note: got a prompt for our favorite couple cleaning up after dinner, and it degenerated into this. excuse the cheesiness and general butchering of Shakespeare.
The week Eponine moved in, Enjolras – typical Enjolras – was quick to establish that he will gladly do the laundry and vacuuming if she cooks and washes the dishes. Of course, as Eponine will claim much later, that was during her "weaker hours" (meaning, any time before she got her morning coffee) and was thus gave her consent much more readily than she would have otherwise.
You see, there is a fatal flaw in this entire arrangement.
Eponine is by no means an amazing chef – she's the type who looks at cookbooks as mere suggestions, sometimes helpful, and sometimes downright asinine. "I cook by feel," she informs Enjolras breezily as she adds two more tablespoons of spices to the curry. Her instincts are pretty good most of the time, he does have to admit, although there are a few times when she quietly sets out the pot out on the back doorstep for the stray cats and he orders pizza, but that's only been like, once or twice, she insists to anyone. Of course, the natural consequence to her rather… freestyle method of cooking is that sometimes, she'll turn around, her latest masterpiece safely simmering away on the stovetop, and there will be a leaning tower of mixing bowls in the sink and scattered measuring spoons dribbling oil onto their counter.
It's a Friday night, finals are over, and Eponine really, really, doesn't want to have to deal with all of those dishes right now. So, she quietly just… shoves them all into the sink, next to the dishes from breakfast and last night's dinner… and yeah. Enjolras arrives home shortly after that anyways, so she completely puts it out of her mind.
That is, until he goes into the kitchen for a glass of water as she snuggles into the couch for a movie.
"Eponine, when was the last time you washed the dishes?"
"A while," she mumbles, padding over. He glares, looking more than a little scandalized. She pouts. "There's just… so much."
"There wouldn't be if you had washed the dishes yesterday," he points out. She sticks out her bottom lip childishly, deliberately puppy-eyed. "Stop it, Eponine. Stop giving me that look."
She tilts her head to the side. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"The look! You know, that look. Right there." He gestures towards her face wildly. She just flutters her eyelashes. "Oh my God, fine. I'll wash, but you have to dry."
"Okay!" She bounces up on her toes to give him a kiss on the cheek, and he just grumbles something about manipulative girlfriends under his breath.
The repetitive motions of wiping damp bowls and plates gets incredibly boring after five minutes, even though Enjolras is scrubbing like he is waging a deeply personal war against grime and day-old stains.
Amused, she hip-checks him. " 'Out, out, damnéd spot?' " she giggles.
"Someone's been reading too much Shakespeare," he comments, flicking sudsy water at her in retaliation.
Her eyes narrow, mock-offended. "Do you just bite your thumb at me, sir?"
"The law is on my side if I do," Enjolras tosses back, and when she smacks him with the dish towel with a cry of "Look at how corrupt the law students are, bending the law to suit themselves!", he counters with the dish sponge, and soon, anarchy breaks out in their kitchen.
"Stop, not fair!" Eponine howls as Enjolras pins her to the now-slippery tile floor, tickling her sides. "You promised you were never going to use my ultimate weakness against me!"
He lets her up eventually, and she rolls over to flop on her stomach beside him, her sides aching with laughter. An entire section of her t-shirt is dark with water and soap, but she leans back in satisfaction when she notes that his once-crisp pale blue work shirt is crumpled and plastered to his skin in places. He bumps her shoulder with his when he catches her checking him out appreciatively, wriggling his eyebrows in a highly obscene display he must have learned from Courfeyrac, and she just has to tilt her head back and laugh at that, and it's not long until the rumble of his chuckles mingles with hers.
" 'But soap suds see I in her hair'," he says after a moment, tucking a damp strand behind her ear. " 'And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any belied with false compare.'"
"You skipped a ton of lines," she points out with a giggle, but she kisses him anyway.