Archive of Our Own ^beta

Éponine goes to the basketball court down the block on Saturday, because she needs to get knocked back into her own skin, and a pickup game sounds like the best sort of medicine.

It’s gorgeous outside, in a way her street rarely is; the sky is just darkening to deep shades of blue, and white clouds are vaulting far overhead. They form a beautiful dome for the court of Éponine’s neighborhood. It lends a sense of divinity to the boys in t-shirts shooting hoops, and the kids trying to climb the chain-link fence.

Some of Marius’s friends are there, Grantaire and Feuilly and Bahorel, already playing a halfhearted game of lightning with Pretot and Mavot. They’re all boys that Éponine knows from school, and also knows from a childhood spent playing with them all, barefoot, in the street.

“Are you going to play, Éponine?”

She waves a hand at the boys on the court and pulls her t-shirt off. Grantaire whistles and grins at her when she flips him off. “Ready to get your ass kicked?” she fires at him.

A few more kids arrive at the same time Éponine does, so rough teams are made and a game is started. They play five on five; Éponine’s team consists of herself, Feuilly, Brujon, Panchaud, and Mardisoir.

Grantaire grins at Éponine in the still space before they start. “I’ll go easy on you,” he promises in a low voice.

Éponine flips him off again. She can still hear him laughing when she catches a pass from Panchaud and ducks around him.

The basketball court is the closest thing to a community center that exists in Éponine’s part of town, and every kid her age loves it fiercely. The free-throw line is faded, the basketball hoops are missing their nets, and persistent wildflowers grow through the cracked cement at random intervals, but it’s like home.

Éponine isn’t the only girl playing; Panchaud is on her team, and Toussaint, who has a stutter but can shoot a free-throw like nobody’s business, is on the other team. Toussaint’s long black hair whips around her head when she runs. In the small moments between plays, Éponine is devoutly thankful that she thought to braid her own hair before she came.

Toussaint plays soccer, so she can run quickly, but so does Feuilly. The teams are well-matched and the game is fast-paced enough that Éponine is constantly gasping for breath, which is just how she likes it.

It’s a Saturday night so more and more kids and teenagers come and go as the shadows lengthen and the star-like streetlights turn on overhead. Éponine is sweating and snarling and euphoric with it. She sees Gavroche and Gervais go running by, undoubtedly entrenched in some complex fantasy of their own creation. “You’ll never take me alive!” Gavroche is yelling, which makes Éponine almost trip because she laughs so hard.

Éponine’s team beats Toussaint’s team by an admirable margin. Bahorel and Panchaud, clearly not ready to be done playing, start coaxing people on the court for another game of lightning. Éponine rejects their pleas with a smile as she pulls her t-shirt back on. She’s just seen her friends arrive, and besides, she can feel her own body again. She got what she came for. Her chest is burning.

Babet and Montparnasse are standing against the chain-link fence on the street side of the court. As Éponine walks up she notices that Montparnasse is stony-faced and uncomfortable, and Éponine only has to look around for a second before she realizes why. Claquesous is there with his own posse– they’re lounging against the brick wall on the opposite side of the court. It looks like Gueulemer has a cigarette. It looks like Hogu has a flask. His shirt says All Cops Are Bastards.

Éponine wipes the sweat off her forehead and says, “He’s gonna notice if you keep staring, dude.”

Montparnasse flips her off and casts one more glance at Claquesous. In an abstract way, Éponine can see the appeal, because Claquesous is tall and has a riot of red hair, dark eyes, and a surprisingly aristocratic nose. He’s only one year older than Montparnasse and Éponine are, but Montparnasse is an absolute fool for him, in a bitter and resentful way. Éponine doesn’t know if the two have ever even spoken.

“We’re not talking about it, apparently,” Babet says. He jumps away to avoid a punch to the shoulder from Montparnasse.

Babet’s thin blond hair is falling in messy tendrils all over his face. He looks washed-out beneath the glaring streetlights that surround the court. They’re white, like stadium lights. Éponine pulls the braids out of her hair before she puts her t-shirt back on.

It isn’t surprising that Montparnasse doesn’t want to talk about it. To be honest, he never feels the need to let Éponine in on what he’s thinking. This reticence is nothing new. It doesn’t stop Éponine from giving him a cheeky grin and trying to steal his phone.

“Watch out, boys,” Brujon hollers suddenly. “The pigs are here!”

The lightning game grinds to a halt as everyone swivels to face the road where, as promised, Officer Javert is cruising past with a forced air of calm.

Éponine curls her fingers in the chain link fence and gives him a wide smile. At her side, Babet and Montparnasse affect innocent expressions and casual poses. The boys on the court are still– no one is even dribbling the basketball.

It’s a ritual at this point, one that every neighborhood kid expects. Javert always drives by the basketball court on Saturday evenings, looking for trouble, and he always will, come hell or high water.

Apart from Hogu’s flask no one is doing anything illegal, but everyone watches Javert anyway, because they don’t want to turn their backs. Hardly anyone in their neighborhood– in their town– trusts the police. Éponine is one of the only white people there, apart from Babet and Claquesous.

“Gee, Officer Krupke,” Hogu yells across the court. Éponine laughs out loud before she can stop herself. Javert’s mouth thins but he doesn’t dignify the comment with a response. Instead he casts another long look at the assembled teenagers before he drives on into the evening.

Éponine grins and turns back to the court.

She and Montparnasse spend a few happy minutes cheerfully yelling insults at the basketball players before she gets distracted by the buzz of her phone. It’s a message from an unknown number.

did you like the book?

Éponine reads the text with her eyes narrowed.

Texts from unknown numbers are usually from Montparnasse, who goes through friends faster than he goes through Doc Martens. But Montparnasse is standing right next to her, too busy staring at Claquesous to be texting. Éponine would be inclined to disregard the message, except–

Except that the only person to lend her a book lately was Cosette Fauchelevent, which means that there’s a very good chance this text is from her.

That could be a problem.

The book in question is Pride and Prejudice, a rather beautiful hardcover edition with marbled endpapers and its own bookmark stitched into the binding.

Éponine has never read it before. She stole a copy for Azelma once (from the public library, but they were selling it during their book fair anyway) but she has no idea where it ended up. Azelma’s room is a library in its own right, but one that Éponine can’t make heads of tails of.

All of this is a convoluted way of saying that Éponine has never read Pride and Prejudice, and when she mentioned that in a casual conversation with Cosette (because of course Cosette likes having casual conversations about books), Cosette had offered to lend Éponine her own copy.

That was about four days ago. Three days, ago, Cosette came to school with the pretty book tucked under her arm, and she gave it to Éponine at the start of their first-hour math class.

“Who’s that from?” Babet asks. He grabs at Éponine’s phone and scowls when she holds it out of his reach.

“None of your business,” she mutters.

She puts the phone in her pocket without texting back.

*

When Éponine gets home, Marius is sitting on the front steps of her apartment building, looking lost. “You okay?” Éponine calls, once she’s close enough to recognize him.

He jumps a little bit and wipes at his eyes. “I’m good,” he says. “Just thought I’d, you know, just walk around for a bit. Give him some time to cool down.”

He follows Éponine upstairs without being asked. Éponine knows that her parents won’t be home, which for her is a blessing. It means that she’ll have to make dinner for herself but it also means that she can offer Marius some level of peace and quiet.

Marius doesn’t really belong here, Éponine thinks. He deserves to live somewhere with big, beautiful libraries and multilingual friends and gardens that he can stroll in. Instead he lives with his grandfather, who is wealthy but who is also unbearably unkind and whose house is like something out of Great Expectations.

