So sorry for the long wait guys, I am terribly busy with my classes and most often when I do find the time to sit down to work on my fics, I come up with a blank. To all that reviewed, favorited and watched, thank you guys so much! I'm so glad you're all reading my work :')
Disclaimer: Oh I wish I owned Les Mis.
Chapter 2:
In Which Stolen Library Cards Provide Much Needed Pizza Dates
Éponine's emotions were in a tizzy.
It had been a total of fifteen minutes and a half when she came marching into her apartment with Cillian in tow. Furious and pink cheeked she had strode in, muttering about iPhones (Steve Jobs should invent an app to keep stupid attractive blonde men from taking bad photos of girls in Central Park over their stupid dog problems...) muttering about Kibble Bits (This is their fault, I bet they have some type of iron in there that made Cillian like this...) and about everything that took over her entire day: whom was basically, Enjolras. Courfeyrac and Musichetta, huddled over a ton of generous boxes of Chinese beef broccoli barely sent her glances upon her entrance, because apparently, Courfeyrac had forgotten to order an even amount of noodles, so therefore he must clean the girl's dishes for a week for he's completely "robbed them of the chance to overdose on good food." Éponine was glad for the distraction, because she did not want to have to explain why adrenaline peaked through her body this much after that confrontation in the park, and really, knowing her, she probably would even toss Courfeyrac out of their apartment building by his ear if he even so much hint upon her scarlet cheeks. So Éponine strides off to her bedroom, leaves Cillian with his cheeky-dog grin in the kitchen and jumps right into the shower with a scowl to boot.
Éponine often practiced her scales in the shower, because this is really probably one of the only times she could do so because her schedule is far too filled up. With the new dissertation in hand and her planned escape routes in the campus where she can completely avoid that stupid man, the post-its in her thick planner will surely double by the minute. She could almost feel the post-its on her hand, and can definitely imagine herself stacking them upon another, when a desperate knocking interrupts her bathing and train of thought.
"GIVE OR TAKE FIVE SECONDS BEFORE I DIE OUT HERE!"
Joly.
"Joly what are you doing?! Stop pounding on the door!" Her voice is slightly muffled by the pounding of the water on the bathroom tiles, but her voice remains strong even with a door separating them both.
"Éponine, oh god it was horrible! One second I was trying to pick up a box of fortune cookies and the next I find myself holding a cockroach at your living room floor! Why do you girls have roaches?! Courf and I don't even have roaches! Do you know what kind of bacteria these cockroaches can bring into your home? And they crawl on New York garbage, oh god the garbage!"
If this was another day where misfortune simply got far too bored chasing after their friend Lesgle and instead, goes after their friendly resident hypochondriac, she would have enjoyed laughing at him with Courfeyrac egging his paranoia on. But seeing as she's naked in the shower, about a minute away from rinsing the shampoo out of her hair and approximately three seconds from contemplating on just wearing a disguise till she graduates to avoid that blonde man, but as one can tell, Eponine really has nothing to laugh about.
"Why won't you go across to your apartment and hide there instead?!"
"Éponine this is serious! I need the appropriate sanitizers and it's in your restroom! Let me in!"
"ADRIEN JOLY!"
"EPONINE PLEASE!"
Eponine is infuriated, she is annoyed, tired and now she is barreling like an angry bull out of the shower because really, she'll do anything to keep Joly from sobbing at her restroom door Now, she is dripping wet and wrapped up in her towel, glaring at Joly and marching right out to the living room, all within a span of fifteen seconds.
And here, two new pair of eyes are staring at her with a mixture of laughter, embarrassment and drunken glee.
Drunken, meaning, coming off of Courfeyrac and the man with the difficult-name to spell from the café this very morning.
"Oh god."
"Hey, café girl, nice to see YOU again."
Eponine who is far too wet and frustrated sends him a rueful glance before marching to their phone. She is gripping her towel closer to her body (because she'll be damned if bad luck makes it into a homerun by stripping her butt naked in front of her friends) and with her other hand, she aggressively takes their phone out of its charging dock and throws it at Courfeyrac's unsuspecting lap.
"Call the building for an exterminator, I will toss you all out of the state if Joly barges in the middle of my shower again because of a stupid roach."
