Here's another fic, for the fic war on tumblr!
Technically, the fic war is about over, but several of us are still filling prompts. (I have 2 more fic war prompts after this one! Then just normal prompts. There really is no differentiation though.)
This one was written for tumblr user samthenardier, who just graduated from high school, but I'm extending the dedication to myself (I graduated from college two weeks ago!) and to my good friend Inge (ThinksInWords here/textsfromumbridge on tumblr), who didn't graduate but had a really crappy day. Here, have something that is less bittersweet for once!
You all are saved this time - given the celebratory reason for this prompt, no one dies this time! Yaayyyy you're saved!
Hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: It's alllllll Hugo.
They had never gotten along.
Not freshman year, when they lived in the same dorm. Not sophomore year, when he chose to live with, among others, her crush in an on-campus apartment. Not junior year, when they both studied abroad in Paris. And not even senior year, as things drew to a close.
Finals were over, and now there was a week between the last day of the semester and graduation, in which the seniors would be the only ones on campus (save for the underclassmen who stayed to help with Commencement). It was a week of partying, of relief after four years of hard work, after activities put on by the campus event organization to help the seniors celebrate their upcoming graduation.
The week culminated with a Wednesday night booze cruise on the river, and even though Enjolras was not a drinker, he had purchased a ticket to all of the events, and the booze cruise was a semi-formal event with a catered dinner and a chance to say goodbye to a lot of his friends.
He watches as his friends get more and more drunk, leaning on the railing off to the side and watching the city crawl. The sunset is proving to be brilliant, bathing the city in an orange glow and silhouetting the old buildings they slowly pass. He's going to miss this.
He is surprised when she of all people joins him in his solitary corner of the deck, leaning against the railing and resting her elbows on top. She is the exact opposite of his position right now, but he makes no effort to bring himself face to face with her; he isn't sure what she wants, but given their history, it isn't something good. He hopes she won't cause a scene in the middle of the cruise, but if she starts in on him, he will accept her debate.
"Enjolras," she greets, and he is surprised at the slight nervous edge he detects on her voice.
"Eponine," he replies tightly, but says nothing else. If she wants to speak to him, the conversation is on her.
"I – I just wanted to congratulate you for being chosen to speak at graduation." She sounds unsure of herself, and, when Enjolras turns to look at her in surprise, straightening up and leaning his hip against the rail, she looks unsure too.
"Thank you," he replies, now more curious than anything else. He notices that she's wearing a long, peach-colored dress. From his vantage point, and how she is resting against the railing, he can see that the back delves into a deep V, exposing a bony spine that reminded Enjolras of a range of mountains, all hills and valleys, casting light shadows across the toned muscles of her back in the dying light. When he looks up at her, he notices for the first time the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, brought out by the glow of the setting sun, her long lashes that catch the light, the richness of her dark brown hair.
Eponine is fiddling with her fingers, and it irritated him. She always fiddles around him and he always wants to just grab her hands and force her to stop it. He scowls, and notices Eponine flit her eyes away from him, looking out at the orange and pink sky instead.
"I'm glad it was you," she confesses suddenly, after what seemed to Enjolras like a moment of silent deliberation.
"What?" he asks. She hates him, why would she care about what he had to say?
A slight smile breaks across her face at his confusion, and she glances at him mildly as she continues to speak, though her voice is serious. "If anyone in our class has anything worthwhile to say and any parting words to send us off with, it's you. Out of all of us, you are the most likely to go off and actually accomplish everything you've ever talked about. You're gonna do big things. So whatever you tell us on Saturday, I know it'll be good." She is quiet, but sounds so much more sure of herself now.
"Well… thank you," he says, "I'm surprised you think so, honestly, given our… history."
Eponine grins at that. "You have more to say than the majority of our professors. Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I don't think you're smart," she points out.
"Even if I – how was it you so eloquently put it? – have my 'ideological head shoved so far up my ass, I can see what I ate three days ago?'"