The thought reminds Éponine of Cosette, as her thoughts often do. She pulls out her phone and tosses it to Marius, who is slouching on the couch. “Is that Cosette’s number?” she asks.

He pulls out his own phone for comparison. “Yeah,” he says. Éponine keeps an eye on him while she pulls out a box of macaroni. She isn’t really sure how Marius and Cosette are such good friends, but then, she isn’t sure how Marius is friends with half of his friends, herself included.

Marius chucks the phone back and laughs when Éponine yelps and almost drops it. “Bastard,” she says, looking down at the screen. Marius has entered the name as Cosette F. The string of numbers looks sharp and threatening, which is…not something that Éponine has ever felt about a string of numbers before, except for maybe during calculus.

“Thank you,” she says. He’s chewing on the end of one of his fingernails now. Éponine sighs and says, “Do you have a new word today?”

That gets him to brighten marginally. “I do, actually,” he says. He pushes against the couch cushions to straighten himself up before he delivers it to her with what must be the appropriate amount of gravitas. “The word dor. It’s Romanian.”

“And what does it mean?”

“It’s untranslatable,” he says, with something approaching fondness. Of course. “But it’s a little more than longing. A little bit like nostalgia.” His eyes are very far away from Éponine’s dingy living room. “It’s melancholy and wanting, even when you don’t know what you want.”

Éponine rubs her sternum with one hand. She tries not to think about Cosette, and she fails. She pours the macaroni into a bowl.

Marius leaves late in the evening, after the setting sun has plunged the neighborhood into a hazy, cotton-candy-blue twilight. He walks with his head down and his hands in his pockets, and Éponine watches him go with a frown. He’s so cautious. She never coaxed the full story out of him, about what his grandfather had done, but he had assured her that he was fine. That everything was fine. She’s worried, but she did what she could.

Though she still hasn’t texted Cosette.

The air is dark and cool but Éponine doesn’t step back inside; she stays on the top step and watches the bright white streetlights flickering and shining, like trapped stars on the sprawling urban streets. A few real stars appear high overhead on the expanse of sky, but Éponine doesn’t know their names. Azelma might, if she asked. Her sister is eating dinner in the kitchen. Soon she’ll call Éponine inside so she can lock the door, and all of Éponine’s bravery will be left shivering on the doorstep.

Dor. An untranslatable longing.

She pulls out her phone.

A direct approach is always best. Carefully she types out, i love it so far, and sends it before she can begin to second-guess herself.

Éponine slips her phone back in her pocket and looks back down the street. Marius is long gone, and so is the sun. Éponine has been brave. She ducks back into the dim golden glow of the apartment stairwell and tries to pretend like she isn’t waiting for Cosette to text back.

Later, when she’s lying back in her bed, she reflects that if Marius belongs at a prestigious university somewhere, Éponine belongs in the middle of a city with a thousand strangers, where she can find her corner basketball games but can also find some way to make sure that her and her siblings are always fed. She would love New York. Or Chicago. Probably. She’s never been to either of them.

She falls asleep thinking about skyscrapers and bridges, and a place where she could hold a girl’s hand in public without being afraid of anyone.

*

Éponine wakes up far too early on Monday to the sound of her parents bickering in the kitchen. She scowls sleepily and pulls her pillow over her head. Mornings are the least favorite part of her day, because she’s most likely to run into her parents in the dim hours before she and her siblings go to school.

The concept of ‘home’ is very important to Éponine, which is why it’s such a fucking tragedy that she hates her own house so much. There isn’t enough light for her; during the day she feels like a wilting flower unless she’s perched right on the windowsill, flooded with dusty sunlight.

Everything is a disorganized and grimy. It’s no different than anyone else’s house in the neighborhood but at some point it started to drive Éponine wild. She can’t do anything about the vague smell of cigarettes, or the fruit flies that spin lazily above the sink, or a thousand other small indignities. The grime on the shower door. The ripped-up patches of linoleum in the hallway. The holes in the screen that covers Gavroche’s window.

It’s even worse in the morning, when the air is dark and damp and the dim yellow lights in the kitchen give everything a sickly tint. Éponine doesn’t eat breakfast at home, because she prefers to get out the door as soon as she can. She hates her house. Everything about it feels filthy, and it clings to Éponine like a layer of grease when she leaves.

Even on Mondays she’s eager to arrive at school. Her friends are there. Cosette is there.

Cosette is wearing a skirt on Monday, a pleated blue one that she’s paired with a white button-down shirt. Éponine wants to bury her fingers in all of that long blonde hair. This is maddening. She can never win.

She sits between Pretot and Mavot in first-hour Pre-Calc. Apparently it’s for their own good– every teacher in the school has been warned against letting the two boys sit next to each other– but all it really means is that they constantly heckle Éponine to pass notes. It could be worse. They’re a hell of a lot of fun to sit with.

And they’re loud enough that sometimes Cosette will turn around to listen to their jokes, and whenever she laughs Éponine feels like an angel has just gotten its wings or a gay kid has just gotten his first kiss or something, it’s that good and pure.

Apparently miracles are being handed out left and right that day, because as soon as Éponine sits down, Cosette turns around to talk to her. “Sit by me at lunch,” she says in a low voice, beneath the sound of their teacher taking roll call. “I want you to tell me what you think of Jane Austen.”

Éponine, helpless, can only nod. As soon as Cosette turns to face the front again, both Pretot and Mavot elbow Éponine in the ribs.

“I will stab you with a pen,” she hisses at them both. At the front of the room, old Fauchelevent raises his eyebrows at her, but he doesn’t stop reading out his list of names and listening for the half-hearted responses.

*

Éponine’s table at lunch has grown a ridiculous amount this past year. They always have to drag extra chairs over, which makes the custodians mad, but everyone she’s friends with is a goddamn anarchist anyway so it’s doesn’t matter very much.

It used to be just her and Montparnasse– Babet has a different lunch period. Then Marius started sitting with them, and with him came Courfeyrac, and with Courfeyrac came his rebels with too many causes. Lunch feels more like debate team these days, but Éponine enjoys it.

She plops down next to Montparnasse, almost directly across from Marius. Marius is sitting between Enjolras and Grantaire, a decision that he looks like he’s regretting, because Grantaire keeps throwing grapes at Enjolras and Enjolras keeps snarling back.

Lunch is always an ordeal. Éponine can usually dredge up fifty cents for the school’s reduced price but she doesn’t do it half the time because the food sucks (one surprising exception is the ravioli, which is logic-defyingly good but is only served once a month). She has an apple today, and she bites into it and props her feet on the seat next to her to keep it open for Cosette.

Cosette started sitting with them sometime after she and Marius were introduced. Marius really is the catalyst for most of the new friendships at the table, which Éponine appreciates as a subtle but important talent. She wonders if shoving Marius into a room with Montparnasse and Claquesous would yield any results.

She glances across the room. Claquesous and his posse are sitting at a table near the windows, hardly eating. Gossip has been flying around about them all day– apparently after he left the basketball court last night, Hogu had a run-in with the cops. The stories vary. Someone said they took offense at his ACAB shirt. Someone else said he and Claquesous were trying to break into a car.

Privately, Éponine thinks that Hogu was probably walking innocently down the street. Just another black kid who got looked at a little too hard, because it was dark and everything at midnight is menacing. Whatever the reason, he isn’t in school today, and Claquesous and his gang look tired and angry. Mardisoir has a black eye, but Éponine has no idea if that’s related.

Someone is saying her name. Éponine turns and meets Cosette’s curious stare. “Are you saving this spot for me?” Cosette asks.

Éponine moves her feet with good grace. Cosette settles down and says, “So, tell me about Pride and Prejudice.”

