luna moth died. "I needed that."

"No problem."

Around then, a successful swing set coup had been enacted by Joly and Bossuet, who were currently hollering with delight while they swung high up in the air. Thankfully, Cosette and Musichetta didn't mind much—Cosette because now she could talk with Marius and watch him juggle, Musichetta because she could tease Joly and Bossuet about their swinging techniques.

Combeferre and Jehan laughed at this, and resolved to have another sleepover eventually, one where they could go out in the backyard and stargaze.

"Alright." Eponine flopped her legs over the tree stump she sat on top of, watching Feuilly and Bahorel have a hilarious contest to see who could entice more ducks out of the pond with leftover rice from lunch. "Who's gonna win?"

Sitting criss-cross applesauce in the grass and clover below her, Courfeyrac considered the options.

"Well, Feuilly probably looks friendlier, but I think Bahorel can throw farther, if he's still as good at dodgeball as he was three years ago." Then something occurred to him and he tried not to laugh. "On the other hand, they might be able to tell, instinctively, that Feuilly's a swimmer like them."

"He and the ducks are kin," joked Eponine, making them both crack up.

It was nice, albeit slightly unusual, for the whole group to be fractured up like they were now. Half of them were over by the swings, and a while earlier Eponine had heard Enjolras and Grantaire decide to go exploring in the woods. She and Courfeyrac kept their phones out, in case anyone wanted to make plans to meet back up at the kite-eating tree, but nothing so far.

By the time Feuilly and Bahorel had given up on getting ducks to notice them, Eponine and Courfeyrac had started feeling bored sitting by themselves.

"Hey, guys, do you think there's enough clothes in the world to cover the whole Earth?" asked Eponine randomly, fiddling with her scrunchies. "My siblings and I were arguing about it the other day, and they wanted your guys' opinions too."

The three of them took a moment to absorb the question, because it was quite an unusual one.

"Is this all the clothes in the world right now, or all the clothes ever made?" Feuilly wondered. Eponine said it was probably the latter.

After he picked a few clovers and put them in his hair, Courfeyrac said, "Maybe if it was more fabric stuff than just clothes, like blankets and sheets too. But there's been so many people—all those clothes would add up either way."

As Eponine shared what her siblings had said, Bahorel shook his head. "This is just like that thing about leaves back in math class. We always talk about the weirdest stuff."

"Aww, come on, you know you like it," Feuilly teased, elbowing him.

Eventually, Musichetta texted on the group chat that the seven of them were tired of the swings and would head over there to the duck pond. Still nothing from Enjolras and Grantaire, though.

"That's strange," Bahorel muttered. "I mean, trees are nice and all, but how long can you really spend exploring?"

At this, Eponine and Courfeyrac looked at each other with wide eyes, both thinking what if they finally—?

Tracing the moss covering the sycamore tree's roots with one hand, and absently searching for Enjolras with the other, Grantaire smiled to himself. Had everything with the kite-eating tree and Luna the luna moth really been this same day? All of that seemed like a week ago, at least.

They'd stayed by the same tree, alternating between not saying much and having spontaneous bursts of conversation, content under the shade and the wind and the leaves.

Both felt great—finally, something had happened between the two of them. It was crazy to think that their crushes on each other only really started earlier this school year, because it certainly felt like a lot more time had passed.

However, one question hadn't been asked yet, and Grantaire knew he should be the one to ask it.

He still felt weird about how he'd basically been planning to sweep this whole thing under the rug, until Enjolras told him his feelings. It was just that Grantaire had not expected to bring himself and Enjolras to that place of acknowledging stuff so out of nowhere. And, yes, he'd been avoiding the daunting task of actually saying things for a while now, just ask Eponine.

But that didn't actually matter, despite how much his brain wanted to fixate on it. The important thing was that, somehow, it had all worked out anyway.

As his hand found Enjolras', Grantaire pushed his mushy feelings away for the moment. He had something to say.

"Hey." There may or may not have been chills when they looked at each other, which was nice but distracting. "Do you wanna go on a date with me?"

"Of course!" he practically shouted, with a bright smile that faded a little as he realized that might have been too eager.

Hopefully Grantaire's matching smile was proof it hadn't been. A few more moments passed like this until they remembered that you actually need to plan a date, instead of just announcing the intention to go on one and then smiling at each other like dorks. Oh well—they were new at this.

Enjolras messed with his hair a little with his free hand, considering things. "Um, obviously I've never been on a date before," he said. "But I don't think it's too complicated."

"Right, definitely not." Grantaire thought for a few seconds, watching the breeze overhead ruffle the sycamore tree and Enjolras' hair in equal amounts. "Well, Cosette and Marius had their first date in her yard, Joly's moms always go to Olive Garden and the movies for their date nights, and the one date my brother's been on was at a waterpark or something weird like that. So those might be really bad examples."

They shared a laugh. "Well, going to the movies has never really been my favorite thing to do, so maybe not that," said Enjolras. "But do you think just going to a restaurant isn't enough? I mean, that might not last super long."

Grantaire agreed, and tried to think of somewhere else they might want to go. Then something occurred to him— "The library?"

"Really?" Enjolras wondered, sounding intrigued. "The library's nice."

"And we always forget to go back and see the gnomes again when we all go have study sessions," Grantaire said, getting excited now. "The gnomes are our thing, you know?"

This was true, and it made the library a serious option.

"That gazebo back with all the gnomes looked super nice, too. Great place to go and sit." After a moment, Enjolras smiled to himself. "I can get you art books, and you can read them, and you can tell me stuff about art. I'd like that."

"Me too," Grantaire said, trying to convey just how much he would like that with his smile. Wow. Was this actually happening? He felt, like, ridiculously happy.

It was also, of course, incredibly weird, confusing, scary—all in a good way, but still—and Grantaire probably needed to calm down. Focusing on the damp moss beneath his free hand, he sighed contentedly. "So where would you wanna go for food? Wait, don't tell me," Grantaire added quickly, smirking a little. "We definitely have to go to the Musain. I'm sure you're not sick of their food by now."

"Shut up," Enjolras said, laughing. "I don't really know right now, but we can pick later. And I can look at my schedule for work, we can decide when we'll both be free. Later."

"Sounds good to me."

With that, they slipped back into comfortable silence, still holding hands and now with their knees touching somewhat.

Eventually, Enjolras wondered aloud if this counted as a date or not, seeing as they were hanging out alone in a nice place. "But is having food a requirement? 'Cause if it's that arbitrary, we could've just gotten some fruit snacks from Feuilly earlier, shared them, and then it would count." He laughed and gave Grantaire a somewhat sheepish smile. "I really don't know, though."

"Well, when Cosette and Marius got together, I think they were at that volunteering thing, so this probably counts more than that. And there’s bugs out here, but that might just make it nicer," Grantaire said, amused.

"Yeah, maybe." Leaning in a bit closer, Enjolras latched onto some of the same bravery he'd had earlier. They blinked at each other. Sunlight streamed in from the pine trees, falling onto their little patch of moss and roots on the forest floor. It was almost unbearable. Almost. "Can I kiss you?" he asked shyly.

Nodding so much he probably seemed desperate, Grantaire tried to remember words. "Mm-hmm," was the best he could manage.

Just as he'd never gone on a date, Enjolras had never kissed anyone. Thankfully, he didn't give his nerve the chance to vanish, and a moment later, he kissed Grantaire.

When they pulled away, there was a by now familiar feeling floating around in their stomachs.

Grantaire had a mental image back to when he was trying to skip stones in the duck pond, of ripples popping up in the water, jumbling everything. That was what his jitters felt like. It was amazing.

"I like you," whispered Enjolras, eyes bright. "A lot."

Murmuring that he felt the same, something suddenly occurred to Grantaire. He cursed under his breath.

"What's wrong?"

"We've been out here for who knows how long and we haven't even texted anyone that we're okay or about when we'll be coming back," Grantaire explained in a rush, taking out his phone to see not a whole lot of messages, but still enough to make him feel guilty for completely forgetting about the rest of his friends. Then he looked back up at Enjolras and felt guilty for a completely different reason. "Shit. I ruined the moment. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Enjolras assured him, again with a smile. "If I'm being honest, I kind of didn't forget about everyone—I wanted to stall going back. But that probably wasn't very nice of me."

Laughing, Grantaire shook his head. "Probably not," he agreed, delighted. "I should text them back now, though."

They weren't sitting as close to each other as they had been right before they kissed, but still close enough to make Grantaire have trouble focusing on the task at hand. His fingers fumbled while he tried to write a text, and he ended up with a bunch of typos. Even worse, Enjolras clearly knew what was happening, and watched him retype everything with an expression that was somehow both fond and smug.

Grantaire finally texted what he wanted to text, which was a very vague reassurance that he and Enjolras hadn't been kidnapped in the woods and would probably head over to the duck pond soon. Replies soon came in, but he hardly looked at them.

"Oh no," he said, giggling a bit, when Enjolras held his hand again, "what are we gonna tell everyone?"

They shared a look and laughed. "We'll figure something out. It won't be too embarrassing," Enjolras said resolutely. "We keep using Cosette and Marius as an example, and I think they just said something like they started dating, or were girlfriend and boyfriend? I mean, only if you—"

"Yeah," he cut in easily. "I wanna be your boyfriend. If that's where you were going with that."

Nodding yes, Enjolras remarked to himself that he really rather liked the woods. It was a shame they had to go back soon.

As the seven of them walked over to the duck pond, Combeferre trailed behind.

In front of him: Musichetta and Jehan laughed about some inside joke from environmental science class; Bossuet made fun of Joly's crocs and they cracked themselves up; Cosette and Marius pointed out birds to each other, hand in hand, cute as ever. Combeferre was where he wanted to be, just observing everyone. Sometimes that was all he needed to do.

When they passed the kite tree, he grew sad at the reminder of Luna. She was such a nice little moth. Should he go look at her again?

Deciding that he'd be able to catch up with everyone just fine, he headed off the sidewalk and jogged over there.

Before they'd all left, Joly had set Luna down on the nicest patch of grass in the area, a little out of reach of the tree's multi-colored shade (from all the kites). Combeferre knelt down next to her, thinking about how nice his friends had been about all this. They were really great.

And he suddenly had the feeling that certain things might not be inevitable. He knew his friend group would put up a fight.

Chapter Text

"I still can't believe I couldn't really tell about you two liking each other," Musichetta complained, crossing her arms and not even glancing down at her forgotten trigonometry work. For once, she wore a sweatshirt instead of a flannel, only because it was finally getting too cold to just wear a flannel. Even by her standards. "I'm supposed to be the person who knows about people's crushes and stuff!"

Enjolras and Grantaire shared a look. She'd been like this since yesterday at the park, when the two of them had finally come back from the woods and told everyone their news. The majority of the friends had had similar reactions of not having expected this.

To be fair, though, most of their biggest moments had happened while they were by themselves. Grantaire told Musichetta some version of this; she simply shrugged.

Unfortunately, that was not the last of the discussion, because no one in this class could ever actually focus on math.

It was a studying day, which they took as an opportunity to shuffle their desks together and talk about anything but their work. Ms. Hutcheson honestly couldn't be bothered to stop them, because she'd learned this school year that sometimes these things needed to take their course. Wrangling those thirteen could be more trouble than it was worth. As for the other students in the class, it was free entertainment.

"So when you got that green ruler for Grantaire that one day, that was why?" asked Joly incredulously. Enjolras, growing somewhat red, face-palmed; Grantaire just laughed.

"Man, I knew you guys were sitting really close together at the Musain for Marius and Eponine's birthday party," Feuilly said in an almost accusatory tone, sounding like a detective who'd finally made a breakthrough in his case. He got two sheepish nods.

"Hey," Bahorel piped up, "Enjolras needs a new nickname variation on Our Fearless Leader now. Any ideas?"

Clearly, he wanted Enjolras to suffer.

Jehan immediately suggested Our Fearless Romeo—Enjolras made a gagging motion. More followed, all of which were horrible. There was Our Fearless Casanova from Combeferre, Our Fearless Lovebird from Musichetta, and Our Fearless Boyfriend from Bossuet.

"But that doesn't make sense," Grantaire pointed out reasonably, comfy as always in his green sweatshirt. "He's not our boyfriend, he's my boyfriend."

For this, he got a very grateful smile from said boyfriend, who had otherwise been looking quite stressed.

Poor Enjolras was so not used to being teased like his friends were teasing him now: his face had gone completely warm and he felt more embarrassed than he had in a long time. This was probably an exaggerated response—his friends never truly meant to be mean, he just had not expected this. But hearing Grantaire call him his boyfriend so casually and naturally made all that pretty much worth it.

Their friends soon moved on from the nicknames, as Courfeyrac set out to prove in some convoluted way that this meant Grantaire was now Pam from The Office, since Enjolras had gone as Jim for Halloween. After all, they both liked drawing.

Everyone laughed, except Eponine, who merely smirked. She and Montparnasse (who'd been gleefully filled in on Enjolras and Grantaire becoming a thing by Jehan, over text, as soon as they learned about it) had already used up all their best jokes and pieces of commentary in history class the period before, so she didn't feel the need to add much to the conversation now.

Her favorite thing to tell them had been the fact that Azelma and Gavroche apparently made bets with each other some time ago about when this would happen.

Combine this with their observations on Thanksgiving about how Eponine didn't tell her friends how she feels enough, and it only served to prove further that they picked up on everything.

Those kids were way too smart for their own good, but gosh, Eponine loved them so much.

Cosette and Marius also had the good grace to not add teasing of their own, because they knew what it was like for everyone to be commenting like this. That didn't mean they didn't laugh along with everyone else, though, because it was all pretty darn funny.

Eventually Enjolras had to stop them. "You guys are so mean," he said, more pathetic than angry. "No way did Cosette and Marius get this much of a hard time when they got together, right?"

Nobody could remember for sure, so maybe they should have just given him the benefit of the doubt, but this was much too fun.

Honestly, Grantaire was enjoying the whole conversation, if for nothing else than to see Enjolras get all cute and flustered. But, he reminded himself, they definitely were going after Enjolras more than after him, so he should offer some support.

"What I don't get is," he said, cutting in on the tangent Bossuet and Bahorel were currently going off on, "why didn't you guys get all this out yesterday? At the park, where we were alone, and not in class, in front of our teacher?"

Next to him, Enjolras nodded emphatically, and across the room, Ms. Hutcheson assured them that all the relationship stuff would go in one ear, out the other. Thank goodness.

Their friends shrugged. "I guess we were more surprised yesterday, and our initial reactions weren't just to start teasing," Feuilly said. Everyone else added their agreement.

"Okay, that makes sense," conceded Grantaire, looking over at Enjolras, who was pouting. "Hey, are you alright?"

"Yeah, I am." He sighed, laughing a bit. "They're just teasing, I need to stop taking it so personally. I'm acting like I've never been embarrassed before."

"Don't worry about it, you're fine."

For a nice but short moment, they just smiled at each other, feeling quite jumbled and fluttery like yesterday, until they became conscious again of everyone else still around them. Trying not to laugh, they both cleared their throats.

Likewise, their friends all exchanged amused and pleased looks; Eponine and Courfeyrac in particular looked proud, if not still exasperated that this had taken so long. Even those who hadn't quite expected this could see that Enjolras and Grantaire clearly liked each other a lot.

Combeferre and Jehan apologized for everyone having maybe gone a little too far with all the teasing, and Enjolras assured them it was alright. Then Joly suggested they start actually doing math. Everybody reluctantly agreed.

And they thought they might have heard, from the front of the classroom, Ms. Hutcheson muttering finally.

At lunch, Montparnasse and Marie sat with the thirteen friends the whole time. They'd started doing this more often lately, but most of the time they did still want to stay partially at their old table—their friends Gueulemer, Claquesous, Babet, and Brujon were there. But after the news from yesterday, today was a special case.

Enjolras had hoped Marie wouldn't make too big of a deal out of things, since they'd become really good friends talking at the Musain. He was severely disappointed.

"Did you guys make a joke about how Grantaire's Pam now, 'cause of the whole Jim Halloween costume thing?" she asked, delighted, right when everyone sat down. Courfeyrac excitedly nodded.

Too late, Enjolras remembered how she had reacted towards Jehan and Montparnasse accidentally dressing up as Rapunzel and Flynn Rider at the Halloween party. And that was nothing compared to people actually getting together. She had loads of jokes prepared.

It wasn't like he regretted the fact that he and Grantaire had started dating or something, just because he had to deal with being teased relentlessly. That would be totally dumb.

Sitting next to Grantaire at the lunch table for the first time that school year was great. Their knees bumped into each other under the table, and their elbows did the same thing on top of the table. Something as simple as that made Enjolras feel all stupidly happy inside.

He could deal with it, he just wished it could be over soon. Enjolras didn't like being unable to change annoying situations.

Thankfully, everything else that had happened during Thanksgiving Break that had been previously overshadowed by Enjolras and Grantaire soon came to the forefront of the lunch conversation.

Montparnasse and Marie had loads of stories from their time in Pennsylvania—airports that were so confusing and huge they almost missed their flight after getting lost on the way back from Starbucks; all kinds of family drama during Thanksgiving dinner, including their cousins' insults towards some of the stickers on Marie's wallet; and a hilariously disastrous day spent going apple-picking, culminating when Montparnasse fell one leg deep into a hole and Marie laughed so hard she nearly wet her pants.

Everybody laughed hysterically at that last story, and when they were done, Joly worriedly asked, "Wait, you weren't actually hurt, right?"

"No, it was fine," said Montparnasse, through gritted teeth. "A little sore, but more embarrassed."

