Chapter Text
His sister is beautiful when she laughs. Her head tilts back and her mouth opens and her eyes practically dance, and her joy always makes him happy.
That does not mean he wants to hold the squirming infant she’s holding out to him.
“Come on,” Cosette cajoles, laughing at the way he frowns at the child. “She’s just a baby, Enjolras.”
“That’s my point,” he frowns, but then his eyes soften and that ruins it. Cosette shifts the birthday girl in her arms a little and stares him down, height difference be damned. The birthday cake with a single candle sputtering sits menacingly on his counter, a birthday party for his niece that inexplicably ended up at the flat he shares with Combeferre instead of his sister’s house. But then, Cosette does what Cosette wants, and nothing Enjolras ever says changes her mind. (Their father always told him they inherited their pigheaded stubbornness from their mother.)
He supposes he’s lucky that his roommate isn’t here to laugh at him as well, but Combeferre has a date this afternoon and therefore is not home.
“Just hold your niece, you antisocial, overworked stick in the mud. Little Geneviève wants her uncle, n’est pas, petite?”
Little Geneviève, who is not quite old enough to form words, babbles and waves her hands at him, a signal that means ‘pick me up right now or so help me.’ Enjolras extends his arms with a sigh and Cosette dumps her daughter on him. Behind her Marius looks smug, and Enjolras can see him going for his phone, bound and determined to snap a photo of this. He scowls at his brother-in-law. The shutter clicks and Marius’ grin widens.
“If you send that to anyone I will find you in the dead of night,” Enjolras promises, and feels pleased when Marius blanches a little. Cosette ruins the moment by hitting him in the arm.
“And sing the Marseillaise over our bed maybe. Honestly Marius, I’m not going to let my brother murder you.”
“That’s what you think,” Enjolras mumbles, trying to get Geneviève’s hands to stop fisting in his hair. “Ouch, no, Ginette. That hurts.”
Ginette babbles and continues pulling on the curly blond strands. Marius takes another photo. Enjolras scowls at the birthday cake, as if the homemade sugary confection has personally wronged him, and his sister and her husband look on, beaming like mooncalves. So he ignores them and disentangles his niece’s fingers instead, pretending he doesn’t feel warmth wash through him when they wrap around his thumb instead.
She’s a beautiful child. She has Cosette’s bright blue eyes and small nose and Marius’ dark, wavy hair. She has dimples too, inherited from somewhere up the family tree (most likely Grandmother Pontmercy, Enjolras thinks, who he has never met but seen many pictures of) which appear when she smiles a wide infant grin up at him, a handful of teeth poking out of pink gums. He smiles back, helpless to refuse such enthusiasm and happiness.
“Aw, you’re adorable,” Cosette coos, and another camera click goes off. “I’m definitely putting that on our Christmas cards this year.”
“I hate you,” Enjolras tells her with a straight face. “Maman should have given you to an innkeeper like she threatened. You’re a terrible sister.”
“You’re just jealous because you don’t have an adorable kid of your own.”
“I have absolutely no wish to change diapers,” he counters. “Or stop working.” Anyways, he already has a baby: his law firm, a tiny struggling thing he created with a handful of friends from college. Cosette likes to tell him he pays more attention to it than he does to his family.
(Which may be true, but Enjolras tries his best not to. The firm does good for anyone who needs it. If he needs to put in extra work to make that happen then he will, happily.)
Cosette pulls a face. “Ah, yes, always the job. You don’t know what you’re missing, brother dear.”
“I’ve got the best of both worlds, little sister.”
She smirks. “So you admit this isn’t that bad after all.”
He sighs at her twist of logic, but there’s no reason to refute it. Especially when he knows Cosette will actually beat him up (probably) if he denies it. “Well,” he says, a little patronizing like any good older brother, “I suppose it’s okay.”
“Good,” she says. “Then you can come over next week too.”
The moment of happiness –– he gets no time to see his sister these days, and Ginette has grown so large since he last saw her almost two months ago –– flickers away when he remembers his schedule for the next week. “I can’t, I’ve got to work. My client––” Cosette sighs, and Enjolras touches her shoulder with his free hand, a silent apology. “We’ve been on this case for months––”
“I understand,” she says, and he knows she does. “I was just hoping we could make something of this. I know you’re married to your job but we never see you but the new house is finally all put together––”
“I know,” he echoes. Kicked out by his incredibly conservative grandfather when he went to law school, Marius spent four years living with his friend (and fellow lawyer) Courfeyrac before he and Cosette managed to buy a house together, a dilapidated old thing that they renovated themselves (with help from friends and the firm and yes even he has spent weekends caulking bathrooms and laying tile in the kitchen). But Enjolras has yet to see it in its full glory, because after over a year of work they finally finished it last month, a month that he spent up to his ears in case files.
