title: gray or blue
fandom: les misérables
pairings: enjolras/éponine
rating: t
summary: Éponine begins working in Montparnasse's coffee shop, and her life becomes entangled with the students in the bar downstairs who talk of revolutions.

Chapter 10

The next payday was a bitch.

And it was unfair, really, that the biweekly occasion that, by all rights, should have been one of the highlights of Éponine's dismal existence sucked so utterly and completely, but there it was.

First, she'd had to practically beg Montparnasse to let her use his phone—he had gotten cocky since she went with him to the cage-fighting, and seemed to take her exasperated demands as flirtatious encouragement, and yeah, that definitely needed to stop before someone's balls were permanently damaged by someone's knee.

She had managed to get hold of Gavroche on the payphone (and yeah, it was Friday during school hours, but that was hardly surprising—she was just glad enough he was home).

He had grown more resentful since the last time she called, though.

"I hate it here," he muttered.

"Is Mom still drinking?" She coughed, pulling the receiver away to catch the sound in her elbow. A niggling pain burned in her breastbone. Great.

"Mom's always drinking," he bit back. There was a pause. "Not as much lately," he added sullenly.

She took a deep, relieved breath that turned into another cough, this one reigniting the burn of the last one and making her double over with its force. Dimly, she clung to Montparnasse's phone, knowing if she dropped it on the pavement there would be hell to pay. "I'm mailing the check today," she finally rasped. "Don't run off, okay?"

He snorted. I know what it's like, she wanted to scream at him, I've been their child longer than you, but you're too young to be on the streets. She wanted to shake him. "I'm doing this for you."

"You're full of it, Éponine," he snarled. It took her a second to realize the line had gone dead.

Little shit! She stared down at the phone, half-tempted to call back. But even if he were inclined pick up—and he wouldn't be—he was more than likely three streets over on his skateboard by now.

She would mail him half the check, but her head was beginning to throb, and she wasn't in the mood to cajole him out of a temper tantrum when she honest-to-God felt like throwing one herself.

"I need the day off," she announced to Montparnasse after she stomped back inside. He picked up his phone from where she had slammed it on the counter.

"I'll take that under advisory," he said slyly, looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

"I'm not in the mood for diplomatic negotiations," she snapped. "I've got shit to do and I'm not feeling good."

"Foul-mouthed this morning, aren't we?"

"Shut the fuck up," she growled, and the elderly woman at the nearest table widened her eyes over her romance novel. "Do you want graphic details about my period? Because there is some serious shit going down in my uterus and I do not have time to deal with yours."

(It was a lie—she'd had her period last week, and hardly ever got cramps, but Montparnasse probably wouldn't give a shit about a cough. He could, on the other hand, be counted on to turn abruptly squeamish in the face of Girl Stuff. When he paled slightly, she counted it a victory.)

"You get the morning off," he said brusquely, flicking the side of the grounds basket to settle the espresso.

"Don't be an ass," she snapped. "I hardly—"

"I have my own shit to do this afternoon," he cut in smoothly, flicking on the steamer to drown out whatever she said next. She glared. "Be back by 1:30," he said, loudly, over the steamer, and with a saccharine smile. "Maybe you can track down some aspirin before then."

She didn't give him the satisfaction of flipping him off—though it would have satisfied her immensely—just yanked open the door to the storeroom hard enough to bang into the wall.

By the time she deposited her check and waited in line at the post office for the better part of half an hour, Éponine had developed a rather insistent pounding headache, too, which made her act slightly less than pleasant when the bustling elderly woman at the counter inquired smilingly if she wanted special Valentine's Day stamps for her letters.

"No," she growled with more vehemence than was absolutely necessary. The woman's eyebrows went up in an infuriatingly knowing way, which made Éponine want to hurl herself over the counter, grab her by the collar and tell her very calmly thatno, she wasn't bitter about being young and single—well, she was, but that was beside the point—but that she was battling an absolutely killer headache and a boss who was a complete shithead, and don't even get her started on the utterly bewildering behavioral patterns of the boys in the bar downstairs.

Instead, Éponine doubled over, coughing directly over the handful of coins she had just laid on the counter. The woman looked at her with a vague distaste that reminded Éponine of the novel-reader in Thebes, earlier.

I guess it's my day for pissing off old ladies, she thought grouchily, pushing back out into the chill.

As it turned out, it was really just her day in general.

Because it was grocery day, too, or at least it desperately needed to be grocery day, considering that all she had left in her flat was a lump of molding baguette, a jar of Nutella that was really technically empty but she just couldn't bear to throw away yet, and exactly one packet of instant noodles.

But the noodles were shrimp-flavored, which she had bought on a whim and ended up hating, and Éponine simply did not think she could bear to go home at midnight and face shrimp-flavored noodles.

She just really hated the shrimp-flavored noodles.

Goddammit.

And so, to market.

She ducked in the first grocery store she saw on the way back towards Thebes, since she didn't have time to make it all the way back to the store she usually used, and was instantly greeted by the Valentine's Day display, a vomitous riot of red roses and pink hearts. In her own grocery store, she at least knew how to avoid the cards and the gift baskets and the displays of specially labeled champagne.

Great, now I'm going to have to find everything, she grumbled silently, picking up a basket at the front and not bothering to hide her wince as someone crashed their cart into another one, sending the metallic ringing throbbing through her head. Who knows where they keep their goddamned saltine crackers in this goddamned establishment.