“I haven’t finished it yet,” Éponine replies. “But I like it a lot.” Cosette beams. Éponine feels prompted to add, “And honestly, I’m just glad I’m finally reading it. We should read it in class. I love Shakespeare, but god, I have enough dicks in my day-to-day life, you know?”

Cosette laughs so loud that half the table turns to look at them.

“Case in point,” Éponine says, gesturing to them. That only makes Cosette laugh harder. A hum of satisfaction works its way through Éponine’s chest.

“Why do I feel like my good name is being maligned?” Bossuet asks amiably.

Éponine raises an eyebrow at him. “We’re talking about gender equality.”

“Ah. Carry on.” Bossuet focuses his attention back onto his applesauce. Enjolras and Combeferre, however, glance over with interest.

Éponine rolls her eyes. When she looks at Cosette, the other girl is grinning at her. “I agree with you,” Cosette says. “I can’t believe the only female author we read was Harper Lee.”

“And she, like the rest of the authors we’ve read, was white,” Enjolras says in a disgruntled tone. It doesn’t mask the glee in his voice– Enjolras is a fighter by nature, and lunchtime is his favorite time to go off.

There’s no stopping it then; the conversation spreads to the entire table. Éponine isn’t mad– this group is a hell of a lot of fun to fight with, even over something as innocuous as literature– but she does mourn the loss of her tête-à-tête with Cosette.

“I remember when lunchtime was peaceful,” Montparnasse says mournfully, after several minutes of good-natured bickering about Harper Lee. Éponine grins and elbows him in the side.

Enjolras frowns at Montparnasse, and Montparnasse frowns right back, throwing in a snarl for good measure.

One problem with such a large lunch table: not everyone does get along. Éponine doesn’t know the source of the animosity between Enjolras and Montparnasse, but it is there, and it is as bitter and strong as dark coffee. She kicks Montparnasse’s ankle.

He kicks her back without even looking at her. Montparnasse is a little irritating because hardly anything seems to ruffle him. Even when he’s fidgety and uncomfortable, Éponine only notices because she’s had years to learn how to read him. To the rest of the group he’s perfectly inscrutable.

He enters the conversation exactly once. “Not only is everyone white,” he says, “but they’re all straight as well.” It’s the perfect catalyst for a whole new round of arguing. Éponine kicks him in the ankle again and he grins at her, smug.

*

“Well,” Cosette says mournfully, when lunchtime is over. “We didn’t get to talk about Jane Austen very much.”

Éponine feels a rush of terrible fondness for her. “We’ll just have to try again,” she says, hoping she doesn’t sound too eager.

But Cosette brightens, like a sunflower at dawn. Éponine remembers the smile on her face all day. She keeps pulling it from her memory to examine again and again, like a shiny piece of beach glass.

It still feels so new. To be unapologetic. To be tired of all those books with scores of boys and one Token Girl. To look back at the long, long line of relevant literature and say, ‘not good enough.’ It’s a heady feeling. Éponine likes it. She likes herself most, and likes being a girl most, when she and Cosette and dragging out these issues and making up stories about all-female renditions of everything they can get their hands on.

Éponine’s never been a writer but she wishes she was, in moments like this. She feels like that’s a thing people do, isn’t it? Writing shitty self-indulgent stories in, like, google docs. She and Cosette could make bastardized versions of every male-dominated power trip of a book they have to read in English class, just to make it more bearable.

They talk about Jane Austen a lot. Cosette says she likes Emma, she likes Mansfield Park, she likes Sense and Sensibility most of all. “I have the movie version of that one,” she says. They’re sitting just outside the cafeteria, soaking up sunshine during the last few minutes of their lunch break a few days later. “You should come over and watch it some time, it’s super good.”

“I’d like to,” Éponine says. Period dramas aren’t her usual fare but she has nothing against them, and she imagines that Cosette’s company will make anything sweet enough to endure with enjoyment.

“Not tonight, though,” Cosette adds. “I have practice.” She’s on the soccer team with Toussaint. By all accounts she’s one of the best players– everyone that Éponine has talked to says that Cosette will probably be captain next year.

(Éponine would never be caught dead at a football game. But, admittedly, she has gone to the soccer games before. Purely because there was nothing else to do and she was near the soccer pitch. That’s her story, and she’s sticking to it.)

“Well, whenever is fine,” Éponine says. She kicks her heels back against the low wall they’re sitting on. Part of her is glad that Cosette is busy with soccer tonight. The thought of seeing her house– maybe even her room– is a daunting one. Éponine will need time to mentally prepare.

Concentration is a fleeting, inconstant thing during her last two classes. All Éponine can think about is sunshine, and gold hair, and sunshine in gold hair, and the particular tilt of Cosette’s smile visible in her profile. It’s awfully hard to focus on English and chemistry. The final bell, when it rings, comes as a relief. She slips through the hallways, feeling like a distracted fool, hoping and dreading running into the object of her afternoon musings.

Montparnasse is sitting against her locker with a bored expression on his face. Éponine walks up to him and starts kicking his feet. “Are you free tonight?” he asks.

She gives him a half smile. “I have to watch Gav and Azelma, but you’re welcome to join me.”

He shrugs and nods.

“We should text Babet too.”

That gets a grin out of him. Ten minutes later the three of them are trudging along the sidewalk to Éponine’s house. Montparnasse isn’t talking much; he got his braces tightened the day before, so Éponine knows his mouth must be frightfully sore. Babet, in his customary way, is bitching about the heat.

Éponine doesn’t mind the higher temperatures. She hates the way her sweaty hair sticks to her forehead and the back of her neck, but springtime is when girls like Cosette start wearing cute sundresses to school, which is incentive enough for her to endure the oncoming summer. She’s such a brave soul. She sacrifices so much.

Gav and Azelma are home by the time Éponine and her friends get there; Azelma is sitting on the concrete steps of the apartment, hunched over a book, and Gavroche is playing some complicated game that involves throwing stones down the street. Éponine ruffles his hair fondly and grins when he starts pestering Montparnasse, who has always been his favorite.

“How was school?” Éponine asks as she trudges up the steps.

Azelma gives a noncommittal hum, but she doesn’t look up.

Éponine perches on the top step. Their tiny apartment is on the second floor, but it gets bad light and it always smells like smoke, so the Thenardier siblings conduct much of their lives on the front stoop.

Montparnasse joins Éponine on the top step. Babet settles himself one level below them with his feet stuck out in front of him, looking for all the world like an ill-tempered black cat. Azelma is still hunched over her book on the bottom step. She chews absentmindedly on one of her fingernails while she reads.

Gavroche keeps playing in the street with little Gervais from next door. The stone-throwing game has somehow evolved into a space western revenge comedy, or something, because Gavroche is doing his best to shout in a western drawl and Gervais is saying something about “the blasters are on full, sir!”

It’s easy to envy their imagination. Gavroche is a clever kid, but Éponine is glad that he still has some sort of wide-eyed innocence in him. Éponine thinks that she grew up too fast. She thinks Azelma probably did too, except that Azelma has always been able to escape into a book when things got really shitty.

Montparnasse has his phone out and is frowning at the screen. Éponine is about to start heckling him when her own phone buzzes sharply against her hip. She pulls it out and feels a small thrill when she sees Cosette’s name appear on the cracked screen.

Hypothetically, the text says, if it turns out that my dad has the six-hour-long version of P&P, would you be interested in marathoning it with me???

The three question marks are very endearing. Éponine has never thought that about question marks before. i’d be cool with that, she texts back. hypothetically.

Cosette just sends her a small burst of exclamation points in return.

A smile makes its way across Éponine’s face. She sets the phone on the step next to her and leans back on her hands, feeling like a queen.

