Combeferre's POV

True enough to his word, Courfeyrac shows up at my apartment while I'm studying, with the intentions of helping me. Courfeyrac doesn't study, as he told me, yet he still manages passing grades, which means that he won't be any use to me in the field of actually studying, but he'll either teach me how he retains so much information without looking back at his papers, or he'll take this opportunity to distract me from my schoolwork, therefore dooming me to a community college and a community college only, but time with Courfeyrac is time well spent. He has a way of making you glad that you blew off something important, because he makes himself important.

I rise from my studying position, all the while realizing how tense I am when my head is bowed over tons of textbooks and worksheets, and snag the chance to stretch my body as I stalk towards the front door to invite Courfeyrac in.

Courfeyrac, as a person, is delighted to see me, a smile smacked onto his face with no motives to let go, but Courfeyrac, as a figure who is required to clothe himself by law, is dressed in one of the most hideous things I have ever seen — if Montparnasse were here, he would lose his shit — and I wish I could peel my eyes away, but I'm too fascinated with how Courfeyrac could've ever decided to wear this out in public to do so. His traditional black skinny jeans are acceptable, as that's what our entire friend group wears most often, but his shirt is a profane billboard of fabric that showcases the French translation for "I eat ass" (je mange le cul), which would be nothing more than a t-shirt to people who don't speak the language, but my favorite class in elementary and middle school was French, so I understand, and I also unfortunately have to live with the knowledge that my best friend owns a shirt broadcasting his sexual activities to whomever can understand it.

I can't help but wonder if he wore this shirt to my house for a specific reason, but maybe I'm just overanalyzing things. Courfeyrac may or may not like me back, but I'm interpreting every movement of his as a sign, which is a tad obsessive, and will probably let me down in the end if he defies all evidence and sneaks off with a girl he met at another bar of his. I'm nevertheless glad to see him here, though, despite his atrocious clothing choices and his romantic ambiguity.

"I've come to help you study," Courfeyrac announces, completely oblivious to how much I despise his shirt.

"You're not good at studying."

Taking this into consideration, Courfeyrac shrugs. "I'm good at annoying you, though, and even that is more fun than studying, so I think I should do it."

I roll my eyes. "You must be a saint." I pull away from the door, allowing Courfeyrac to close it on his way in, and return to my spot at the kitchen table amidst piles upon piles of work and scraps with which Courfeyrac will have a field day when he grows bored of studying, as I do all the time.

"Why don't you study somewhere comfortable, like the couch?" Courfeyrac asks, genuinely confused as to why I don't employ an actually sound idea. "You always seem to tense from sitting on a flat chair, just staring at all of this academic garbage on the table."

"First of all, it's not garbage" — Courfeyrac rejects this by raising an eyebrow, so I point a finger at him as a tacit scolding — "and second of all, you have suggested a great idea, so we will now relocate to the couch. Help me carry my stuff, yeah?"

Courfeyrac is nothing short of pleased that I've welcomed his idea into my heart, so he enthusiastically totes some of my textbooks over to the living room, then plopping them down on the coffee table so that he can weightlessly slide onto the couch. However, he comes back to pick up one textbook, left open from when I was reading it right before Courfeyrac arrived, and imbibes some of the words as he waits for me to join him. Once I'm properly settled into the sofa, Courfeyrac declares that he shall read to me the assigned pages of the book, all the while scooting onto my lap for some fucking reason that only he could ever understand.

"The Roaring 20s," Courfeyrac reads, and I assume he's only pausing to allow the title to set in with the listener, but he's actually pausing from disgust. "Are you serious, 'Ferre?"

All I am is serious, so I prompt him to elaborate. "What do you mean?"

My friend rests the textbook upon his lap, which also transfers to my lap, as he's sitting on me, and raises a hand at me, like he's chopping air with it. "Look, the roaring 20s are pretty interesting and all, but in order to learn, you have to experience some of the traditions of the time period."

Courfeyrac's character is a wondrous aggregate of complexity, bursting with both good ideas and bad ideas, and he proposes them as if they were all brilliant, even when everyone else can see that they're oftentimes terrible. This is one of those terrible ideas. Overall, it's illogical. Pretending to live in the 20s doesn't do anything except insinuate a mindset into myself, and the mindset of the 20s was that of racism and bigotry. It won't help me learn the facts required to pass classes. That time period doesn't exist anymore, so it's trivial to replicate it.

"Does that include segregating my ancestors?" I deadpan.

Courfeyrac is struck by the realization that I'm correct, and that he's made a mistake by not narrowing things down to only a few traditions, but before the time at which he thinks I'll become enraged, he revises his offer. "Yeah, sorry about that, 'Ferre. What I mean is that you need to live life on the edge!"

"That's exactly what I've been telling myself," I mutter.

"Yet you haven't done anything about your obvious lack of ambition," Courfeyrac quips, spiking me with the painful truth. "You're transforming into a rusty sea urchin."

"Well the problem is that I don't know how to go about living life on the edge."

"You have to stop examining things for every little detail, and just do what you feel nice doing in that exact moment." Courfeyrac thinks for a moment so he can collect more advice, and he pops to life with another piece. "Become a hedonist — it'll help."

Confessing to the humor of Courfeyrac's recommendation with a laugh, I counter, "I'm not becoming a hedonist, Courf."

His eyebrow shifts. "Then how are you going live on the edge?"

I take my time pondering this, all the while Courfeyrac staring at me to detect any subtle facial signals and to hear my verdict exactly as and when it comes, but I only think of one thing, something I have been contemplating a lot before today, something about which I was ambivalent and scared, something I am facing now.

The hint of a smirk is the last thing Courfeyrac sees before my lips consume him, grasping at what I've wanted but never grabbed until now, a bed of fire and passion, a home I've made for myself.

Courfeyrac wastes no time attempting to recover, instead speeding full force into the kiss, like he, too, has been waiting for this for ages. His body is warm, I find, most likely as a side effect from all of the hormones building up in the room, portions of his angst diminishing and being replaced by nothing but love for me and for this connected action.

We make no room for thinking in this, only labeling ourselves as hedonists now that Courfeyrac has advised it, and it is solely our bodies who take the wheel. We feel what our bodies feel. We are dictated by our physicality, not by our apprehensions nor our emotions, and it's fucking wonderful.

My hand, previously ensnared by his mass of hickory locks, now trails down his back, eliciting shivers deep inside of Courfeyrac's spine, and stops to cup his ass for a firmer position while our mouths grind together in harmony with each other.

Courfeyrac, being the tease that he is, begins to rock into me, which includes jamming the lap of his jeans right up against my own, and swaying as if an ocean wave. He's fueled by the minuscule groan I export, causing him to rock harder, and export a groan from himself, too. A buildup of tension swims through my jeans, and his as well.

Courfeyrac whimpers my name against the current of heat, the short syllable of the nickname he's given me that has never sounded better than it does in this moment. He steadies himself by placing his palm against my chest, where he can easily notice my heartrate whirring at two hundred beats per minute, while my fingers lurk under the waistband of his skinnies, and search around within the space of a few centimeters for the elastic of his boxers. Both of us deriving pleasure from me toying with his hipbones, I don't advance below that point, and we are perfectly content.

It's all we ask from each other.

~~~~~

A/N: I love how this was the most sexually intense thing I've ever written and it wasn't even intense and I was still uncomfortable

I'm so weak

~Dakoterrible