"Yeah, I know what that's like," Grantaire said sagely, shaking his head. "That's really the worst part." Unable to keep a smile away, Enjolras rolled his eyes.

To Marius' delight, he got to trade Pennsylvania lore with Montparnasse and Marie. Everyone learned some more information about the whole situation between his dad and grandpa, and Marius got to brag about his grandpa and aunt's amazing place. (Unintentionally making Montparnasse and Marie jealous, because where their family lived was way less cool than a basically-a-mansion with acres of totally amazing woods.)

From there, the conversation transitioned into Bossuet's stories about Thanksgiving in Maine, the funniest things that had happened on Neopets during break, and more updates on Bahorel's sister.

"So she's gonna have her kid sometime after the school year's over," he told everyone, taking a few quick bites of garlicky green beans. "I'm definitely gonna have a job by then, but I'll want to do a bunch of babysitting for her too. Is babysitting hard?"

Musichetta and Eponine, the two out of the group who had the most babysitting experience, shared a laugh. "Well, I like it, but it can be hard," said Musichetta. "I've never babysat an actual baby before, though, so I don't really know about that."

"I have, obviously," Eponine said without much enthusiasm. "My siblings were cute when they were babies, but I definitely prefer them now, without all the crying and diapers and everything. It's overrated." For a moment, Bahorel just blinked at her, suddenly a little worried. "Oh—I'm sure your niece or nephew is gonna be great!"

At this, they all laughed.

Joly got out of his seat to show Marie pictures he'd taken on his phone of Luna the luna moth, the kite-eating tree, and a bunch of other stuff from the park yesterday. She laughed especially hard at the selfie he took while swinging, which perfectly captured the moment Bossuet jumped off the swing a little too excitedly. Meanwhile, Combeferre and Courfeyrac summarized everything with Luna for Montparnasse.

"When we all went back to the tree—y'know, after everything with Enjolras and Grantaire—we were thinking about her again," Combeferre said, somewhat sadly.

Leaning forward with both elbows on the table, and with a nearly forgotten tray of mashed potatoes and chicken fingers in front of him, Courfeyrac cut in. "Then I had a great idea. We had a funeral for Luna!"

Having a funeral for a moth had reminded Combeferre both of The Office, which had an episode about a bird funeral, and of the joking offer Courfeyrac made earlier in the school year to have a funeral for Combeferre's broken glasses.

"Huh." Montparnasse didn't seem impressed.

"Well, I guess you had to be there," Courfeyrac said with a shrug. "It was nice. Cosette sang."

Combeferre smiled. He really appreciated that his friends hadn't thought it was silly or ridiculous for him to care so much about a moth, and that they had cared about her too. Earlier, in math class, Grantaire had promised to have the drawing of Luna painted sometime that week, and to remember to bring it to school no later than a week after that. They'd both laughed.

Across the table from Montparnasse, Jehan rocked from side to side a bit. They wanted to ask about something.

While they were texting at the park, Montparnasse let it slip that at the Halloween party, he had asked Grantaire and Marius about Jehan's Gravity Falls poetry fanfiction. Jehan couldn't help but wonder if there had been a bigger context to that situation, because they did remember a time when the three of them and Marie had been gone during the party, but would that have been all that was about?

Either way, they had certainly been surprised, but that had quickly turned into Jehan offering to share their Google Doc with Montparnasse so he could read it. And he said yes.

Jehan wanted to know if Montparnasse had read it yet, and if so, what he thought about it. The two of them didn't have any classes together and band practice wasn't until later this week, so they were impatient to bring it up now. On the other hand, they didn't know if that was being too desperate for feedback or something.

"Hey, you okay?" Bahorel asked them, because their rocking must have become obvious. They nodded.

It ended up working out without Jehan needing to bring it up on their own anyway, because Feuilly's question about who could help him with his latest creative writing assignment for English class naturally led to the nomination of Jehan.

"I honestly don't know if I would be much help," they said, shrugging. "I never really wrote much before this fanfic, and Gravity Falls probably has nothing to do with your thing."

Cosette raised her eyebrows. "I'm sure the skills would transfer onto other subjects, Jehan."

Although not entirely convinced about that, Jehan agreed to help Feuilly, only if Combeferre helped too. With that decided, Montparnasse picked at his potato chips and cleared his throat. "Speaking of your fanfic," he said casually, "I read a bunch of it last night after you shared it with me. Really good. Odd, yeah, but good."

This led to murmurs going around the table, because nobody had known about this. And of course they were going to turn it into some kind of a big deal, when it totally wasn't.

When Musichetta joked that Jehan really should have written a fanfic about Rapunzel and Flynn Rider from Tangled, Enjolras gave Jehan a sympathetic look. Seemed like this day had just turned into teasing for everybody.

Montparnasse smiled ruefully at Jehan, who shook their head at the laughter. "Monty, why does this keep happening?"

"I think they've got nothing better to talk about."

"That's definitely it," agreed Enjolras. Cookie in hand, Grantaire nodded.

Chapter Text

"Dude, do you think that's the best idea?" Joly asked with crossed arms, looking up at Bossuet, who was walking on a weirdly high curb instead of on the sidewalk. "Sixth grade field day ring a bell?"

"Come on, I'm a lot less clumsy now than I was in sixth grade. You're not being fair."

As he said this, Bossuet landed totally wrong on one foot and ended up having to hop on one leg for a minute before he could gain his balance again. "See? In sixth grade I wouldn't have caught myself!"

Although Joly was only partially satisfied, everybody else laughed, forming a very messy and non-uniform clump on and around the sidewalk.

They were walking to Cosette's house after school, but this was a special occasion: the first time Montparnasse and Marie came with. And for this special occasion, which had been planned earlier in the week, Cosette and Valjean had come up with a special surprise: he was going to make enough dinner—a yummy rice pilaf with chicken and roasted vegetables—for all of them to stay and eat. She and Marius had tried to subtly make sure nobody had any important plans this evening, and thankfully, no one seemed to.

It would be the start to a hopefully great weekend:

Enjolras and Grantaire would have their first date; Eponine, Combeferre, Feuilly, and Musichetta had made plans to go shopping at a local bookstore called Corinthe; Courfeyrac had an important soccer game a few cities away; Bahorel finally had time to remake his annual humongous music playlist; Cosette and Marius would hang out at his house to watch Disney movies; Joly's family was going to go to the local farmer's market to buy some new succulents; Jehan and their sister would watch even more cartoons than normal; Bossuet actually had no homework and was planning on relaxing; and Montparnasse and Marie would get to print all the pictures they took up in Pennsylvania. Great stuff all around.

And Cosette was especially hoping that today would smooth out anything still weird between her, Montparnasse, and Marie, after what had happened at the Halloween party.

They now knew about her whole past with having been the Thenardier's foster daughter, which was weird, but she figured if she was never going to directly bring it up to them (and she really didn't want to), there was no sense in holding a grudge over it.

"So what happened on field day in sixth grade?" wondered Montparnasse, hands in his pockets.

"Bossuet tripped really bad during the egg-and-spoon race, and the school nurse told him to take it easy, but then he was walking on a curb like that again—and he tripped and sprained his ankle," Joly explained, giving a pointed look to Bossuet, who only smiled and shrugged.

All he had to say about it was, "Good times." Joly and Montparnasse exchanged incredulous looks.

"I think that was the field day I won the jump rope competition." Bahorel had a wistful expression as he kicked a pebble along the sidewalk, clearly reminiscing. "Man, those were the days."

"Oh yeah, you won, and I was second," Musichetta remembered. "We always said we would have a rematch one day, didn't we?"

They half-jokingly made plans to go jump roping again, and then Marie wondered aloud, "So you guys have really all known each other since elementary school? That's crazy."

"Well, some of us have, some of us only met in middle school," said Feuilly.

"That was when our whole group really became a thing, but yeah, smaller groups of us were a thing before then." Courfeyrac had perked up at the topic, because he loved thinking back to before high school—when it had been so easy for everyone to hang out. Now they had jobs and too much homework and responsibilities. "We should tell you guys more elementary school stories sometime."

Marie said she'd like that, and then Courfeyrac got back to telling Combeferre charmingly stupid jokes about The Office that he pretended to hate but actually loved.

Everybody turned a corner, cutting onto Cosette's very long street. Dark, towering columns of soft clouds swirled overhead, promising rain eventually and already bringing lots of wind.

But for the moment, the fifteen of them just made their way along, laughing at nothing in particular and failing to consider that something might dampen their spirits.

Well, Courfeyrac and Grantaire each felt somewhat nervous about seeing Valjean for the first time since the Halloween party. Yes, they'd ended the party on good terms with him, but the falling-off-the-table incident was still fresh in their minds and probably would be in his as well. That was why the whole group hadn't hung out at Cosette's house after school in a while, to let things cool off.

Basically, Grantaire was letting his mind run despite all the reassurances he'd gotten from Cosette that there were no hard feelings left. What else was new?

Scratch that—something certainly still was.

He and Enjolras had been talking with Eponine about stuff from history class the whole walk, holding hands not the entire time but for long enough intervals that Eponine kept rolling her eyes at them. Grantaire knew she wasn't really annoyed, though, because she hardly even tried to hide her smile. Maybe what happened on Thanksgiving really had smoothed her out around the edges.

The fact that they'd been dating for nearly a week now was absolutely crazy to Grantaire, who had expressed that to Enjolras (his boyfriend—insane) this morning.

Enjolras' response? A smile and a kiss on the cheek. He kept replaying the moment in his mind, smiling to himself.

More towards the middle of the group, Montparnasse was chatting with Jehan about their fanfic, which, by now, he'd read all of what was written so far and had numerous suggestions for.

"I really like the subplot with Waddles and Gompers teaming up with the Snadger to fight the Gnomes," he was saying, "but I think it's starting to take away from the subplot with Candy and Grenda trying to meet mermaids at the pool, and that's more important to the story overall. If that makes sense."

"Well, Monty, I appreciate that, but I kinda figured out everything with the plot already, and changing everything sounds… um… not very fun," Jehan said apologetically, laughing a bit. "Sorry."

Montparnasse shrugged. "Nah, don't be. If you want ideas for future fics, though, I could help with that, maybe?"

"Yeah—I've been meaning to think of things."

"Whoa, you're gonna continue your writing career after this one?" asked Feuilly. "Awesome. That's better than being a one-hit wonder."

Happily, Jehan confirmed that they were not planning to be a one-hit wonder, and started rambling about what they had thought about so far for future projects.

Their main worry was the fact that as much as they loved Gravity Falls, the prospect of branching out to other cartoons was very enticing, and now they couldn't decide on which cartoons would be the best. "I even thought about bringing Neopets into it somehow," they said. "Maybe it could just be whatever show I have, and then the characters play Neopets? And that brings it into the story? I dunno."

"Wait, I think there's actually something on Neopets for you to write stories and submit them, and they put them in a newsletter," Marius brought up, turning to Cosette. "Right?"

She nodded. "You should definitely check that out, Jehan."

Jehan wasn't sure, because they had read the Neopian Times and didn't think their style fit, but they'd think about it.

In the middle of laughing at Grantaire's joke about their history teacher's obsession with the Industrial Revolution, Eponine heard her phone ring.

Naively suspecting nothing more than a wrong number, she took it out of her pocket. And cursed under her breath.

It was her mom. What now?

"Guys, can you shut u—I mean, could everybody be quiet for a while?" she asked everyone, raising her voice enough for it to carry over the wind and her friends' conversations. "My mom's calling. I hate when that happens."

They quieted down without any argument, and as Eponine answered and said hi, Cosette felt a chill unrelated to the wind that was blowing through her hair.

Not that it happened often, but she always felt incredibly weird when one or both of the Thenardiers—the people who had been Cosette's foster parents so many years ago, who had made her life with them rather crappy besides the fact that she had had five pretty great foster siblings, and who she and Valjean had been avoiding compulsively for as long as she could remember—were only on the other side of a phone call.

Musichetta sent her a somewhat concerned look, and Marius gave her hand a squeeze; she answered both with a smile she didn't quite feel. No big deal. She was fine.

As this happened, Montparnasse and Marie shared a look. Their only knowledge of the Thenardier parents had come from what Grantaire and Marius told them at the Halloween party (plus Eponine's sporadic complaining), and they didn't know what to expect. Everyone's reactions were worrying.

"What do you mean I need to go grocery shopping tonight?" Eponine asked into the phone, trying not to sound as desperate and defensive as she felt. "I told you I was going over to Musichetta's house after school. Dad said he was gonna go grocery shopping."

(Musichetta's house had long been the one Eponine told her parents she went to with all her friends after school since they didn't know about Cosette, because it was the closest to where she actually would be, and therefore the most plausible.)

Her mom gave some ridiculous excuse about why that wouldn't work anymore, and when Eponine wouldn't relent on tonight, insisted she stay home on Saturday to watch her siblings to make up for it. Instead of going to Corinthe with Combeferre, Feuilly, and Musichetta, which she'd really been looking forward to.

Apparently it was "only fair". Apparently Eponine had been getting to hang out with her friends so often lately that it was becoming quite ridiculous.

It was times like this Eponine couldn't help wishing she didn't love her friends as much as she did. Then she could've just been annoyed at the sympathetic looks she knew they were giving her as they filled everything in from her side of the conversation, instead of recognizing it as them caring. Being reasonable and logical was exhausting sometimes.

"Mom, come on! I'll watch them the rest of the weekend, and next week I'll do nothing but babysitting, chores, and homework. And when I come home I'll make dinner. Does that work?"

She held her breath, and so did her friends.

A few seconds later, Eponine said bye and hung up. "I actually convinced her," she told everyone. "Miracles really do happen every day."

Cheers went around the group, but Marius and Cosette looked incredibly uncomfortable.

She felt like an idiot. Her plan to let everyone stay later than normal for dinner suddenly had a gaping hole in it, one that now seemed totally obvious.

Of course she should have told Eponine beforehand—there was always something going on with her parents!

And now she'd promised her mom dinner, which meant she would either have to call back and explain about staying later (which could result in the reversal of the Corinthe decision, or at the very least just be embarrassing) or go home while everyone else stayed for dinner (which would be absolutely unfair).

There was no way for the surprise to just be postponed, either, because Valjean had certainly already started cooking dinner and that would mean so much food would go to waste.

This really sucked.

Cosette and Marius had an extremely distressed silent conversation, before walking over to Eponine. Guilt settled in their stomachs, especially Cosette's.

To make this easier, they had to rip the bandage off, explaining everything about the surprise in a rush.

Mixed reactions came from everyone. For one, they were pleasantly shocked about the dinner invitation, especially Marie and Montparnasse. But the circumstances certainly dampened their happiness about this.

"Well, crap," said Eponine matter-of-factly. "I guess you guys couldn't have known."

Her tone kept Cosette and Marius silent.

The house was coming up, and Eponine mulled her options over quietly. Meanwhile, everyone else texted their parents about how they'd be staying longer than normal.

By the time they reached Cosette's driveway, Grantaire couldn't take this. "Your family likes eating late, from what I've seen," he told Eponine. "If you don't eat much here, I'm sure you can pull this off and they won't suspect a thing."

"Yeah, I know. That's what I'm gonna do."

Not another word was said on the matter. They just went up the oak tree-lined sidewalk to the front door, each questioning how everything had become this weird. Shouldn't there have been more of a discussion about things? This wasn't a normal part of hanging out at a friend's house on a Friday afternoon, that was for sure.

Cosette pulled her dad aside and briefly told him how the surprise had needed to be spoiled ahead of time. After that, everything soon thankfully shifted back to normal.

Valjean even had jokes to tell. With a mischievous smile, he asked if they could all refrain from falling off his tables and sticking fake cockroaches on his walls for a prank. Grantaire, Courfeyrac, and Bossuet shared anxious looks, but when everybody else laughed, they relaxed.

Wonderfully heavy rainfall soon set in outside, pelting the tiled roof relentlessly and filling the oak trees with water that would certainly drip all over Cosette the next morning. Nobody minded the rain much, since they were warm and dry inside, and since everyone had been planning on getting a ride home from their parents or someone else's parents anyway.

To everyone's mild surprise, Joly had always absolutely loved thunderstorms of any and all severities. There was something about watching millions of raindrops descend from the sky, when it was illuminated just right, that he couldn't get enough of.

Dinner was well underway, sending amazing smells of rice pilaf, chicken, and roasted vegetables circulating through the house. A small group settled at the computer for Neopets.

"We need a rematch for Hasee Bounce, don't we?" Feuilly asked Bahorel. "After, y'know, I totally smoked you the other day."

"You're just lucky I don't play it that often, dude."

Grinning, Feuilly let him go first, as a sort of peace offering.

Then Musichetta made a joke about how earlier they were talking about how she and Bahorel needed to have a rematch for jump rope, and now there was this; how many other little rivalries did Bahorel have with everyone?

As it turned out, quite a lot. He and Eponine could never keep from upstaging each other in English class with increasingly ridiculous presentations, all while Joly watched with a mix of dread and amusement; he and Marius kept getting into spicy food eating competitions at the most inconvenient times; he and Montparnasse had this whole thing were they would try to untie the other's shoes without being caught; and now he was pretty sure that one rude regular at the Musain had started being mean to Enjolras purely to see Bahorel's indignant responses.

"Guess I make enemies wherever I go," joked Bahorel, starting the game and successfully ignoring Feuilly's more than questionable trash talk.

"You would probably be better at insults if they weren't all puns," Montparnasse noted. Next to him, Jehan laughed a little, and Feuilly made a sarcastically insulted face—which made everyone laugh a lot.

With a knowing smile, Musichetta fiddled with her blue-green flannel. "The worst ones are trash talk, puns, and geography trivia. I don't know how he does it."

