Your Combeferre, and I sincerely want to know everything, but I'll restrict it to 1, 4, 6, 10, 20, and 28.
1. What foods do they love, and what foods do they refuse to eat?
Combeferre’s a pasta and bread guy, but he firmly believes in the theory of “everything in moderation.” which is to say, everything except banana peppers and green olives. his mom makes a killer potato soup that reminds him of better days.
4. Who did they look up to the most as a child? Who do they look up to as an adult?
as a child, definitely his mother. he was used to being looked up to by all his younger siblings, but his mother is his rock and taught him everything he knows about being there for people. she read to him at night every night until he started to read to her, and he looked up to all the heroes in all the story books she brought home for him. as an adult, he still looks up to her, and having grown up and branched out a bit in his education, he looks up to the big name peacemakers like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. more than anything, he looks up to his friends, because they teach him how to be more dimensional, less static, more mobile. they teach him how to love actively rather than just from the sidelines.
6. What languages do they speak? Do they have any idiosyncrasies or identifiable patterns of speech, word usages, etc?
english, french, (though it’s not spoken exactly) latin, and a tiny bit of italian. it comes from being a voracious reader and the nagging thought that one can never know exactly how much integrity something loses when it’s translated. he’s very specific and particular about his words and how he uses them, and he has the tendency to touch his fingertips to his lips and hum a soft, single note when he can’t figure out the perfect word to use. he has seen words go to waste too often to use them flippantly, and he sees his vocabulary as the sharpest weapon in his arsenal.
10. What makes them feel safe or secure? What makes them feel insecure or unsafe?
being home, above all else, is how he feels safe. he generally doesn’t believe in the “anywhere I lay my head” method of defining home; home is the walls of the house he grew up in, his bedroom at the top of the stairs and the sound of his kid siblings crashing around in the hall wrestling over something small, the clockwork of a well-cooked homemade meal, sitting at a dining room table. home is candlelight, home is dumping out pots and pans full of rainwater captured in the act of dripping through cracks in the ceiling.
and home is also where he is now, a full-size bed in a big enough room where his will-be doctor roommate can’t sleep a full night and wakes himself up every few hours just to make sure he’s still breathing. home is doing homework at the scratched, ugly dining room table that was carried in from a street curb where it would’ve been thrown away. it is his new set of brothers, and for all their loudness, he loves them. home is helping people. home is being there.
what makes him feel insecure is anything that threatens his loved ones. he puts everyone he cares about before himself, and sometimes just realizing how little he has the capacity to care for himself is enough to set him off-kilter. feeling unsure or unable.
20. Do they like to travel? How do they pack and prepare?
Combeferre loves to travel, though he doesn’t do it often. he travels mostly to go back to his family home, to visit for holidays and long weekends and whenever he can. though it defies the logic that tends to define him, he likes the feeling of weightlessness and anonymity that comes with being on a train or airplane, knowing that everyone around him has a thousand stories that make them who they are just simmering under a thin surface that can only be broken by beginning a conversation. but he usually doesn’t begin conversations, content to look out a window or read a book. he likes the feeling of moving that fast, that far, knowing that he can always come back to wherever he’s just left.
he packs his bags with just enough measure and precision to not stress himself out. he packs items in groups rather than in outfits: shirts, then pants, then underwear and socks, toiletries, books, chargers for his electronics. he doesn’t pack until the night before he leaves because the pressure makes him focus. he lays out his clothes for the next day on top of the suitcase, mostly folded. he tries to get a good night’s sleep.
28. What is a gift that they have received that was especially touching or significant?
his mother gave him a copy of Little Women with a beautiful inscription in the front. he keeps it on his bookshelf so that he can always see it.
