"Plaiting a Long Red Love-Knot Into Her Long Dark Hair..."

[psalm_onethirtyone]

To-day is Write mhari Fic Day!

Incidentally, it's taking me a little while with your fic, talissarocsham, since you did not exactly specify what you wanted your fic to be about, and I must come up with a storyline before I can begin writing.

At any rate, here is fic.

Samuel/Combeferre, at long last.

The next day, Samuel went to school feeling vaguely apprehensive. At last he was going to meet Combeferre.

He had been thinking of it as 'at last meeting' for a long time now, hardly realising it until it became natural. The last time he had met Combeferre he had been a child, an entirely different person--now he was going to meet Combeferre all over again. But despite the apprehension, he really couldn't wait at all. He remembered the very moment he'd left Combeferre's room, and couldn't believe it had only been a little over a month. It seemed like years and years of living away from home.

He did pay attention in his classes, but only just barely; remembering to take down notes but not to take them down in a particularly legible handwriting.

And after school he found a place by the doors and waited anxiously, until finally he saw Combeferre, surrounded by Courfeyrac--acting just as insane as usual--and Joly, and lanky Bossuet trying to keep them from smothering him.

"Combeferre!"

"Enjolras!" Courfeyrac cried. "You're at last seeking us out! And I must say, it's about time! What do you mean, avoiding us for so long? Honestly, you come, you give us a lecture, and then you go like smoke on the wind! See what you've made me do? I'm using obnoxious similes! Do come along and have a drink with us, now that you're back!"

"No," Samuel said firmly, but not without a little laugh. "I want to talk to Combeferre."

Bossuet gave him a sideways look of surprise, and he tilted his head. But Bossuet didn't attempt to address him, merely saying, "Well, Courfeyrac, if he wants our philosopher from us, we mustn't stop him."

"Oh, but I will stop him!"

Meantime, Combeferre had edged over to Samuel. "You wanted to talk to me?" he smiled, but now Samuel didn't feel any lightheadedness; only a little pleasant feeling. Of course he still loved Combeferre's smile. He was only reacting to it differently, because he was no longer a child.

"Yes, but privately. Perhaps we might eat supper together?"

"Certainly. I should just like to stop by home and leave my things."

"Of course! I shall too."

"Ah, Enjolras! You're forsaking us again! First for Feuilly, and now for Combeferre? You're a hardhearted man."

Samuel turned, wondering how on earth Courfeyrac knew he'd been staying with Feuilly. It wasn't as though Feuilly would ever mention it. He wasn't that sort. He might have given Courfeyrac a lightening-quick, sarcastic smile if he'd heard him wondering where Samuel was, but anything more would have been uncharacteristic. And Courfeyrac didn't seem the sort of person to realise the truth from a look.

"Simply busy," Samuel murmured, and for once Courfeyrac did nothing more than scrunch up his nose sulkily.

Joly sighed. "Courfeyrac, do come along. We agreed anyway that you needed to be looked over."

"Oh, that. Yes, you're right." Courfeyrac perked up again. "Let's off! I haven't since I was a tiny wee babe had a doctor poking me and prodding me and looking in my ears. Let's do that!"

"Courfeyrac," Bossuet informed them amiably, "may be the victim of what he is fondly calling The Great Disease of the Revengeful Ear. He says Bahorel has ranted at the top of his voice so many times that his ear is revolting and aching painfully. I believe Joly is rather jealous. At any rate, he's going to try to cure it. He's enlisted my help for some reason."

Smiling greatly, Combeferre said, "Well, we shan't keep you. Do make sure Courfeyrac comes out of it all right."

"Joly will know what he's doing." Bossuet bowed and trotted after Joly and Courfeyrac.

Combeferre bit his lip. "Do you think Courfeyrac will be all right?"

Even after all this time and growing up, Samuel did not really like Courfeyrac, and he could not say that he would be particularly upset if the man lost an ear. "Likely." He caught from Combeferre the same look of reproach he'd received the day he first met Courfeyrac.

"But," said Combeferre, as though he hadn't given it, "you were saying supper?"

"Yes."

"All right. Shall we meet at Café Chanson in, perhaps, half an hour?"

"That's fine."

And they parted.

Samuel could hardly believe it had gone so well. He hadn't been embarrassed or frightened: he had just spoken to Combeferre and invited him to supper the way any ordinary man might do. He was so pleased that he was at Chanson in a quarter of an hour, and then had to wait and be glanced at impatiently by the waitress until Combeferre arrived.