Delighted, Feuilly came up with one on the spot. "If Warsaw you ever doing any worse at Hasee Bounce than you are now, we'd go jump in the Baltic Sea. 'Cause it'd be so unbearable."

It was a pretty awful example of trash talk, puns, and geography trivia all at once, but they all couldn't help laughing anyway.

"I've always wondered, why Poland?" asked Montparnasse.

He shrugged. "Why does Combeferre love moths? Why does Cosette love birds?"

"Or Joly with medical stuff, Grantaire with art, me with… flannels and books, I guess," Musichetta added, laughing. "I could go on, probably."

"Don't forget me with rivalries, apparently," Bahorel said, finishing the game of Hasee Bounce with a decently high score and giving Feuilly a smug look while everyone laughed.

Right before dinner was ready, Eponine pulled out her phone to text her parents some excuse about being home later than she had originally told them. It was smart to get ahead of these things, instead of explaining once they called.

"What're you telling them?" wondered Marie, hoping she wasn't overstepping.

"Just that we're all playing Monopoly with Musichetta and her parents, and that they've insisted we stay for the whole game." Eponine shrugged, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "And it would be rude to say I have to go home earlier, wouldn't it?"

While they giggled, Cosette refrained from voicing her thoughts on the matter.

Didn't Eponine get sick of lying to her parents, no matter how much they deserved it? Wasn't she scared she'd get caught one day? Cosette couldn't imagine it.

She was pulled out of her thoughts by Valjean announcing dinner was ready, because then she and Marius got to work setting things out at the table for everyone.

It was all a hit—Valjean really had become a great cook over the years, much better than he had been when he first adopted Cosette. Listening to her friends praise his cooking, she smiled to herself.

The conversation over dinner was random, as it often was. Topics ranged from the best new deals at the Musain (Enjolras, Jehan, and Joly) and job-searching endeavors (Feuilly, Marie, Bahorel, and Musichetta), to wildlife seen in the outside courtyard at school that day (Cosette, Marius, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre), ridiculous things that happened in physics class throughout the week (Montparnasse and Bossuet), and the latest attempts of Azelma, Gavroche, Louis, and Felix to cause chaos wherever they went (Eponine and Grantaire).

Overall, the surprise had gone well, besides the obvious mishaps. For now, at least, all of those complicated things from earlier were out of everyone's minds.

Chapter Text

Probably getting her clothes damp from the grass, but not particularly caring, Eponine laid down in her front yard, tossing her favorite purple scrunchie up into the air over and over. She watched it arc up into the sky, backdropped by poofy silver clouds. Each time, she caught it before it fell on her chest.

Soon, Musichetta would pick her up and bring her (along with Feuilly and Combeferre, whose houses were on the way) to Corinthe.

Eponine hadn't expected her parents to let her drive herself there after everything last night, but it was annoying nonetheless. She'd wanted to get out of the house earlier than necessary, even with the misty drizzle still left over from yesterday's thunderstorm, and thankfully her parents hadn't objected.

In fact, Eponine's siblings were out here too, running around playing some game she didn't feel like paying attention to. Their loud laughter served as welcome background noise.

Unfortunately, Azelma and Felix teasing Gavroche and Louis for nearly tripping wasn't distracting enough to keep Eponine from thinking about yesterday. From thinking about what had happened with Cosette and Marius.

The whole tricky situation with Eponine's mom's phone call throwing a wrench in their plan for everyone to stay later than normal obviously hadn't been their fault. Eponine knew this. She did think it was weird that neither of them—or Valjean, who would have been in on the plan too—thought to double check with her, since they all knew how her parents were, but that didn't matter now.

Still, it had been pretty inconvenient.

She'd needed to apologize just about a dozen times for the late-running game of Monopoly at Musichetta's house (the lie she told her parents) and they still tried to guilt her about going to Corinthe today. Her mom and dad were being worse than normal lately, which was really saying something.

And maybe she was becoming more easily worn down than normal, too.

The worst part was so much of her family baggage being displayed for all her friends to see and speculate and worry about, or at least that's how it felt in her mind. Especially with how Marius and Grantaire told Montparnasse and Marie about things at the Halloween party. She wasn't mad or anything, it was just a lot to think about. Everything was a lot.

Eponine could deal with her life just fine—she always did. But everyone's concerns were overwhelming.

So in short, she didn't know how to feel about yesterday, besides hoping it wouldn't be awkward the next time she saw Marius and Cosette.

Finally growing sick of this frustratingly depressing train of thought, Eponine put her purple scrunchie back on her wrist and sat up, determined to shake her bad mood off before Musichetta got here. And she pretty much succeeded, calling out jokes and encouragement to her laughing siblings.

When Musichetta's worn out car pulled up in the driveway, she lowered her window to say hi to everyone.

"Hey, Chetta!" called Louis and Gavroche, running up alongside Felix. Azelma asked her about how dance team was going, before relating her own stories about STEM club and general school stuff.

Listening to this rather one-sided conversation, Eponine walked down to the car.

She and Musichetta said bye, and then they were off. Their conversation consisted mostly of more dance team anecdotes, which definitely helped keeping Eponine's mind off of her previous troubles.

Knowing Musichetta, that might have been intentional, but Eponine didn't dwell on that.

Soon they picked up Feuilly, whose hair had become frizzy and floppy from being out in the drizzle, and Combeferre, who had been holding a hand above his face to keep his glasses from getting covered in tiny raindrops.

"Okay." Musichetta gave everyone a quick smile as she started the car up again. "Who's ready to get some books?"

And they all were, of course. Corinthe was always a hit.

With the smell of coffee floating through the air and walls of books all around, the four of them strolled wherever they felt like. Combeferre and Eponine discussed Percy Jackson and the snacks they'd get later; Musichetta and Feuilly admired notebooks together and wondered whether Corinthe was hiring. Eventually, they found a table to sit at in the main area, with a pile of snacks and coffee drinks almost as big as their pile of books.

Outside, the wind and rain had picked up considerably, and it had undoubtedly become too chilly for the eventual walk back to Musichetta's car to be very comfortable.

"Hey, I just got an idea for a new trivia game," said Feuilly, after taking a burning sip of hot chocolate. "In case we ever get sick of Paper Football Trivia."

Combeferre ate a few bites of the mini frittata he shared with Musichetta and Eponine. "What's that?"

"They ask the question, you take a really big sip of some super hot drink, and you can only swallow once you know the answer. And then not totally burning the roof of your mouth is, like, the prize."

The three of them exchanged a look. "Dude," Eponine said, "I mean this in the nicest way possible, but what the heck?"

He just shrugged, and then they all laughed, getting more than a few weird stares from other customers. That was okay, though, and so was the unpleasant weather outside. Eponine felt the worries that had been swirling around in her mind gradually fade away, replaced with yummy snacks, pretty books, and some much needed time with her friends.

"Can you sit still?" Jehan asked their little sister, who rolled her eyes and stopped squirming. They were braiding her hair while the two of them watched cartoons and ate PopTarts—a long-standing Saturday morning tradition.

Weak rays of sunlight came in through the foggy, rain-splattered windows and shone on the TV, which displayed an exceedingly rare rerun of Courage the Cowardly Dog.

Their sister wore Jake the Dog pajama pants and a Spongebob pajama shirt, and she had a stuffed animal version of Waddles from Gravity Falls in her lap. Add to that her Princess Bubblegum costume from Halloween, and Jehan's enormous collection of cartoon character stickers (plus the fanfic they were literally writing about Gravity Falls)—the two of them may have been a tad obsessed.

Oh well. There were worse hobbies.

Thinking about their fanfic made Jehan unconsciously hum a bit, because that brought along with it thoughts about Montparnasse. They hadn't been teased too much the rest of the school week about him reading and loving the fanfic, but all that was still fresh in their memory.

Just then, a commercial for the cartoon series about Tangled flashed on the screen, like the TV knew what they were thinking about and wanted to taunt them. Jehan stared at Rapunzel and Flynn Rider and felt their face grow warm.

"Hey—ouch! You're tugging on my hair too hard, Jehan."

"Oops, sorry," they said, letting go a little and going back to braiding her hair even faster than before. The Tangled commercial was soon replaced by one for some generic pillowy thing with an animal theme and an annoyingly catchy jingle that their sister sang along with out of habit.

When her hair was finished, their PopTarts were eaten, and Courage the Cowardly Dog hadn't come back yet, she began playing with her stuffed Waddles. "So that's cool that you guys got to stay at Cosette's house for dinner last night," she said. "Was the food good? Did anyone fall off a table again this time?"

Laughing, Jehan said, "The food was really good, and no, there wasn't any falling this time. Thank goodness."

"Me and Azelma talk about the Halloween party all the time. It was so fun. And, y'know, your friends are cooler than I thought they were."

They raised their eyebrows, deciding to let that slide. "Oh, by the way, Cosette wanted me to tell you again that she loved your costume a bunch. And Valjean told me to ask you how school was going."

She didn't say anything to that, just smiled, played with Waddles, and fiddled with her new braids.

"Musichetta said she wanted an Adventure Time trivia rematch, and Bossuet said there were a whole bunch of unluckiness stories he needed to tell you and Eponine's siblings and Courf's little brother, since he forgot about them at the party." They shook their head. "I told them we'd need to have a whole nother party to have time for all that."

"Yeah, there's such a long line for them to see me, they're gonna have to talk to my agent first," she joked, making both of them burst out into giggles.

Joly's moms shared an amused sigh as they watched all four of their kids—including Joly, who would be turning seventeen in less than a month—splash delightedly in the shallow puddles dotting the farmer's market parking lot. This was something that happened a lot.

Like Joly, his siblings loved rainy weather, so getting to play in the puddles was something that usually brought them all together. Who cares if it made them look like little kids?

It was nice for there to be no bickering, no roughhousing, at least for a little while.

Sometimes managing his siblings reminded Joly of way back when he, Eponine, and Bahorel did that presentation on To Kill a Mockingbird. There was a lot of him trying, mostly failing, and eventually succeeding to mediate, and more often than not they would bond over making fun of him. Good thing he didn't really mind.

They were at the farmer's market to look for new succulents, partially because you can never have too many succulents, and partially because the ones they had now had been accidentally knocked over or intentionally used as weapons a few too many times.

Joly was honestly content to let his siblings and his moms choose which succulents to get, only joining in on the heated discussion if they asked his opinion directly.

Instead, he snapped pictures of the prettiest things he could find—fresh and vibrant vegetables, mouth-watering streusel topped muffins—to commission Grantaire to draw. (The price of commissions was always different. Sometimes a hilariously bad impression, sometimes an embarrassing but funny story, sometimes just a cool looking quarter.)

His attention was drawn right back when he saw his little brother nearly trip and fall next to the muffin booth, but thankfully he caught himself.

After this, Joly amused himself by wondering what his friends were doing right now and hoping whatever it was, it was fun. Musichetta might have still been at Corinthe with Eponine, Combeferre, and Feuilly, trying to decide between half a dozen different books and feeling guilty about the ones she wouldn't get to buy. Bossuet was most likely at home, enjoying his homework-free weekend and (let's be honest here) getting himself into some sort of endearingly unlucky situation.

Both thoughts were comforting to Joly, who smiled as he strolled past booths and into puddles.

Honeyed afternoon sunlight pierced through murky clouds and slanted across the pine trees enclosing the library's backyard. The rain was the lightest it had been all day—only a soft, feathery mist fell on Grantaire and Enjolras, who didn't particularly care anyway. A downpour was probably due to start again soon, but they wanted to stay out here. At least there was a gazebo.

"Wow," muttered Enjolras, staring at the gnomes while the two of them walked across the parking lot, shoulder to shoulder. "I mean, obviously I knew they'd still be here, but it's different to actually see them in person."

"Yeah, I think there's even more of them now," Grantaire observed.

Going to the library had turned out to be only part of their date, due to Enjolras' mom getting so excited for her son that she offered to make them a picnic lunch that they could bring along in a cooler.

Since this was super nice of her—and eating in the gazebo honestly sounded more fun than eating at a restaurant—they obviously accepted the food. When Grantaire told his family about what Enjolras' mom had done, his mom and stepdad made a whole big deal about how they were gonna put together an amazingly decadent dessert.

And now they had a tremendous horde of food that was probably way too much for just two people, all to be eaten in the gazebo behind the library.

Of course, there was probably a possibility that someone would yell at them for basically loitering and turning the gazebo into their own personal restaurant.

But, on the other hand, if all these gnomes had been back here for who knows how long without getting taken away, how likely was it that any library employees ever even looked back here? Enjolras and Grantaire would take their chances.

"Here seems good," Enjolras told him, setting down the cooler with the food his mom cooked, and Grantaire followed suit with his own cooler. "At least the table isn't that wet."

Everything had been going well so far—excluding the awkward moment when Enjolras had almost dropped the cooler he’d insisted on carrying for him while walking back from Grantaire's house to his car, and when Grantaire got frustrated fumbling with his stubborn seatbelt. Watching Enjolras chat effortlessly with Grantaire's parents had been nice but weird.

He was just thankful for the fact that everyone in their group of friends knew each other's parents, at least to a vague extent. Having this be the first meeting between your parents and the person you were going on a date with must have been even worse. (Another nice thing was that Grantaire's older brother had been out of the house when Enjolras picked him up, so he didn't have a chance to say anything embarrassing or obnoxious.)

As Enjolras set everything out and got into a silent battle with a container of pasta salad that didn't want to sit upright on the uneven picnic table, Grantaire watched with a smile that was equal parts amused and fond.

Maybe, he now considered, awkwardness wasn't the exception to how well the date was going. Awkwardness could be rather nice sometimes.

"Need help?" he wondered, nudging Enjolras.

With an awfully cute expression of determination on his face, Enjolras shook his head. It reminded Grantaire of group projects in history class, when Enjolras always happened to pick something to do that he had particular trouble with, but stayed diligent anyway. "Nah, I got it. Thanks, though."

Enjolras kept messing with the container, and Grantaire was content to just sit and watch the trees and gnomes.

He finally got it to sit right, but it fell again only thirty seconds later, met with a laugh from Grantaire and a resigned groan from Enjolras.

Because of the weird gunk covering most of one side of the table, they sat right next to each other, instead of across. That was nice, though—it let Enjolras scooch his leg over just slightly, so that their knees were touching. And it reminded both of them of the cafeteria at school.

They ate their crazy amount of food in a mix of animated conversation about all kinds of things (including speculation about what books the four of their friends who went to Corinthe bought this morning and about how Courfeyrac's soccer game would go this evening, increasingly ridiculous theories about the library gnomes, and more subdued worries about what had happened with Eponine, Cosette, and Marius on the walk home from school yesterday) and thoughtful, happy quiet. Birds chirped in the surrounding woods and an actually pleasant breeze blew through the gazebo.

Grantaire finally gave up trying to eat more. "What were they thinking?" he muttered, staring down at the only halfway finished pasta salad and the barely dented chocolate cake. The one thing he finished was his water bottle, which had been filled with lemonade like always. "It's like they thought we were going on a double date with Cosette and Marius or something."

"My mom never judges portion sizes correctly," Enjolras said, somewhat apologetically. "The two of us end up with a lot of huge dinners. This'll be good as leftovers, at least."

”Oh yeah, definitely. And if I tell Eponine I got a bunch of food your mom and my parents made, she'll come over and get some of it." He shook his head. "Azelma and Gavroche have enormous appetites. It's almost scary."

They laughed at this, and then Enjolras stood up, tugging Grantaire along with him. "Come on. I wanna look at the gnomes again, and the sky's really gray and pretty."

It definitely was—huge dramatic clouds hung overhead, filled with tension for when they would finally release rain and lightning. Grantaire laced his fingers together with Enjolras', and thought about all the amazing shading in those clouds. If he could draw that, that'd be something.

"I still don't understand why there's all these gnomes here," Enjolras mused. "Probably never will."

Grantaire nodded in agreement, and Enjolras went on. "Gosh, it seems like so long ago when we first saw them, that day at the library."

"Yeah, it really does."

"Cosette and Marius weren't even dating at that point." Something else occurred to him, making his face grow warm. They passed a gnome covered in Spanish moss, with daisies growing around its feet. "Wow—I technically didn't even have a crush on you yet back then. That's crazy."

"That was the day I first realized I had a crush on you, actually," Grantaire said off-handedly.

Enjolras' eyes grew wide, and his face got even warmer. Obviously he'd spent plenty of time these past few months wondering if Grantaire liked him like that, but to hear when it had actually started was very different. "Really? Cool."

A smile tugged at Grantaire's mouth as he looked away somewhat, a bit embarrassed. "Yep."

The wind had picked up considerably, ruffling his hair into a wonderful pile of messy curls. Enjolras couldn't help staring.

"I think it was when we got back to the main group, y'know, after I fell off the table and then when Joly was telling me all about what ice packs to use," Grantaire went on. "You were talking with Combeferre about his broken glasses thing and Bossuet about his bathroom thing, and then you told them about the gnomes."

"Right, I remember that."

"And I guess you guys were laughing a bunch, and—well, your laugh is nice. Really nice."

For a moment they just smiled at each other, not paying much attention to the gnomes or the wind. "So's yours," Enjolras told him, feeling familiarly jumbled. "I like making you laugh. That never used to happen."

This got Grantaire all tingly inside, but before he got the chance to reply, the clouds suddenly gave way to an insane amount of rain. Actually insane.

Their clothes were already pretty much soaked by the time they could even register what was happening and run back to the safety of the gazebo, laughing so hard you could probably hear it inside the library.

"What the heck was that?" Enjolras asked, out of breath from all the running and laughing. "Talk about going from 0 to 100. Gosh."