Eponine snorts. "It was something like that," she tells him, offering him a wide smile that he can't help but share. She takes a sip of her drink, some pink, fruity thing, and turns towards him. A large gust of wind bursts around the boat, fluttering her skirts in every direction, and raging through her hair. Enjolras feels his own blonde curls bounce into his eyes as the breeze retreats; Eponine reaches up in what seems to be an almost involuntary action to brush them out of his eyes. When she realizes what she's doing, her cheeks flush, and her hand drops gracelessly to her side.
Taking a step back, she stutters, "I – I'll see you later, Enjolras," before turning and hurrying away from him, grabbing Musichetta as she retreats.
Enjolras just stares after her in shock, left wondering what just happened as his scalp tingles in the absence of her fingers.
Enjolras sees her again late Saturday night.
His friends talked him into going out, reminding him that they had limited time left together as a group. Eponine went along, considering they traveled in the same circle of friends. Really, he wondered how he had never spent more time with her; they were constantly orbiting one another, passing in the campus buildings or on the sidewalks or lawns, attending the same parties or going to the same person's room for movies or television specials. He always knew she was around, of course, but he supposed they must have just avoided one another due to their mutual disdain.
She comes to him at the bar, where he's sitting next to an almost-full pint, again on his own. His friends are off dancing or flirting or just running around being boisterous. He watches her, careful to keep his expression unreadable, as she surveys him for a long moment.
"Not really your scene?" she asks.
He notices the slight sheen of sweat clinging to her hairline and her chest, just above the line of her low tank top – it's hot in the bar, even he is sweating, but she's been dancing – as he shrugs. "My friends reminded me that this is our last hurrah, that we don't know when we'll all be together like this again, so I came. I think they threw in something about burning bridges too, but honestly I was already zoned out."
Eponine laughs. "Zoning out? So you are human!"
Enjolras is unsure of how to respond, so he just stays quiet, and an awkward silence falls between them. He takes a sip of the beer he's been ignoring the whole night. It tastes no better than it did before, unfortunately, just warmer.
Eventually, Eponine clears her throat and says, "So how is that burning of bridges going?"
Enjolras grins in spite of himself. She's not as bad as he's always thought she is. "As you can see by my sitting here alone at the corner of the bar, it's going well."
Eponine grins back.
"And is that why you came over here, Eponine, to burn bridges with me?" he asks, still smirking at her. Her name tastes foreign on his tongue, and he realizes he's only rarely spoken it, almost always in anger, and probably never to her face.
"Actually, you looked a little lonely," she replies.
He looks at her in surprise, and she's staring at him with wide eyes that tell him she's surprised too, and then she's looking down at her hands. He doesn't know what to say, doesn't really know what to do with this information or with the fact that, in just the last few days, four years of dislike has turned into a sort of uneasy friendship.
So he simply asks, "Can I buy you a drink?"
It's Eponine's turn to be surprised, but she nods slowly, and he's suddenly flagging down the bartender and she's ordering her drink and he's paying.
When the beer is in front of her, she holds it up for a toast. "To burning bridges," she says, smirking at him. He raises his glass, clinking it against hers, and they each drink – she, a large gulp, he, only a sip. "Come on, Enjolras! Drink! It'll make it more fun."
"I have to be up early, and give my speech–."
"Oh, please. One drink is not going to hurt you in the least tomorrow. I'm not drinking a lot either tonight. I'm saving that for tomorrow!"
Again, it grows quiet.
"So… was college everything you hoped it would be?" he asks unsure of what else to say.
"Absolutely! You?"
"Oh, definitely. I'm going to miss it." Another pause. Then, he asks, "So, do you have any regrets?"
Eponine is quiet for a long moment. "Honestly?" She looks up at him, staring at him with eyes that seem to hold and hide a thousand secrets, and says, "I regret not getting to know you better. I regret not giving you more of a chance."