They had only ordered and the waitress gone off when Combeferre looked at him curiously, and said, "You've changed. I thought at first you were still Dimitri, and then you laughed to Courfeyrac. You never did that before. Were you really staying with Feuilly?"

"Yes. He was very kind. And, Combeferre, I am not a child any longer."

Combeferre smiled. "I can tell. What shall I call you? I don't wish to call you Dimitri, but you've told me any number of times not to use Samuel."

"Use Samuel now. I don't mind being Samuel. I'm a different Samuel from before."

"All right, Samuel."

There were a thousand things Samuel might have told Combeferre, but he didn't. He wasn't sure why. It was only that it seemed sufficient to say he was no longer a child, and that it would have been improper to say anything about his stay with Feuilly. It was like a dream he wouldn't tell anyone.

So instead Samuel asked Combeferre about himself.

And they talked and talked, conversations that Samuel really enjoyed and thought quite as wonderful as the ones on his first evening with Feuilly and Manon, if in a different way. There were simply so many things to talk about that they couldn't stop. They talked the whole way back to Samuel's now un-dusty apartment, and stayed and talked by the lamp until long past midnight. Samuel was realising, now that he had Combeferre back, how much he'd missed him.

They ran out of things to say around three, and laughed crazily at nothing because they were both exhausted. By the time they went to sleep at last in the uncomfortably small bed Samuel owned, they were too tired to notice their elbows poking each other.

When at last he woke, Samuel lay on his side and looked at Combeferre, smiling blearily in the light dotting the bed and floor. He was completely disoriented from staying up so late and then getting up equally late, but too happy to mind much.

He propped himself up on his arms and daringly kissed Combeferre's hair, which had come unbound while they slept. Combeferre startled him pleasantly by taking his hand and squeezing it gently.

Samuel was sure he would write with Dimitri's handwriting for the rest of his life. He would answer to two names. He would still talk like Dimitri and carry out Dimitri's dreams. That was his duty. But Combeferre would know he was really Samuel.

Somehow, nothing in his life had ever pleased him more.

~~~

Courfeyrac is annoying/annoyed and drunk. LJ Spellcheck gives me "crack", "freak", and "coffeecake" as possible replacements for "Courfeyrac". I suppose I should not find this funny.

I thought it also suggested "cleavage", but it turns out that was me misreading "coverage" and "cleric", which Courfeyrac is emphatically not.

Several weeks later, on the night before Christmas Eve, Samuel found himself staying late at Musain. He told Combeferre just to go home, as he foresaw being there a long time over some work, and didn't want to keep him up. Combeferre complied, and Samuel looked after him for a moment fondly, feeling disgracefully like Manon looking after Feuilly. This thought jolted him out of it abruptly.

He was glad Combeferre had not asked about the work as, strictly speaking, there was none. What he really wanted was to talk to Courfeyrac. He wondered absently as he moved over to Courfeyrac's table if Combeferre had already known this.

Courfeyrac was rather drunk, he noted instantly.

"Hallo, Dimitri."

"Bonsoir, Courfeyrac. How is your ear?"

Courfeyrac giggled. "It took you that long to ask? Lord, you are busy, Dimitri. My ear is fine, but Bahorel is still an idiot."

"Do you--"

"A complete idiot. I wonder why he talks so loud. He's always talking, always loud. I wish you would talk more. You're the only one who could drown him out."

"Courfeyrac, do you--"

"Would you like any of this wine? I feel impolite, drinking alone. It's nasty, but I've been unfortunate enough to have had worse."

"No, thank you." The trouble with Courfeyrac, Samuel thought sourly, was the he was mostly the same drunk as he was sober.

"Oh, well. I expect you'd like better stuff. That's proper. Our leader should not be reduced to our states. That's not at all proper. You shall have only the best. We all think so. Even Feuilly thinks so, I expect, and he's Feuilly, you know."

Samuel blinked. "Feuilly?"

"Yes."

Suddenly he thought of something. "How did you know I had been staying with Feuilly?"

"Silly of you, Dimitri. I'm part of the family. I told you--remember when I told you? I said I should love to be Feuilly's son's godfather. I asked. Now he's mine to corrupt. Oh, you may never let me near any of your children, but Feuilly had no such qualms. He thinks better of me than you do. You don't like me at all." Courfeyrac's finger trembled accusingly at Samuel. "Feuilly trusts me. You don't."

"No, I don't."

"You don't like me because I love life," Courfeyrac went on, ignoring him. "There's something wrong with you. There has been since I first met you. And you don't like me because I'm happy all the time. Why shouldn't I be happy, eh, Dimitri? Why shouldn't I?"

"I never said you shouldn't."

"Just because I want to be happy before I die. I want to be happy, and no one minds but you. Joly wants to be happy too. We're worried and we want to be happy. Joly's frightened. He believes in you and he doesn't want to die and he knows he could. He wants to be happy always so that he'll be happy if he does die." Unsuccessfully, Courfeyrac tried to straighten. "And me too. A lot of people get killed doing things like this. Not all of them. But some of them do. If we're the ones-- we don't think about it. And you don't like us because of that. Do you think we should be brave about it?"

"No," said Samuel roughly. Little as he would have minded Courfeyrac's losing his ear, or perhaps his tongue, Samuel did not want him dead.

"Yes, you do."

"Courfeyrac..."

"Shall I be silent? Are you tired of hearing me go on? I'm not sorry. Feuilly trusts me with his child."

"I don't have any children to trust you with. Now, Courfeyrac--"

"Pah! I won't have it. I'll go on loving life."

"Courfeyrac, may I help you home?"

To his utter astonishment, Courfeyrac stood unsteadily. "Oh, very well. But I won't stop loving life and I won't stop talking and that's that. You're so annoying. You don't trust Joly and myself and poor Bossuet to love your precious revolution just because we love it a different way. I won't stop talking."

He was as good as his word, and by the time Samuel was making his way back to his own apartment, he would have been glad never to be spoken to by Courfeyrac again. However, he had listened.

He wondered if Dimitri would have listened. He wondered if the old Samuel would have listened. But there was no profit in wondering. He had listened, because only by listening would he understand his Amis.

And he might not be able to stand some of them, but he must understand them all.

