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“I think in a week or so,” Enjolras muses, sifting through the final pages of his book, “I’m going to propose.”
From his lean against a tree out in the field on this uncommonly pleasant afternoon, one field among many of Grantaire’s acres and estates throughout rural France, Grantaire is oddly silent. It allows Enjolras to finish his reading, a rare grace. Normally his friend enjoys playing the fool, but if they're alone, he is more likely to be serious.
“Next week?” He says, deep. “Enjolras. The woman hates you. I know your grasp on the fairer sex is limited, but she said it outright.”
“We had a misunderstanding,” Enjolras explains. “I was undereducated on women’s issues. I was arrogant. I’ve seen my mistakes. We had a discussion. I chased her in the rain.”
“You chased her in the rain,” Grantaire repeats, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I think some may consider it romantic.”
“Do you?”
Enjolras laughs. “No, of course not. Besides, the woman you’re courting surely also hated when you left, but you seem drawn together again now that we’re back in town. It’s the perfect timing.”
“You didn’t want me to marry her,” Grantaire grits out, suddenly aggravated. Indeed. Enjolras had cornered him in a fit of inspiration in his own bedchambers, unable to sleep. Grantaire. We must leave the countryside at once and return to the city. I’ve had an idea for my revolution. His childhood friend’s characteristic reticence and then queerly vulnerable assent.
I can’t leave Eponine.
You must. Besides, she—
She what, sir?
Her mother, her family, her attention. She hardly looks upon you the way I’d expect— The speech had been overly long. Grantaire had tried to make them get up, get tea, discuss, but Enjolras had been so determined to finish the conversation he’d planted himself at the edge of Grantaire’s bed, made his case with a hand on his friend’s quilted chest, right over his heart. Grantaire’s hooded but beloved face in the dark. So close to his own. Listening to Enjolras’ fervent whispering, so as not to wake any of the servants. You must come with me. Tomorrow.
I’ll follow you, Grantaire had said then.
“Well,” Enjolras says, “no. Her affections seemed—“ on Marius Pontmercy, not on you, where any affections should rightfully be. “Not enough. For someone as devoted as you to his friends and, I assume, a future wife. I didn’t want you hurt. I may have to apologize to Musichetta for that before I propose. She adores her sister. Anyway, Grantaire, you and I fight and it makes us dearer companions. I don’t see why I can’t engage in friendly debate with my future wife.”
“Ah,” releases Grantaire, like he’s been struck. He does not often speak with such brevity.
“Actually,” says Enjolras, “if you still love her, Musichetta confirmed to me that Eponine still speaks fondly of you. Perhaps that opportunity is not closed off to you. And now that I have heard tell from Musichetta that Eponine truly cares for you, it is easier for me to believe. It was my foolishness to separate you last year. Forgive me.”
“Stop.” Grantaire’s voice is dull.
“Why? You were taken with her last summer. I suspect if I hadn’t intervened you’d be married now. Perhaps you can reignite her interest. Courfeyrac doesn’t think it so strange when I wrote him—“
“Stop.”
Finally, Enjolras does. He looks his longtime friend and frustrating compatriot in the face, and sees his typical resignation. Enjolras doesn’t know what he could be punishing himself for now.
“This woman,” Grantaire says, almost desperately soft. “You truly love her?”
Enjolras gives him a slanted look. “I think love is not an achievable goal for a man like me. She’s well-read. She’s independent. I will go about my business and I will lead the revolution, and when I die, she will handle the finances with honor. I presume it’s love for you, but recall we are different.”
“No,” Grantaire disagrees glumly, “no, it’s not love for me either.”
“Then why court her at all?” Enjolras asks, baffled. “The Bennetts are nobility but there’s no motivation in their financial standing. You’ve picked the quieter of the two, the more flexible, I assumed—”
“You assumed I was shallow. That I would choose a meek woman to go with my own lack of inspiration.”
“I assumed you were besotted,” Enjolras protests, quieter now.
“I promise you she is not so meek, nor so lacking in her own opinions,” Grantaire says, and it needles Enjolras, for a reason he can’t name. He scrambles to continue. To make it make sense.
“Either way. Grantaire, Musichetta and I have a clear understanding. She knows where I stand. If you don’t love her, it’s cruelty. I never thought—“ he hardens “—I assumed you weren’t so careless with your affections. That you wouldn’t play with the heart of someone who actually cares for you. Sometimes I feared it! But I always told myself that was the one thing you wouldn’t stoop to,” Enjolras, please, comes soft but he plows over him, “genuine relationships the one moral you’d uphold, and now I see instead you are truly a—“
“They are sisters!”
It’s burst out of him. Enjolras blinks, feeling his rage ebb in his confusion. “…sisters?”
“They are sisters,” Grantaire says into his hands over his face. The wind is picking up across the field, the leaves rustling, making it harder to hear.
Suddenly, Enjolras feels the cad. “You don’t love Eponine. Your affections lie elsewhere.”
“Yes,” Grantaire whispers.
