I'm much happier with this one, so I hope you all enjoy it! Thanks everyone for being so nice about the last chapter :)

Disclaimer: If I owned Les Mis, it would definitely be a bit more cheerful, and a lot less good.

For Éponine the next few weeks passed quickly and blissfully. She started her job at the Café Musain and found she absolutely loved it, quickly becoming close friends with Musichetta. She enjoyed dealing with the customers in the main café, but the best days were the days she ran the room upstairs, where she could talk to her friends while she worked. The extra time with them allowed her to see their little habits: Enjolras would come whenever he didn't have class, to study, read, and write speeches, and he only ever drank black coffee; Joly was usually tired from shifts at the hospital, but he never complained and was always bright and cheerful, particularly around Musichetta; Combeferre was kind and honest and was always ready to talk to you no matter what he was doing. And of course, when Marius came, she was happiest of all.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses, of course. She was still sleeping in her alleyway, but had stashed most of her things in a cupboard in the Musain. She wasn't starving, as Musichetta had said she was happy for her to eat what she wanted from the café, but her pride kept her from eating much more than she needed to survive, and she remained painfully thin. As often as she could, she washed her hair and had a quick wash in the sink at the café, but she knew that weeks of living on the street were showing: the bags under her eyes were bigger than ever from her lack of sleep, and there was a layer of ingrained dirt on her skin that she could never quite get off. This problem was exacerbated by the building site over one wall of her alleyway, which spread a cloud of thick brown dust all over the place on a daily basis. Her voice suffered, and she coughed like she had smoked sixty a day for the past fifty years. She hadn't heard a peep from Azelma since she left, except a text three days afterward to tell her that her Pa had finally noticed she had left, and was angrier than ever before. She replied begging her sister to get out of there, but her sister's reply made it plain she was going nowhere, and was furious with Éponine for leaving, so Éponine was always worried for the safety of her sister. Would she even know if something happened to her? Worst of all though, was the constant fear that she would be found by her father, or one of his gang. Her blood ran cold at the thought of the reaction they would have – they would certainly hurt her, possibly kill her. They might even hurt Les Amis, or Musichetta, which would be far worse than she could bear. The thought of Marius, or Grantaire, or Combeferre, or Courfeyrac in pain because of her… she didn't think she could live with herself. She had given her surname as Jondrette as protection, but it was unlikely to be enough permanently.

Despite all this, and having never really made coffees or tea before (the inn wasn't really a coffee kind of place), she became good at her job and learned quickly, so Musichetta decided to try and teach her to bake. When she first started, everything turned out quite well, with Éponine discovering she was actually pretty good at decorating cakes. She seemed to almost literally glow with pride when 'Chetta and the Amis complimented her on it.

It all went downhill when Musichetta started letting her bake without supervision. Éponine, while very smart, had a short attention span, and got bored of measuring out amounts and following recipes pretty quickly, leading to 'creative' combinations such as tomato soup cupcakes and cookies with popcorn, crisps and chocolate chips. Some were surprisingly tasty, but others, such as the Nutella and pumpkin brownies, were so bad that even Grantaire couldn't swallow them, and Combeferre had to think for a full five minutes before he could say something nice about them. After that Musichetta decided she'd handle the baking and Éponine could decorate, for all their sakes.

There were a few surprises for Éponine and Les Amis over the passing weeks: Feuilly introduced them to his girlfriend Sylvie, a short and slightly plump lady with short, chocolate brown hair and a permanent blush. She was painfully shy when first introduced to them, but a combination of Combeferre's gentle personality and Éponine keeping Grantaire as far away as possible allowed her to lower her guard slightly and talk to everybody. To Éponine's delight, she turned out to be one of the nicest people she had ever met. She also had a passion for jewellery-making, and it turned out she had met Feuilly when selling to tourists near his stall. The next day, Feuilly bounded into the café, the most animated the Amis had ever seen him, to announce that they were engaged and would be married that December. Everyone was ecstatic: Feuilly was such a nice, friendly, hard-working man who deserved to be happy with a really great girl like Sylvie.