And there’s a little guilt there, because Cosette cares about nothing so much as family and he so often forgets to call and visit, which he knows drives her mad. After their mother’s death his sister promised to go to any length to keep their tiny family close, and since their father passed away just after her wedding she has only tried harder.
Which is perhaps the reason why they’re sitting at his kitchen counter in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of July with a small birthday cake. And why Cosette practically glows with happiness. He doesn’t want to deny his sister this.
(Truth be told, he never wants to deny his sister anything. He’s a terrible –– or fantastic –– older brother.)
“What about Thursday evening?” he offers, an appeasement. “We start late on Friday so I’ll be free that evening.” Actually, he’ll probably be up to his ears in notes for the closing statements on Friday but he can do that in the morning if he must. For Cosette.
“The game’s that night,” Marius mentions.
“We can watch it together,” Enjolras says, even though Marius is a hardcore PSG fan and Enjolras, despite being Parisian himself, has supported Marseille since he turned ten because it was his mother’s team.
“I refuse to let you keep her up past her bedtime,” Cosette tells them both. “But Thursday sounds fine.” In Enjolras’ arms the girl in question starts to fuss and her parents snap back to focus on her.
“Speaking of sleep,” Marius switches subjects smoothly, like the attorney he is. “I think it’s naptime.”
“You’re not telling me she actually sleeps,” Enjolras asks skeptically, bouncing her a little in his arms.
“One can hope,” Cosette sighs, reaching out to take the girl. He feels a little cold without her warm body pressed against his chest. “I think she’s hungry.”
“I don’t know if we have anything she will eat,” Enjolras frowns. To be honest they don’t have much by way of food at all at the moment because he’s been working too much to get out to the store and Combeferre, always at the hospital, keeps worse hours than he does (and even when he isn’t at work he tends to spend time at Eponine’s run-down place instead of the flat, because she’s closer to the hospital and because Combeferre is a good boyfriend). It will probably be instant coffee and energy bars for the next week, unless someone (probably Eponine, actually) takes pity on them and brings food.
Cosette gives him one of her looks, like she knows this is how he’s living, but it’s not his fault. He has a job to do and feeding himself just isn’t as important as making sure the people he represents have roofs over their heads and food for themselves and basic human rights.
“That’s fine,” Marius replies absently, shouldering the diaper bag. “We should be heading home anyways. You promise you’ll visit.”
“Next Thursday,” he says. “Yes.”
“If you don’t show I will find you,” Cosette threatens with a kiss to each cheek. “See you later, Enjolras.”
He shows them to the door and then settles on the couch with a cup of lukewarm coffee and the briefings from this weeks interviews. This case is large, if simple, and winning it will finally put their firm on the map after five years of struggling along.
Because their firm is tiny. There are four of them –– outgoing, ever-smiling Courfeyrac; lazy-but-brilliant Bahorel awkward and crazy smart Marius; himself –– who decided to start their own firm instead of selling out to a larger group. They were determined to stick together and do something for the people, not for the money, encouraged by their senior advisor. During one night of drinking and general excess and terrible puns, Courfeyrac produced Les Amis de l’ABC and somehow (through a series of passionate arguments on Courfeyrac’s part and a blinding headache on Enjolras’) the name stuck.
Enjolras thinks the pun puts people off. The first time he brought that up Bahorel laughed, slung an arm over his shoulder and pronounced, “O captain my captain, we are naught but young, nameless avocats who cater singularly to the poor.”
Feuilly (brilliant, hardworking Feuilly who keeps the books and deals with accounts and has no degree but knows the law better than some of them) frowns and says, always, “He’s right, you know. We need to step up our game.”
This case, this is stepping up their game. He is determined to win it.
Combeferre texts around sunset –– Staying the night, thought you should know –– and Enjolras smiles at his friend’s caution. Near one he finishes reviewing his notes for the next day, every detail committed to memory. The dregs of his coffee lie on the coffee table, long-since gone cold, so he rinses the cup out and sheds his jeans and shirt on his way to bed, collapsing atop the covers in his undershirt and boxers, dead to the world within minutes.
(Once he would have stayed up for hours before a court day, but now court days and the evenings preceding them are par for the course, and sleep welcomes him with open arms.)