Prompt: "Enjolras is delirious (illness, injury, whatever) and Eponine is sarcastic about it."
"This wouldn't have happened if you actually took care of yourself."
Enjolras had been running a fever for a good portion of the day when Combeferre finally gave in and called her.
The timing is horrendous; that the man began to show signs of worsening as his roommate was literally heading out the door to a convention he already has the ticket for - when Cosette, who had a hand in it, would be extremely disappointed in her quiet, non-judgmental, I understand way that made it worse - when it was an event Combeferre had actually been looking forward to - is almost not feasible.
Enjolras himself insisted that his friend not stay on his account, but Combeferre, still worried, made sure that someone would be there until he got back.
And rightly so.
Their friends are actually often busy - student revolutionaries don't get paid well - but Courfeyrac spent half his day off watching over their glorious leader, and is about to spend the rest of it having a 'boy's night' with Gavroche while Éponine takes over.
Enjolras has, unfortunately, has only gotten worse since then, worse even than Courfeyrac's descriptions, which is why she is now standing in the doorway to his room, her hip cocked and a smirk on her lips.
He is bundled up in a nest of blankets (courtesy of Courfeyrac) and he looks not furious, not filled with righteous anger or indignation, no, but grouchy as she crosses the room and places her hand against his forehead. He regards her warily as she flips from her palm to the back of her hand to note the change in temperature, and he speaks up only when she pulls away.
"I can still take care of myself, you know," and the commanding tone is slightly lessened by the bout of coughing that overtakes him immediately after.
She pushes him back to the bed with an index finger to his forehead. "No."
He glowers, but he can't seem to summon up the strength to prop himself up again, so she softens it a little - "Not today, yeah? But you'll be alright soon" - but not fully - "and maybe this will teach you to take care of yourself before this happens and you'll eat and get some rest. Maybe then you won't catch fire and burn up like this the next time you have to give a speech in the rain, pretty boy."
So she helps.
She has a lot of experience taking care of her siblings, even more now that she's got unofficial (for now) custody of them, and she knows how to do it
Mostly.
Alright, so she does throw a few sarcastic jibes in there just to rankle him, but it's frankly disconcerting to see him so worn out.
She brings him ice water and makes him soup (from a can, of course; she adds too little water at first so that it comes out lumpy, then too much in an attempt to compensates that it turned weak, and, okay, maybe she is a little weirded out by this whole thing, butt least he didn't say anything about it) and, generally, just leaves him alone and kicks back, crosses her legs, and prepares for a night of uncomfortable but largely uneventful sleep.
It is only a few hours later that Éponine awakens to the sound of mumbling.
"Enjolras?" she groans. She stretching her arms behind her back until she hears the pops because sleeping propped against a dresser is not and never will be comfortable, and asks "what time is it?" in the middle of a yawn.
She figures he has been trying to wake her to ask for a pain-killer or some water until she realizes how odd that admission of weakness, even slight as it is, would be, and she scrabbles to right herself.
She makes it only partway, her knees knocking painfully against the floor - alright, so maybe stubbornly refusing to even drag a chair in here was actually a pretty terrible idea - but that works well enough.
His face is clammy and pale, and he is shivering, but worst of all are his eyes, half-lidded and unfocused.
She can hear the mumbling better now, something about blood and smoke, and she can hear the unmistakeable tremor of fear there.
"Enjolras?" He gives a little start. His gaze immediately darts to her and fixes there, and she swallows hard.
Éponine doesn't have nightmares like that, no, where she is scared and trembling in the aftermath, mostly because she's gotten used to them, but she remembers.
She remembers the strange nightmares that vulnerability - this awful, awful vulnerability - creates, and she remembers these waking nightmares, where consciousness was no relief to the delusions.
(She remembers dreaming, once, of her father as a great, scaly crocodile, with a sharp, crooked grin that went on and on and on, stretching out even as he bit her head off and lingering in her mind as she woke up drenched in sweat; the faint, fever-drenched memories tumbling down into an enormous maw haunted her for weeks after, though she was then able to mostly separate this dream from the reality, and young enough to think that her fear was misplaced.
Except it was twice, actually, if she's being honest. She had a repeat in her new apartment, a three hours drive away at least and so, so far from their clutches, but it didn't matter then; in her dream she was a little girl again, frightened and uncertain and not yet sure how to put on a brave face, and she was eaten alive for it. )
She knows he worries sometimes, is reminded of the time Bossuet fractured some of the bones in his foot at a protest, and remembers how angry he was at himself. Even the attempts at humor in the days to come - Joly would sometimes take one of his crutches and rub at his nose with it, pretending to be dapper - could not abate that, but fear?
She forgets sometimes that this boy of flames cannot bear everything, though he may try, and he did not grow up in her world.
She reaches to feel his forehead, to see if his temperature has gotten any worse, but he jolts back, and raises an arm weakly. His eyes remain focused on her, but he looks as though he does not recognize her.
"Enjolras," she says again, more firmly, and perches on the edge of the bed, "it's Éponine. You're hallucinating, and you are going to have to let me check your temperature."
"É…ponine?" he questions. He sounds tired and groggy, and though he allows her to place a hand on his forehead, he still flinches at her touch.
When she withdraws, she puffs out a slow breath. "Alright. You're burning up. It's been-" she has no way to tell the time, but in the small square of sky she can see, the moon is high. "-long enough. I am going to get some advil, and I will be right back, and if you just stay here-"
"Don't."
She blinks at him, startled from this recitation of plans. He has let his head fall back against the headrest, and he watches her wearily.
She regards him for a moment before responding. "I'll be quick - I'll come right back - and you need to lower your fever - "
"Please." And his hand is around her wrist.
She stills, and for a moment the thudding of her heartbeat picking up is all she hears. That alone is reason enough to say no, to not stay, but -
"Alright, pretty boy," she says, settling more fully upon the side of the bed, and though she knows this is going to be even more uncomfortable than before, she can't quite make her voice sound resigned, "if you insist."
She awakens a few hours later, when the sky is still dark, but streaked with faint hints of colors so it is obvious the sun will soon be up.
Enjolras is not yet awake. A hand on his forehead reveals his temperature is not quite so high now, but she slips away and pads to the bathroom to shake out two tablets, then back to nudge him awake.
He takes the pain-killers sleepily, and is dreaming again, hopefully peacefully, within seconds.
And then she hesitates.
He has woken less and less with his nightmares, and she can probably get in some actual sleep if she heads to the living room couch.
But…
Éponine maneuvers as quietly as she can to the end of the bed, resting her back against the wall, and stays there until morning.
The Amis call it miserable, after, when it takes three days to purge the sickness, and it would certainly seem that way for Éponine, who proves most effective at breaking through the haze brought on by the fever and so stays over most often -
and it's fine.
She doesn't ask him about the nightmares, just checks up on him, and does extract the promise at least try to take better care of himself, and it is… comfortable.
(But she teases him relentlessly about the rest.)