Montparnasse bites his lip and turns his phone off too. He’s wearing a black t-shirt with gold buckles up the sides, over his ribs; it should look ridiculous but he just looks like a goddamn model. “Do you have anything to drink?” he asks.

“God, please,” Babet says, letting his head loll backwards so he can make a face at them. Éponine nudges his shoulder with her foot and gets up to go look.

There’s nothing in the fridge but alcohol, but there is ice cream in the freezer, so Éponine grabs a handful of spoons and takes that instead. Within seconds of stepping outside Gavroche and Gervais have abandoned their game to jump on her, clambering for something cold and sweet. “Calm down,” she says. “Azelma, do you want any?”

They reorder themselves on the steps with Éponine at the center. She’s surrounded by arms and reaching silver spoons. It’s uncommonly warm, even in the shadow of the apartment building, so the ice cream is a relief. It’s such an innocent scene, in Éponine’s mind. Certainly no one else at school has seen bitter, vicious Babet and pretty, impassive Montparnasse, lazy and overheated, sprawled on a dirty flight of steps eating vanilla ice cream out of the carton.

They’re springtime monarchs on concrete thrones. Gavroche and Gervais start playing in the street again while Éponine and her friends stay on the steps, chatting and heckling each other and intimidating the hell out of everyone who passes. Azelma goes inside before too long, so then it’s just Éponine, Montparnasse, and Babet. Like a clique. A squad. A gang.

Babet starts smoking after a while, in a furtive way, like he’s expecting to be reprimanded for it. Éponine wrinkles her nose but doesn’t say anything. Montparnasse just waves the smoke away with a casual hand.

“Did you ever read Pride and Prejudice?” Éponine asks.

Montparnasse says no. Babet tips his head to one side and says, “I read a bit of it. For English last year. But I read, like, the minimum amount.”

“Well, did you like it?”

He shrugs pensively. “It was okay. Pretty tame, you know? It’s difficult to get too invested in the lives of people with fucking manor houses or whatever.”

Éponine shrugs and lets the subject drop.

Her friends don’t leave until shadows are stretching across the street and the sun has taken on a belligerent orange hue, preparing itself to set. Éponine sees them off and finally goes inside. She feels like a prisoner returning to her cell after a glorious day of freedom.

Her parents aren’t around. She orders pizza for herself and Azelma and Gavroche, and gets them to bed within a reasonable time. She perches uncomfortably on the windowsill in her room while she does her homework so she can see the sky fade, bruise-like, to blue and purple and black.

It’s almost midnight by the time she goes to bed.

If Marius belongs at a university and Éponine belongs in a city, where does Cosette belong? She can’t be dismissed as soft and pretty– her father is an ex-convict, just like Éponine’s. The main difference, of course, is that Cosette’s father is actually a good man, whereas Éponine’s father deserved everything he got and more. But Cosette is no flower, no angel. She’s dealt with the same bullshit that everyone else has and she’s still so kind.

Éponine tries to imagine Cosette teaching at a high school. She’d be everyone’s favorite teacher, undoubtedly. But she would be good as a journalist too, one of the investigative ones who wears a trench coat and goes to work with a handgun in her pocket. Professional soccer player is an easy bet. Or professional musician– Cosette plays piano, though Éponine has never heard her. She could travel the world and perform on beautiful gleaming stages.

That would probably suit Cosette very well. Éponine falls asleep with the faintest strains of music in her ears.

*

Éponine still doesn’t think she’s much of a writer, but English used to be her favorite class. It’s also the class she skips the most often, which she doesn’t really have a justification for, other than the fact that it comes right before lunch and that’s usually when her truant disposition flares up.

Also, this year she’s found that she dislikes English more and more.

The teacher is Mabeuf, who is perhaps one of the only old white guys that Éponine tolerates. He views her absences with a sort of weary amusement (and she’s pretty sure that he marks her as present even when she’s not, on some days).

He’s old, and he’s kind. But he isn’t very good at diversifying the literature they read in class.

There was a time this didn’t bother me, Éponine thinks. She’s rifling half-heartedly through her copy of A Separate Peace, trying to find the specific passage that Mabeuf is currently speaking about at the front of the room. Éponine is tired. She kind of hates A Separate Peace. She can see the literary merit in it, but there’s approximately no girls.

Also, at the beginning of the unit, Mabeuf felt the need to give them all a stern talking-to about Gene and Finny and how they really aren’t gay. He seems to expect that any attempt to discuss it will just lead to crude jokes and giggling, so he’s banned it as a topic of discussion.

Éponine keeps her head down. Even the teachers she likes are a little bit terrible sometimes, which is disheartening.

Next to her, a girl named Musichetta is trying to keep her head propped up with one hand so she doesn’t fall asleep. “They’re gay, fam,” she mutters, pitching her voice so she doesn’t catch Mabeuf’s attention. Éponine tries not to laugh.

“Let them be gay and in love,” she mutters back.

Musichetta heaves an unimpressed sigh. “But then we get the ‘bury your gays’ trope. We can never win.”

Their voices are low but Mabeuf gives them each a stern look without breaking his monologue on the intentions of John Knowles. Éponine ducks her head again.

A Separate Peace leaves a bad taste in her mouth for so many reasons that she can’t articulate. It has nothing to do with her– when has she ever been a boy at a private school? – but the injustices perpetrated by Mabeuf still feel oddly personal.

Éponine has read books about girls and private schools, and she hated almost every one of them. It’s always cliques and cattiness and an obsession with boys. None of the authors have ever considered the true realities of girls being friends, apparently. They’re always enemies instead.

Gene literally jostles his friend out of a tree but still calls him his friend. Why aren’t girls allowed the same depth of devotion, even when that devotion is poisonous, even when that devotion leads to death?

Being a girl is an exhausting institution, a subscription to some bullshit Éponine never wanted. She thinks that there must be a lot of perks when one is a boy.

Sometimes she thinks about it. Sometimes she looks at her face in the mirror and tucks her hair back so it doesn’t flow over her shoulders, long and decidedly feminine. She can’t tell if she would make a good boy or not. She isn’t sure why she thinks about it as much as she does.

“Where are the female characters?” Musichetta whispers. Éponine smiles, but her heart is like stone in her chest.

*

Prouvaire stops at Éponine’s desk at the start of Chemistry that same day and gives her a battered book with a red cover. “Sappho,” he says, as she flips it open. “I thought you might like it.”

She glares up at him. He just grins. “Give it to Cosette, when you’re done,” he adds. “She wants to read it too.”

Éponine shoves the book in her backpack and tries to ignore the way her face has heated up with hope and embarrassment. Straight girls can read Sappho too, she tells herself fiercely. That doesn’t stop a small bubble of wonder from encompassing her thoughts for the entirety of Chemistry.

She walks home by herself, because Babet and Montparnasse apparently skipped last hour together. It’s warm out. Éponine is wearing black skinny jeans (the closest thing to armor a teenage girl can have) and right now she’s cursing them, because she’s hot and she can feel sweat in the top creases of her thighs.

“Where’s Gavroche?” she asks, when she finally gets home.

Azelma, who is already doing her homework at the kitchen table, looks up and blinks. “Baseball, remember?”

“Right.”

The light above the sink is flickering. Éponine gives it a long look and goes to sit outside.

Marius shows up on her doorstep again later that day. Éponine feels like he needs company more than conversation, so she sits on the stoop and reads Sappho while Marius wrestles internally with whatever awful thing his grandfather has thrown at him.

“Do you have a word?” she asks, after he’s calmed down some.

He gives her an inch of a smile. “Defenestration?”

“What does that mean?”

“To throw someone out the window.”

