Sorry this is super short, but my best friend's band had a gig tonight so I've been helping him all day and now I am pooped!

I also apologise for the slightly slow-moving plot, but excitement is coming thick and fast, I promise.

On an *ahem* completely unrelated note, at least one new chapter tomorrow, I think. Probably two.

Disclaimer: I don't own Les Miserables and I am too tired to think of anything funny.

He really had tried to ignore her.

At first, it was pretty easy. She ignored him too, for the most part; she served him his coffee and took away his empty cup with little more than a 'Hello'. There was the distracting swaying of those hips, the small but sweet smiles, and those bloody DIMPLES, of course, but he had years of practise ignoring that sort of thing. He was honestly surprised he had even noticed them.

But as time went on she appeared to get more and more confident, and harder and harder to ignore. In particular, whenever the Amis were all there and she let her guard down, he couldn't tune her out: the way she talked with her hands, the way she talked so much louder when she drank, or the way she threw her head back when she laughed, sending her thick dark curls tumbling down her back like a waterfall.

The real trouble, he decided, was that once you did notice something, you can't help but see it everywhere. So when after a few days of her job at the Musain he noticed that she sang quietly to herself as she worked, he couldn't help but hear it. Even putting his headphones on didn't help him focus, he just wanted to know what she was singing that day. After a few weeks, he even began to spot patterns in her clothing: she only had one black leather bomber jacket, two pairs of jeans and seven t-shirts that she wore in different combinations. Why did she never wear anything else? Didn't girls like shopping?

It couldn't be sentimental value: one of the t-shirts was bright pink with 'Je t'aime Orleans' across the front and when Combeferre had asked if she had been or wanted to go, she had only replied 'No, I haven't. And it's not far enough away for me.' She had also expressed her dislike of the colour pink on several occasions. He knew she wasn't well off, but surely her wages here would stretch to a new t-shirt? Or a loaf of bread every now and then, nobody should be that thin, especially when they work in a café. Even stranger, her skin never seemed completely clean, but surely she was able to wash, wherever she was living. Everywhere has a bath or a shower, for God's sake.

The worst day of all was the day he realised how her skin and eyes glowed when Gavroche was with her, because he couldn't even think of a single logical reason why that would be. He observed a similar phenomenon when she was around Pontmercy, but he had heard Combeferre mention that she was hopelessly in love with the buffoon, so at least he could see a potential cause for that… radiance.

After the first outburst, with her electrifying glare and the fire in her eyes that had affected him so strangely, he had resolved never to argue with her again, in order to avoid such distractions.

He hadn't realised at the time that she would be so infuriating. She constantly questioned his judgement during meetings, and spoke to him as though he had never been outside before: she may have more first-hand experience of the poorer streets of Paris, but he wasn't a complete idiot, he knew what went on.

Plus, if she made out that his life was easy one more time, it was going to take all his efforts not to flip the table over and trash the entire café. He wasn't living in some mansion or out of his parents' pockets: he earned what he got through his internship at the courts, and he split the rent 50/50 with Combeferre on a modest three-bedroomed apartment in San Michel. The only money he accepted from his parents went toward his tuition fee at the university, and he only accepted this because he knew it was pointless for his education to suffer for his pride. He didn't tell her all this, of course. It was none of her business. And he certainly wasn't giving her the satisfaction of knowing she'd struck a nerve.

So he resolved to stay steadfast in his refusal to meet her eye – particularly when there was a danger they'd be all ablaze again – and tune her out as much as he could. That was the only way he was going to get past this temporary lapse of concentration.

So they barely spoke outside of meetings. And he decided he wouldn't notice her skin or her hips or her smile or her clothes any more. Or her voice. Or her laugh. Or her hair. And definitely not those bloody dimples.