“Oh, Grantaire,” he takes his old friend’s shoulders in his hands, horrified. “Grantaire, had I known—and here I am preaching to you on cruelty. When I’m courting the woman you love and I don’t even feel that way about her. I had no idea. I’m so sorry, you must believe me. If you wish it, I will stop my courtship immediately. You can begin, and I can find another woman amenable to the type of marriage I—“
“No.” Grantaire’s next words are dark, miserable. “I don’t love Musichetta either.”
Enjolras swallows. “Grantaire. The youngest Bennett is barely twelve. Even among our peers who see no wrong in marrying a girl not yet eligible, she is too young to love. You can’t—Grantaire, you can’t mean—“
“I don’t know why I expected this conversation to go any better than any of our others,” Grantaire laughs with no mirth. “I—“ And his brown eyes dip down. Enjolras can barely comprehend it. He sweeps the fields surrounding them with a gaze, and then steps in closer. “You can run to your university friends. You can challenge me to a duel after. Just know that will mean death for me, Enjolras, I could never harm you.”
“I don’t understand,” Enjolras says breathlessly, and that’s when Grantaire kisses him. “Ah,” he burbles against his friend’s lips, and that’s when Grantaire makes to pull away. But it isn’t—that feels wrong, and Enjolras abhors wrongness, can’t stop himself from fighting it. He grabs Grantaire by the lapels and reels him back in.
It seems Grantaire is more surprised than he by this turn of events. Instead of resuming the kiss that has made Enjolras’ stomach turn over in joy, he tumbles them both down into the grass.
“No,” he moans, alarmed. “No, no.”
“Why not?” Enjolras demands immediately. “Finish what you started.” For once.
“That is no reason for kissing,” Grantaire complains, but does as he’s told. And for once, Enjolras doesn’t care if there’s a reason. If there’s reason at all. He thinks, I have dreamt of this, and thought it was some kind of misfiring then. A longheld brotherly love combining poorly with first puberty and then, when puberty no longer served as an excuse, loneliness. He knew he could never love a woman, not the way he’d seen, sweetly or not so sweetly desiring like Courfeyrac or his other friends. But a man. He’d never realized it could be a man. This man, who is kissing him with abandon and pushing him against the grass like they’re about to—
“Can men tumble other men?” Enjolras manages.
Grantaire stares at him from above, flat. How can he be so expressionless, when his face is as red as his mouth? When Enjolras has seen him rudely mocking and gloriously delighted and loosely warm but never—this nothingness?
“Yes,” comes the answer Enjolras longs for. “But—I won’t do that to you.” Enjolras flushes. Of course. That Enjolras even thought of such a thing, that he said it—he’s spent his youthful life in books, in the confines of a too-large house among finery, longing to burn it away. “Enjolras. Consider what you’re asking me for. I was content to just—to just be able to visit you. To have wives beloved to one another, that would beg us to accompany them to each other. I would never expect you to…” He wipes something from his eye. Enjolras has never seen him cry sober in adulthood. “Don’t do this to me,” he pleads.
“I—but you’re a rake,” Enjolras murmurs. “You slept with all the widows. You don’t—“
“What does that matter,” Grantaire snaps.
“You’re just not…” Enjolras says. Like me. Like I’ve realized I am.
“I call it being Grecian. There’s other words. Invert. That hasn’t seemed right, either, the fairer sex doesn’t repulse me.” He moves to sit up. Enjolras wishes he wouldn’t. As usual, Grantaire defies him, spoken or unspoken. “Sex isn’t necessarily love, just like marriage isn’t necessarily love. You’ve worked at least one of those things out. I trust your intelligence to make the next jump.”
And Enjolras, for all his faults emotionally, can. When it’s presented to him so plainly, of course he can.
“You love me,” he realizes. “Like husband and wife.”
“Not like that, I just said.” Grantaire looks profoundly sad. “Sure, Enjolras. In your honorable, perfect conception of love that even you do not uphold, I love you like a wife does her husband. More like a lover does her gentleman caller, praying a tryst means anything to him when it clearly never will. Knowing she’s ruined. For anything and anyone.”
The yawning gap between them that Enjolras has felt for years, felt even when he was hesitantly jubilant at their return to being neighbors and traveling together, begins to close.
“I love you like that,” he says. Immediately corrects: “no. I love you better than that.” Grantaire stands. “Don’t run,” Enjolras commands. Even grass-stained and newly well-kissed, sprawled in a field, he feels powerful.
“What do we do?” Grantaire whispers. “I would follow you anywhere.”
He had before. He always had, and suddenly, it comes with perfect clarity to Enjolras the depth of the why. It was following in a different way than Combeferre, than Courfeyrac.
“We must tell the women we’re courting the truth,” Enjolras says. “We marry them if they consent. We are in love. Then we live out my rebellion together.” His rare concession to his stubbornness: “if you’ll have me.”
“I will,” he’s nodding, the most solemn Enjolras has ever seen. “I will have you if you have me.”
“I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.” –Jane Austen