A/N: Wooooot, new chapter let's go! No worries to those missing the crack, it comes back next chapter along with UST that is 100% Courfeyrac approved.

Loveless

Part VIII

Summary: In Grantaire's honest and quite inebriated opinion, the best part about Enjolras falling for that scruffy gamine was that the poor girl in question seemed to have no idea. [Modern AU Enjolras/Éponine—Frustration is the name of this game]

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"You broke her oh my god you broke her—"

"Out of the way! Let me through, you idiots!"

"Uh, throw something on her face! I'll get the cold water—"

"Can you hear me? C'mon girl, you—"

"Oh god, what is that—"

"Did—did someone hurt her?"

One last, devastatingly quiet voice. "Éponine."

Éponine's eyes opened suddenly and without warning, the light from around her blinding for the moment before she adjusted to see her arm cradled in the hold of a blank-faced Joly.

Her sleeves were pulled down, all several of them, revealing blood encrusted knuckles and further ugly black—finger shaped—bruising along her wrist and forearm. She attempted to snatch the offending appendage from his grasp, only to have him clutch down in response. The touch was light, but in her sensitive state it forced another hiss of pain to escape from her lips.

"Fractured, at the very least," he noted, emotionless and in true medical student fashion, the only hint of his distress the lingering shock in his wide eyes. "And by the look of it, intentionally."

From behind him, his usual bottle of alcohol conspicuously missing from his hands, Grantaire looked furious and alarmingly sober. It came as a shock to her, so that she only caught the tail-end of his spat, "—did this?!"

"No one," she replied quickly, instinct forced the words from her lips and through the haze of white noise filling her eardrums. "I tripped."

A dry laugh came from behind her and for the first time Éponine noticed that she was in fact not laying down on the floor, but in someone's lap. She twisted to look, but her side screamed once again in protest. She clapped a hand over it and winced.

Joly counted off quietly, "Broken rib, right side."

The voice from behind her spoke up, a dark sort of amusement in the familiar, "You must have tripped a long way for that."

Recognition came with it and Éponine tensed up. "I did." What right did he have to say anything?

"Bullshit, bull-fucking-shit—"

"No, Grantaire, let's have her tell us more. Where did you trip? Stairs? Sidewalk? Into someone's closed fist?"

Anger and embarrassment welling up, Éponine ripped her arm from Joly's grasp and stood slowly. For a second, the figure beneath her tensed, his hand wavering on her waist as if to drag her back down, but only a slight brush of his fingers against the side of her hip alerting her to his reluctance. She refused Courfeyrac's patient hand and instead leaned heavily against the table. She hissed, "None of your business."

When Éponine turned to escape, rush to the door and to freedom where she didn't have to be made to feel like her heart was being squeezed too tight with their damn care, she had only seconds to give a noise of surprise as she nearly bumped into the sudden figure standing tall and incensed before her.

Enjolras gave an indignant snort, his eyes burning in their sockets in a way she hadn't seen since the protests. He sounded quietly furious, his voice polite and quiet and dangerous. "No, of course it's not our business. It's not like we've seen and talked to you every single day for the last few months, or consider you any measure of an acquaintance. No, of course we're not worthy of being told whether or not you've been beaten within an inch of your life."

This silenced her. Éponine wished she could force her gaze away from his, but it appeared locked by outside forces. She couldn't even tell what shade his eyes were, the dilation so severe that only a thin light circle of color blared outside the brilliant black. Something had upset him greatly, and it shook her to the core to even consider that it could be her state. After a few painful seconds, she muttered, "No need to be so dramatic."

That had been the wrong thing to say.

"He broke your wrist!" Enjolras hissed and slammed his fist on the table, so suddenly and with such force that it almost forced her back, if it wasn't for the fact she was used to being surrounded with men with tempers.

"I broke his jaw!" Éponine shot back, heaving from the effort of not blackening his eye. Or at least, ruining that perfect profile of a nose. He stood, his sheer magnitude of presence engulfing her in a way that should have alarmed her.

Instead, her chest feeling strange and tight, she could only focus in some vague way on the way his hair was mussed, like he'd dragged hands and fingers through it to relieve some sort of stress that hadn't been there before she'd collapsed. Or the quick rise and fall of his chest, fast breaths that fueled his strange anger like gasoline and made her feel a bit faint as her eyes took in how broad-shouldered he was, raised to his full height. His skin was flushed and, light as he was, all traces of how he felt showed plainly.

But still, even with the multitude of others surrounding her and distractions that littered across her mind, she couldn't seem to break away from eyes.

There was a hum from Courfeyrac. "Oh, now there's a him."

She turned on him and glared, wishing for once that the strange man would at least react to her mental threats of murder. "I don't have to say anything. This isn't a trial." Éponine was of the mind that she'd do better at a trial. Less arrogantly handsome men.