"What has the roach ever done to deserve such cruel words Ponine? It isn't stupid, it was actually pretty big. You should have seen Joly's face when he realized what it was though." Courfeyrac is busy laughing now, making numerous mistakes in his dialing because of his shaking shoulders.
"I got a photo, wait till Cosette sees it..." Marius cuts in, waving his phone around with a horrified looking Joly in a colorful picture.
"Marius, how did you even manage to bring Cosette into this?"
"I uploaded the photo on Instagram and Cosette loves Instagram, so naturally I would be - "
But as their voice rose, Eponine's scowl deepened even more. The conversation turns from hurling out a cockroach into the streets below (Bahorel) and then to different sets of filters that Cosette apparently prefers over "Valencia" on Instagram. If Marius had not been so in love with Cosette, Eponine would probably inquire that he is far too knowledgeable about the difference between orange, and a darker shade of orange. I mean, even Musichetta barely paid any attention to that, and out of all the three of them she is the far more artistic one.
Eponine flops on the couch, towel still wrapped tightly around her. She contemplates slapping her hand to her forehead hard enough to possibly knock her out so she wouldn't have to deal with their friends, but she is stopped from doing so when a throat clears from the stranger next to her.
A hand is now thrust under her chin, waiting for her reciprocal touch to initiate an ancient-long action of meeting someone new. Eponine deliberately wipes her wet hands unto Courfeyrac's jeans, forces a tight smile out and grasps his hand firmly.
"I am Combeferre." He says. Nothing more, nothing less. Combeferre was tall, he looked even more comical than Courfeyrac and Joly combined when they're squeezed unto Eponine's couch. (And that really was saying something.)
"I am Éponine, it's nice to meet you Combeferre."
"I'm Grantaire, if you don't remember." The man with the difficult-spelling name from today cuts them off completely, he strides towards them with a sorta-drunk-but-not-yet-disabled grin on his face.
"Hey Grantaire."
"Hey Eponine. It's nice to meet you again! Small world huh? Okay, will you be eating your fish balls?" Grantaire gestures hungrily towards the box that was named "Eponine" in a soft calligraphy that she knew Jehan wrote, and really, she's lost her appetite after Joly interrupted her bathing, so she ignores the laugh that came from Courfeyrac at "fish balls" and merely nods her head in confirmation.
"Okay sweet, I am starving! Fish balls are food created by the Greek gods and I am not shitting any of you, it really is. Hey Jehan, are you going to eat yours?"
Combeferre next to her shakes his head, his gentle countenance turned into one of gregariousness. "He has no idea about Greek gods, do not trust Grant."
Eponine actually breaks into a small chuckle at Combeferre's comments. It is true that Grantaire, who is now on a mission to stick his chopstick on every box in lieu of his coveted fish balls had a communal light of his own. He was very much like the playful Courfeyrac in a way, but there is a certain way he holds himself that reminds him very much of the sometimes-regal Jehan, but with a bit more sarcasm. Okay, a whole lot more.
"Twenty three scrubs on my hands and now, all is well guys. All is well." Joly strides out, a smile now replacing his panic-ridden face from earlier. Eponine would have decked him over the head with the living room table, but if she were to do that the towel she was wearing will surely slip and bare her naked for all of her friends to see. It was either being stripped naked or physically assaulting Joly, so naturally Éponine picks the former.
"Joly, you are lucky I am in this stupid towel, because I swear to Courfeyrac's Wicked tickets, if I wasn't, I would have tossed you out into the alley beside Musain right now."
Well that did it, Joly was surely disgusted and now terribly anxious of Éponine actually making an honest threat. True to Joly's nature, he had very well been acquainted by the very same alley when Courfeyrac's stray cat of the week ventured in between the darkened building. In a state of panic from the injured and limping Courfeyrac, he pushes Joly into the alley with a wild look that sent him knee down in grime in garbage, instead of Courfeyrac's vision of Joly chasing heroically after the feline he hadn't even named yet.
Needless to say an injured, cat-less Courfeyrac and a hyperventilating medical student was the highlight of the entire year for Cosette, Eponine and Musichetta.
