#Enjolras and Floreal are QP partners just FYI

[sketch-rambles]

Loving Feuilly

A High School AU where Enjolras is really close with Feuilly and for years people have been half-joking about them dating, until Enjolras has heard “are you in love with him or something?” one too many times and finally thinks “shit... am I?”

And it’s not even that much of a stretch, because he spends so much time with Feuilly anyway, because being around Feuilly makes him really happy, and Feuilly makes him smile involuntarily just by existing, and makes him laugh all the time, and yeah, it’s really, really not that much of a stretch. He knows he loves Feuilly, that’s not in question, not even a little bit, but now he’s got the thought that maybe he’s in love with Feuilly in his head and he can’t get it out.

Without meaning to, he starts this mental checklist in his head of all the reasons he should like Feuilly. Feuilly, who is so wonderfully kind, and the poor thing can’t seem to say no, he’s always busy because he spends so much of his free time taking on extra projects. Feuilly, who is ridiculously intelligent, and takes multiple AP classes (and has the dark circles under his eyes to prove it), and the rest of his classes are all honors, and who calls himself an idiot all the time even though it’s the farthest thing from the truth. Feuilly, who is unreasonably talented, who has a beautiful voice and the handwriting of an angel and a great art-style and amazing piano skills, and on top of all of that is a damn-near professional dancer, how does this guy even exist? And speaking of the dancing, Feuilly, who, now that Enjolras thinks about it, has really nice arts and a great butt, and oh shit, oh no, he really does like Feuilly romantically, doesn’t he?

By the start of Senior Year, Enjolras is ready to admit that he... has some romantic attraction toward Feuilly. He doesn’t want to call it a crush, because that seems such a violent word for such an extremely pleasant feeling, and loving Feuilly really is a pleasant feeling, a bubbly sort of warmth in his chest that makes everything okay whenever Feuilly’s around. So he figures he’ll never act on it, because he’s content to just love Feuilly and let that be enough.

But then there’s, like, a 4-day weekend, because scheduling got way out of hand somewhere in the school administration, and it’s the longest Enjolras has been away from Feuilly since summer vacation, and it hits him like a truck how much he misses him. He’d been half-seriously toying with the idea of how he would ask Feuilly out on a date, since they live like 2 hours away from each other, and Enjolras doesn’t have his license yet, and they’re both so busy, but now he realizes that if he doesn’t ask Feuilly out, he might explode.

So he talks it over with Grantaire and Montparnasse, because they’re his only friends that live near enough that he can walk to their houses, and also because Parnasse has actual dating experience, and they let him bounce ideas off of them until he’s come up with something of a plan.

Enjolras has never been more 50/50 about how he thinks a plan is going to turn out. One minute he’ll think that he’s actually got a pretty good chance of Feuilly saying yes, and the next minute he’ll be sure Feuilly will say no. And he’s nervous, mind-rattlingly so, but he can’t realistically think of a bad outcome. Either Feuilly says yes, and he goes on a date with a person he likes, or Feuilly says no, and they stay friends and Enjolras gets to say he’s gotten up enough courage to ask someone out.

Enjolras knows he doesn’t have much time that week to do anything, so he figures he’ll wait until Friday to ask, but the second he sees Feuilly Monday morning, he knows he’ll never make it. He hadn’t planned on telling any of this other friends yet, so that no one holds him accountable if he chickens out, but at lunch he’s got so much nervous energy that he searches the entire school to find Courfeyrac, and can’t find him anywhere, and finally he needs to talk to someone about it so bad that he tells Joly and Gibelotte (and Bossuet, who happened to be there) and just doesn’t mention that the guy in question is Feuilly. But toward the end of it Feuilly comes over from whatever he was doing before and sits down, and everything’s great because being around Feuilly is just like that, but Enjolras still has this freezing cold nervous feeling and he’s desperately trying to get Joly to change the topic before Feuilly figures out what they were talking about.

It is an utter mess and Enjolras wants to scream, but Feuilly is there with his beautiful hazel-brown eyes and his soft blue jacket and everything is just a little bit better.

