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Neither of them really like to talk about how they met. Not because it’s bad, or shameful—it’s just that it’s one of the few things that is truly theirs, an aspect of their relationship that isn’t tied up in Les Amis de l’ABC. Both of them love their friends to pieces, and are totally okay with most of their dates being worked into or around meetings of their little band, but when they want to be alone, they head to where they began—not at the Musain, like most people think, but the Olds Memorial Library.
She’s been taking night classes for about a month—mostly basics so she can start on a degree in earnest next semester. She’s got a job at the library as a clerk for the free tuition, but Admin stuck her in the Math library. This works out perfectly—calculus is the subject she’s worst at, and she’s here surrounded by every textbook the university has to offer. It’s also unusually dead; not many people need extra copies of math books, and coupled with the fact that it’s squirreled away at the back of an old, only sporadically heated building at the edge of campus, the net result is that any non-math-major avoids this particular library like the plague. Since Amherst is liberal arts-oriented, even the number of math majors in here is pretty severely truncated. Also, the radio seems permanently stuck to a country station, and she can’t for the life of her find the switch to change it, so she simply turns it down most days. Today, though, she needs some warm-and-fuzzy music, so she lets the slightly crackly station play.
One word, that's all you said
something in your voice called me, turned my head
your smile, just captured me
So she’s sitting at the circulation desk at the back of the room in January, feet tucked underneath her and draped in one of her friend Marius’s cable-knit sweaters (the woman who raised him—and by extension, her—stress-knits) as she studies a related rates problem. She lets out an errant curse, then nearly falls out of her chair as she’s answered with a quiet cough, one that she realizes, as she focuses on amused hazel eyes behind rimless glasses, is probably covering a laugh.
You were in my future as far as I could see
and I don’t know how it happens, but it happens still
you asked me if I love you, if I always will
She raises an eyebrow, determinedly ignoring the flush rising in her cheeks. “Hi. Help you with something?”
“Hello. Philosophy library says all of Descartes is here for some reason,” he responds, still smiling. “Discourse on the Method and Principles of Philosophy?”
“Er…” she types in the name as the boy leans on the circulation desk. “Aisle R,” she gestures, and prepares to go back to her homework.
“Thanks.” He pushes away from the desk, and she notices for the first time how big he actually is—well over six feet, with proportions to match. It’s an odd clash, up close, with his rolled-sleeve button-up under a worn gray cardigan and dark jeans—new, and with none of the artful tears and wear that come with the most popular brands. She would know; she’s worked more retail than she cares to admit, and before that her pants were either stolen from wealthy neighborhood thrift shops or had the torn look the old-fashioned way—from being worn into the ground. And since she’s already put so much effort into looking him over, it’s practically a crime against feminism if she doesn’t evaluate the effects of said jeans as he turns around. (They’re very positive).
Having in this way improved her day, she returns to her homework, where the rate of water flowing out of a leaky bucket has not been elucidated by glasses-boy’s butt. Too bad.
She exhales explosively, then leans back in her chair. She’s skating on thin ice with this class as it is; it’s taught by a TA who barely speaks English, and math’s never really been her thing. She’s trying to preempt the tension headache forming behind her eyeballs when the boy returns, book in hand. He hands her his library card silently, and she stutters over his last name. “Zachary C-Comb-fair?” She’s cringing as she says it, and he laughs and corrects her.
“Combeferre.”
It flows from his mouth a thousand times easier than from hers—understandable, it’s his last name—but she repeats it and still gets it wrong. He says it again, and she mimics him, and the give-and-take continues for a few minutes until he nods approval.
“There you go.”
“Combeferre.” The name is a bit hedonistic, rolling off her tongue like a heavy wine, laden with the barely-touched ‘b’ and the purr of the double-R.
Well, you had me from hello
I felt love start to grow
the moment I looked into your eyes you won me
“I find myself at a disadvantage,” he says. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
“Éponine Thénardier.”
“And you had trouble with my name?” he laughs, trying on the moniker for size. “Eponine Thénardier.”
“Indeed. What’s the book for?”
“I’m a philosophy major. And biochemistry,” he adds hastily, possibly reading her facial expression as judgment rather than the flabbergasted shock it actually is. To each their own, she supposes, but she can’t fathom spending the money it takes to go to Amherst on a philosophy degree. Biochemistry is good, she supposes. “Descartes is a mathematician too, so someone decided that it’d be a good idea to put all the Descartes down here.”
She shrugs. “Makes sense.”
“Not really,” he replies. “He’s mathematically important because of Cartesian coordinates and such, but honestly his philosophy was completely separate and…” he trails off. “And…you don’t care.” His voice is even, but she can hear the embarrassment in it.