~~~

Westmark femslash; Zara/Rina.

Believing

The golden divinity and the russet divinity, he soon realised, were clearly in love with Florian: the former, dreamily and happily; the latter, bitterly and almost against her will. Westmark, page 92.

When Rina first met Florian, she hardly believed in him.

Her town, Quilan, had been small. Her mother and her father were often worried because they were short on money. When she thought about it, most of the town was worried because of money. So she and her two twin sisters and one older brother grew up thinking it natural for people to have a worried, not-enough-of-something look on their faces always.

Florian didn't look like that. Florian's face was a mixture of so many things, with his wry smile, his serious grey eyes, his sarcastic eyebrows, and his habit of suddenly losing all that and laughing for his children or looking at them with such affection that Rina wanted to throw her arms about him, but he never looked harrowed or frightened. Probably because of Florian's authority, people took note of his children and accepted them. This was different from being underfoot in a small house where everyone was simply desperate to have everything done before night fell because they could only afford to burn lamp oil when it was absolutely necessary.

Florian was unhurried. Florian could listen to her when she talked.

Her sisters, who were both eighteen when she left and by then already had the usual look of people living in Quilan, called her a sentimentalist, and when all three were getting along, they made her talk about her unrequited loves and told her stories about princesses woken from forever by true love. They were her favourite stories, and she wasn't ashamed of them even now.

Her sisters wouldn't have been surprised that she was in love with Florian. They would have laughed and brushed her hair while they asked all about him. Rina might not have known what to tell them, though, because she still wasn't sure she quite believed in him. He was far too wonderful to be real.

It didn't take her very long to realise Zara was in love with him, too. But while she liked being in love with him because he was so wonderful--because he was Florian--Zara didn't seem to like it at all.

Not that Zara liked anything.

She still felt bad about it, though. Real life should be like stories. People should be happy when they are in love, more happy then they've ever been. It was--it was a pity Zara didn't like it.

She had left Quilan a year ago, because her sisters told her she was pretty and she was afraid she wouldn't be if she got the worry-look that made her mother so plain. She only realised later that she shouldn't believe everything her sisters said, and plainness rather ran in the family. By then she had a job as a laundress, and spent her evenings wrapping a hard-earned piece of silk around her swollen hands to make them feel better.

Then she met Florian, and because Florian was Florian, she felt pretty again, and didn't mind her hands as much. She was terribly in love with Florian and she liked herself for it. She wished Zara could be like that too.

One evening Zara spent being particularly bad-tempered and sharp, and De Roth and Stock were both suffering for it. Rina, on the other hand, was feeling rather mellow, and she got up the courage to ask Zara something she'd been planning since she found out Zara didn't like being in love with Florian.

