"I'm going to hurt you, you know," he says, his eyes webbed in red and his mouth tasting of whiskey.

They sit across from each other, cross legged on his bed, wrapped only in sweat and moonlight. She reaches up, pressing her thumb to his bottom lip with a derisive laugh. He may have his words and his podium but she has her claws and her fangs.

"I'd like to see you try."

He's looking at her unseeing, gaze foggy, as he slowly pulls her hand away.

"I won't try. It just happens. It happens to everyone that tries to get close." Suddenly his eyes lock on her's with a force that almost dared her to look away. "I'm sorry. Those aren't words I say often, but know that now. I am sorry."

They're brushing their teeth when he tells her. He says it so casually, like he's going out to go pick up dinner or something.

"Hey," he says, tapping his toothbrush against the sink, meeting her eyes in the mirror. "I'm going to study in Russia for a year."

A thin line of toothpaste foam trails out from the corner of her mouth as it falls open. Enjolras laughs a little and wipes the foam away, his eyes twinkling slate-blue under the poor bathroom lighting. Even the horrid fluorescent light turns his hair blazing gold against alabaster skin. His smile is positively radiant and it makes her want to scream.

"It's an exchange program for the university," he continues, leaning against the vanity as Éponine rinses the toothpaste from her mouth. "I'm going to study at our sister school in Moscow. I mean, I had to fight tooth and nail to get them to disregard that demonstration last year, but I'm fairly certain that Professor Lamarque had something to do with-"

"You're leaving," she finally is able to choke out.

"Well, yes. But you know, it's not like I'm going to be unreachable. You can call me all you want…" His hand is against her cheek, coaxing her closer to him. Asking quietly for her to follow. "It won't be easy, but this is just such an amazing opportunity for me, you know that. It's not easy, nothing is, but I still want it. I still want you."

A shark will die if it stops swimming.

A sharp inhale. A set jaw. A strained smile. "You're right," she chirps. "You've got a phone. I've got a phone. And I am awesome at phone sex."

"It's been a week, Enjolras."

"I know," he answers as the interference from the line crackles around his voice. "I know. I was in jail and I wasn't granted my phone call."

"You fucking idiot. You're going to get kicked out of your program," she jams her thumbnail between her lips and starts chewing.

"No, they didn't even take my name. They just threw us all in a cell for a few days and they let us out, which sounds ridiculous because it is. And before you get angry with me, they are the ones who turned the demonstration into a riot."

The silence between them is more than pregnant. It's palpable and brimming and all those other words that mean something needs to be said; that a fight needs to happen. That both parties have about a thousand things to say and only one way to say them. A silence that demands to be heard.

He's got her in a death roll and he doesn't even know it.

She rips at her thumbnail with her teeth and then spits it out. "I'm not doing this anymore."

A sigh on the other end. Éponine doesn't need to see him to know what he's doing on his side of the world. His eyes are screwed shut, a grimace offset by flared nostrils. He's probably got the phone pressed so hard against his face it's leaving an imprint.

"Fine. Okay."

"Okay," she repeats.

"I told you, Éponine," he breathes. The meaty sound of his fist hitting something hard crashes through the phone line. "I told you."

"You say a lot of things."

"I don't want this."

"I don't care," she blasts back, a little too quick. A little too sharp. "Do you want to talk about it when you get back?"

"Maybe."

She repeats it back to him and she could have said goodbye but her lips are numb, so she doesn't really have much of a clue. There's a tinkling crash as her cell phone smashes against the wall, not so much exploding as crumpling. It looks pathetic. It feels pathetic. She wants to be angry at him for being right, for hurting her, but the only thing she can think about is this fucking phone and how she'd rip out it's guts to fix it, if only she knew how.