"Seriously," agreed Grantaire, this time deciding he felt like sitting on top of the picnic table, the part that wasn't gross.

Immediately, Enjolras raised his eyebrows. "What are you doing? You know Joly would freak if I let you fall off another table," he teased, standing so close to the table that Grantaire had a hard time focusing.

He successfully kept his laughter away. "Please shut up."

With a wave of jitters almost as strong as the rain still pounding away around them, Enjolras took Grantaire's hands in his and said, more calmly than he felt, "Make me."

Grantaire felt his stomach drop. Wow. This was so not fair.

How was he ever supposed to be able to focus when things like this kept happening?

The angle was awkward, but no way would that keep him from leaning in a little closer, calmed by the pelting sound of rain. And a moment later, they kissed.

Chapter Text

"Ooh, do you think I should get that flannel?"

At his sister's question, Montparnasse crossed his arms thoughtfully. "Well, for one thing, we're just here to print out our Pennsylvania pictures," he said. "I didn't think we were really gonna shop."

Marie shrugged dismissively, and glanced ahead at their parents, who were walking through the supermarket talking about boring stuff. "Dude, I can shop if I wanna shop."

"And I think there's some whole thing with Musichetta being the only one out of all them who wears flannel? Like she thinks nobody else can pull it off and they all kinda agree?" he went on, somewhat unsure because Jehan hadn't ever told him about that in more than vague terms. Montparnasse prided himself on being excellent at picking up on context clues—so was Marie—but there was so much going on with their still relatively new friends that he couldn't possibly be expected to know everything.

While Marie thumbed through the flannels for one in her size, Montparnasse listened to the thundering rain outside. He liked the sound, but storms always made his sinuses act up.

"So is that a suggestion against me getting it, or do you want me to get it just to mess with her?" teased Marie.

"Despite what you guys seem to think, I don't always want to cause trouble." They shared a little laugh, and she punched him on the shoulder affectionately. "I mean, I have to do something when everyone's teasing me and Jehan about the Halloween costumes thing for the thousandth time, or when Jehan brings up the band practice water bottle incident for the millionth time. But I've been alright with those, too. And I teased Enjolras and Grantaire on Monday about getting together, but everyone did that—you were particularly bad."

"Yeah, I know you're not so mean anymore, I just like to pretend you still are," Marie reassured him, laughing. "Don't you think the band practice thing needs a better name, though? Like Waterbottlegate or something?"

Kicking a random candy wrapper around on the floor, Montparnasse shrugged.

"Tell Jehan, not me—they want to use it as something that happens in their next fanfic. As far as I'm concerned, they have the copyright and all the creative rights and everything to that story." She laughed, and he grinned. "I just want to leave all that behind and have a fresh start."

"Right. Okay, dude." Having finally found a flannel her size, Marie held it up for him to see. "I'm gonna get it, so honestly, whaddya think?"

He gave a simple thumbs up, to which she nodded, satisfied. By now their parents were several aisles ahead of them, and naturally they hadn't even noticed yet that Marie and Montparnasse had trailed behind. They exchanged an exasperated eye-roll and speed-walked to the place where they let you print out pictures.

Pennsylvania had been nice, even with the surplus of family togetherness and affection.

One great thing about having Marie as a twin sister was that she was generally okay with getting hugged twenty times in five minutes, so she absorbed much of what Montparnasse wouldn't be able to handle on his own. At the same time, she got annoyed by enough stuff for them to be able to complain together once they were alone. Basically, they made a great team, and they pretty much always had.

What hadn't been nice about Pennsylvania was the sudden realization that he actually did end up missing all of their new friends, just as Marie had smugly predicted he would.

Not only Jehan, either. Montparnasse had missed everyone else too, the whole thirteen. It was weird.

Obviously Montparnasse had had friend groups before accidentally becoming part of this one. He and Marie had been tight with their other lunch friends (Claquesous, Gueulemer, Brujon, and Babet) for years, but the four of them were just so different from their new friends. Comparing the two group dynamics was like comparing apples and oranges, as cliche a metaphor as that was.

Overall, this school year had been a lot different than either he or Marie had expected. And that was actually great.

"I still can't get over how nice it was of Cosette and her dad to let us all stay for dinner yesterday," Marie muttered once they had put the little chips from their phones into the photo things. "And the food was so yummy. I should give that recipe to my culinary teacher, it'd be a big hit."

"Yeah, definitely."

There was a topic regarding yesterday which they hadn't talked to each other about yet, mostly because they knew it wasn't their business and even discussing it privately might be overstepping. Yes, everyone said Montparnasse and Marie were part of the group just as much as the original thirteen, but they didn't want to push it.

The whole business with the Eponine's parents—the Thenardiers, Marius and Grantaire had said at the Halloween party—and Cosette and Valjean. What was up with that?

Montparnasse was able to tell that what Grantaire and Marius had told them wasn't the whole story. He figured Marie had, too. Obviously that completely made sense, because it was personal business and they wouldn't have wanted to say something Cosette or Eponine would prefer to keep private. Still, he couldn't help being curious, and that curiosity was steadily turning into worry.

Bundled in his favorite tattered maroon sweatshirt, Bahorel flipped through songs on his phone and added the best ones to his ever-growing annual playlist.

There was a crick in his neck from the way he was sitting, and the tag on his sweatshirt was itchy and dumb, but he found that he really didn't mind.

Thoughts about songs somehow led to thoughts about Bahorel's future niece or nephew, and what music they would eventually like. And that led him on a whole mental ramble about what it would be like being an uncle—how often he would go over to see them, all the great and terrible jokes he would tell, if his sister would be cool with all of his friends meeting her kid. His sister and her husband were moving much closer, so it would be easier to get help from their family. She wouldn't even have the baby for several months, but it was nice to imagine.

Bahorel was halfway through imagining Combeferre rambling off trivia and Feuilly telling his patented geography puns before he realized what he was doing. This seemed awfully sentimental of him.

Daydreaming about his friends becoming honorary aunts and uncles to his sister's future baby was kind of out of character for Bahorel. That was something that Courfeyrac might do, maybe Cosette or Musichetta too.

It wasn't like he disliked their sentimentality or anything, it just came as a surprise to feel that way himself.

Even yesterday at Cosette's house, they were all talking about how Bahorel had little harmless rivalries with everyone. But now he felt like how Eponine must have been on Thanksgiving, after the whole Declaration of Undying Friendship and Love thing. He'd teased her about that a lot during English class the past week, but maybe he could relate more than he wanted to admit.

Oh well—that was hardly something to worry about, now was it? Bahorel eventually decided that he needed to go outside and walk around barefoot in the damp grass, rain still coming down in random showers. And this was rather nice.

Trying to feel more amused than resigned, Bossuet watched as a sparkling raindrop sped down the lowest branch of his favorite oak tree and plopped right onto his head.

He sighed. What to do now?

"I always get myself into situations like this," he muttered, staring down at his soaked tennis shoes. Bossuet had known there was going to be a crazy amount of rain today, but of course he went exploring in the woods anyway. One wrong splash into a puddle that was deeper than it looked and he'd soaked his shoes beyond repair. His parents would be annoyed but not exactly surprised.

After a moment's reflection, he added, "No—I actually have been in this exact situation before. When was that, eighth grade or something?"

Yep, in eighth grade he had gone on a puddle splashing spree with Musichetta (who had wisely worn waterproof shoes) and Joly (who had wisely refrained from splashing altogether, content to just stare at and study the puddles, because they were too deep), and this whole entire thing had happened before.

That's how he knew that even a couple rounds in the dryer wouldn't do a thing for shoes that were soaked to the bone.

Which his shoes definitely were right now.

"Crap," he said, just as he looked a bit past the incriminating puddle and saw a frog. It was very cute, brown and orange mottled together. Currently doing nothing but staring at Bossuet, who waved and smiled at it.

"You're probably wondering how I got into this situation, little froggy." Bossuet laughed at his own hardly-a-joke, a reference to cliche movies where the main character would say something like that in overhead narration right at the beginning. Obviously this frog wouldn't get the joke, but still. Whatever. "The thing is, I'm not waterproof like you are… I mean, frogs are waterproof, right? Well, they would have to be, wouldn't they?"

A second later, as the frog blinked and more raindrops pitter-pattered onto the two of them, Bossuet realized he was standing in the middle of the woods, wearing soaked shoes that were making his feet incredibly uncomfortable, and talking to a frog about whether or not it was waterproof. This was pretty weird, even by his standards.

Well… honestly, in his experience, being able to talk out his problems always helped. And having an audience allowed him to turn his problems into stories, which helped even more.

So Bossuet spent a while longer in the rainy woods, as more sunlight gradually filtered in through the trees and made everything look even more beautiful than it had already. His frog learned tons of things it had never needed to know about Bossuet's greatest hits of being an unluckiness magnet.

He was reminded of the Halloween party, when he got to tell the same stories to Eponine's, Jehan's, and Courfeyrac's siblings. (And then got dragged into the whole fake cockroach prank, but that was all just part of the fun.) Good times.

The week after, Bossuet and Grantaire had been talking in math class about what had happened to each of them during the party.

Obviously Bossuet's stuff couldn't match up to Grantaire's at all, what with the whole falling-off-a-table situation, but they could relate to each other on a few topics. Mainly, what they had each learned from the experience.

Grantaire had vowed never to sit and play on tables again (at least not ones owned by the parents of any of his friends).

And Bossuet had reflected on how he felt more capable while dealing with complicated situations himself now, after having to navigate everything with the nearly disastrous prank. He didn't know if that had actually improved his skills for dealing with things, but then again, he didn't know that it hadn't, either.

While the JV soccer game went on, Courfeyrac stared up at the darkening sky where mist cascaded in flowy sheets and down at the mess of grass and clover beneath his feet. He leaned down to place a few tiny snail shells safely into the palm of his hand, then looked them over. Were they just dirty inside, or was there an actual snail in there? Courfeyrac was never sure.

Usually he and his teammates had plenty of fun talking and joking about stupid stuff while they waited for their game, but today was different.

One reason was that their coach had strongly warned them against making so much noise when they were on the sidelines a couple games ago after a particularly hilarious joke Courfeyrac made about the gross smell on the team bus.

Another was that he uncharacteristically didn't feel like joining in on everyone's conversation about how bad the JV guys were playing. It was just one of those days.

(On a somewhat unrelated note, however boring his team could be at times, Courfeyrac was always glad that no drama had come from them like the drama with Feuilly's first swim meet, and the people Eponine, Jehan, Bahorel, and Montparnasse had overheard being extremely mean. Better boring than anything like that. Musichetta felt the same about the dance team.)

Maybe he missed his friends, that seemed likely.

Earlier Musichetta had texted everyone a whole string of photos from Corinthe—mini frittatas and slices of raspberry cheesecake, vintage editions of books Combeferre bought, even a super funny shot of Feuilly's hot chocolate spit take after Eponine told a great joke. Courfeyrac was glad they'd had a good time, and couldn't help wanting to trade damp bleachers and snail shells for a cozy bookstore and yummy snacks.

Besides those pictures, there hadn't been a bunch of activity on the group chat today, at least not since the last time Courfeyrac checked his phone.

At lunchtime, Joly had sent a short video of his family's new succulents from the farmer's market, complete with a game of The Floor is Lava that his siblings were playing in the background. (It was still in the parking lot of the farmer's market, and the way it went was that everything that wasn't a puddle was the lava.)

Courfeyrac was on the team bus heading to this game when Joly sent that video, and he had delightedly replayed it several times. Joly's siblings were something else, always.

But that had basically been it.

He hoped everyone else was having a good day.

That Jehan and their little sister were watching so many cartoons their brains would fall out, that Bahorel was making significant progress on his playlist, that Bossuet wasn't finding some way to ruin his Saturday with unluckiness (or at least that he found whatever unluckiness that befell him amusing), that Montparnasse and Marie were enjoying printing out their Pennsylvania pictures, and that Cosette and Marius weren't doing anything his dad would yell at them for while watching Disney movies.

And that made him remember Enjolras and Grantaire's first date, which was hopefully going well. Courfeyrac and Eponine were quite happy that those two had finally gotten everything worked out, because it took a while. All the times he called Enjolras Our Fearless Coward paid off.

Thoughts about his little brother also went through Courfeyrac's head as he half-heartedly watched the other JV soccer team steadily increase their lead. This past week at school, he'd worn his fake mustache from Halloween to school as a joke, resulting in a call from home from an unamused teacher with a real mustache just like it.

Their parents hadn't barely punished him, because the whole thing was honestly hilarious and the teacher overreacted.

Louis and Felix were in his same class, and thought the whole thing was amazing. Eponine kept complaining to Courfeyrac about how often they were droning on about the mustache incident, which would apparently go down in history at their elementary school.

Spending so much time observing and thinking made Courfeyrac feel like Combeferre. That brought a smile to his face.

As if it had heard his thoughts, a papery moth fluttered in front of him from out of nowhere. Mist beaded its fragile wings, and the floodlights overhead gave it an almost mystical glow.

Inside Marius' microwave, a plate almost overflowing with nachos spun around and around. The hum of the microwave blended in with the hum of rain outside.

Cosette had been over at Marius' house a significant part of the day, and throughout that day, there had been countless shifts in the weather.

It went from a pleasant drizzle to windy flashes of rain, unpredictable downpours to feathery mist, and finally to a steady sprinkling. She was glad to be inside.

They'd spent the day watching Disney movies, which was one of Cosette's favorite ways ever to spend a day. First was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, because of her inside joke with Courfeyrac where their nickname for each other was Snow White. Second was Tangled, because of Jehan and Montparnasse dressing as Rapunzel and Flynn Rider on Halloween. (That still made her and Marius giggle every time they remembered it.)

Now Aladdin was on, because of one time in elementary school, when Cosette first had Eponine, Grantaire, and Marius all over at her house at once.

The four of them, with Valjean hovering nearby, had watched Aladdin. Cosette was very nervous at the time, as she hadn't had friends over at her house much at all previously. Really, it was only Eponine herself before then, because even though she and Enjolras went to the same elementary school and were friends, he never went to her house. And everyone else in the group went to a different elementary school. So it was a big deal. But Aladdin was a hit, and she and Marius even sang A Whole New World together without missing a beat.

Once Cosette had finally realized her feelings for Marius late in middle school, she figured things had pretty much been settled during A Whole New World. That was it for her.

Thinking about that now brought a smile to Cosette's face, and as Marius took the steaming plate of nachos out of the microwave, she kissed him on the cheek.

"Hey," he said, with a cute little smile. She said hey back. They stood like that, nestled between the counter and the fridge, until Marius wondered, "Do you think your dad would want any nachos? My dad probably won't."

Today, Valjean had actually tagged along with Cosette to Marius' house, to hang out with Marius' dad. To everyone's surprise—especially Valjean himself, and Cosette—the two of them had become great friends a while after their kids started dating. This was the first time they'd seen each other again since Thanksgiving, when the four of them ate together.

"I doubt he'd want any," Cosette figured, eyeing the nachos hungrily. In the background, Aladdin and Jasmine were singing. "The leftovers we brought you guys from last night should be enough for the two of them."

"Alright, cool."

This somewhat-recent development of their fathers becoming friends was a pleasant surprise. Cosette couldn't remember the last time Valjean had become close friends with someone (he was friendly with everyone at church, but that didn't really count), and Marius was the same.

The way they saw it, Marius' dad always wanted to go places and do things and interact with people, but hardly had the money or time to do so. Work took up so much of his day that Marius was almost selfishly glad that he spent nearly all of his off-work time at home. As for Valjean, he certainly had the time and money to go out and do stuff, but often lacked any motivation of the sort. He wasn't a hermit (not completely); he just loved his home and his garden, just like Cosette did.

And with his daughter and her humongous group of friends constantly hanging around, Valjean usually figured he had plenty of excitement in his life already. Making food for them occasionally and trying to keep them out of too much trouble was enough for him.

In this circle of friends, all of their parents did know each other, to some extent. Joly's moms and Bossuet's parents got along very well and would often talk for twenty minutes or longer if they ran into each other at the store, as would Bahorel's dad and Musichetta's mom (who knew each other briefly from college). There were plenty of vague Facebook connections throughout the group, at least.

Certainly everyone avoided the Thenardier parents, although not for the reason Valjean did; it was just because nobody really liked them.

All of the parents (obviously excluding Eponine's) did trust and like Valjean enough to be fine with the fact that their kids were over at his house multiple times a month. But besides gardening-based small talk with Joly's moms at the farmer's market and politics-based small talk with Enjolras' mom at the bank, that hadn't translated into an actual friendship with any of them until now.

Cosette and Marius were glad that their relationship was accidentally the perfect opportunity and excuse for their fathers to become friends, and found the whole situation both amusing and sweet.

Now they were curled back up on Marius' ugly yellow couch, engrossed in the movie. A stuffed dragon (his favorite stuffed animal, forever immortalized in Grantaire's sketchbook) sat between them, and Cosette was trying not to spill her nachos on it. Valjean and Marius' dad were in the next room over, chatting and eating the leftovers from last night.

"I wonder what they're talking about," Marius said, glancing over at the side table, where a few knicknacks sat collecting dust. "Oh! Almost forgot. I gotta juggle those for you later like I said I would. I know you love watching me do that."

Blushing a bit, Cosette nodded. "Yeah, I do," she said with a giggle. "Hmm… I bet they're talking about some secret conspiracy. Serious adult stuff."

"Oh yeah, definitely. Aliens are taking over. It's a whole thing." They laughed together, and he took a thoughtful bite of nacho. "Their first clue is your guys' leftovers—that food was so good, it has to be from outer space. There's no other explanation!"