Éponine whistles in admiration. Marius runs his fingers through his wiry hair and tips his head back to look at the sky. He has small pieces of gravel stuck on his palms, and Éponine wants him to notice them and brush them away. She focuses on her book instead.

Marius takes a deep breath. “I think I’m going to move out,” he says quietly.

She looks at him swiftly. Why is he always so much braver than anyone imagines? “Where will you go?”

He shrugs violently. “I haven’t thought that far ahead,” he says. His eyes are red. “But I need to. I need to leave, I need to get as far away as possible.”

Éponine frowns at him. “Don’t be hasty,” she says. “I know it’s not easy living with your grandfather, but it is a roof over your head and food on your plate.”

He shakes his head vehemently. “I can’t stay there anymore.”

“You can’t talk to him about it?”

“He won’t listen to me. He says these awful things, all the time, but whenever I try to speak up to correct him he looks at me like I’m a disgrace.” Marius’s hands are balled into fists, the elegant fingers curled tightly in anger. “Like, for the love of god, sorry I don’t agree with all of your fucking politics.”

Éponine feels weary with worry. “There must be some other option,” she says.

“What, Éponine?” he shouts at her. “What would you have me do? Tell me what you think I should do, because God knows I have no fucking idea.” He’s crying again, bitterly, and he looks away from her to scrub at his eyes.

Éponine closes her book. She scoots down one step, so she can press her shoulder against Marius’s and feel him tremble.

If Éponine was ruthless, she would leave her parents’ house. Skip town, get herself to a city where no one knows her. Cut off all of her hair and start over. Find a job. Find new friends. Get a new name…

But she has school, and she has Azelma and Gavroche to think of. Éponine certainly isn’t a mothering figure but she can’t abandon them. She wouldn’t like to abandon her friends either. She would miss Marius. She would miss Montparnasse and Babet. She would miss Cosette.

“You don’t need to leave,” she says. She keeps her eyes fixed on the dusty brick houses across the street. “You don’t need to drop everything you’re doing a year before you graduate, and leave all your friends. If you have somewhere to go, none of us will stop you. But I think you should stay.”

He breathes in raggedly. “I can’t live with him anymore.” His voice is a symphony of desperation, but Éponine is so tired of this song.

“Then don’t,” she says. She taps her fingers on the cover of the Sappho book. “Leaving your grandfather’s house doesn’t have to be synonymous with leaving town. You could stay with someone. Enjolras, maybe. Or Courfeyrac– his brother moved out, he might have the space.” Her voice sounds very small in the vast blanket of grief that covers her dusty neighborhood. If Marius was a symphony, she is a single violin.

The sun finally drops behind the apartment building, leaving the two of them in shadow. The air is still unbearably warm. It’s stifling; Éponine feels like she’s being swallowed alive.

Marius is quiet for a long time. Then he tips himself sideways so that his head is resting on her shoulder. “Are you doing okay?” he asks quietly. He’s retreating back into himself, and his voice is more level. More composed.

It’s Éponine’s turn to take a deep breath. “I dunno,” she says. “There’s just a lot, you know.” She feels him nod. He leans up and gives her a kiss on the side of her head.

“I’ll talk to Courfeyrac tomorrow,” he says.

*

Friday is quite a day.

Classes are a trial, as usual. Éponine has Sappho stuck in her head like the lyrics of a song: Sweet mother I cannot weave– slender Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl.

Slender is a good word for Cosette, she thinks.

Curse Prouvaire.

It loops through her thoughts all throughout English. She stares blankly at the pages of A Separate Peace without reading any of the words for almost the entire hour. Poetry is supposed to be uplifting, isn’t it? Love poetry is supposed to be divine and beautiful and make you believe in a heaven of crimson clouds where you can rest with your beloved for eternity, or something like that. Instead, Éponine just feels a bit drained. She’s never been able to make anything beautiful. She can’t put herself into lovely fragments of poetry and hold them out to Cosette like a handful of violets. She can’t offer Cosette anything at all, really.

At the front of the room, Mabeuf says something about ‘the creation of inner enemies.’

“What the fuck,” Éponine mutters under her breath. “Same.”

Musichetta, sitting one seat over, bites her lip to keep herself from laughing.

The end of the hour comes as a vast relief. Éponine slips out of the room and begins pushing her way to the hallway where her locker is. Thank god it’s lunchtime. She still has two hours to get through after lunch, but right now this break feels like a lifeline. She drops off her books and heads to the cafeteria.

“Where’s Cosette?” she asks, once she sits down at the lunch table.

Marius, who is talking intently to Courfeyrac, looks up and gives her a small smile. “I think she had to talk to Fauchelevent,” he says. “Making up a test or something.”

Éponine frowns.

“I’ve always wondered,” Grantaire says idly, “are they related? Cosette and old Fauchelevent?” He straightens up as Enjolras sits next to him, but he doesn’t turn his head. Éponine can actually see the amount of effort it’s taking him to not immediately face the blond.

“I’m not really sure,” Marius says with a shrug. “I know Fauchelevent is friends with Cosette’s dad, but they clearly aren’t related.”

Éponine takes an absent bite of her apple and props her feet on the chair next to her. Montparnasse is missing also, which isn’t so unusual, but she feels a bit lost without her two favorite conversational partners.

Bossuet sits down and immediately jumps up again; someone in the lunch period before theirs had spilled milk all over the seat of the chair, and he had sat in it without looking. The table erupts with equal parts consternation and laughter. “I’ll take you to the office,” Grantaire says amiably, getting to his feet. He seems uncharacteristically eager to get away from Enjolras. “They should have a change of clothes for you.” Marius gets a handful of napkins to clean up the mess while Enjolras busies himself with glaring at all of the janitors in the vicinity.

The table is even more empty with the absence of Bossuet and Grantaire. Éponine spends most of the meal in silence, eating her apple and a bag of chips that Courfeyrac offers to her. She pulls Pride and Prejudice out of her backpack, props her chin on one hand, and reads for the rest of the lunch period. When the bell for fourth hour rings she jolts and looks up, dazed.

Her friends have already abandoned the table and the unenthusiastic janitors are sweeping the lunchroom floor. Éponine grabs her stuff and gets the fuck out.

“Éponine.” Halfway down the hallway, someone says her voice like a song. She turns around and sees Cosette smiling at her. “Prouvaire said you had a book for me.”

“Well it’s his book,” Éponine says automatically. She wants to say I missed you at lunch, but she doesn’t. “I finished it last night so, uh, I can give it to you now if you want.”

“Yes please!” Cosette smiles and falls in step beside her.

“It’s really good,” Éponine says. She hugs her books to her chest as she walks. How can she test the waters here without unnecessarily outing herself? “Have you read anything by Sappho before?”

Cosette shakes her head. “Not really,” she says, “but I’ve wanted to for a while.” She has to speak louder over the voices of the students around them. “Have you?” This last question is almost a shout.

It’s so noisy in the main hallway; Éponine can hear students yelling from here. It distracts her midsentence. She’s still trying to remember what she was saying when she rounds the corner, and everything goes to hell.

Someone is hauling Brujon away from Montparnasse, who is bleeding heavily from the mouth. He’s slumped against the white brick walls, and he’s smiling. Brujon is yelling at him still, ugly words that Éponine can’t make out, but Montparnasse just grins more broadly and flips him off.

Éponine shoves her way through the excited ring of students. Before she gets there, Claquesous steps out of the crowd and stands in front of Montparnasse. As Éponine watches, surprised, Claquesous holds out a hand to help Montparnasse to his feet. The pair of them push their way through the crowd away from her– hopefully to get Montparnasse cleaned up, but who can tell? Éponine has no idea what just happened. She turns around and finds Cosette still behind her, looking equally confused.