"But—"

"What!"

She rounded on Joly, her eyes narrowed into dark slits so furious he almost flinched. At the sight of Joly—who'd only ever tried to help, the stupid, stupid med student—looking scared out of his mind, Éponine released a breath.

This was stupid.

She held out her arms to the still suspicious looking tutor and declared, "If you really want to help then bandage me up. I can't do it myself right now and I am not going to a hospital." This she said loudly, informing the whole lot of them.

Joly nodded and went off to grab medical supplies from the back with a distinctly ticked off Chetta, who shot Éponine a look as if to say that they'd be talking later. She sighed at the thought. First day on the job and she was screwing up. Great.

"I don't suppose we're getting anything more out of you now, huh?" Courfeyrac said aloud, breaking the silence. Éponine didn't respond, simply pursing her lips further. She simply ignored the still looming figure of Enjolras, figuring that if she didn't look at him, he didn't exist. It was a good enough policy, and one she'd employed many times during her father's escapades. She wouldn't meet his eyes again; they seemed liable to suck her up into that strange purgatory that kept her feet still and heart racing.

When Joly returned, he did so with his hands full of several bags worth of bandages and tape that looked as if they'd been collected over the years.

She gave him a strained smile and took a step forward. Then—

"I think I can handle that," a smooth voice cut in.

No.

"No," Éponine said immediately, simply refusing to allow this to happen. Joly's eyes flickered between her own furious ones and that of the equally furious ABC tutor leader beside her.

One secretive and dark slip of a woman and one overprotective emotionally stunted idiot of a man. There was no lesser of these two evils.

His eyes went towards Grantaire, who nodded slowly.

Then Joly shoved the bags of supplies into Enjolras' arms and ran off, presumably to find a safe place to hide. Éponine spluttered in refusal. Courfeyrac let loose an almighty sigh and Jehan snapped a quick picture of the smug smile alighting their leader's face as Éponine nearly stamped her foot down in indignation.

Éponine felt ready to claw someone's eyes out with her almost useless fingers, and wished that the look on Enrjolras' face had been anything other than vague disinterest as he'd rounded on her with a polite smile.

"Let's start."

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"I'm not telling you anything."

"I don't expect you to."

"Nothing. I mean it."

"Of course."

"So there's absolutely no reason for you to do this."

"If you say so."

"And I'll get you back, you know I will."

A hum. "If I actually believed that you'd keep any of the money you cheated off me or any of the tutors, doubtless I would be terrified by your words."

"But then why—"

"Pardon?"

"…Nothing."

"No, please go on. If you were going to ask why I would even bother cleaning your completely accidental wounds—now, stay still—since I am to receive nothing but vitriol and spite for it, then the answer may shock you."

"Does it rhyme with 'you're an asshole'?"

"If you want it to."

"No, what I want is for you to leave me alone, but since it doesn't look—"

"Do you really only think of us like idiots? A group of out of touch young men who aren't able to form the slightly hint of emotional attachment even to someone who practically shoved her way into our lives and forced us to care?"

"I don't follow, monsieur."

"Madam, I am only saying that the group considers you a friend, even if you don't reciprocate."

"Of course I reciprocate!"

"Pardon, I didn't realize that for you being a friend means letting another drive themselves insane with worry over something that only take a second's explanation."

"It's not that. It's not. But, if you forced me to answer, monsieur, at this moment, I will lie. I cannot falsify this. You can push as much as you want, only if you understand that nothing leaving my lips will be the truth."

"I don't want the truth. Keep your secrets."

"Again, I don't follow, monsieur."

With the last bandage fastened around hand, he let his fingers linger, tracing the outline of her bruised knuckles, concentrating on the old barricade wound. That, he touched gently and with care, as if it were holy. Éponine forced back a shiver.

After what seemed like ages, he answered, eyes half-lidded with contemplation, "Enjolras is my name, Éponine, and I would much prefer you use that. And if you must, lie to my face, as long as you can guarantee your own safety. You do have that wretched gun, after all." She opened her mouth to respond, only for him to finally look up and fix his intense eyes upon her face. There was anger in them, yes, but also concern and fear and a strange sort of softness that made her insides clench. "Only know that if you do consider us friends, then grant us the honor of caring for your well-being and not taking our worry as a reason to push us beyond arm's reach."

At this, he let his hands ghost down her now bandaged arms as if to reassure himself they were there. He ended at her hands, retracing the fingers through the gauze. "And most of all, understand that when you need it, your hand can always find purchase in ours for support." As her mind went blank with confusion and wonder, Enjolras dipped his head to brush a kiss against her knuckles that she barely felt through the painkillers. "They are such lovely hands, after all."

From a distance away, and armed with several recording and audiovisual equipment, the rest of the ABC tutors exchanged excited and slightly tearful looks.

He could be taught!