Apart from the giggles that left Musichetta's mouth and the incessant eye rolling coming from Bahorel's conversation with Marius, the group of friends have reached an impasse of some sort, of course excluding the incredible tension in between the sanitized Joly and the Dove-smelling, fresh-out-of-the-shower Éponine.
"Hey Joly, are you eating your fish balls?"
'Well at least I know Grantaire can be trusted in breaking tensions' Éponine concludes mentally.
"Didn't the French militia have such wonderful taste in clothing? I mean look at this cut Jehan!"
"Oh they are good! Those navy buttons are nice. Maybe it represented their regality? Navy is such a robust color..."
"They look like buttons to me."
"I think they're gold-finished. Wait, could the French militia even afford that?"
"Maybe."
"Guys are you kidding me right now? You're supposed to help me with my research!"
Éponine was sure that if there were to be any other reliable people she could entrust to help her with her dissertation, it would be Cosette and Jehan. But it seems like life truly had sent her spiraling upside down, because for the second time of the exact same month, she had been completely, invariably, wrong.
"I actually don't know a lot about the revolution." Jehan confesses with a wry smile. As much as Eponine was tempted to string out a ridiculous amount of F-words, he is really hard to dislike or is like all the sweetest words combed into a slip of a handsome young man.
But do not be fooled because he too, Jehan Prouvaire, had a mean streak. And when ignited, the gentle poet with many nicknames evaporated like embers, which is then replaced by a roaring fire that burned whomever got near.
But today, as the trio inhabited the farthest table to the right wing of the large library, Jean is poet-Jehan, not Jean-Hulk in the making. Though truth to be told, Eponine actually felt she could trade places with a raging Jehan right about now, because her temper is simmering at this very moment.
Cosette decided to speak out right after Jehan's confession. "You could call Grantaire."
Cosette might as well have told her that she won a lifetime supply of money to provide for her siblings because either way, the thought of winning that much money and actually confiding in GRANTAIRE of all people for a subject as this, ensured the same amount of amused and slightly hysterical snorts that came from her nose.
But instead the wheat haired girl tosses a pencil at her direction. "I'm serious Ponine! He is well versed on the revolution since one of his flatmates is some sort of specialist on it. I think his name is Eric."
Eponine decides to wait with baited breath for Cosette to laugh her high-pitched, Disney-princess giggle. To ensure that she really was just teasing.
Anytime now and a bird should fly right to the finger of Cosette Fauchelevant and sing along with her laughter.
Give or take a few more minutes before the woodland creatures of the New York Zoo comes bounding into the library to carry a giggling Cosette away in a bed of flowers.
And she does not laugh.
"You are actually serious."
"Eponine! Give Grant a call, he really would know how to help you."
But Eponine was Eponine, and as much as she would love to drag Grantaire from his flat somewhere in the city (possibly by luring him with fish balls and champagne) she does not want to rely on somebody else to ensure that her A in the class will be acquired through not independence alone, but with help.
She decides as Jehan stares at her with his green eyes that she'll probably call Grantaire when she's reduced to miserable tears.
Eponine took her days by the storm for the following weeks. As her savings got larger and smaller at the same time, so did Azelma grew nearer to adulthood and Gavroche bursting out inch by the inch. (She figured that soon her little man will grow past Azelma, then later her in a few years to come.) Eponine's planner also got thicker, since her promotion at the café, her pays have gotten larger and the need to slave over to a third job soon reduced itself to only needing two. Another good news was that no stork with a beak full of puppies have come knocking on her front door, nor did the bird landed on her when she deliberately walked the longer paths in campus, and it most certainly did not bump into her or Cillian when she walked him around the block far from 18th avenue.
Over all, the two weeks since the incident have proven to be quite the winner. Turtle-neck-wearing Jacob had also left her alone, receding back to merely allowing Eponine and her not-chic wardrobe to share the same breathing area as him for the three hours they were in a class together.
And the man that had plagued her day not so long ago?
Also a no show.
Eponine really contemplated removing her newly redesigned escape routes around campus since that man seemed to have evaporated faster than Musichetta's chocolate ice cream back home. Not to mention if her planner even thought about growing an inch thicker, she certainly would have to invest in another and she really can't afford that right now.