The goddamned saltine crackers were with the rest of the crackers, as it turned out, in the same aisle as the chips and pretzels and other sundry salty goods, and Éponine had grabbed a box of those, three baguettes (they would get a little stale before she could finish them, but it couldn't be helped when one didn't have time for grocery shopping) and practically an armful of ramen noodles in garish packaging, chicken- and beef-flavored only, before she turned a corner and found herself in the produce section.

Fresh produce, in February, in Northern France, could be counted on to be overpriced already, and, for an individual who mailed off approximately 80% of her post-rent paycheck to her parents and brother, it was almost certainly out of the question.

But—strawberries.

She was standing in front of the display before she knew what happened, looking down at the strawberries in little green baskets with handles that were actually so cute as to be irritating.

But the strawberries in them were gleaming red and delicious and they were small, which meant they were probably sweet, too. The sign above them proclaimed a price that was somewhere below are you fucking kidding me but still beyond the realm of sure, I'll take a carton!

Éponine looked at her basket. I could just not get Nutella this time, she reasoned with herself. But it wasn't really sound reasoning, because she didn't have the money for Nutella, anyway—last time she bought it, she'd had to choke down the stale baguettes they sold for quarter-price on the third day to go with it.

Still.

Her hand was already hovering over the basket nearest her when someone else's basket butted into what was definitely her personal space. And then stayed there. Presumably while whoever-it-was took their time inspecting the strawberries.

Éponine snatched her hand back, irritated. She eyed the person's basket for a moment. Several cartons of grape tomatoes. A bulk-size bag of green lentils. Organic milk. Flaxseed.

Flaxseed.

She glanced up to shoot a glare at the pretentious person who so casually invaded her personal space with such absurd groceries, but, in shocked surprise, ended up dissolving into another coughing fit.

Ow, she thought, burying her mouth in her elbow to smother the cough as her lungs burned anew.

"You should probably get that checked out," said Enjolras.

Her annoyance had cooled while she practically hacked her lungs out, but that comment brought it all back.

She gave him a slightly frosty look. "I'll survive." She wanted to snap that she didn't have the time to go see a licensed medical professional, but her head was throbbing and terseness suited her.

She wished she had noticed him sooner. He wasn't wearing red, that day, or she might have.

He nodded in a way that said I'm pretending not to be skeptical.

Someone opened the door to the freezers and Éponine shivered. Dammit. She looked back at the strawberries so she wouldn't have to look at him, who, unlike every other person on the planet, still looked good under shitty fluorescent lighting. The lighting did, however, reflect off his glasses with something of a glare, which somewhat marred the effortless aesthetic she supposed he was striving for.

She pretended to study the strawberries for a moment before realizing that he was looking at her basket.

Crackers. The cheapest baguettes they sold. About fifteen packets of ramen noodles. Cheap, empty calories.

She was flushing hotly before she could help herself, switching the basket to the other hand. Not that she cared what someone thought of her groceries, even if that someone were Enjolras, who probably never got sick and who bought things like lentils and flaxseed and probably had dedicated entire Les Amis meetings to the importance of leafy greens and legumes.

Goodbye and enjoy your fiber, she thought, about to mutter something along those lines and make an escape, but he spoke first.

"If you're sick, you should probably get oranges instead," he told her, neatly snagging a carton and carefully tipping it to examine the bottom. "They have more Vitamin C."

"I like strawberries better," she retorted, but her grip on her basket had relaxed, slightly.

He half-smiled and deposited the carton in his basket, moving a bag of spinach aside to make room at the bottom. "Well. It's a good sale."

For a moment she was struck with the utter absurdity of the situation—that she had seen Enjolras standing on a table brandishing a newspaper and decrying tyranny (or something that sounded equally stuffy), and she had run into one of his fellow activists at something that basically passed for Fight Club in a sketchy warehouse by the river, and here they were in the grocery store, discussing the price of strawberries.

"You should go home and drink some Echinacea tea," he added, turning away from the strawberries. "That's what Combeferre always tells me to do."

"I can't," she said, ignoring the prickle of irritation that came from his obvious love for dispensing advice. "I have work."

At that, he clenched his jaw and looked as if he would very much like to say something else, and Éponine would frankly have loved for him to tell her that she was being labor-trafficked one more time.

"Well," he said, frowning, "just try and take it easy."

Take it easy? She stared blankly, and he looked slightly embarrassed.

"Don't go anywhere else after work," he added by way of recovery.

She thought he was referring to the meeting downstairs (what day of the week is it, even?) but he gave her a significant look. She realized Bahorel must have told him about the cage fights. The way he was looking at her, grey-or-blue eyes brilliant even through his glasses, made her wonder if he was sizing her up, trying to picture her watching the fights, pitying her for having to go to work with a nasty cough.

He touched her arm lightly. "Echinacea tea," he said, nodded in farewell, and then disappeared around the next aisle.

She realized, very belatedly, that behind the bag of spinach in his basket there had also been a bottle of champagne.

She definitely did not wonder who the champagne was for.

A/N: Nothing much to say here, except that I had planned more for this chapter and it ended up being longer than I anticipated, so the odds of another chapter getting posted SOONER rather than later are good. And I'm also sorry it's been so long. *cringe*

Also, I do apologize for the extra-amount of profanity in this chapter. Pissy-Éponine, you know.

Finally, I realized that this was originally categorized under Brick-'verse, and it really is musical-based. So yes, I switched it over. Hopefully that didn't freak everyone out!