It was over from the start
you completely stole my heart
and now you won't let go
I never even had a chance you know
you had me from hello
“Not really,” she says playfully. “But I like listening to you talk.”
He smiles in spite of himself, and leans over the desk, peering over his glasses at her calculus papers that are really more scratch-outs at this point. “Related rates?”
“Yeah,” she says glumly. “I just…I really don’t understand.”
“I didn’t either when I started. Do you have Tran?”
“Technically. He’s fobbed it off on a TA.”
“Ah. I’m glad I never had to go through that…thank God for AP courses.” He pulls the notebook towards him, turning it sideways between them. “What you need to do is…”
He walks her through her entire math homework, and derivatives finally start to make sense. (They would probably have made more sense if he didn’t emanate a distracting amount of heat, but she isn’t complaining). They remain the only souls in the library for nearly an hour, working through her homework when they’re interrupted by a harassed-looking Engineering professor looking for a copy of her class set. Combeferre ducks out quietly, mouthing Éponine a ‘sorry’, as he heads for the door. She yells a thank-you as he leaves, but she isn’t sure he hears it as the door swings shut behind him. With a sigh, she turns to the increasingly-impatient professor.
Inside I built a wall
so high around my heart, I thought I'd never fall
one touch, you brought it down
Combeferre doesn’t come back the next day, or the next (and she’s not disappointed, she’s not. If she put on a little more mascara that morning, well, what was wrong with looking good?) He finally pushes through the swinging door four days later, when (of course) she’s in sweatpants, pencil between her teeth, and hair piled on top of her head. There’s a unit test in two days, and she isn’t prepared at all; derivatives can, apparently, take her only so far.
He approaches her blithely, with a cheerful request for Pascal’s The Provincial Letters, when he catches sight of her face. “When’s the exam?”
“Thursday,” she mutters, scrubbing a hand through her hair. “I need an 83% to keep a B, and I need a B average to keep my enrollment verification.” She’s not sure why she’s telling him this. She’s known him for a day—really an hour, all told—and yet it’s only force of will that keeps her from spilling her life story, everything about her parents’ lack of parenting and how worried she is about Azelma and how unprepared she is to be a parent for Gavroche. Combeferre exudes competence and gentleness, and she’s positive that he would both listen attentively and offer sound advice. At the same time, though, she doesn’t want her life—messed up as it is—to bleed over into the easy rapport she already feels with Combeferre. He seems like someone she’d truly like to know better, and she’s not willing to jeopardize that. So she simply flips her notes around so he can see them. “Help?”
The bricks of my defenses scattered on the ground
and I swore to me I wasn't going to love again
the last time was the last time I'd let someone in
So he does for nearly two hours, at the end of which she feels much better about math and he provides to return the next day. She sends him off to his next class with his Pascal, then packs up her things before heading to her second job at the Café Musain. Her shifts at the library aren’t for nothing, but the main benefit is tuition. It’s the Musain, the coffee-shop-with-a-liquor-license, that covers rent, groceries, and basic necessities.
But you had me from hello
I felt love start to grow
The moment I looked into your eyes you won me
She’s slinging hipster drinks of both the alcoholic- and non- sort like a machine, calling out obscure slang for half-caf vanilla chai lattes with no foam and double vanilla shots as she pours a vodka and coke for the curly-haired drunk at the other end of the bar. It’s 6 PM, far too early to be hammered, in her opinion, but she’s seen him before and guesses she should be more surprised if she sees him sober.
She’s been deep in the weeds for almost an hour now, because that damn Enjolras kid is giving one of his speeches again and this one’s about gay rights. Not that she’s not a proponent of gay rights in the abstract, but between rainbows making her head hurt and the fact that for some reason gay men, to a man, have complicated coffee orders, she’s really just not happy that it had to happen on her shift, the day before her first-unit Calculus test. That she needs a B in.
“Coffee, black, room for cream.”
She readjusts her apron and asks for a name, then looks up at the apparently-not-gay man and realizes it’s Combeferre. He’s watching her with an odd little half smile that’s really not telling her much of anything, and as she writes his name on the cup she asks him about his lecture. He replies that it was boring, thanks, and asks her if she’s always worked here or if he’s just unobservant.
She gets the impression that he couldn’t be unobservant if he tried, and so asks instead if he’s here with the group or if he’s just wandered in as an innocent bystander. His ears go a little pink and he tucks his hands in his pockets.
“Sorry about this. It’s normally not this crowded, but what with DOMA’s Supreme Court case this week and all, and the fact that we really publicized this meeting, we’re getting about three times as many attendees as we thought. Which is good for us, but…anyway, if we’re expecting anything like this many people again, we’ll move it to somewhere less crowded.”
She automatically thinks of other places that are less crowded…like the Math library…and what she’d like to do to him there. Christ, she needs to get laid.