When class was dismissed, it soon became quite a shock when Eponine hoisted her heavy shoulder bag on and her phone beeped even before it hit the two pm mark. Cosette often texted her at this time, opting for a late lunch at a restaurant somewhere near campus, and really if she knew that this probably was not Cosette actually scheduling lunch at the appropriate hour, she really would have not answered it and instead hurled the phone at Jacob who stood aghast and offended at Eponine's bleach-stained muscle shirt.
"Pizza?" The text read.
Eponine was not horrified at the mention of pizza, she loves the greasy excuse for a food. She unravelled at the meaty one (for she sometimes really truly ate like a rabid carnivore) more than the more popular pepperoni pick and she would never be caught dead turning down an invite for free food.
No, it was because the white font that was surrounded by the soft, aqua blue border did not only match the eyes of Lucifer himself, but it also did not form the familiar names of people she normally lounged around with back home.
Her phone asks if she's sure if she wants to delete the message. Eponine does not hesitate when she touches down "yes."
Message number one from "Enjolras" successfully deleted.
The second message came when she was doing lunges at the gym with an angry Jehan. One thing that one should know about this poet when he was angry is that he is a great work out partner.
When she opens it up, it wasn't necessarily a message, but a forwarded, 15 page long essay of "The New Yorker's: Responsibility of Having Dogs"
At this rate, Eponine did not know whether this could count as the second message from the elusive "TA" of her class (but was he really?) or the fifteenth one since the essay was fifteen page long.
She does not delete it this time around, but instead she changes his contact name from "Enjolras" to "Possible Baby Puppy-Momma."
She considers replying with a photo of Grantaire's being far too drunk from a couple of nights ago, but before she could even try, Jehan is pushing her to do squats with him, a rabid eye on her as he pointedly looks at the weights she was expected to place around her ankles So with a toss of her phone into the gym bag, she forgets all about Enjolras, the baby momma.
The sixteenth and seventeenth one came when Eponine was walking about Columbia's prestigious grounds with a barely awake Grantaire. After deliberately pushing herself to actual tears after pulling a dreadful blank at a certain area of her dissertation, she had finally given in and secretly called Grantaire (in a locked bathroom and all) proudly persuading him to be the lucky man to help her with her paper.
Grantaire of course, calls "bullshit" on her and tells her to meet up with him at Columbia.
So now here they walk along the shelves of the school's library, they are stocked well and Eponine can feel the slimy scent of "Ivy League" drifting from the spines of the four books that Grantaire had in his arms.
"Grantaire, how do you think you can manage to borrow these books if you are not even in this school?" Eponine hisses, shoving the stray hair that fell from her bun crassly.
Grantaire sends her a sly smirk and flashes an ID at her face, his fingers conveniently covering the unlucky guy's photo.
"I got ya covered, Ponine."
By the fifth book stacked in his arms, Grantaire proves to not always have Eponine's back. Basically, he shoves the heavy books on her arms, dashing away to the restrooms for he "really needed to go" and to just "wait here and try to pretend you belong."
What was that even supposed to mean?
Her phone vibrates against the back pocket of her jeans then. She has half the mind to let go of the books in an act of ridiculous rebellion, but that probably would not be "blending in" with the rest of the special snowflake ivy's of this school, so she thinks less about it. The second vibration happens not after three seconds of the first one, and in a huff, Eponine places the books to her feet and slides the blasted phone out of her jean's back pocket.
"You look like you're about to run out of the library with those books." It read.
Eponine freezes up at the text, flashes of Combeferre's stupid thriller films of stalkers following girls around in dark corners (is an ivy league's library considered a dark corner?) flickering through her head in quick stills.
But the second one read: "You may want to pick up The Republique from Plato while you're at it."
And Eponine's fear of hockey-masked sociopaths are gone and instead, she is facing the man whom she avoided like the bubonic plague successfully for half a month now.
"Fancy seeing you here." He says, tone dry and eyes piercing.
"Uh"
"Columbia has much softer tissues in their restrooms here. NYU's own gives me chaff - whoa Enj, I uh thought you would be asleep...and not...here." Grantaire stutters out, incredibly embarrassed. Eponine finds it difficult to comprehend if he was flustered because of his very vocal tissue comparison (this is Grantaire we are talking about after all) but after a few seconds, she becomes perplexed by the fact that Grantaire knew Enjolras enough to have an idea of his sleeping regimen.