“Let’s find everyone else,” Éponine says. She wraps a hand around Cosette’s wrist and tugs her back towards the academic hallways.

Babet appears out of nowhere next to Éponine and all but leaps on her. “Did you see that?” he yelps.

“Only the very end,” she says, keeping a wary eye on the principal as he strides out of his office. “What the fuck happened?”

“As far as I know Brujon just called Montparnasse a fag and decked him,” Babet said. “There has to be more to it, though.”

“Jesus,” Éponine mutters. She realizes at that moment that she’s still holding on to Cosette’s wrist. She lets go and bites out an apology.

Cosette waves it away. “Do you think Montparnasse is okay?” she asks. Her eyes are wide.

“Probably,” Babet says. “He’s tougher than he looks.”

“You saw him laughing,” Éponine adds. “Kid’s got no sense of self-preservation, what the fuck–”

“Class started five minutes ago!” a teacher yells, from very near them. “You should all be reporting to your classrooms right now! I won’t hesitate to mark you late, Mardisoir!” He plunges through the crowd of students in pursuit.

Cosette squeezes Éponine’s hand. “I’ll talk to you later,” she says. She’s gone within seconds.

“Come on,” Babet says, pulling her in the opposite direction. “We’ll be late to Myriel’s class.”

The hour passes in a daze. All anyone can talk about is Montparnasse and Brujon, even though no one knows anything concrete. Unfortunately, it sounds like everyone heard the slurs that Brujon was throwing around, and the conversation verges on homophobic more than once. Éponine grits her teeth. Montparnasse is so fussy and private– it would kill him to hear his personal life being dragged into the open like this.

She spends most of the hour shooting murderous glares at the more talkative students until they get the hint and shut the fuck up.

She finds Montparnasse slouched against her locker before she goes to her final glass. He looks bored and lazy, as though he didn’t spend the earlier part of the afternoon acquainting his face with the finer points of Brujon’s knuckles.

“Did you hear you and Brujon are gay lovers?” Éponine asks him.

He rolls his eyes.

She kicks one of his feet. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks next.

He doesn’t look upset, or angry. She wouldn’t know anything was wrong, except that his right eye is swollen and his lip is cut open. There are dark drops of blood on his otherwise-immaculate white shirt.

“I’m going to tell you the whole story,” he says with a shrug, “but right now, I don’t know how it ends.”

She nods. She can understand that.

Montparnasse pats the ground next to himself and gives her a look. She grins and drops down to sit with her back against the lockers.

She doesn’t really need to go to Chemistry, anyway.

*

Éponine stays with Montparnasse until the very end of the day, when he’s called into the principal’s office to give his account of the fight. Éponine stays sitting by her locker as classes let out and students swirl around her. Most of them are just pleased to be going home for the weekend but she can hear speculation still, about Montparnasse, about Brujon. She waits until the last timid freshman have cleared the hall before she stumbles to her feet and leaves the building.

It’s sunny outside, but not as hot. The perfect sort of weather. The kind of spring day where folks go on adventures and start epic journeys. The kind of day where Éponine, who is just a girl walking home from school, feels like anything can happen. Her mind is expanding out from the confines of her skull and filling the whole goddamn blue sky.

She’s kind of in denial about what happened to Montparnasse. She’s holding the ugly truth of it at arm’s length, because inviting it any closer would just make things terrible.

Her route doesn’t usually take her past the soccer pitch but she detours that way anyway, just to see if she can get a glimpse of blonde hair. The girls’ team is running drills or something. Éponine watches idly as she walks by, but she doesn’t stop. She’s almost reached the road when someone calls her name.

“Éponine!”

She turns around. Cosette is jogging towards her, red-faced and out of breath. She has her soccer jersey on and her long hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail.

Éponine can literally feel herself growing more gay. She hopes it doesn’t shine out of her eyes like a pair of inconvenient rainbows, aimed directly at Cosette.

“I don’t have a game this weekend,” Cosette says breathlessly. “Do you want to come over to mine tomorrow and hang out? We can watch Pride and Prejudice.”

Éponine blinks at her. “Sure,” she says. “Text me the address?”

“I will.” Cosette grins at her, loose and happy, before she starts jogging back towards the practice field. “I’ll see you later!”

After a moment, Éponine keeps walking. She has to fight to keep a smile off her face.

It seems selfish, to have such lightness in her chest so soon after what happened with Montparnasse. She can admit that freely. That altercation certainly isn’t over. Even if Brujon gets expelled– and hopefully he will– they’ll still be dealing with this bullshit from his friends, and from other like-minded assholes.

Éponine is tired of it. Everything around them is so violent. Is it wrong to want one soft, unguarded moment to spend with Cosette?

She puts her headphones on and keeps walking. The sun is still so gentle on her face, unlike the oppressive heat from the past few days. Her footsteps match the beat of her favorite song, and Éponine imagines herself being the star of some teen movie; the scruffy heroine, walking away from a day of hardships with optimism still in her heart. She grins at her own foolishness and bobs her head as she crosses the street.

*

Éponine goes to the basketball court that night. She thinks about Cosette showing up out of the blue, like she always does at school, and then dismisses the thought. There are still subtle divisions drawn through the lunch table crowd– plenty of them won’t be found here, either because they live too far away or because it’s just not their scene.

Enjolras is there, however. He and Montparnasse are sharing a cigarette when Éponine arrives, which is surprisingly civil for the pair of them. She decides not to question it.

The cut on Montparnasse’s lip has scabbed over. It doesn’t seem to bother him; he’s in surprisingly good spirits, though he seems very distracted. His eyes keep darting around the court as though he’s looking for someone.

“Are you playing tonight?” Éponine asks Enjolras. He looks over to the court, where Bahorel and Mavot are shooting hoops. His long hair is tied back in a bun.

“If enough people show,” he says. “It’s been ages since I’ve played.”

She hums in agreement and waves a plume of smoke away from her face.

Enjolras has a surprising amount of violence beneath his skin, Éponine thinks. His face is pretty enough that everyone expects wildflower-softness from him, but in reality, he’s a Molotov cocktail with the fuse already lit.

Prouvaire, who actually is a wildflower, shows up a few minutes later with a yellow book of poetry in his hands. “Don’t mind me,” he says, when Éponine raises an eyebrow at him. “I’m just out for a walk.”

He stays perched on the brick wall as more people show up and divide into teams. They play five on five again; this time, Éponine is the only girl. She plays with Enjolras, Gueulemer, Bahorel, and Pretot. They make a decent team, though Gueulemer is a clumsy player. He keeps falling over Hogu, on the other team.

Claquesous is there too, but he isn’t playing. Éponine can see him out of the corner of her eye. He’s talking to Montparnasse. It makes her grin, before she’s dragged back into the movement of the game.

Éponine went to the ocean once, when she was eight or nine, for reasons that she can’t remember now. It was her first experience with having the fear of God struck into her, because she has never met anything before or since as frightening and relentless. Her skinny legs were far weaker than the push and pull of the current; her voice was like a whisper against the sound of the waves dying against the shore.

She loved it. Even when her feet were knocked out from under her and her mouth was dripping with the taste of salt, she felt alive and aware to a heightened degree. As though life was lived on a plodding path, and the ocean had raised her to the sky.

Basketball with the neighborhood kids can be a bit like that, on nights when the games run late and the younger kids aren’t around to be minded. The play is just as relentless; the players rove back and forth, up and down the court, like they’re being led by the water.

Éponine is also just as likely to be knocked off her feet.