He looks like he’s going to keep talking, but he gets shoved and shouted down by the group of boys behind him, one of which—a small redheaded boy with hair longer than hers in a flowered sweater—eyes her speculatively before ordering a raspberry tea.
The crowd finally levels off and seats itself, and a blond boy with hair straight out of a shampoo commercial climbs on his chair and begins to speak. The entire room, before abuzz with quiet chatter, falls silent. When the boy breathes, the spectators lean forward, literally hanging on his every word. She’ll admit it herself; he’s good. She’s not really an idealist herself—she’s been disappointed too many times for that—but if she had to choose a man to lead her into war, this golden boy would be on her short list. At the very least, she might even be bothered to get to the polling place next time it’s close, for the sole purpose of voting on this issue. (Which is pretty damn impressive).
But even as the young man (Enjolras?) talks, her eyes slide to the boy at his right, seated on a chair rather than standing on it, pushed against a wall with a laptop out. It’s clear he’s heard this speech or some variation before, because he’s unobtrusively typing, only occasionally looking up at Enjolras, possibly to make sure he’s staying on topic. He’s wearing a different shirt today, but the same gray cardigan, and his long legs extend into the aisle out from under his off-brand laptop. His glasses have slid down his nose, and her fingers, no longer occupied with coffee beans and vodka bottles, itch to push them back up to the bridge, then push the hair that’s fallen in his eyes back over his high forehead.
It was over from the start
you completely stole my heart
And now you won’t let go
I never even had a chance you know
You had me from hello
He disappears after the blond boy descends from his makeshift podium, and she can’t help feeling disappointed that he didn’t come back and talk to her as she shoos the rest of the party out the door (thirty minutes late, she might add—the tips had better have been worth it).
The next morning in the library, she’s prepared—not just with math books, but she’s put on a full face of makeup, her favorite pair of jeans, and a shirt that actually advertises her cleavage. However, it’s nearly noon and she’s starting to worry that it was all for nothing when he pushes the door open, messenger bag hanging from one shoulder and two cups of Musain coffee in hand. He hands her one with the same odd half-smile.
“I asked the other baristas for your order. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I never mind coffee.” She drinks it like the ambrosia it is and feels her synapses fire faster on contact with the hot liquid. “You split fast last night.” Shit, had she really just said that?
“Sorry,” he apologizes. “My friend Feuilly asked for a ride home from the auto shop, otherwise I would definitely have talked to you.” His voice gets almost shy. “Hey, I’m really sorry…for making you work so hard last night. I’ll make sure our meetings move, if you want.”
She cocks her head at him. “Why?”
“I…I just thought it might make you uncomfortable.”
“It’s good tips,” she responds. “Unless it bothers you that I work there?” She really hopes that Combeferre isn’t like that, but she’s definitely dated guys who aren’t really into the fact that she works as a barista. Montparnasse certainly didn’t like it, but since she isn’t a fan of being a kept woman and most of his money is illegally made, she’d dumped him as soon as he’d started talking shit about her working at Amherst. She starts picking at the corner of her notebook.
“No! Not at all,” he says, looking slightly frustrated. “Look…”
“Do you want--“
“D’you want to go out sometime?” He gets it out faster than she does, and even though everything she has seen of him points to his unflappability, there are two spots of red on his cheeks and his ears are the color of Pepto-Bismol.
“Yeah. I really would,” she hears herself saying, even though her brain’s basically just exploded with a flare of irrational happiness. “Y-yes. Definitely.”
His ears begin to fade to their normal coloring. “Great.” He leans forward, like he’s about to kiss her—and she can’t say she’d complain—but grabs the math book instead, pulling her around the desk to study one more time. And if she sits closer to him than either day before, or if their hands brush more deliberately and more often than they ever have before, then she’s not going to whine about it.
That’s all you said
Something in your voice calls me, turns my head
You had me from hello
Now they usually they spend their time at the Musain or the Corinthe, or in their shared apartment when they move in together, but the problem with all those places is they’re never quiet. The Corinthe’s a club, the Musain’s usually mobbed with hipsters and at least two Amis at any one time, she’s hyper-paranoid about being seen on campus, and Gavroche lives with them, along with usually at least one Ami crashing on the couch. But when they really need to get away from it all, they go back to the Amherst Mathematics Library. In the two years they’ve known each other, the heating’s gotten no better, nor has the filing system, but the silence remains impenetrable. So she wraps herself in his gray cardigan and he memorizes the bones by tracing over her limbs, and she studies for whatever class is giving her the most trouble (never Calculus again, thank God—she’d passed with room to spare), and he helps her if he can or commiserates if he can’t (which is never). The country radio station plays the same songs, she basking in his warmth and he in his philosophy, and they return to where they began.
You had me from hello
Girl, I've loved you from hello
fin