Her sisters would have laughed and brushed her hair while they asked all about him. Rina knew that would have pleased her, the way it used to. Perhaps Zara, who didn't like anything, would like it.

"Zara?" Rina asked, and was startled to see that when they stood face to face, she was the same height as Zara. "Zara, may I brush your hair?" She felt rather as though she could have dropped her face in her hands from embarrassment. That had not come out quite right.

Zara was tugging on a strand of her reddish-brown hair, which could have been wavy but was leaning more toward frizzy, and was rather tangled. "My hair?" she asked in disbelief.

"You have pretty hair, but it would look even nicer brushed out," Rina smiled hopefully. "It's no trouble. I'd like it." She was praying desperately that Zara wouldn't notice Stock grinning to her right.

"All right," said Zara at last. Rina was relieved.

Zara's hair turned out to be easier to brush than Rina had thought, if she did it lightly without getting too deep into the tangles. She was very afraid of pulling it. It was not at all like her flat, fair hair, and so thick! So she ran the brush over carefully, only touching the parts that weren't tangled. It hurt just a little because her hands were still swollen.

"Do you love Florian?" she asked abruptly, not sure how to lead up to it. Her sisters never needed to be cautious how they asked such questions, because such questions didn't bother Rina.

"I think so," said Zara's voice, grouchily. "You didn't just want to ask about that, did you?"

"Well... yes," Rina admitted. "My sisters liked to ask me about that sort of thing, and I thought maybe you'd like it too," she added, afraid Zara would decide to go if she had no explanation.

"Oh," Zara's voice said, sounding unsure. "Well, then."

"What?"

"Then go on, keep asking. If that's what you want."

Rina beamed at the back of Zara's head. She had as good as said she liked it! "What do you love most about him?"

"He's doesn't mind. He doesn't complain. He doesn't worry."

Rina couldn't help it: she laughed. "I love that best, too! Isn't he wonderful that way? Isn't it just so lovely hearing him talk? You're right, he doesn't mind at all. He's so easy to talk to!"

"Yes..."

"It's lovely, isn't it? And the way he's so clever. I wish I had half his wit."

"Oh, you manage," Zara mumbled, and "Ow!" as Rina snagged the brush on her hair, forgetting to go carefully in her excitement.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to." Gently, Rina detached the brush. "Isn't he handsome?"

"No. He wouldn't be interesting if he was. Don't you dare tell me the pockmarks give him a rakish air, either. Florian isn't handsome."

"Oh..."

Zara craned around to look at her. "Now, don't be disappointed because we disagree. He's Florian. You and any other person in the world couldn't look at him and think the exact same things."

"I suppose that's true."

"I think so." Zara sighed. "Thank you for brushing my hair."

Rina smiled at her. "I liked it. You have nice hair."

With a little, despairing shake of her head, Zara touched Rina's cheek gently. "You may go on thinking that."

"Um--" Rina shivered.

"Thank you." She kissed Rina carefully, almost like the sister's kiss Rina's gotten many times before, but not quite. Then she left, hurriedly, blushing.

For a while after, Rina wondered if Florian noticed they both acted a little strange around him. Zara was even more angrily in love, and she herself was afraid to speak very much to him, so she sat around and bit her fingernails off and talked to Luther when Luther was there, and Justin when he was not.

Slowly, she realised that Justin was much easier to believe in than Florian. Florian was frightenly perfect. Zara was a little frightening, too, just because of being angry. Justin, however, was easy to be in love with.

She knew that behind the beauty and bloodthirstiness, Justin was alone, and unhappy. He needed someone to love him, even a laundress with swollen hands.

Sometimes she imagined telling this to her sisters while they took turns brushing her flat, fair hair.

Comments

*squee*

[mhari.livejournal.com]

Gahhhh! lovelovelove!

I <3 your Rina in particular. It would be so easy to write her off as the Token Dumb Blonde, and she's not, and you get that part of her as well as the spacy hopeless romantic part.

And I cannot help adoring your Courfeyrac, dork that he is. :D

Re: *squee*

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

*squees* Oh, thank you thank you thank you. ^_^ I'm so glad you like!

[tatteredsparrow.livejournal.com]

Enjolras/Combeferre! Squee! I love them, and I just adore your drunk!Courfeyrac as well. Lovelylovely. *hugs*

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

Thankees! E!/C is so the easiest LM slash to write... >_> Which makes them a nice break once in a while.

[talissarocsham.livejournal.com]

*sheepish* Sorry. I bad.

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

Yes, you is.