Hogu is a ruthless player. He isn’t afraid to trip people up when they least expect it, even on the concrete court. Éponine manages to dodge him every time, but Hogu trips up Gueulemer more than once, and Enjolras goes down hard a few minutes after Éponine scores. The angle is awkward. His knees and elbows are unharmed but his knuckles come away red and dripping. He’s back on his feet before anyone can pause, though, so the game keeps going. Éponine is a sweaty mess but it feels like a fucking dream. She can tell that Enjolras is more hurt than he’s letting on but he keeps playing anyway, and it gives him a bitter edge. He makes a beautiful shot barely a minute later, then lines Bahorel up for a perfect slam dunk a few moments after that.

They keep playing until Pretot falls too, and skins his knee. At that point it’s dark enough that everyone is willing to drop the game for the night and limp home. Montparnasse is already gone but Éponine isn’t surprised. He doesn’t like basketball much; he only comes to the court for company. Claquesous is gone, too.

Panchaud and Toussaint showed up, but they aren’t playing. Panchaud is talking to Hogu. The three of them are standing on the edge of the court, away from everyone else. Hogu seems to be trying to get a rise out of Panchaud, but she and Toussaint are rebuking his every attempt. Godspeed, my queens, Éponine thinks fondly.

She leans against the fence next to Enjolras to grab her shirt, phone, and water bottle. The back of Enjolras’s hand is torn and bloody, and he and Prouvaire are studying it intently. Prouvaire smiles at Enjolras. “No I did not uppercut the sky, pull back a mess of hot, bright bones…”

Éponine tunes out the rest of his recitation. She’s still recovering from the last of Prouvaire’s poetic meddling. “I’ll see you guys on Monday,” she says, and she sets off toward home with her t-shirt slung over one shoulder.

Gueulemer catches her, barely a block away. “Ép,” he calls. She stops beneath a streetlight and watches him jog up.

“What’s up?” Éponine asks. She holds out a fist for him to bump.

She isn’t scared of Gueulemer, but he is rather large and intimidating, especially in the dark. His expression, however, holds no malice. He meets her fist with his own and says, “I wanted to ask you about Montparnasse.”

She crosses her arms and shifts her weight to one hip. “He left before we finished playing,” she says. “I don’t know where he went.”

He waves the comment away. “I know that,” he says. “He left with Claquesous. No, I wanted to ask if he’s gay or not.”

Éponine stares. “What?”

He shrugs. “’Sous likes him quite a bit,” he mumbles. “They’ve been hanging out lately– I was wondering if it was a bro thing or, like, a gay thing.”

“A gay thing,” Éponine repeats flatly.

He holds his palms up, looking contrite. “I don’t have an issue with it,” he says hastily. “Not like Brujon– that was really messed up, we’re all pretty pissed at him.” A few pieces are beginning to fall into place in Éponine’s mind. “I just wanted to know because I don’t want ‘Sous getting his heart broken or whatever.”

“Does he even have one?” Éponine asks.

Gueulemer gives her a startlingly wide grin. “Maybe not,” he says, “but he does like Montparnasse.”

Éponine gives him a considering look. Gueulemer isn’t exactly a gentle giant– he’s been suspended more than once for fighting, and did a stint in jail for robbing a convenience store last fall– but there is a definite core of goodness in him. He isn’t clever like Claquesous, or as social as Hogu, but he’s a good guy at heart. Éponine feels an unexpected murmur of appreciation in her chest.

“It’s not really my place to say if he’s gay or not,” she finally says. “But I don’t think he’ll break Claquesous’s heart.”

Gueulemer smiles at her again. “Good,” he says. He glances up at the violet sky. “Want me to walk you home?”

“I can walk myself home,” Éponine says, “but you’re welcome to come with me.”

They amble down the sidewalk.

“Your blonde friend is real sweet,” Gueulemer says unexpectedly, after they’ve walked a block or two. “The little Korean one.”

Éponine shoots him a look. “Cosette?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know her name. She’s nice, though. She lends me a pencil almost every day in French, because I always forget mine.”

Gueulemer is older than Cosette– he’s older than Éponine, too, and even Claquesous– but it isn’t surprising that he shares a class with her. He’s on his second run of senior year right now. Éponine has heard teachers conferring about him, saying that he probably won’t graduate this year, either. He just can’t get through the coursework.

Éponine looks at Gueulemer, walking beside her with his hands in his pockets. She thinks about his brawling, and his theft, and his grades; she also thinks about the careful way he tried to ensure that Claquesous wouldn’t get hurt, and the way he walks beside her now, whistling.

Nothing is fair.

“She is really nice,” Éponine says. “She keeps trying to lend me books.” It’s almost unbearable, really. Éponine isn’t used to overt kindness from her friends. She spends all of her time with Montparnasse, who is haughty and intimidating, and Babet, who is bitter and sarcastic. Talking to Cosette is like skipping through a garden, but a garden where it’s forbidden to touch any of the flowers.

She keeps walking with Gueulemer. After they’ve gone another block, he reaches over and ruffles Éponine’s hair. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.

Éponine smiles, and tries to ignore the ache in her chest.

*

She’s a mess the next day. It’s like her head is a nest of jackdaws. She reads to pass the time, and tries to do her schoolwork, and tries to distract herself in so many different ways that make absolutely no difference. It’s maddening.

“Dude, chill,” Gavroche says, the third time she paces past his room. “Cosette fucking loves you.”

“Don’t swear,” Éponine snaps at him. Then she goes to sit on the front step until it’s time to go to Cosette’s house, late in the afternoon.

It’s another beautiful day. Éponine walks with her head down and her hands in her pockets. It isn’t too far to Cosette’s place, but there is a noticeably difference in the quality of the neighborhood. The street where Cosette lives has fewer cracks in the pavement, and more trees. The paint on the houses is nicer. So are some of the cars.

Éponine checks her phone three times to make sure she has the right address. Cosette’s house is white, and has the bronze numbers nailed above the mail slot. There’s a small potted plant on the middle step. When Éponine knocks on the door, Officer Javert opens it, and she freezes.

He raises both eyebrows at her. “I was just on my way out,” he says, a little gruffly. “Have a good day, Ms. Thenardier.” She sidesteps wordlessly so he can get down the steps. He keeps his head bowed, and Éponine watches with macabre fascination as he walks away down the sidewalk. It’s odd to see him in plainclothes.

She remembers opening the door of the apartment in the middle of the night and finding him on the landing, when she was fourteen. Her parents made her open the door, because they thought that would gain some of Javert’s sympathy. It hadn’t mattered. Javert had arrested her father anyway and led him away while Éponine watched with her hands balled in the hem of her nightshirt.

“You must be Éponine.”

She turns around and comes face-to-face with Cosette’s father. Papa. Guardian? They don’t look anything alike– Monsieur Fauchelevant is tall, thin, and black, whereas Cosette is short and Korean. He smiles kindly and holds the door open wider so she can come in.

“I’m sorry if Officer Javert startled you,” he says as Éponine takes off her shoes. “He and I were just discussing something over coffee.” He gives Éponine another pleasant smile. “Cosette is upstairs,” he adds.

The staircase is lined with photos and a painting or two. One of the photos is of Cosette on the soccer pitch, hugging Toussaint with a huge smile on her face. Another one shows a much younger Cosette beaming at the camera to show off her missing two front teeth. Éponine can’t look at it for longer than a moment; she feels like she’ll melt into a puddle and slide all the way back down the stairs.

When she reaches the landing Éponine looks around warily. She doesn’t want to go poking around anywhere she shouldn’t. Hardly a second later, however, Cosette’s voice sounds from the open door to her right. “Éponine? Is that you?”

Éponine goes to stand in the correct doorway. “Hey,” she says.

