Prompt: Graduation fic.

He finds her on the bleachers at the edge of the football field.

Her back is to him, but he can still make out her feet dangling over the side.

He'd thrown his own cap, as per tradition - not that it particularly mattered to him, but he distinctly remembered the disheartened cries of 'killjoy!' when he thought to opt out of it - and when all settled down, he found it had disappeared. Honestly, he might have actually put some effort into looking for it, if she hadn't disappeared as well.

Now, when he settles silently down beside her, he notes that she is holding a graduation cap. Her fingers are pulling gently at the tassel, and he can just barely see his name, neatly etched on the inside.

Two mysteries solved, then.

It isn't quite dark yet, but it's enough to clearly make out the stream of cars that she's fixed her eyes on, with headlights glowing in the dimness; she casts her eyes to him and offers a faint smile before looking away again.

"Enjolras. So you switched out the red for, what, more of the same?" She speaks of the switch from graduation gown to jacket. He shrugs in response; it was mostly rhetorical, anyway.

The silence that then falls between them is not comfortable, or, at least, not as it usually is.

She asked him a question earlier. From the way she acts now, it seems to be weighing as heavily on her mind as it is on his.

(What is he supposed to say? No, there is no way any of their group of friends will leave?

That he has more important things to think of, or is supposed to, but that he has thought of her more often than he should, and why would he ever just let them drift apart?)

Even when she speaks, it is difficult to pull himself from his thoughts, because what she says is "we are not going to fall apart" and this mirrors so clearly what she asked before that he must pause to consider whether this was imagined or not.

She's looking away from him again when she repeats it.

He wants to smile - to grin more, actually, which is a bit beyond him, so instead he shrugs and asks her - because sometimes the man with the silver tongue is at a loss for the words he wants to say - if she plans to keep holding that forever or if she's going to give it back.

She smiles, finally turning away from the sight of the traffic, and says that, no, she will keep it - unless he's willing to trade?

She reaches over to tug at his red jacket so it is clear what she means.

It isn't particularly cold, and she is not really in the habit of doing this, but there is , something in her gaze that makes him slide off the jacket in order to offer it up - and why not? This may be the last time they see each other for quite a while, if she is right and it is not the last time, as she has decided.

Éponine gives a flash of teeth, brilliant against dark skin. She plunks the hat atop his head, then leans forward to brush a curl away.

Her fingers linger too long - or not long enough, he thinks - before she pulls away. There is a laugh in her voice when she speaks. "You can have it back," she declares, curling the syllables around slowly as if tasting them, "when you see me again. Incentive."

He thinks, as he watches her hop down the bleachers, he did not need any incentive, but then, it's a nice excuse.