Another surprise came from a conversation Éponine had with Grantaire on the day of Feuilly's announcement. Happy as she was for her friend, his successful romantic life reminded her of her own lack of one, and she was sharing a bottle of whiskey with Grant outside the café that night to try and dull the pain, when he had suddenly said 'It doesn't make it go away.'
Her silence told him that she didn't understand, so he sluggishly gestured to the bottle in her hand and continued 'the ache. In your heart. Drinking doesn't make it go away.'
'What makes you think I've got heartache?' She had asked.
'Come on, Pony. I've seen the way you look at Marius. Fuck, everyone's seen it. Except Marius, but he's thick as shit.'
Éponine had given a wry smile and asked 'is it really that obvious?'
'Yerrrrrrrrrrrrrrp.'
'Oh.'
They had sat quietly against the wall for a while, swigging their whiskey, when her slightly fuzzy brain caught up with what he had said. 'Wait, how do you know? Who's giving yooooou heartache?'
He sighed and looked her in the eyes. 'I'll tell you if you swear you won't laugh'
'Depends who it is'
'…fine. It's Enjolras.'
Éponine immediately sobered up, her eyes went wide and she had to stop her jaw from dropping. She didn't know who she'd been expecting him to say, but it wasn't Enjolras. They were polar opposites of each other!
'REALLY? But you're so different!'
He looked at his legs, stretched out on the street in front of him and shrugged. 'Opposites attract, I guess. Well, one of them does at least.'
'Oh Grant, I had no idea. How long has this been for?'
'I fancied him from the day I met him but it's only been like, full-scale love for about a year. Once I saw him all fired up, giving a speech about human rights or some shit, that was it.'
'Aww that's adorable. Who knew you were such a Romeo?!'
'Romeo gets the girl. Or I suppose the guy, in this case.'
'He also dies. You don't want to be exactly like Romeo.'
'Touché.' They tapped their bottles of whiskey together, and then took another swig each.
'I'm definitely calling you Romeo from now on.'
'Don't you dare.'
'Fine… R. Nobody'll question just R.'
He glared at her for a second or two then gave in. 'FINE you can call me R.'
So she did, from then on. And after that night, the already close pair became best friends, virtually inseparable. She didn't tell him about the alleyway, because she knew he'd offer her a bed at his apartment, and she didn't want charity, but other than that, they told each other everything.

The biggest surprise of all for Éponine was how interested she became in the Amis' plans for social reform. As she grew closer to the students, she felt more confident voicing her opinions – not that she had ever been shy – and after a few weeks she was one of the most vocal members of the group, which inevitably led to frequent arguments with Enjolras. She hated to admit it, but his arrogance and refusal to listen to her was really getting into her head, and poor Musichetta often had to listen to long-winded rants as they worked. One day, during her fourth week of work at the café, she was in the middle of a particularly lengthy tirade ('He's so CONVINCED he's right about EVERYTHING! Doesn't he think I know a bit more about life on the streets than he does? And why does he never even look me in the eye?! I swear to God, one of these days I'll murder him and the jury'll let me off.') when Musichetta cut her off with an amused 'Jesus, Éponine, you've really let him under your skin. If I didn't also have to listen to your daily soliloquies on Marius, I'd think you had a thing for him.'
Éponine had just scoffed 'Don't be bloody ridiculous.'
'You can't deny he's pretty gorgeous!'
'I have a hard time seeing past his giant ego, to be honest.'
'I never thought you'd lie to me, Jondrette.'
Keeping her eyes firmly on the cake she was decorating, Éponine allowed herself a small smirk. 'Come on, you know he's seriously fucking HOT' she thought to herself, but out loud, she just said coyly 'I don't know what you could possibly mean.'

heehee

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