Eponine was nicknamed a bright little flower for a reason, so it did not take her long to fit the puzzle in her head.
"Is he you and Combeferre's third flatmate?"
"The one and only."
Now if the possible escape route was through a crack of a library shelf or a hole on the ground, Eponine would have, could have, possibly tried to sink into it and run for refuge, but knowing that she's been planning elaborate escape routes that rivaled James Bond's works and then realizing he was right under her nose all this time - well Eponine's tank of emotion was a mixture of both disappointment and utter humiliation.
"Do you have my card Grantaire?"
"What? Why would I have it?"
"Because this wouldn't be the first." Eponine's brows were furrowing even closer now, and she did not care that she was probably sporting a unibrow because of this action, because now Grantaire was truly picking at his pockets, assuring that he did not have the card that he showed Eponine a while ago.
But oh, she knew how pick pocketers work because she was subjected to the same job when she was younger and she knew how to detect an unexperienced one without struggle.
"Grantaire don't you even dare slip that card in my pocket or so help me - "
Grantaire immediately halts, eyes wide as he looks at Eponine as if he's seen Chris Angel himself.
"How the hell?"
She gives him a look in reply but he's giving her a sarcastic smirk now.
"Can you do card tricks too? Like 'Pick a card, any card' Ponine?" Eponine's look turns even more menacing and before she knew it, Grantaire is taking her shoulders, shoving her into the surprised hands of Enjolras and gave them both a smile.
"Eponine, meet Enjolras. He's the one who knows more about this stuff than Combeferre and I combined. Have fun now young children!"
And then Grantaire is out of the stacks and Eponine and Enjolras are once again, alone in each other's presence.
He clears his throat and steps back from her close proximity, now averting his eyes from her as he moved his hands that were, in his shock, gravitated to hold against Eponine's tiny waist when she was shoved against him seconds ago. Eponine too, was a bit startled and could only react by remaining silent with her brown eyes staring holes into his sharp, smooth jaw.
It is awkward and silent before Eponine breaks the tension.
"So you probably aren't the official TA for Professor Muriel huh?"
Enjolras straightens up now, allowing himself to finally look at her, (anything but her eyes really) so he sets his eyes on her cheekbones instead.
"No, I go to Columbia. It's a running joke between he and I, the TA thing. I just visit him from time to time and he puts me to work."
"Oh" Eponine whispers, completely unsure about this man's less than feral reactions to her. They were a striking difference from their first meetings.
"So...Plato. Add that in your list."
"Which section would that be in?" Eponine grunts out as she picks the heavy books into her arms. Enjolras moves forwards as if to take the books himself, but he stops at the same time she freezes up.
And ladies and gentlemen, that weird tension between the two returns with its wry self.
Eponine also remembers that the card she probably had in her back pocket (she knew Grantaire slipped it in anyway) was not his, or Combeferre's, but probably Enjolras' himself.
"I assume this card..."
"Is mine, yes."
Eponine wants to damn it all to hell, she wakes this early on her day off to try to be productive on her stupid dissertation, but instead, she ends up in between the stacks with the same man whose contact she renamed as "Possible Baby-Puppy Mama."
Where did the weeks, where everything went according to the post-its on her planner, go?
Her sigh is loud as she makes a U-turn on her steps to return the books on her hands, she figures she'll bribe Bahorel to get bootleg copies of these books for her instead, but Enjolras is side stepping her with a furrow of his brow.
"Plato is the other way."
"What are you talking about?" Eponine is confused, because well, she is about to return the blasted books and he is speaking in circles now.
"Plato should be this way, not that way."
Eponine's gaze turns from being startled at his different nature (how can he turn from terrible and annoying to charming and desolate?) to actually looking at him as if he was kidnapped and was possibly given a personality transplant in his absence.
Enjolras breathes out slowly before clearing up the air from the thick tension that surrounded them once more.
"I'll let you borrow them under my name."
Eponine blinks at him.
"Are you shitting me?"