"Right, I never told you, but my dad doesn't know how to cook. We just have a personal chef who's also an alien," said Cosette, trying insanely hard to keep a straight face and eventually failing, collapsing into giggles along with Marius.

After a moment, Marius gasped. "What if Future Enjolras was an alien?"

This was too much, and the uproarious laughter coming from the two of them was almost enough for Valjean and Marius' dad to ask if they were okay.

"Wow, I completely forgot about that guy, honestly," she said, still laughing. "We should tell Enjolras about his clone."

From there, they drifted between talking about their increasingly complicated conspiracy theory of aliens and clones and actually paying attention to the movie. In the other room, Valjean and Marius' dad kept talking about whatever it was they were talking about.

Eventually the conversation somehow led back to all the weird stuff from yesterday, with how Cosette and Marius didn't think to tell Eponine about their dinner surprise and then she had to tell her parents an even more complicated lie than normal.

Cosette still felt just as stupid and guilty as she had when it first happened, but Marius tried to persuade her not to.

"Hey, Ponine knows it wasn't really your fault," he said, one hand holding hers and the other petting his stuffed dragon. "If she's upset or annoyed, it's just directed towards her parents. That's how it always is."

With a sigh, she laid her head on Marius' shoulder. "I know that, I just can't help it. Everything's so complicated and I always blame myself."

"Yeah, I get it. I think that Eponine can tell you feel guilty, but she just sees it as pity and it bugs her."

He was right, and Cosette nodded to show she understood. It was about time Cosette got over all of her complicated feelings from when she was Eponine's foster sister, because really, more than a decade should have been plenty of time to get over everything. But apparently not.

Sometimes she did pity Eponine and her siblings for the fact that the Thenardiers were their parents, and they had no way out of living with them. Cosette had Valjean—she was so lucky to have such a great dad! She'd only lived with those people a few years, but her former foster siblings were stuck with them.

Of course, Cosette knew pity wouldn't solve anything, and that none of them would appreciate it. This left her in a weird cycle of unresolved guilt she'd never paid much attention to until recently.

Well, whatever—this was no time to dwell on stuff like that. She had a movie to watch, and a boyfriend to hang out with.

All that could stand to be ignored for a while.

Chapter Text

That next Monday at lunch, everyone fawned over Bossuet's new tennis shoes (his dad drove him to the store the day before to replace the soaked ones) and laughed a bunch when he told them how he ruined his old pair by splashing in puddles. Then they congratulated Courfeyrac on his varsity soccer team's win.

When Marie showed up in her cute new flannel, they all glanced towards Musichetta, who shrugged and smiled. "If anyone else is gonna wear flannel, I'm glad it's you," she said.

Musichetta and Marie high-fived, and then Cosette asked Enjolras and Grantaire how their date went.

"Pretty great," said Grantaire, with a small smile that grew wider as everyone cheered and Enjolras grabbed his hand under the table. "I got a stomachache from eating so much cake and pasta salad, and then I almost fell off another table, but it really was nice."

"Dude, you have to start being more careful. I can't be on call as your doctor 24/7, and I'm certainly not going to chaperone you on dates," said Joly. Everybody laughed.

Lunch carried on in a similar fashion the rest of the week, with plenty of jokes and rambling conversations about the weirdest topics. Bahorel asked if anybody knew any recipes for cool baby food, even though his sister wouldn't even have her kid for several months, and Eponine again brought up the question about if all the clothes ever made could cover the entire planet, which her siblings still wondered about all the time. They added Montparnasse and Marie to the group chat one day, because somehow that hadn’t happened yet.

One day Combeferre and Jehan finally remembered their plan made at the park to have a sleepover for the first time in forever, and brought this up at lunch.

Nobody was really free that weekend to have the sleepover with them, which was fine. This way they could Google astronomy facts and delve deep into Wikipedia to their hearts' content. Having less people also meant the sleepover could be at Jehan's house, which was nicer but smaller than Combeferre's house.

"A sleepover is a really good idea, though," said Marius. "I never think about it, but we haven't had any of those in forever, have we?"

Combeferre and Jehan shook their heads no, and Feuilly smiled ruefully.

"Well, we definitely can't have one at my house," he said.

"Why's that?" wondered Marie.

"My parents wouldn't let me after the last time—I think it was in seventh grade. I had the dumb idea for us to all try to throw fruit snacks up into the air at once and catch them in our mouths. Basically all of us missed, but we ran off to do something else right after and forgot to clean up, so we just left them laying all around my bedroom. It was totally stupid."

Marie's eyes went wide, and Montparnasse said, "So I'm guessing your room got a bunch of ants?"

"More ants than you could ever imagine." Feuilly looked haunted, and he glanced toward his own pack of fruit snacks with a shudder. Ants were a serious business.

"We called it Bugpocalypse," added Courfeyrac, giving Feuilly a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

Montparnasse said he was glad nothing like that had ever happened to him, although he'd gotten into plenty of tricky situations during sleepovers with his other group of friends.

There was a scar on his elbow that he used to tell people was from something cool like climbing a tree or falling off a bike, but was actually just from crashing into a table during a stuffed animal snowball fight.

"Stuff like that happens to you a lot, I think, Monty," Jehan noted, snuggled up in their oversized and overcolored jacket. "There's that, there was the water bottle incident, and how you fell into a hole when you guys went apple picking. I mean, those things aren't very related, but you get what I mean."

Instead of rolling his eyes or protesting for the umpteenth time about his embarrassing anecdotes being brought up, Montparnasse just shrugged. "Yeah, I do. Oh—forgot to tell you, Marie started calling the incident Waterbottlegate. Whaddya think?"

"Ooh, I love it!"

As the days went by, the upcoming end of the semester loomed in everyone's mind. In their English class, Eponine, Joly, and Bahorel had to do another book report for the midterm.

This one was somehow even more disastrous than the one they'd done near the beginning of the school year, mainly because Eponine couldn't get out of taking her siblings with her to the library when they had to work on it.

Between Bahorel giving Azelma lessons on how to throw a punch, Joly examining the scrapes Louis and Felix had gotten from running around outside in the middle of the night, and Eponine trying to keep Gavroche from playing Jenga with the books, it would have been a miracle if any work had gotten done.

Once Ms. Hutcheson finalized the date of the trigonometry midterm exam, it was time for everyone to get cracking. A longtime tradition was for whoever needed it to get some tutoring from Bahorel, who was arguably the best in the group at math.

This year, he decided to hold all study sessions at the Musain. Mexican food was brain food, apparently.

Bahorel didn't have the attention span to tutor people in any kind of normal way, instead devising some crazy strategy that turned out to be surprisingly helpful.

With Jehan he would create a whole word problem and go through the whole thing, using characters from Gravity Falls for the theoretical scenario. But he would purposefully get details from the show wrong—messing up characterization, mangling continuity—until Jehan couldn't take it anymore and called him out on it. Then Bahorel would ask them to go through the scenario using the correct details from Gravity Falls, therefore requiring Jehan to put everything into their own words and understand it better.

Watching from behind the counter, Enjolras was impressed. His own pre-test motivational speeches often helped his friends get over their nerves, but Bahorel's creative studying techniques were on another level.

Another study session left Enjolras more confused than impressed, so when Bahorel and Feuilly came back up to the counter for even more tacos, he said, "Hey, weren't you guys gonna study today? It looked like you were just on your phones laughing at memes."

"Ah, but that's exactly what we were doing," said Bahorel, pulling up his camera roll, full of trigonometry memes. Feuilly had tons of history and geography memes on his phone, because that was a class Bahorel had been having trouble with. Enjolras had to admit it was a great idea, swapping memes and making studying much more fun.

When Grantaire finally managed to remember to paint his drawing of Luna and bring it to school to give to Combeferre, his friends all gushed over it.

Combeferre immediately started making plans about where to put it on his wall and about what other moth memorabilia he could put with it, as Courfeyrac listened with an amused smile.

Everyone else turned to Grantaire, who didn't look as uncomfortable with the compliments as he usually did.

"You've really improved a lot since the start of the school year, you know," Cosette said, smiling. Enjolras nodded agreement.

This did mean a lot to Grantaire, even though his only reply was to eat some of his burger with a thoughtful look and mumble thanks after taking a sip of apple juice.

On either side of him, Enjolras and Eponine shared an exasperated look and translated for everyone else that this meant Grantaire felt all mushy inside. Grantaire accepted defeat and laughed a bit. "Okay, you got me. I do appreciate the compliments, it just takes me a while."

"Don't worry," teased Eponine. "If it's all too much you can always go fall off a table again—that'll give you some humility!"

After everyone laughed a bunch at that, Musichetta and Feuilly had some news of their own. "We both got a job at Corinthe!" she told her friends, who all said congrats.

"Man, that's like a dream come true for you, Chetta," Bossuet said. She nodded excitedly, starry-eyed.

Only Eponine had some misgivings about their new jobs, because she knew her parents went to Corinthe pretty often. For some reason they hated the Musain’s Mexican food but loved the little bookstore. If everyone started hanging around there all the time, like had happened with the Musain, they could run into some issues.

So should she tell Cosette about it? It was honestly hard to know.

For one thing, Eponine just didn't like warning Cosette and Valjean about where they might bump into her mom and dad, because she felt so angry that they needed to be so cautious at all. Why did her parents have to be the way they were? Everything was so unfair sometimes.

(That was also why she never asked her friends to tell their parents not to mention Cosette or Valjean if they ever ran into the Thenardiers and started talking about the whole friend group—which, to be fair, practically never happened; nobody liked the Thenardiers much, no surprise there. Obviously that would’ve been smart, because who knows what could come up in a conversation, but she just hated the thought of dragging even more people into all of this.)

But she also knew that certain things were just the way that they were, no matter how unfair. Resisting out of principle instead of playing along often caused more harm than good.

Something else to consider was how things were between her and Cosette right now in general—Eponine wasn't sure about this, either. Ever since the weirdness that one Friday, with Cosette and Marius' surprise, they hadn't really talked to each other about what happened.

It wasn't like it was a particularly significant incident or anything, only a warning sign that their whole complicated situation was becoming a bigger deal than they had both previously thought.

This scared Eponine, and it was beginning to scare Cosette as well.

Neither girl honestly had much significant experience in sorting things like this out in the open, and now that seemed like a problem.

Eponine prided herself in shouldering the brunt of her parental situation alone, reluctant to accept much help from her friends except for when they had to cover for her. The thought that her siblings deserved to deal with more than they already had to was not one that could ever occur to her. (Whether her siblings actually wanted to help Eponine handle their mom and dad by doing more besides sticking up for each other, was another question.)

As for Cosette, she’d ended up with a dad receptive enough to nearly always lead her in acknowledging and mending any arguments the two of them had.

She was a naturally sweet person who tended to admit right away when she was wrong about little things, and who also tended to not end up in many situations more complicated than that.

After all, excepting everything that happened at Homecoming with the people from the swim team and at the Halloween party with Grantaire falling off the table, this group of friends really hadn't run into many fights or similar buzzkills over the years. Even stuff with the Thenardiers had hardly ever been as relevant as it had been this school year.

This meant that even though Cosette and Eponine had obviously been dealing with these weird circumstances for a very long time, they weren't particularly equipped to actually deal with it.

As in bringing it up to each other or the rest of their friends instead of only letting vague worries simmer separately in their minds. As in actually finally talking about everything.

Who knew what else had unknowingly complicated all of this throughout the years, to the extent where Eponine and Cosette—who were sisters at one point, for crying out loud—didn't know how to work things out anymore. That was yet to be seen.

In less heavy news, the end of the semester crept closer every day, and winter break hovered like a tentative mirage.

School was great because it was the main place everyone hung out, but a break was well needed.

Everyone did alright on the trigonometry midterm, thanks to Bahorel's wacky study strategies. When his friends gushed to Ms. Hutcheson about his methods, he actually might have blushed.

The first sleepover Combeferre and Jehan had went great, even with their little sister's repeated attempts to join in on whatever they were doing. Finally she swore revenge—the next time the two of them had a sleepover, she'd have one with Azelma the same night. (Jehan wasn't sure their parents would be okay with this.)

Although she and Feuilly certainly enjoyed their new jobs at Corinthe, Musichetta worried she might soon find it harder to balance work and the dance team.

Over break, there were going to be several competitions, and with that came lots of time at practice. She could only hope she'd be able to deal with it all.

Feuilly had plenty of time to work, since swim season had already been over for several weeks already.

The end of the season always left him feeling odd, but this year was different. He and Marie couldn't deny that some of their teammates who came over to see them at Homecoming acted different towards them afterwards. It was an understandably weird situation for their teammates to have stumbled into, given that they couldn't have had any idea what happened at the swim meet that day.

Still, though, an increasingly obvious conclusion was that the people who were now acting weird included the two who Eponine, Bahorel, Jehan, and Montparnasse overheard back then. And maybe more of their teammates had been secretly saying mean things about them for a while, too; who knew?

"That's been the point this whole time, y'know?" he said to Marie one afternoon at Corinthe, when the biting chill and rain outside kept too many customers from coming in.

She nodded with a rueful, understanding smile, running her fingers over the stickers covering her wallet.

"We couldn't have known who said that stuff, and it's not like we can really know for sure which of them were just fake friends all along," he went on. "I guess since some of them are weird now it speaks for itself, but that's still frustrating. And I don't know why I all of a sudden care about what happened now, when it's barely even relevant anymore."

"Maybe Bahorel's been rubbing off on you too much," she teased, just to get a bit of a smile from Feuilly. "Well—maybe you couldn't let yourself care before. The four of them cared enough for all of us, and we were thinking more about them making it a big deal than how it affected us."

Feuilly nodded, knowing Marie was right. The other day in math class, Courfeyrac and Jehan had said something similar.

It looked like a customer was coming up to the counter to purchase a huge, vaguely French-looking book, so Marie gave Feuilly one last smile and picked up her wallet, then headed off to sit and study.

Ever since that Friday when everyone came to Cosette's house for dinner, rain and wind and chills had defined the month. Rarely a few days went by without something from a drizzle to a full-out thunderstorm, and everyone's parents said it was the rainiest December they could remember.

This weather had several effects, probably the most noticeable of which was an unlucky inability to hang out at the bleachers after school or at Cosette's house again, because either everyone was busy or it was raining too much to walk all that way. While this was definitely a bummer, the friends came to a silent consensus to just hope the weather would clear up over break.

Only Courfeyrac spent much time seriously worrying about this indefinite delay in how often they'd all get to hang out, especially with winter break coming up.

Almost counterintuitively, the friends usually always spent less time together over breaks than they did while in school. Plenty of plans were made, but with family obligations, events with band or sports, and now jobs, not much slipped through the cracks.

When he brought this up in Spanish class on a free day, Combeferre and Bossuet gave him sympathetic looks. "I get it," said Combeferre, "but this does happen every year. We always bounce back after hanging out less over winter break."

"Yeah, and we're actually gonna be doing something for Joly's birthday this year, so that's something," Bossuet added.

Grateful for their understanding, Courfeyrac agreed to stop worrying so much.

He would actually have more free time during break than usual, due to a development with soccer that had come as a total shock. After multiple games across various counties were canceled due to excessive rain, the soccer season in the local area had actually been postponed for a while. Now the last game of the season would be right before spring break, and he was off the field for a while. Courfeyrac hadn't known they could actually do that.

Eponine disliked the rain because she always had the worst luck running into out-of-nowhere downpours, and her parents never remembered to buy her an umbrella.

"Isn't that kind of on you too, though?" Grantaire pointed out at lunch. "They make you go to the store all the time."

"So?"

"So you have a bunch of opportunities to buy an umbrella, and you also keep forgetting," said Bahorel. As Eponine flicked one scrunchie at Grantaire, and the other at Bahorel, no one was surprised—they all saw that coming.

She wasn't the only one bothered by the weather. Montparnasse's sinuses kept acting up, and Valjean and Cosette's yard had become a delightful rainforest for some of their plants, but a muddy wasteland for others. To top it all off, Cosette had fallen off her tire swing into the mud not once, but twice so far.

At least Marius cheered her up when that happened. She'd clean herself off and text him in the cozy warmth of her bed, reading his nostalgic rambles about when it would rain up in Pennsylvania during the summer, and he got all soaked and muddy and basically had the time of his life.

Sometimes he shared his stories of exploring in the woods with Bossuet (who had nearly ruined his new shoes in puddles while exploring more than a few times this month) and Grantaire (who really wanted to take Enjolras back to that sycamore tree they'd gotten together by once the weather cleared up enough). Cosette loved seeing Marius so excited, but she hoped he didn't miss Pennsylvania too much, since the situation with his dad and grandfather meant he barely went up there.

Out of everyone, Joly definitely loved the raininess the most.

When he wasn't excitedly freaking out about beautifully dramatic storms and the wonderful gloominess, he was busy planning his upcoming birthday party with help from Bossuet, Musichetta, and Enjolras.

As his birthday was in the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, there was usually some family trip preventing a party on the actual day. Luckily, that wasn't the case this year.

Getting to all hang out at the Musain was certainly something everyone—including Montparnasse and Marie, who could make it this time—looked forward to, as the semester finally drew to a close. Nobody could believe junior year was already halfway over, but at the same time summer seemed like forever ago; so much had happened since then!

Chapter Text

Joly's birthday party was the perfect way to make up for the fact that these thirteen friends never really got around to actually doing something Christmassy as a group.

Ever since middle school, there was usually some kind of effort for a group Secret Santa each year. Enjolras would try to get everyone into it, and Combeferre and Courfeyrac would help him plan, but it always fizzled out somehow. Christmas parties never came to fruition either because people had too many things going on with family, and when stuff was all complicated like that, it was better to leave it alone than spend hours working out plans over the group chat.