Cosette beams at her and jumps out of her chair. “You made it!” She comes over to give Éponine a hug, as though she’s just accomplished something great. Éponine hugs her back. Her chin rests perfectly atop Cosette’s head.

“I ran into Javert when I came in,” she says casually, dropping her bag next to the door. Cosette wrinkles her nose.

“Sorry about that,” she says. “He and Papa have coffee in the afternoon sometimes, he stayed later than I expected today.” She sits on the edge of her bed and gestures for Éponine to join her. “Papa is going out in a bit, he said he had some shopping. So we won’t be interrupted.”

Christ. This is almost too much for Éponine’s poor heart to handle. She just gives a smile and settles next to Cosette on the bed. The duvet is dark blue and soft underneath her hands.

The whole room isn’t quite what Éponine expected. It’s very neat, and the walls are nearly bare, except for a few postcards of famous works of art taped up on the opposite wall. There’s a small desk beneath a large window, through which Éponine can see the orange glow of the late afternoon sun. There’s a stack of books on the windowsill, and another on the bedside table, as though they’ve migrated from the well-stocked bookshelf next to the door. She can see the copy of Sappho’s poems on Cosette’s desk.

“I like your room,” Éponine says.

Cosette looks up from her laptop where she’s been setting up the movie to smile at her. “Thanks!” she says. “Do you want any snacks?”

They go downstairs. Cosette’s Papa is gone, which makes the house around them feel hollow. Cosette seems perfectly at ease as she pours juice and puts popcorn in the microwave. Éponine tries not to jump out of her own skin every time Cosette smiles at her.

“I finished Pride and Prejudice,” she finally blurts, while they’re waiting for the popcorn.

Cosette raises one eyebrow. “And?”

“It was good. It was so good.” Éponine leans back against the counter and looks out the window over the sink. “I usually have a hard time getting through books written around that time– they’re so long-winded, you know? But I loved it.”

“I’m so glad.” Cosette smiles but keeps her eyes down. “It’s one of my favorites.”

“I forgot to bring it,” Éponine says, feeling suddenly guilty. “But I can bring it to school on Monday.”

Cosette looks up again to smile at her. “There’s no rush,” she says. “Monday’s fine. Take your time.”

I would take my time with you, Éponine thinks helplessly. I would be so, so nice for you. I would make everything beautiful for you. Being in Cosette’s house is doing odd things to her head. She wants to put her hand on Cosette’s soft chin and tip her face up so she can kiss her there, in the middle of the kitchen with the counter at her back.

“Popcorn’s done!” Cosette says brightly as the microwave starts to beep. “Are you ready? Do you want to grab the glasses so I can carry this?”

They migrate back upstairs and make a nest out of Cosette’s bed, so they can comfortably watch the movie with their snack in reach. “We don’t have to watch the whole thing today, obviously,” Cosette says, over the opening music. She arranges her skirt over her knees. “But I’d like to at least get to Darcy’s first proposal.”

“Sounds good,” Éponine says. Their knees are pressed together. She takes a long drink from her blue cup before she focuses her attention on the movie.

It’s really good. She likes it. It’s perfect, to watch it so soon after reading the book. She also loves the quiet, unrelenting commentary that Cosette keeps up during certain scenes. “I hate him so much,” she breathes whenever Mr. Collins appears onscreen. “He reminds me of every creepy, greasy uncle i’ve ever encountered.”

“I feel so bad for Charlotte,” Éponine says, wrinkling her nose.

“Mm, I know,” Cosette mutters. She shifts over and lays her head on Éponine’s shoulder. Éponine wraps her arm around the shorter girl and tries not to vibrate out of her skin.

“He’s a little too dark and brooding, isn’t he?” Éponine says some time later, as they watch Mr. Darcy glare at something. “He’s reserved in the book, but I feel like this goes a little overboard.”

Cosette nods. She’s playing with the hem of Éponine’s shirt. “I agree,” she says.

They keep settling and collapsing into each other as the movie goes on, like a pair of stars succumbing to each other’s gravity. Éponine is warm and Cosette’s bed is comfortable and Cosette herself is pressed all along her side in one soft line. She nestles even closer as she watches.

Does it count if Cosette’s attention is all fixed elsewhere? Her eyes are still fixed on the laptop and Éponine isn’t sure if she’s even aware how closely she and Éponine are intertwined.

It feels much too close for comfort. The boundaries have disappeared between her jawline, Cosette’s cheekbone, their hands, their legs. Éponine can feel every gentle bump of Cosette’s spine beneath her fingertips.

The skin on her neck is so sensitive. She’s hyperaware of every touch, which is why her breathing absolutely stops when she feels Cosette press a kiss, long and slow, just above her collarbone.

She closes her eyes for one moment. Her hand stops, right on the center of Cosette’s back.

“Okay?” Cosette whispers. Her sweet face is so, so close to Éponine’s own.

“Please,” Éponine breathes back. She places her free hand on Cosette’s jaw and kisses her right on her soft mouth.

Cosette fumbles for the laptop and closes it with a click before she kisses Éponine back. She pushes Éponine back into the pillows and climbs on top of her. Her knees are on either side of Éponine’s hips and Éponine thinks she’s going to die. She puts her hands on Cosette’s thighs, right where her pleated skirt is riding up to show her pale skin.

They kiss for a long time. It’s brilliant. Cosette keeps leaving Éponine’s mouth to kiss her jaw, her nose, the arch of her eyebrows. Every time she strays for too long Éponine will put her hand on Cosette’s jaw again and guide her back. The movie is forgotten. So are other mundane concerns, like breathing and the passage of time and interfering parents.

They both jump apart when the front door slams shut downstairs. Cosette’s father calls her name. “We’re here,” Cosette yells back, wiping her red mouth with the back of her wrist. Her eyes are wide and dancing. Éponine squeezes her thigh and bites her lip to keep from laughing.

“Does Éponine want to stay for dinner?” he calls up. Cosette raises her eyebrows. Éponine nods and shrugs, and Cosette beams at her.

“She’ll stay,” she yells. “We’ll be down in a minute.” Then she flops onto her back and succumbs to a terrible fit of giggles. Éponine buries her face in a pillow. She’s smiling so widely that her cheeks hurt, and her heart is racing.

“Do you want me to braid your hair?” Cosette whispers. “It’s pretty messed up.” Éponine starts to laugh.

“Please,” she says. “I don’t want to get kicked out of your house.”

She sits with her back to Cosette. Cosette kisses the nape of her neck, making her shiver, before she starts sifting through the long strands of Éponine’s dark hair. “I love your hair,” Cosette says as she braids it.

“I didn’t know you were gay,” Éponine says. The words feel clumsy and invasive in her own mouth but she doesn’t know how to take them back. She shrugs. She would bow her head, but Cosette is still working.

Cosette just hums. “I wasn’t sure if you were either,” she offers. That makes Éponine laugh. They’ve both been foolish, apparently. She feels unbearably light. If it weren’t for Cosette’s fingers in her hair, she thinks she would float all the way up to the ceiling. For the first time Éponine thinks– maybe she belongs right here, and maybe Cosette does too. Maybe they belong in this moment, in this place, together.

They’re going to eat with Cosette’s father, and then maybe they can watch more of the movie (or not watch the movie, as the case may be). Éponine will be allowed to kiss Cosette again. It’s a glorious thought. She doesn’t let herself worry about school, or what her friends will say, because right now she has this soft moment that she and Cosette carved out with their bare hands. They made a place for themselves where they could exist freely, with each other, without fear.

She gets a text from Montparnasse while Cosette is still braiding her hair. All it says is, i know how the story ends.

Éponine grins. ice cream and gossip @ my place tomorrow, she sends to him. i have a story for you too.