His seemingly, permanent tight lipped expression breaks into a tiny smirk at her language, and Eponine is so shaken she is actually contemplating to knock him over the head in case he really had been invaded by a bug in his head.
"No. On one condition."
Of course, there would be a condition.
"Okay...what is it?"
"Pizza over a conversation about the dogs."
Eponine did not know whether she was relieved over the fact that this still was the same man that practically threw up a diatribe on her because of Cillian, or if she actually preferred the boyish-man that was more shy and soft spoken that urged her to take on Plato's book.
"Okay fine."
Enjolras was nothing if not efficient, if he is to multi task to keep himself busy and standing, he shall do so because he dislikes wasting time. But seeing Eponine today was not planned and he really was taken much off-guard. He did want to speak with her, at the same time he wants a bite of food. So why not do it all in one time?
"There's a pizza parlor not far from campus that makes great ones."
"Were you abducted?"
Enjolras stops in his appraising of the shelves as he looked over works from Plato to Ovid, none of them being "The Republic."
"Abducted?" he asks, confused as he looks upon Eponine's shadowed features.
Pretty face, he thinks.
Then he is uncomfortable for his thoughts and he looks away hastily, now appraising the shelves with much more forced vigor.
"I feel like you were given a personality transplant."
Enjolras did not particularly care for the opinions of others, but it struck him that this girl, this Eponine with the same name sake as the heroine of a timeless revolutionary's fictional life - Epponnina it was - this very same girl from the park with the blazed cheeks and little clothing to boot, the one who he is voluntarily helping - for reasons he really does not want to think over - views him in the light Grantaire often teased him about.
He stays silent and doesn't reply.
Eponine feels as if she's set flame to her chances at getting free food and books - but even more, she feels as if she actually struck a nerve at this walking conundrum with the strange name of Enjolras. But she does not know how to apologize or handle emotions, she is a bit selfish and more keen to leaving things out to air-dry instead of tackling them with strong feelings of being sorry or being empathic. She tries, she really does, but she does not know how to navigate Enjolras. He is a stranger that is familiar to her, he is a rough mixture of shadow and light, of everything that was not Marius nor Courfeyrac. He was not Grantaire, he was not entirely Combeferre. He is a persona of his own and Eponine does not know how to approach this new territory.
So she does what she does best.
"I'll pay for the pizza."
Not order pizza, but deflect. She is not sure if it worked, because Eponine was too embarrassed to look at Enjolras, but his voice is echoing against the shelves again and she takes what she can get from her screwed up apology.
"I'll carry the books."
And that was that.
Conversing with Enjolras is not the same as arguing with Enjolras. Eponine is not quite sure if there is a difference between the two, since she found she liked to intentionally quarrel with him, so she deliberately did so when he attempted to slide open her seat for her when they've reached the pizza parlor.
Enjolras, who was aware of her intentions, trapped himself in the mock-quarrel anyway, because in doing so he did not have to shake his mind to awaken from the blissful and utterly different calmness when he is around Eponine. Fighting with Eponine is easier than being perplexed by Eponine.
Once the order was placed and their respective iced teas were positioned far enough to their respective left hands (to ensure that they would not accidentally knock it over) they began the familiar language of Eponine and Enjolras.
Bantering.
"So do you often read laws concerning dogs on your free time or..."
"As a matter of fact I do. I'm studying law, if you didn't know."
"Would have thought you would go into beauty school, your hair is so pretty - uh, well kept."
Enjolras' mouth dries up at her slip of words and he forces down more concentrated-iced tea down his esophagus in reply.
"I - "
The pizza arrives and both of them are anxious and confused as they sat across from each other, both failing to bring themselves into the familiar territory of quarrel. Instead they are sharing meat and cheese madden greasy food on an afternoon, and no there aren't humping dogs in between them as they wail like roaring lions on other side of them, nor were there people in cellphones listening in to their argument then laughing haphazardly as if it was the single, funniest shit they've ever heard in their life. There wasn't even a band of perfectly dressed, Dior cladded Jacob's around to interrupt both Enjolras and Eponine.
So both think to themselves, "what now?"
Enjolras wants to just say what is clawing out of his throat, but instead he carefully chews on his food and steals glances from the corner of his eyes.