But now they all got to do something on Joly's birthday, for once, and it could conveniently count for their Christmas and New Year's Eve things as a friend group. Sure, only Joly would receive presents, and there weren't any fireworks, but these were just technicalities.

Tonight they were having the party earlier than usual, so it could last longer. Thankfully, since it was the middle of the holidays, not many other customers were around.

An hour or so into Enjolras' shift, his friends began filing into the Musain.

It looked slightly different than it had the last time everyone came in—all kinds of Christmas decorations with a Mexican theme covered the walls. Even the booths had reindeer stickers and "¡Feliz Navidad!" stickers all over them.

The biggest difference, however, was a new karaoke machine.

"New" was a relative term. Enjolras didn't know how long karaoke had been around, but his coworkers guessed the thing was at least a decade old.

He wasn't sure why his managers thought a karaoke machine would be a huge hit, especially since it barely worked half the time. Maybe it'd work tonight, though, and they could all have some fun singing songs and laughing at each other's performances.

When Joly arrived, dressed in his favorite crocs and dinosaur-themed clothes, everyone said happy birthday. They already had that morning on the group chat, but you can't have too many happy birthdays.

"How does it feel to be seventeen?" Musichetta asked him, grinning in her best gray flannel.

"Somewhere between not different at all," he answered matter-of-factly, "and an existential crisis since I'm only a year away from being technically an adult. That's very weird."

Marius agreed (he and Eponine had their joint birthday party back in mid-November) and then checked his phone. "Okay, Valjean and Cosette are on their way."

It was a little odd that Valjean would be coming to this party, especially since he rarely went out to restaurants at all. The theory Cosette and Marius had was that he was starting to take more initiative himself in getting out of the house, ever since becoming really good friends with Marius' dad. And they all loved seeing Valjean when they went to Cosette's house, so he was definitely welcome. The Thenardiers hated the Musain’s food and never went, so it did make sense Valjean would see this as a safe place to go.

"Grantaire should be on his way, too," Enjolras put in, while wiping down the cash register. "He told me he was probably gonna walk over with Eponine and her siblings."

"Wait, why are they walking here?" wondered Feuilly.

"'Cause she couldn't get permission from her parents to use one of their cars. Grantaire said she's kinda getting tired of always asking people for a ride, especially when her siblings are coming too." Then Enjolras laughed a little. "And since there actually hasn't been any rain yet today, she wants to enjoy it out of spite."

Everyone agreed that that was very in character for Eponine. With a smirk, Bahorel noted that it did kind of look like rain was coming soon. Musichetta rolled her eyes at him.

Unfortunately, he was right—by the time Valjean and Cosette pulled up, it was pouring outside.

"Hey, guys! Happy birthday, Joly," she said cheerfully, pulling down the hood of her warm and fluffy coat. "Gosh, this weather is ridiculous, right?"

It really was. Montparnasse went on another rant about how the rain kept making his sinuses act up, Bossuet lamented how careful he needed to be around puddles to keep from ruining his shoes, and Courfeyrac talked more about how the soccer season had gotten delayed.

This developed into a whole conversation about the weather, eventually somehow leading to Joly's family's new succulents, which weren't doing very well. That probably had nothing to do with the weather, since they were indoor plants, but Valjean gave him advice on how to help them anyway.

Sometime during this, Marie came up to the counter to chat with Enjolras and his coworkers, since there still weren't any new customers.

"Y'know, I'm still looking for a job," she said. "I know a while ago you said you had no clue if this place was hiring or not, but what about now?"

The girl one register over—who was a couple years older than all of them, and knew Combeferre's older brother, Musichetta's older sister, and Feuilly’s older sister from back in high school—said she was pretty sure they were. Marie thanked her, bouncing a bit on the balls of her feet. It was refreshing, the way she got excited about nearly everything. Nobody could deny that Marie was weird sometimes, but that was part of her charm.

This made Enjolras remember something she'd told him. "Hey, so did you actually end up getting Montparnasse a fish tank for Christmas?"

"Yeah! My parents helped chip in for it, and it's sort of more for the whole house instead of only him, since we didn't have any pets before. But he thought it was so cool." For a moment, she glanced with a smile over at her brother, who was currently trying to impress Jehan with his ability to eat a taco and not spill any of it. Earlier Jehan was rambling to him about all the astronomy facts they learned with Combeferre at their sleepover earlier in the month, and Montparnasse might’ve looked a little awestruck. "Setting everything up is gonna be his project over break. Hopefully he'll be as good at that as he is at the oboe."

"Or at throwing garbage and accidentally hitting people in the head with it," Enjolras joked, making them both laugh.

“Or at falling into holes while picking apples!”

“Or at knocking water bottles into the bleachers!” Jehan cut in, having apparently overheard their conversation.

Montparnasse gave them a look somewhere between annoyed and fond; it was the type of look Enjolras remembered giving to Grantaire often before they got together. Honestly, he still gave him that look sometimes, like when Grantaire was particularly unreceptive to compliments or when he joined in with everyone else’s teasing about the two of them. But to say the fond part was stronger than the annoyed part would be an understatement.

“Come on, it’s not that big of a deal,” said Grantaire, sopping wet even through his sweatshirt.

Azelma and Gavroche stifled laughs as Louis and Felix looked for frogs in the rain-logged grass lining the sidewalk, all grateful he was the one doing his best to calm Eponine down right now. The rain was calmer than she was now, but they’d still gotten totally freaking soaked.

“I guess it’s my own fault,” she muttered.

“‘Cause you still haven’t bought an umbrella?”

“Hey, you must not have one either!”

Grantaire laughed sheepishly, as she sent him a death glare. “Yeah, I forgot mine. Sorry.”

“I’m gonna tell Enjolras how irresponsible you are.”

He laughed again, knowing she was just getting the rest of her irritation out of her system. Hopefully she wouldn’t be in such a bad mood for the party.

When they made it to the Musain a few minutes later, everyone was super sympathetic about how soaked they got.

Well, Bahorel made a little joke about it, but he got a wet scrunchie flicked at him. And Feuilly took back the fruit snacks he’d just given him, just to mess with him. Joly made everyone who’d gotten poured on take their jackets off, so at least they had one less cold, wet layer.

Grantaire walked over to the counter, where Enjolras was staring worriedly at him. He smiled.

“Are you okay?” Enjolras asked.

“I’m fine.” Then he lowered his voice. “I feel worse for Eponine, she got really upset about the rain.”

“Yeah.”

“And I just totally forgot to bring my umbrella.”

Enjolras looked at him incredulously. “How could you do that?”

“Dunno,” he laughed. Also laughing, Enjolras shook his head a few times. “Hey, at least I haven’t fallen off any tables lately. That’s something.”

“Right,” Enjolras said sarcastically, grinning. “And it’s been a while since anything hit me in the head.”

Grantaire glanced up, like something above Enjolras’ head was about to fall. Enjolras almost fell for it, but instead just glared at Grantaire the way he liked best.

He was about to say something suitably witty and flirty, when a conversation going on in the rest of the group caught his attention. They both listened.

“You really don’t have to do that,” Eponine was insisting.

“It’s no problem at all. There’s a supermarket just down the road.” Valjean sounded just as resolute as she did. “If you all don’t get towels to dry off, you’ll catch colds.”

Joly piped in. “Yeah, nobody’s allowed to get sick on my birthday!”

“But—” Eponine started, then cut herself off. She looked frustrated. “Okay. Thank you.”

Valjean shook his head, smiling slightly. “It’s no problem.”

He took out his wallet and gave Cosette some cash, for everyone to order more food while he was at the store. This caused some more protests from people in the group, who obviously hadn’t expected him to pay for any of their food, but everyone relented when Valjean jokingly complained about how all he wanted to do was help and he couldn’t even do that. Then he headed out to his car.

Grantaire and Enjolras glanced at each other while Cosette asked everyone what they wanted to eat. Between how awkward she sounded and how tense Eponine still looked, they were on high alert.

“Joly!” shouted Bossuet, out of nowhere. Everyone kind of startled and Louis and Felix laughed.

“What?” wondered Joly, bouncing a little.

“Now that everyone’s here and it’s officially a party, you get three birthday wishes,” Musichetta said, grinning.

“Whoa! Cool!”

As Joly spent a minute or two pondering his birthday wishes, Cosette kept asking people what they wanted. When she got to Eponine, they both seemed especially awkward.

Clearly what just happened caused a bit of tension. Grantaire’s best guess was that Eponine was irritated because she interpreted the whole thing as pity somehow or just felt bad that Valjean was going out and buying towels, and that Cosette was irritated because she didn’t understand why Eponine protested Valjean’s help at first. Obviously he didn’t know if that was everything, or if that was what they were feeling at all. Honestly, he’d been worried about Cosette and Eponine getting into a funk since after the Halloween party, when Eponine’s first instincts regarding the situation with Montparnasse and Marie were to give Cosette some space for who knows how long. He didn’t know if things would be better now if she took a different approach, of course. Grantaire really wasn’t sure what he could do about these issues, if anything. It was so complicated.

They didn’t talk about any of this out loud right now, of course, but Grantaire could tell Enjolras was thinking about it all too.

Cosette was coming up to the counter when Joly told Bossuet, “My first wish is for you to sing a funny song on the karaoke machine!”

This was a great wish, and Bossuet accepted enthusiastically.

“Okay, three of the burritos are chicken and beans, and the other two are beef and rice,” Cosette was saying, as Bossuet made his choice.

He didn’t announce it, so everyone was looking at the screen in anticipation and got rickrolled when Never Gonna Give You Up appeared.

Everybody laughed, and Grantaire gave Enjolras a smile, remembering their banter at Homecoming about this song.

As Cosette told Enjolras what flavors the tacos would be, Grantaire mostly paid attention to Bossuet absolutely nailing the hell out of Never Gonna Give You Up. Joly and Musichetta were basically crying laughing, and Eponine’s siblings were barely short of having a riot. He tried making eyes at Enjolras but he was just too gosh darn good at his job and wouldn’t stop listening carefully to Cosette’s order.

When she paid and went back over to Marius’ side, Enjolras offered Grantaire her receipt to draw on.

“Hell yeah,” he said, making Enjolras giggle.

Grantaire fished a pen out of his pocket and started drawing the most obvious thing in this situation.

Enjolras’ face when he took it back and saw he’d been rickrolled again was priceless. And adorable and hot, of course, but mainly priceless.

“This is really good,” Enjolras said, clearly trying to hide his embarrassment. Grantaire just grinned at him.

The song was ending, and everybody (even the few people who weren’t part of the group, mainly Enjolras’ coworkers) gave Bossuet a bunch of applause. He grinned at Joly and Musichetta, cheering for him.

Musichetta nudged Joly and smiled. “What’s your next wish?”

“Hmm.” Joly looked wistfully out the big window by the door. “What I really want to do right now is some puddle splashing. The parking lot looked kind of perfect for it, ‘cause it was nice shallow puddles.”

“Long as you’re careful,” Musichetta said.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t trip, don’t worry,” Bossuet joked, getting a bunch of laughter.

Enjolras looked to his coworker preparing the food. She shrugged and just said to be careful.

Joly was clearly getting extremely excited, even more so when Eponine’s siblings all said they wanted to splash in puddles too. Montparnasse wondered why they wanted to, since they’d just gotten soaked in the rain.

“Well, it can’t get any worse, so we might as well have some fun,” reasoned Gavroche.

Grantaire saw Cosette frown, but she didn’t say anything.

Remembering the Halloween party table debacle, he threw in another “be careful”. This happened a few more times from everyone, and Joly looked a bit restless for puddle splashing.

“Alright, let’s go,” Bossuet announced, ushering the kids and Joly out the door. Musichetta followed, her giggles trailing outside.

Most of them stayed inside, because it seemed like the kind of thing everyone didn’t need to come along for. It didn’t sound like it was raining anymore, but it must’ve been cold.

Courfeyrac started rummaging through the karaoke options. Combeferre teased him a little about how puddle splashing was an excursion, so why didn’t he go along? He rolled his eyes and said karaoke was an even better excursion. Then he presented everyone with the only crazier choice than Never Gonna Give You Up (and coincidentally another song Grantaire and Enjolras had talked about at Homecoming): the Gummy Bear Song.

How the hell was that a karaoke song? Grantaire asked Enjolras this and only got laughter in response.

They were all laughing like crazy, but eventually Grantaire noticed Cosette still looking a bit upset. She walked over to Eponine and didn’t say anything for a few moments.

“I hope nobody trips from the puddles, ‘cause it’s so dark out.” They were close enough to the counter for Grantaire to overhear.

“Well, hopefully not.”

“Maybe you should go watch them?” Cosette asked.

Grantaire wondered why she worded it like that, instead of volunteering to watch them herself.

Eponine still looked prickly. “It’s way too cold, and they have Joly.”

Cosette frowned again, and turned and walked out the door rather quickly. Nobody besides him and Enjolras had been paying attention to their conversation as far as Grantaire could tell (Courfeyrac’s singing was just too hilarious and captivating), but they all seemed to notice this. Eponine’s face fell, then turned unreadable. Marius followed after Cosette, looking concerned.

Grantaire didn’t know what to make of this, and Courfeyrac was still singing, so he just tried to put it to the back of his mind.

Right when Courfeyrac finished the song, they heard a shout from the parking lot. Grantaire’s heart raced. Did someone actually trip and fall?

Feuilly and Marie were the closest to the door.

Headlights flooded the restaurant when they opened it; Valjean must’ve just gotten back.

“Joly!” Grantaire wasn’t sure who said it, maybe Bossuet and Musichetta at the same time. His skin crawled, but he stayed where he was for the moment because everyone couldn’t go out the door at once.

Gradually, through the shaky progression that chaos usually caused, everyone learned that Joly had tripped and fell, hurting his left ankle and right hand. Valjean rushed right out of his car as soon as he was in park, not even bothering to take the key out of the ignition, because it happened just as he was pulling up.

By the time Grantaire and Enjolras stepped into the parking lot, holding hands to calm each other’s nerves, a lot had happened already.

Valjean was next to Joly, talking calmly. He’d sent Cosette and Marius to turn his car off and grab the towels he bought, plus a random pillow from the backseat for Joly. Eponine and her siblings were bundled up, looking warm but shaken.

Grantaire didn’t even notice how cold and wet he still was until Marius tossed him the last towel.

Musichetta was on the phone. She must’ve been calling Joly’s moms, who’d stayed home with his younger siblings tonight because the last time they went to the Musain they caused a major ruckus (and so his birthday party could be just with his friends, as they’d already been doing birthday stuff all day). Valjean asked Enjolras if there was a first aid kit he could get in the restaurant.

“On it.” Enjolras ran back inside and Grantaire huddled deeper into his towel.

Bossuet held Joly’s good hand. He and Musichetta looked at each other while she finished her call, and then she came to Joly’s side too.

“They’re all on their way right now,” she said softly.

“Thanks,” Joly said. He didn’t sound too bad, all things considered.

When Enjolras came back with the first aid kit and an ice pack, he gave them to Valjean and went to stand by Grantaire, grabbing his hand again.

“How are you feeling now?” Valjean asked.

“Well,” Joly said, wincing thoughtfully, “I think I sprained my ankle, ‘cause it—ow—really hurts. My hand doesn’t hurt as bad.”

Valjean nodded. “That’s good.”

They waited for Joly’s family. Everyone was relieved the injuries weren’t any worse, but the mood was understandably tense and subdued. For one thing, Grantaire didn’t hurt himself this bad on Halloween, so it was different even besides the fact that it was Joly, of all people—doubly unfair because it was his birthday, and because he was supposed to be the doctor here, not the patient.

Jehan was clearly stressed, humming some Disney song as they rocked back and forth right by Montparnasse. On his other side, Marie sniffed just loud enough for everyone to hear.

Joly looked at her, concerned. “I’m gonna be fine, don’t worry,” he told her. “A sprain’s no big deal.”

“I know,” she said, sounding a bit choked up. “I just—man, it does really feel like me and Montparnasse are bad luck for the group sometimes. I know we weren’t even out here, but—”

She started to laugh as she said it, silly as it was. Everyone else laughed a little too. Feuilly said they definitely weren’t bad luck, and she smiled.

Bossuet said, “Yeah, I must’ve given you my bad luck.”

Laughing, Joly said that was okay.

Joly’s younger siblings were a lot less rambunctious than usual, just talking quietly with Bossuet, Musichetta, and Eponine’s siblings. His moms did their best not to look panicked as they felt, and Valjean did his best to help them not to feel so panicked either. Joly kept telling them he was going to be okay until they could finally relax. Valjean talked with them about plants for a while (which everyone thought was kind of funny, but obviously nobody said anything), before they got back on the injury again.

“We should bring him to the ER tonight, right?” one of his moms wondered.

“Not on my birthday,” Joly couldn’t help whining.

His moms were only a little amused. Joly said, “I don’t think it’s so bad I need to go tonight. A sprained ankle isn’t always, like, an immediate attention thing.”

Then he winced.

“Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to go just in case?” Musichetta asked. Joly laughed, and she facepalmed. “Bad choice of words.”

“Yeah, that’s what happens when you get injured on your second birthday wish,” Bossuet said, joking but still quiet. “By default, the third wish is that the ER doctors say you’re fine after checking it out.”

They all laughed, but Joly was still reluctant. “It’s the rules,” Bossuet insisted.

“That’s right.” Both of his moms were giving him the look he knew meant there was no getting out of spending the rest of his birthday at the ER.