Enjolras stares at her in shock, but she takes a casual sip of beer and eyes Grantaire and Jehan, sitting in a dark corner, wrapped around one another. They had only recently confessed their feelings to one another, and Enjolras had been thrilled that Grantaire had found someone else to love – he loved the other man as a friend, and dearly at that, in spite of his emotional problems and alcoholism, but had never felt any romantic inclinations towards him – and Eponine was simply thrilled that they had finally found each other.
"I'm sorry for that too," he replies, tearing his eyes away from his canoodling friends.
She shoots him a shy smile. "Is the night before graduation too late to form a new friendship?"
Enjolras pretends to think it over for a minute. "No, I don't think so."
"Even with four years of mutual hate leading up to this moment?"
"Oh, I think hate is a pretty strong–."
"Bullshit. We hated each other, and tolerated one another's presence when it was necessary. And by 'tolerated,' I mean 'ignored.'" She finishes her beer, setting the glass on the bar with a satisfying thump.
Enjolras just grins, and finishes his own drink as they fall into an amicable silence.
"Walk me home?" she asks suddenly. It's nearly two in the morning, and they have to be in line for the promenade before commencement at 8:45.
"Sure, I'm tired, too, and I have a big speech to give tomorrow!"
Eponine gives him a big smile, waving at some of her friends as they leave.
Enjolras' speech took her breath away (or perhaps it was simply him).
It was surprisingly short; she had expected it to be long, but it was excellent, and even a little funny. He talked about the need to be driven, but not to forget about life. He talked about youth, and how now was the time to stand up and make changes, how it was their job as the future leaders of the country and the world to improve things for everyone.
He looked at her as he talked about the importance of listening to others, even if their opinions seem disagreeable at first, and of the importance of helping only those that want help, because that is far more effective than trying to change the lives of people who don't care or don't notice. Her stomach flutters a bit, and she smiles at him.
The graduates toss their caps into the air, and suddenly it's over, just like that – college, homework, clubs, sports, dorms, campus food, all-nighters in the library, finals – the last four years are officially behind them.
Eponine finds herself in tears, overcome with the immense joy of being the first person in her family to ever graduate college (she was certain she was also the first to even graduate high school) combined with the heartbreak of the closure of a chapter in her life she had so dearly loved, had thrived in and relished.
Fingers tap her on the shoulder, and there are her friends – Marius, her one-time crush, his girlfriend Cosette, Musichetta, Joly, Feuilly, Bossuet, Bahorel, Grantaire, Jehan, Courfeyrac, Combeferre – they're all there, all of them hooting and hollering and screaming and crying, waving their ridiculous black caps in the air and hugging and jumping.
She sees him from far off – how can she not? He appears like an angel out of the mist, not reflecting the light of the sun, but creating his own, casting it out from somewhere inside him, somewhere she can't see.
His golden hair is on fire, his ocean blue eyes piercing with the same mixture of emotions that she feels as he reaches them, and he's pulled into the celebration by an ecstatic Courfeyrac.
When he reaches her, they share a chaste, almost tentative hug, but no words, both too embarrassed to speak.
They go out to dinner as one massive group, though they made reservations in smaller groups to make it less difficult on the restaurant.
Eponine ends up with Bahorel, Grantaire, Jehan, and their families. For her part, only her siblings, Azelma and Gavroche, came to her graduation. Enjolras sits with Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Feuilly, and the rest crowd into another table.
Afterwards, the students (and any family members that were of a going-out age that wanted to go) went to their favorite bar to celebrate.
They've been there for hours, celebrating and dancing, and Courfeyrac and Grantaire have managed to get Enjolras a little tipsy (by ordering more beers and filling his glass bit by bit when he wasn't looking), and eventually they have him joining in on shots of whiskey.
Eponine isn't sure if he's ever been drunk before, and if he has been it's certainly never been around her, but suddenly he's out on the dance floor with them, bouncing around and singing wildly to 80s classics. It's quite unlike him, and entirely too hilarious.
But eventually, his energy dwindles, and Eponine catches sight of him sitting on a bench that lines one of their high-top tables, his head lolled back into the corner and his eyes half-closed.