Eponine wants to hate herself for not apologizing for the incident at the library, and she is so uncomfortable that she decides that if her conscience does not quit at the very second, she will pour packets of spice on her pizza to put her mouth in a burning state of pain. That would be enough of a distraction, yeah.
The sun is turning into an orange hue, one that dictates that New York is being clouded by sunset. It's the kind of light that curved into every towering building in the city, the type that swallowed the streets and it's people whole. Eponine is not an exception to that, for now her angled features are drowning in that same light; but she is brighter than the rest, he silently concludes.
Enjolras is so baffled by how pretty this infuriating little thing is that when he tries to swallow the last piece of his half of pizza, he instead chokes on the crust, leaving him hacking.
There is no use, multi-tasking did not fully work to its potential so therefore, a plan B must be made and quickly. Enjolras stands abruptly, told her he'll be back then disappears like she's offended him again.
He comes back after a good thirty minutes armed.
With two pizza boxes actually. He tells her that they are to take them both: for he and her, and she wants to deny it, but she thinks of who waited for her at home (mouths to feed) so she agrees to it. Musichetta and Gavroche loved pizza anyway.
They split by the time she gets off the yellow cab with him still inside. He is giving her an aloof smile, and then he is nodding to her in goodbye.
"I'll be leaving you messages." Enjolras says, then the yellow cab is being swallowed by the rest of the cabs that littered their street and the orange hue of New York eventually turns into one of night.
"I'm home!" Eponine announces, not at all surprised that Courfeyrac is curled on their couch with his game controller in hand, and eyes on Cosette's flat screen.
Eponine carefully places the box of pizza on the table, careful to leave it in the middle just in case Cillian finds it completely okay to snatch it.
"Courf, I don't know which is more of your favorite hobby: eating our food or raising up our energy bill."
Before Courfeyrac can laugh, a startled scream from Cosette shakes Eponine and Courfeyrac's would-be banter.
"EPONINE!" she screams, eyes red rimmed and blazing with emotions as she marches out with the pizza box in tow.
Courfeyrac is as confused as Eponine, both think that Cosette has gone into an emotional feat over the meat-sprinkled pizza, (or has she turned into a social-justice, vegetarian today?) or has Cosette slipped into some kind of emotional trauma to greasy food?
But before both Courfeyrac and Eponine could ask her why, or Gavroche and Azelma finally pick a piece of pizza from the box, Cosette holds up a banner that makes Eponine's stomach drop.
"It's a boy!" it reads.
"WHAT?" Courfeyrac shouts, eyes wide and staring at Eponine as if she had transformed into an animal in front of his eyes.
Cosette is crazed now, looking at Eponine's stomach as if she had X-Ray vision; determinedly looking for the baby boy the banner was blatantly saying.
"Eponine?" Azelma whispers, wide bright eyes at her mute sister.
Eponine is staring at the banner, shocked, amused, angry, all of these emotions stirring at her core like Grantaire visibly shook a cocktail when he's making them in their apartment. She is shocked because she truly did not think he had a sense of humor, call her ignorant and biased, but it was hard to get an indepth look of Enjolras when he keeps on breaking his gaze from hers during their semi-awkward but oddly comfortable lunch escapade. Not to mention, Eponine was still in such a confused state over his contrasting behavior from today and his behavior from their first meeting.
But now, of all the curses and thoughts that threatened to spill from her mouth, all that left was:
"Enjolras."
And her little whisper of his name proved to be the complete opposite of an assurance. It's like she lost her vocals and thus could not tell Courfeyrac and Cosette they are merely interpreting this all wrong.
At the sound of commotion, pitter patters stroll into the living room where the three people stood agape and unmoving. Cillian raises his nose up in the air, sniffing Eponine, then barks once, twice, and runs into the kitchen in excitement. If this dog thinks he's going to get his fourth kibble of the day he's got another thing coming.
Hope that wasn't too bad...
Sorry for the long wait guys, I had this all typed up and I was just editing it, but I got really sick so that took another two days. I'm still sick though, I'm currently coughing like crazy while I type this Author A/N.
Well we only have one chapter left of Accidents on 18th Street! Hopefully I can get that to you by this month.
Reviews are very welcome! X