With the party officially broken up, everyone made their carpooling arrangements. Joly hadn’t even gotten to open his presents yet, so they just all went in the way back of his moms’ SUV. Hopefully there would be enough downtime at the ER to open them, because having to wait until tomorrow would just stink.

Welp, off to the hospital.

“I mean, I know I’m obsessed with doctor stuff, but this is ridiculous,” he joked with Bossuet and Musichetta, still lingering by the car. They laughed and wished him luck getting better soon.

It was basically the weirdest night ever. Nobody said much, even as Enjolras drove to Eponine’s house to drop her and her siblings off (fitting all of them and Grantaire in the car should’ve been impossible, but they made it work somehow). Joly’s injury was on everyone’s mind, but Grantaire did find himself thinking a little about the weirdness between Eponine and Cosette.

The silence once it was just him and Enjolras was a lot more comfortable, mainly because the car wasn’t bursting at the seams anymore. They each took a long, drawn-out sigh.

Chapter Text

The group chat, the rest of that same night and throughout the next day:

jolllly

bossuet: thanks for the book on dinosaur puns!!! theyre super hilarious

chetta: thanks for the succulent omg i love it!!!!

enj: thanks for the grey’s anatomy dvd lmao!! gonna try to convince the doctors to let me play this on the little tv in my room

chetta

yay i’m glad you like it!!!!

jolllly

cosette: thanks for the succulent and tell your dad thanks for the other succulent omg wow!!

feuilly: thanks for the book about weird polish medical stuff, it’s very disturbing! i love it!

enj

yeah grantaire convinced me to get you that so i’m glad you like it!

bossuet

how are you feeling?

jolllly

combeferre: wow another succulent! thanks!!!

i’m okay just kind of like ow ow ow this really sucks stupid hand and stupid ankle for hurting

bossuet

and stupid puddles for making you trip!

cosette

yeah seriously :( and thanks i’ll tell him! oh and he says he hopes you feel better (and that he has a bunch more gardening tips for your moms but obviously that can wait lol)

jolllly

nooooo it’s not the puddles fault, they didn’t do anything wrong

bossuet

joly

chetta

joly

jolllly

lol jinx

and okay you’ve made your point

courf

love how it was clear just from them each saying your name that they were lecturing you lmao

jolllly

yes they’re very good at lecturing me. okay gonna open yours next courf

OMG ARE YOU KIDDING

grantairrrrre

whoa what is it

courf

*evil laughter*

jolllly

AHHHHHH this is so funny what the heck

grantairrrrre

seriously what is it, i’m invested now

marie

yeah what is it?

jolllly

OMG OMG

feuilly

courf maybe you should just tell us

courf

an evil genius doesn’t reveal their own plans!!

bahorel

what

ponine

pffff yeah you’re hardly an evil genius courf

combeferre

he already told me what it is

he printed out “10 ways to become a doctor” from wikihow and changed every “doctor” to desidoctist lmao

and he added his own section at the end about interior design stuff and chemistry stuff

jolllly

WHOA really???? i’m not at the end yet

HOLY SHIT this is so funny XD

combeferre

oh sorry for spoiling it!

jolllly

no problem dude

courf

yeah ferre why’d you spoil it!!

bossuet

lol that’s really funny courf!

grantairrrrre

yeah seriously that’s hilarious

enj

seriously

marie

seriously!!

marius

wow seriously!

courf

how many people are gonna say seriously lol

but also yes you’re all right thank you very much

ponine

okay courf you kind of are an evil genius

okay i typed that out and sent it before i saw what you just said, i take it back (ungrateful)

courf

no take backsies!

jehan

joly what’s the next present????????

jolllly

i’ll do yours next

thanks! we actually already have an operation game but now we can play like double operation or something

jehan

did you see the secret message i put on the bottom?

jolllly

uh bewarb… oh is that something from gravity falls?

jehan

yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

monty

and why did you put bewarb on the bottom of his operation game?

courf

whoa a wild monty appears

jehan

why not???

monty

sure okay. and excuse me?

marie

he’s talking about how you never say anything here the whole time we’ve been on this group chat lol

monty

what??? I say stuff

jehan

ha

jolllly

marius: thanks for yet another succulent wow this is so many succulents you guys!!!!

eponine: whoa i love circus peanuts thanks!!

grantairrrrre

joly what even is your taste in candy

jolllly

don’t bully me it’s my birthday and i injured myself

grantairrrrre

fair enough lol

chetta

lmao

jolllly

omg marie i love the doctor-themed stickers!!! they’re so cute

marie

yay!!!

feuilly

i think circus peanuts are bad for your teeth joly

jolllly

booooooo

ponine

yeah lmao booo

feuilly

okay fine, sorry

jehan

monty literally the last time you said something here was hey when we added you and marie to the group chat!! i just scrolled through and checked

monty

oops

bahorel

lmao

jehan

open monty’s next

jolllly

already on it

oooh dinosaur stickers cool! thanks!!

monty

sure

jehan

wow monty heres your award for sending five whole messages in the groupchat besides just “hey”! congrats!!!!!

bahorel

lmao get him

monty

jehan pls shut up

courf

quick jehan hit him with a frying pan!!

combeferre

lol

cosette

yeah lol!

jehan

okay shut up everybody

grantairrrrre

or enj can get him with some trash lol

enj

yeah lmao

monty

i’d rather not join joly in the hospital with a concussion, thank you very much

Enjolras has a free pass with the trash thing though

jolllly

bahorel: wow another succulent thanks!!!! this one’s so pretty

grantaire: oh my gosh it’s a drawing of even more succulents it’s awesome!!!!!!!!!!!

alright that’s everything. thanks so much you guys!

bahorel

of course!

bossuet

wow so how many succulents did you get?

jolllly

uh my siblings are laying them out on the table near the window right now

six succulents!! wow this is an unprecedented amount of succulents

chetta

lol

feuilly

oh yeah so have you just been on your phone this whole time with your family in there with you lol? we aren’t distracting you right?

jolllly

no it’s fine! my moms said of course i could talk to you guys since the stupid party had to end early

chetta

:( awww

but i’m glad you can talk to us!

jolllly

yeah and actually it’s just me and my siblings in here right now. my mom went to get us food from the cafeteria and then my other mom really had to go to the bathroom so she left me in charge

marius

cool

jolllly

oh no

bossuet

what’s wrong?

chetta

yeah joly what’s wrong?

jolllly

they’re weaponizing the succulents again!!!!!!! help!!!!!

bossuet

joly just stay calm

bahorel

weaponizing the succulents?????

grantairrrrre

again??

chetta

it’s a whole thing, i think usually it’s his brother and his youngest sister who do it

joly come on we know you can mediate them, you got this

ponine

just get a doctor in there to make them stop

jehan

or scream!

feuilly

that’s probably not a good idea jehan

jehan

that’s what i do when my sister won’t listen to me

and my parents aren’t home. they don’t like it but like its mainly a joke, it makes her laugh

chetta

joly any updates?

jolllly

okay we finally got them under control

thank goodness

cosette

that’s good

bossuet

yay good job

jolllly

okay my moms are back and the doctor is too so i gotta go. and i’m tired so i’ll probably talk to you guys tomorrow

chetta

goodnight, feel better!!

bossuet

yeah feel better!

enj

feel better!!

courf

feel better! (x10)

bahorel

what?

courf

that’s for everyone else so we don’t have to keep blowing up joly’s phone lol

combeferre

courf that’s silly, I’m sure everyone wants to say it themselves

courf

yeah okay fine

jolllly

updates: we got to go back home late last night but i didn’t sleep very well. looks like i have some bruises from the fall too. they gave me a cane for walking cus my ankle isn’t so bad i need a cast and crutches or anything, and a compression sleeve for my hand

it all hurts and sucks

chetta

oh no :(

bossuet

:( sorry buddy

grantairrrrre

that really stinks man

jolllly

it’s okay

i’m reading courf’s desidoctist thing to cheer myself up

courf

glad to help

jolllly

we gave all the succulents a home, here’s the pictures:

cosette

wow awesome!

marius

they look so great!!!

jolllly

thanks!

ponine

joly all my siblings say they hope you feel better!

direct quote from gavroche- he’s gotta show those broken bones who’s boss!

this was right after i told him you just sprained your ankle

jolllly

lmao that’s great

you guys didn’t get sick right?

ponine

nope

bossuet

awww you’re still in doctor mode even after everything

jolllly

that’s good

yes i know i’m the best desidoctist ever

bossuet

you sure are

grantairrrrre

cosette tell your dad thanks again from all of us for the towels! they were a lifesaver

cosette

of course

bahorel

guys guess what? I got a job at the dollar store!

marie

ooh congrats!!!

feuilly

yeah that’s great man

combeferre

awesome!

marius

that’s cool!!

jolllly

nice!

cosette

that’s really great!

bossuet

cool!

the same dollar store where gavroche and azelma bought those fake cockroaches?

bahorel

how would i know

ponine

it was probably the one near the middle school, right?

bossuet

yep, i think they said they bought it after stem club one day

bahorel

oh yeah, that’s the one

cool, maybe i’ll see them there sometime

jehan

that reminds me, bossuet my sister wanted me to invite you to a sleepover the same night she’s having one with azelma

but no offense i don’t think thats a good idea cus she probably just wants you to help them pull pranks on me

bossuet

yeah i don’t wanna get dragged into that again lol

courf

i still can’t believe i thought they were real lmao

i was terrified

marius

they looked really real

bossuet

sorry again for my crimes

chetta

lmao

jolllly

lol

ponine

i’m just embarrassed my siblings manipulated you into going along with it! too smart for their own good

bossuet

oh it’s fine

enj

Tguyhijod

feuilly

what

ponine

oh ew he and grantaire are having a date at his house right now i think

he probably butt-texted us while they were kissing or something, gross

courf

lmao

bahorel

eponine just say butt-dialed

butt-texted just sounds wrong

ponine

*flicks scrunchie through the phone*

bahorel

oh no that hurt so much

enj

oh shit

oops

courf

oooooh enj what are you doing??

enj

enj is in the bathroom right now

i was just stretching and accidentally typed that

ponine

and how does that happen from stretching?

enj

uh cus i didn’t realize his phone was on the part of the bed i was stretching over

courf

oooooooooooh you’re in his bed

chetta

ooooooooh

bahorel

oooooooh

bossuet

oooooooooh

marie

ooooooooh

enj

wait are you guys saying oh or ooh

and also shut up

courf

ooh, duh

enj

okay well shut up

courf

no

grantairrrrre

guys please stop bullying grantaire

bahorel

so you picked up his phone now enj?

grantairrrrre

yes

courf

and you guys are both in enj’s bed together now lol?

enj

okay chill out we’re not actually doing anything

not really

we are leaving now though so bye

ponine

well that was way too much information

Chapter Text

“Come on, we’re doing commissions,” Grantaire announced with a grin, when Bossuet and Musichetta opened the door for him at Joly’s house. It was a big house, and very nice; one of Joly’s moms was a lawyer, and one was a scientist.

Joly was cooped up on the couch in the living room, with plenty of pillows behind him to rest on and plenty pillows in front of him to keep his left leg elevated. His new cane leaned against the ottoman covered in coasters for a mug of tea, a glass of water, and a cup of apple juice. He looked a little bit miserable.

Through Joly’s admirably good attitude about his injury when it happened in the parking lot at the Musain, and his excitement in the group chat to open all his presents at the ER, everyone had kind of been expecting him to hit a wall with all that optimism.

So Musichetta and Bossuet had pretty much decided to spend all the time they could at his house for the rest of winter break, and everyone else wanted to stop by too when they could get the chance.

Musichetta was busy with dance practice and her new job at Corinthe, but she was making it work.

Instead of getting right into commissions (which was Grantaire’s best idea for raising Joly’s morale), they spent a few minutes teasing him about yesterday on the group chat, when he accidentally keyboard smashed on Enjolras’ phone and everyone freaked out. Enjolras told him he probably wouldn’t be over at Joly’s house until tomorrow, because while he wanted to support him he also wanted to wait out the teasing at least a little. Grantaire thought this was a bit silly, but it really was cute, how flustered Enjolras got.

When Joly’s youngest sister came rushing in and out of the room for no apparent reason, Joly shushed them, because they were joking about making out and all that.

“Okay, come on, what do you want me to draw?” Grantaire asked him.

“I dunno,” Joly groaned.

Helpfully, Musichetta said, “What about the karaoke machine at the Musain?”

“Sure,” Grantaire said. “Okay, price of commission is… show us a new dance routine you learned recently.”

Bossuet cheered at that, and Joly smiled too. Musichetta was a bit embarrassed, but she shrugged and thought about what it should be. When she finally started, Bossuet reprised his performance of Never Gonna Give You Up, making everyone burst out laughing. She was blushing hard by the time she wrapped up and they all clapped for her.

While she sipped her apple juice and Grantaire kept sketching, Musichetta and Bossuet got Joly into a conversation about all his birthday presents. He got some great stuff from his moms, and mostly little silly things from his siblings, but he was mainly excited about everything from his friends.

“The Wikihow thing is so great,” Bossuet said, laughing. Earlier he and Musichetta had read it together, sitting on the little couch where they now were again. It was perpendicular to Joly’s couch, and right next to the recliner where Grantaire sat.

“How did he even think of that?” laughed Musichetta.

“I guess ‘cause he’s an evil genius,” Joly joked, referencing what Courfeyrac had said on the group chat.

“Yeah, apparently,” joked Bossuet, elbowing Musichetta a little. She laughed.

A lot of Joly’s new succulents were here in the living room, along with all the ones his family already had. Maybe everyone had overdone it a little with getting him so many succulents, but from what she could tell Joly was genuinely happy about it.

Soon Grantaire finished the drawing and passed it over. Bossuet leaned over, brushing shoulders with Musichetta, so they and Joly could all see it at once.

“Really cool,” she said appreciatively.

“Yeah, nice song choice, too,” Bossuet said, laughing. It read Never Gonna Give You Up on the karaoke machine, appropriately.

Grantaire nodded. “Wait, gimme that,” he said.

Bossuet handed it over, this time leaning the other way, so his leg bumped into hers.

A minute later, Grantaire showed them a little stick figure Bossuet next to the karaoke machine. It was cute.

“Wow, just a stick figure?” she teased.

“Not too good at drawing people yet,” Grantaire said easily, shrugging. “And, like, all you asked for was the karaoke machine, so.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, pretending to be offended.

“Alright, who’s next?”

Bossuet and Musichetta looked to Joly, who said he still didn’t know what he wanted Grantaire to draw. Musichetta hid her concerned frown in her apple juice, and Bossuet bounced his knee, thinking.

“You should draw some fake cockroaches,” he said, making everybody laugh.

An hour and several more commissions later, after a bunch of laughter from Grantaire’s silliest drawings and the increasingly ridiculous payments he requested for his commissions (Musichetta couldn’t stop laughing when Joly had to stand up with his cane and go on a whole rant sounding like an elderly person, or when Bossuet had to try to come up with ten dinosaur puns in a minute and failed miserably), Jehan and their little sister showed up.

Nobody wanted to make Joly sit up instead of being comfortable laying down, so when they all decided to watch Phineas and Ferb those two sat on the floor.

“Oh, you guys don’t have to do that,” Joly said, sitting up then glancing hopefully at Bossuet and Musichetta, who moved to the couch after the excess pillows were taken care of.

Bossuet and Musichetta each sat at one end, with Joly in the middle.

“I mean,” said Bossuet, looking across the couch, “you can still lay down if you want. I mean—”

He looked at Musichetta, who blinked. “Sure!” she said, a bit loud. “That’s fine.”

“Sure,” said Joly, after a moment.

So he would still face the TV, Joly laid down with his feet across Bossuet’s lap and his head across Musichetta’s. Feeling her face heat up just a little, she saw Grantaire and Jehan both smirking like something was funny. Jehan’s sister was rambling on and on about why Isabella was her favorite Phineas and Ferb character, so Musichetta paid attention to that instead.

About halfway into the episode, Musichetta wasn’t feeling so awkward anymore. Bossuet looked super comfortable, and she’d finally given into her impulse to tousle Joly’s soft floppy hair just a little. He looked like his mood was the best it’d been all day, and so relaxed he could fall asleep. Musichetta was very glad she didn’t have work today.

At a particularly funny Dr. Doofenshmirtz joke, Joly cracked up laughing so adorably she just had to smile at him and tousle his hair again.

When Joly tilted his head to look up at her, it was all a bit too much. She could feel Bossuet smiling at both of them, too.

This was silly. Joly and Bossuet were her best friends besides Cosette, or maybe not even besides, instead tying with her. Ranking was impossible in this huge group that all loved each other so much, but whatever. She was extremely fond of them and had always thought they were cute, and knew from a semi-disastrous game of Truth or Dare in eighth grade that they thought so too, about her. But that never really mattered, mainly because duh, there were three of them.

So Musichetta figured it was just protectiveness over Joly’s injury that had her feeling so fond of both of them today, and that it was just the extra fondness that had her feeling kind of flustered.

Joly’s siblings had all passed through the living room, watching various bits of the episode, and when it was over they persuaded Jehan’s sister to play Legos with them. Grantaire had clearly been texting someone on and off during the show, so now was everyone’s chance to tease him again.

“How’s Enjolras?” Bossuet wondered, feeling Joly’s feet twitch a little as he and Musichetta giggled.

“Yeah, and is he lonely if he’s in his room all by himself right now?” teased Jehan.

“What?” Grantaire asked, looking up from his phone.

“Aren’t you texting him?” asked Musichetta.

Grantaire shook his head. “Eponine.”

Bossuet thought it was kind of funny they’d all assumed incorrectly, but then he noticed Grantaire’s worried frown as he looked back at his phone.