Enjolras finally cracks before last period, mentally rearranges his schedule and figures he can work in a date on Wednesday, and tries to ignore the butterflies in his stomach that are actually tiny ice dragons as he works up his nerve and heads to the locker bay to find Feuilly.

It does not go at all as eloquently as Enjolras had hoped, especially because the first thing he says once the locker bay is suitably empty of everyone but the two of them is, “Hey, can’t I ask you something before I lose my fucking nerve?”

And even despite that, once he finally gets it out, Feuilly... says yes? Is this real life??? Yes, this is real life, Enjolras has to remind himself, because he heard himself ask it even if it seemed to unreal to register as an actual thing that he just did, but he can’t stop smiling, and this is amazing.

He tells all of this friends as soon as he can.

Courfeyrac is honestly more excited than Enjolras, and literally screams when he finds out. Combeferre, who sits with Enjolras and Feuilly in math class, is worried at first about getting third-wheeled, but is ultimately also ridiculously happy for them. Grantaire comes over and starts chanting “OTP, OTP,” because he’s Grantaire.

The date is a simple one. Wednesday during lunch, Enjolras and Feuilly find an area without too many people to sit and they watch an episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine on Enjolras’s computer. Enjolras, at Floreal’s half-joking suggestion, brought Feuilly a chocolate bar. Feuilly bought Enjolras a brownie. It’s a good date, Enjolras thinks, although he has very little experience in these things.

Afterwards, they’re walking back to class, and Feuilly turns to Enjolras and asks, “Are we doing this right?” because neither of them have dating experience, but Enjolras reasons that they both had a good time, so yes probably.

And it’s wonderful.

Until he talks to Matelote later.

Because Matelote has a bunch of points about how Enjolras didn’t really tell Feuilly how much he likes him, and how there isn’t a second date planned yet, and on and on, and she’s honestly trying to help, but Enjolras suddenly realizes how complicated this whole dating thing is. He overthinks until he’s swept into a well of anxiety and everything in his head is chaos and confusion and then...

Nothing.

The next day is a numb depression. It’s not something he hasn’t experienced before, one of those days where even thinking of Floreal, who is usually his base-line for happiness, doesn’t elicit so much as a flutter of emotion, and it is mind-bogglingly weird to look at Feuilly, who he went on a date with yesterday, and feel... nothing.

The attraction isn’t fully back the next day, either.

By the end of the week, Enjolras asks Feuilly on a second date for the next Wednesday, basically the same thing as the first, but he’s not as excited as the first time, and he can’t quite place why. He chalks it up to stress and tries to move on, but he can’t, and he doesn’t know what to do, and they he remembers, oh right, communication is a thing.

After the second date, Enjolras asks Feuilly where he seems this relationship going. Or, rather, he tries to, but the question starts right in his head and leaves his mouth as a disjointed something-or-other about “is this a date thing or a friend thing, I dunno, I know you don’t have any more experience than I do, I don’t know, never mind I guess.”

It is not good.

And Enjolras really, really can’t let it go, can’t wait until a third date to work out why he suddenly doesn’t feel so amazing about this relationship. So that night, he texts Feuilly and phrases the question more coherently. And they talk it over for a little and then decided that they really like spending time with each other but just don’t see each other in all that much of a romantic context. And Enjolras feels amazing, which does not exactly feel like the proper reaction here, but who the flip cares? He asked a guy out, planned and went on dates, practiced healthy communication, and examined his feelings; he feels like he just leveled up in a video game or something, he just gained so much experience.

(Combeferre, who told his mother about this and was hardcore shipping it, treats it like a breakup, as does Eponine, even when Enjolras explains that it only counts as a breakup if they were officially dating in the first place, but Combeferre has a lot of feelings and he’ll get over this.)

And Feuilly is still amazing is a ridiculous number of ways, and still more attractive than Enjolras would have noticed a couple years ago (and he still has a really nice butt), and Enjolras still loves him to bits, but it’s not romantic, and that’s okay.

Loving Feuilly is a good feeling. A really, really good feeling.