Not completely sober herself, she stumbles over to him, crawling into the bench and sitting next to him.
"Enjolras, wake up!" she shouts over the music.
Enjolras' looks sleepily in her direction, his blonde curls falling into his eyes. She reaches up to brush them away, entirely too aware of the heat emanating from him as she grazed the skin of his forehead. Their bodies are almost pressed together, and she can feel the electric current passing between them, setting her ablaze in a way that she never thought Enjolras – Enjolras of all people! – could.
He catches her hand as it rescinds, holds it tightly in his, and Eponine is struck by how soft he is, how tender, like he suddenly isn't this strong and terrible man who can kill with a stare and maim with a word and fight like his life and the lives of his friends depend on it.
She had never known that he felt things for people just like she did – though maybe she was the first to touch him this way, and this was his first time touching another. Maybe he was only now learning that bare skin could spark when met with bare skin.
But Eponine is learning it too, because Enjolras was never a man for her, never one who could make her hot in any way other than in anger, never one who deserved or earned or required more than a passing spark, and certainly never one who could make her feel. No, he was much too rough for that, too terrible and angry and resentful – not to mention that most of these were directed towards her – and she needs a man who is soft and kind and patient and everything Enjolras isn't.
But who knew that when a man such as he, a man who is the sun and is fire and is light and is heat and is the spark that restarts a heart, meets a woman such as she, a woman who is night and is ice and is shadow and is cold and is the secretive moon, the sparks between them can create?
Who knew that when they finally kiss, when he finally cups her jaw and brushes his lips against hers, which part eagerly against his and draw him back in again and again and again, a star would be born?
And suddenly, it doesn't matter that this is the culmination of four years of mutual dislike. It doesn't matter that their friends have spied them, are catcalling and wolf-whistling at them and cheering and shouting. It doesn't matter that there may not be a next for them because it took them until the very end to find each other.
All that matters is that their kisses have bred stars and those stars have formed into constellations that sing of the sun and the moon, that tell the story of the beautiful celestial bodies on which all known life rely over all else, who orbit but never touch, who see but hear only silence, who share the sky only on the rarest of occasions, cursed to an eternity of just missing one another in the same everlasting dance.
Enjolras' hand digs into her rocky spine and valleys form between their bodies where their position in the booth prevents them from touching, but the heat is there and that's all that matters.
Suddenly they're back in his apartment, stumbling over partially-packed boxes that will be moved out over the next few weeks, and falling into his bed in their underclothes, kissing feverishly in the moonlight that levels the field between them by bathing them both in silver.
When they surface for air, now much more sober than when they started (but still unwilling to let one another go), sleep slowly begins to claim them. Eponine is draped across Enjolras, in her underwear and one of his t-shirts (the t-shirt that he initially was going to wear to bed, but gave her when she announced she didn't want to sleep in her bra) breathing in deeply the scent of him as she rests against his bare chest. His hand traces that rocky spine and the other plays with her hair just as her hands traces the contours of his chest and abdomen and absently play with what curls they can reach.
She yawns. "Enj," she starts, calling him the nickname that his friends gave him back in freshman year, "Think we'll stay friends?"
He hears, rather than sees, the smirk in her voice, and tilts her chin up towards him so he can kiss her lightly. But, despite the teasing and lightness of the question, he honestly doesn't know. So he dodges the question, grinning as he murmurs, "Happy graduation," against her lips.
Rain pounds against the windows as their friends stumble into the apartment. He hopes no one will come looking for him.
"Well, I think we could do it. We hit it off really well, don't you think?"
Enjolras scoffs. "Yeah, with a four-year warm-up!"
Eponine grins and kisses him. "Well. Let's just try to keep in touch," she suggests, running her hand dangerously low on his torso and delighting in the shiver and the hitch of breath it causes.
He takes the offending hand, lacing it with his own, and kisses her again and again and again, until all she sees are the constellations they have created.
Somehow, he knows that Eponine isn't going anywhere soon.
No, they both can tell that they will be in one another's lives for a long, long time.