He and Musichetta shared a look, and she asked if something was wrong.

“Oh, well…” Grantaire trailed off. “Did you guys—well, no, you three were already—Jehan, did you notice Cosette and Eponine talking before she went outside, um, well—”

Cosette and Marius had come outside pretty much right before Joly fell, so that was probably why Grantaire seemed so awkward.

“No,” Jehan said, curious. “I was just watching Courf sing the Gummy Bear Song.”

“Aw, we missed that?” laughed Musichetta.

“Yeah, it was crazy,” Grantaire said, smiling but sounding worried.

“But she walked out pretty suddenly,” Jehan went on. “Was she upset about something?”

Bossuet didn’t know anything about this. Joly and Musichetta seemed just as confused as he was. Grantaire explained delicately that Cosette had said something to Eponine about hoping nobody would trip (so that was why he was all awkward; Bossuet felt Joly tense, and saw Musichetta mess with his hair comfortingly), and asked if Eponine should go watch, and when she said no because of the cold had gone outside herself.

“Maybe she was upset,” Grantaire went on. “It was weird. I don’t know. ‘Cause then you had your injury.”

“Right,” Joly said, sounding bitter. “So now you’re talking to Eponine about all that?”

Grantaire nodded. “She said she felt bad, but it also seems like she’s a bit annoyed and just trying not to let that show. And I don’t think she wants to talk about it with Cosette.”

This was odd, and kind of worrying. Bossuet didn’t know what to make of it.

Musichetta said, “Cosette barely talked to me about what happened that one Friday, y’know with their dinner surprise for everyone?”

“Yeah,” Grantaire said, nodding sympathetically.

Bossuet hadn’t known what to make of that either. He could tell how bad Cosette and Marius felt for inconveniencing Eponine after her mom called, but also couldn’t imagine how exhausting it always was for Eponine to have to work around her parents’ seemingly unending supply of nonsense. And the whole weird situation where Eponine had to keep her parents from finding out that she was still friends with Cosette must have been exhausting for both of them, though they never seemed to want to let on that that was the case.

“I think Cosette just feels so bad for Eponine and her siblings, like about their parents,” Musichetta went on. “And it’s like she doesn’t really know what to do about that, but she’s also still really affected from back then too.”

Grantaire said he agreed. “I know Eponine’s just too independent for her own good, that’s part of it,” he said ruefully. “She wants to deal with it all on her own.”

“It hasn’t always been this much of a big deal, has it?” wondered Jehan. “Like, between her and Cosette.”

“No, definitely not.” Grantaire looked thoughtful. “There was never any awkwardness between them back in elementary school, when Eponine introduced her to me and Marius and we were all like best friends. Or middle school either, I think. So who knows.”

Joly said it was strange, and Bossuet said hopefully they would talk about it soon. Grantaire sighed and ran a hand through his hair, looking quite tired.

“Let’s just not be awkward around either of them,” he resolved. “‘Cause that’ll just make things worse.”

They all agreed to that, and got back to watching Phineas and Ferb. Joly’s moms each came home from their separate jobs, and talked with everyone. Joly’s siblings and Jehan’s sister showed everybody the truly crazy looking four-story Lego house they’d created.

Soon they got more visitors. It was Cosette and Valjean, but thankfully the goal for no awkwardness turned out to be way easier than expected.

Cosette sat next to Jehan on the smaller couch, and they all talked for a while, but soon found themselves paying more attention to Valjean’s conversation with Joly’s moms.

Joly knew his moms were friendly with Valjean, but it seemed like his injury had resulted in them basically immediately thinking of him as a super close friend. It meant a lot to him and them how instantly and effectively he’d helped Joly when it happened, so he supposed it made sense. Still laying across the couch quite cozily with his feet in Bossuet’s lap and his head in Musichetta’s lap, Joly watched the parents curiously.

Valjean looked quite embarrassed as his moms recollected how nice everything he did for Joly was.

“I know that anyone would’ve done that,” he said, after Joly’s taller mom brought up how he hadn’t even taken his key out of the ignition when he parked and saw what happened.

“Well, we were telling Bossuet’s parents about it because we saw them yesterday, and they were just as impressed as we were,” his shorter mom said.

Cosette seemed like she was doing her best to hide fond laughter at how embarrassed Valjean looked at the thought of anyone going around bragging about him to other people.

But he must’ve wanted to be polite, so he just nodded vaguely.

Joly’s moms went on, saying how they’d also talked to Musichetta’s parents about everything Valjean did too.

“They said they really appreciate it, for Joly’s sake,” Musichetta told Valjean, smiling.

“Of course. Really, it was nothing.”

Cosette smiled. “Marius told me his dad saw Combeferre’s parents at the store, and they were talking about it for a while too.”

“Enjolras’ mom said she was talking about it with my parents, too,” Grantaire said.

“I guess word got around,” said Joly’s shorter mom, laughing. Joly wondered how much of that was parents talking to other parents, versus his friends telling their parents what happened (and then those parents talking to other parents).

He knew his moms were pretty popular among most of his friends’ parents, obviously excluding Eponine’s, mostly because his house had hosted the most sleepovers on average back in middle school. Plus they volunteered at school a lot, and in general were very outgoing and friendly. That made their newfound friendship with Valjean pretty funny, because while everybody in the group knew how awesome he was, outgoing wasn’t exactly a word anyone would use to describe him. So this would be interesting.

Musichetta started messing with Joly’s hair again, and Bossuet’s bouncing knee was distracting in a good way. He still felt discouraged from his injury, but he knew how much effort everyone was putting in to cheer him up.

Chapter Text

“You’re popular,” Cosette told her dad, trying not to laugh. “I’m so sorry to tell you that, but it’s true.”

“No, no,” Valjean said, waving her off.

“Really!” she insisted. Next to her, Marius nodded, and so did his dad, sitting next to Valjean. They were all eating dinner outside at Cosette’s house, on the front porch.

In the week or so since Joly’s injury, in more important developments than the new year and everything was how Valjean had become much better friends than ever before with pretty much all the parents in the group.

He and Marius’ dad had already become good friends, and he knew basically everyone else perfectly well enough. But Joly’s moms were super grateful for how he’d helped out Joly after his fall, and between that and their shared love of plants and gardening, they basically decided to become best friends with him. And between word of mouth from them and from all the friends to their own parents, everyone got talking either in chance meetings at the store or the bank or online on Facebook. So then they all decided to become best friends with him. Cosette thought it was very sweet.

Earlier today was the first day of school back from break, and at lunch and in trigonometry class everyone discussed this new development. She really appreciated all the nice things everyone’s parents were saying about her dad.

Eponine’s silence was what she couldn’t help focusing on the most, though.

Marius kept telling her to do her best to not avoid thinking about all that as much as she wanted to, so she mulled it over while their little group ate dinner.

After Joly’s injury, Cosette and Valjean dropped a few of her friends off at home, including Marius. He’d asked casually if she wanted to hang out for a while since the party ended early and she said she was too tired for that, but immediately regretted it and texted him when she got home.

She was tired, just in a different way, and if she couldn’t make herself talk about this with anyone else, she at least had to with Marius.

In between checking the group chat for Joly’s live updates on all his presents, Cosette and Marius had discussed that whole weird moment with Eponine at the Musain.

Honestly, Cosette didn’t know what happened. She felt bad that Eponine and her siblings got soaked, then that her first reaction to Eponine’s reluctance for Valjean to go buy them towels was to be annoyed with her, then that her siblings were going out in the cold to splash in puddles while they were still all wet, then that she couldn’t even make herself express this (before they went outside or to Eponine, but then Eponine used the cold as a reason not to go outside and it annoyed Cosette again, so she felt bad about that too) because ever since Halloween or probably earlier she’d had this frustrating new awkwardness about overstepping with Eponine’s siblings, and then that all this resulted in was her getting irritated and going outside without really saying anything. It was a mess.

Another thing Marius kept telling her was that it wasn’t as bad as she convinced herself it was. She tried to believe him.

Obviously with Joly’s injury there was no time to resolve this or say anything else, but Cosette also wasn’t sure they would’ve if they had the chance.

For the rest of winter break, they happened not to see each other at Joly’s house or anywhere else. Cosette had gotten herself so worked up over everything that she hardly said anything to Eponine today at school, and she knew that was completely the wrong thing to do, but it happened anyway. Marius was being so patient with her, which she was just so grateful for. He was really the best boyfriend ever.

Not wanting to push Cosette too hard, Marius was just suggesting she talk to Eponine about everything, without pressuring her. She appreciated it, but maybe what she needed to get over herself and fix things was that pressure. Without it, Cosette wasn’t sure she was strong enough to do this.

Even when she told Marius this, he smiled and said he was proud of her for realizing that, and that her realization made him believe she could do it more than ever.

He was so sweet, but as many times as she repeated his words in her head, she didn’t think it had changed anything yet.

For one thing, fretting over not telling anyone only conjured up more guilt and stopped her even further in her tracks. Just as she had no idea how she and Eponine got to this point, Cosette didn’t know why she couldn’t talk about things with anyone else but Marius, either. Not even Musichetta.

Maybe it all started when Marius and Grantaire told her and Eponine about Montparnasse and Marie at the Halloween party, asking them what the deal was with Cosette and Eponine’s family. They asked her if she wanted them to let those two know they told Cosette and Eponine about it, and she’d immediately said no. It wasn’t like she didn’t like Marie and Montparnasse—honestly, she loved them both. But something about peeling away even more layers of her history with Eponine made her feel intensely uncomfortable, despite the fact that they already knew.

After that, it took her a while to realize how different things seemed between her and Eponine. It probably wasn’t until that day with the partially failed surprise. And that had made Cosette feel so guilty it was no wonder she couldn’t force herself to talk to Eponine about it. Now there was this.

Marius’ unwavering support kept Cosette from ever seriously considering for too long that Eponine’s simultaneous lack of communication was anything other than a response to Cosette’s. If she made the first move to mend things, she had no reason to believe Eponine wouldn’t cooperate. But of course the little chance that wasn’t true kept her stagnant, as did the waves of guilt from every other direction.

One wave came from the fact that Valjean didn’t know about any of this, besides what happened with the surprise that day.

It was just easier not to tell him about the Halloween party thing (especially with everything else that happened that night), and of course he wasn’t there for the awkwardness at Joly’s party.

The part of her that was scared talking to Eponine would somehow only make things worse thought it was better for Valjean not to know about it.

She could tell Marius knew how tangled up with guilt and worries she was right now, as they all kept eating.

Watching the fireflies dance around her yard, Cosette tried thinking about something else. That worked only for a little while.

Her dad’s sudden popularity among so many of her friends’ parents was cool—Cosette really thought it would be good for him, just like forming the friend group was so good for her all the way back in middle school—but it came with an obvious caveat.

The real reason Eponine was silent earlier that day when everyone discussed their parents’ recent thoughts about Valjean wasn’t this rift between her and Cosette (at least, hopefully not), but because of her parents.

Of course she would have nothing to say, because Eponine had to keep it a secret from her parents that she even knew Cosette and Valjean. And, possibly for more reasons than Cosette really knew about, she and Valjean always did whatever they could to avoid the Thenardiers. Hardly going out to restaurants besides ones like the Musain they knew they disliked, doing their best not to linger at grocery stores besides when they happened to run into another one of her friends, it was all to avoid them.

Near-hermitness was probably Valjean’s natural tendency with his personality, but Cosette also knew it was a matter of safety. She didn’t know exactly why it would be so dangerous to see the Thenardiers—an actual reason that would compel Valjean to go to so much trouble, surely more than just the fear Cosette still felt humming through her bones whenever she thought about them.

And now Valjean was practically being forced out of his comfort zone, because all the other parents wanted to be good friends with him.

It wasn’t like that necessarily made it likelier that the Thenardiers would find out about them, but surely it was possible. None of her friends’ parents were friends with the Thenardiers on Facebook, at least, nor did anyone really like them at all. Though it didn’t happen often, Cosette knew that chance conversations around town between the Thenardiers and other parents in the group weren’t completely unheard of.

All this was unsettling, but still seemed so far away that Cosette couldn’t worry too much. She definitely saw this new development as an overall positive.

Everything with Eponine was a different story.

Cosette reached across to Marius’ rocking chair and held his hand, hoping she could be as brave as he thought she was.

Eponine pushed a shopping cart down the aisles of the little grocery store her parents had her shop at, deep in thought. She’d finally remembered to buy an umbrella tonight, but that felt like the least of her worries right now.

Usually Eponine acted like she hated going grocery shopping so often, mainly because she figured it might give her some leverage in certain situations, but ultimately she didn’t mind the experiences themselves, just the fact that her parents were always manipulating the fact that she had her license but no car. The grocery store was nice and calm, especially in the evenings.

Another factor that always mingled uncomfortably with her outward resistance to doing all her parents’ chores was that the less often the Thenardiers were out of the house, the less likely it was that they would happen to run into Valjean and Cosette.

Sometimes her friends asked why she didn’t put up more of a fight when they forced her to do errands, usually after she found herself bragging about tricking them in other ways. Eponine never gave a straight answer, even when this wasn’t in front of Cosette, because she didn’t like talking about it. And she never really used to have to, before this school year, because it seemed like all this was never as relevant in the broad scheme of her friend group as it was now.

Obviously this stuff was always relevant for her, because they were her parents and this was her life, but it was easier to keep it all to herself.

That’s what she wanted to keep doing, except for the fact that Grantaire was so insistent on her doing otherwise, and every day threatened to get Enjolras to give her one of his whole speeches about it if she didn’t start talking to Cosette herself.

What happened at Joly’s birthday party before his injury was weird, that was for sure. Eponine was somewhere between not understanding what Cosette’s problem had been (to be fair, she meant that mildly; it’s not like Cosette had made a scene or anything) and understanding it far too well. What happened that day with Cosette’s surprise was weird too, and so was the fact that the two of them hadn’t discussed that or even the incident on Halloween with Grantaire and Marius telling Marie and Montparnasse about their shared history. Grantaire and Marius let them know about it together, but she and Cosette just didn’t say anything to each other afterwards.

Eponine figured Cosette needed space. She was awkward about inviting her siblings to the Halloween party and awkward about that surprise. All that awkwardness was understandable; judging Cosette for it would be like judging Eponine for being so stubborn about dealing with everything herself.

Look at what they’ve both been through, and it just made sense. Eponine just didn’t think it was her job to get Cosette to open up about all of that.

She had more to worry about, both in general and still where Cosette was concerned. One thing was the Corinthe, which her parents still frequented (they hardly bought any books, just liked to read in the area with chairs and tables mainly as a front for eavesdropping, because they were total weirdos). All Eponine could assume was that Cosette had picked up on the times when Feuilly and Musichetta complained to Eponine about seeing her parents at work, and decided she and Valjean shouldn’t go there. It worked out without Eponine having to say anything after all, so she was mainly satisfied.

Her parents never took Eponine or her siblings with to Corinthe, always complaining about how they never got any peace and quiet anywhere else. Eponine still loved the bookstore, but she wasn’t going as often as her friends were. Partly because she did feel bad Cosette never went, and partly because the association with her parents inadvertently left a bad taste in her mouth. But it wasn’t that big of a deal.

But the new problem was how everyone else’s parents ended up becoming best friends with Valjean in the aftermath of Joly’s injury. It had been almost two weeks at this point.

Honestly, Eponine had expected something like this to happen at some point, because Valjean was such a great person and already at some level of familiarity with all the parents due to having the friend group over at his house so often. It was really just Valjean’s impressive commitment to keeping to himself that kept it from happening for so long.

Obviously Eponine knew much of that commitment related back to avoiding her parents, and obviously she hated this, but it was just how it was.

Maybe this new development of all the parents loving Valjean and apparently talking about him whenever they saw other parents in the group meant that Eponine should ask all her friends to tell their parents that the Thenardiers couldn’t know about Cosette and Valjean. But she really didn’t want to have to do that.

It already felt like it was so not her place to make all of her friends and all of their parents go to that much trouble (because it was the same trouble Cosette and Valjean had to go to, and she already hated that more than anything), but especially so with the awkwardness between her and Cosette. Plus, nobody’s parents would absorb that information without getting incredibly concerned and asking more questions. Was it cowardly of Eponine to dread that so much?

Nagging at her every day now was the question of what her siblings would think about all this, if they knew about it.

They’d all gone outside to splash in puddles when she and Cosette had that weird moment—that was what the weird moment was about, obviously—so they didn’t know about that, and so far they hadn’t been around when she and her friends talked about Valjean’s newfound popularity.

Eventually they might hear about it through the other younger siblings of the group, if they happened to relay their parents talking about Valjean, but so far it hadn’t happened. And though she knew it probably wasn’t the right thing to do, Eponine hadn’t told them.

They were her little siblings and she had to protect them. Eponine was always feeling like she couldn’t even do that, so when her conscience told her that they probably deserved to know more about situations like this, she just wasn’t strong enough to listen to it.

She thought about Thanksgiving, when her siblings’ receptiveness resulted in Eponine learning to be more open with her friends about how much she loved them.

What it didn’t do was teach Eponine how to be much more open about all of this complicated stuff, or apparently trust her siblings in similar situations.

Then she thought about all the swim team drama. Since Homecoming, there’d been a handful of lowkey conversations between different combinations of the six of them involved in all that, and it really seemed all straightened out now.

Eponine felt bad that Feuilly and Marie didn’t end the swim season on great terms with all of their teammates, and she knew Jehan, Bahorel, and Montparnasse felt the same. But she knew, logically, that talking about everything was the only reason that the drama in their own friend group had cleared up. Apparently, she just couldn’t make herself listen to this yet.