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It was an accident. Enjolras certainly put no thought into it; one moment he was standing nose-to-nose with Grantaire, and the next he had his hands on Grantaire's wrists, and their long bones were flexing within the circle of his fingers.
Grantaire was trained in fighting, and could have slipped his hold without a second's thought. Instead he went quiet, and Enjolras was close enough to hear his breathing shift, to see his eyelashes lower until they were stark against his cheeks.
He let go, discomfited. Grantaire gave him a brilliant and goading smile like that had been exactly his object, and therefore he'd won that round, and they went back to their quarrel.
The second time was less easily overlooked.
Enjolras was delivering a speech about the gravity of Perier supplanting Laffitte as President of the Council of Ministers; this might seem to be simply the new king replacing established men with one more malleable, but it was more than that, and it went deeper. Orléans might wear his trappings with more grace than the late Bourbon, but he was nevertheless as much an encroachment – more so, in fact, because he wore an innocent face, and in actions such as this he revealed himself. Laffitte had been one of those fools who invited him to take the throne, a moderate liberal and a decent man, and this was how he was repaid; this could not mean anything but Orléans' intention to control his administration absolutely, and put down all possible disorder with the bayonet and grape-shot –
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Grantaire nodding mockingly along, keeping time like some sort of demented metronome, undercutting his best points. It was incredibly irritating, and it was the worse for the fact that Grantaire listened well enough to use his words against him later, but gave the impression of paying no real heed at all.
Then Grantaire abandoned even the mocking ghost of attention and reach for a bottle, and without turning his head to look at him or breaking in his speech, Enjolras put out his hand and stopped him.
He continued his oration, hitting all the necessary points, and near the end of it he could tell that he had them; that they would be on their guard when Louis Philippe gave his false promises, that they would look beneath his conciliatory facade to the Royalist wolf within. Then he concluded, and glanced to Grantaire as he too often did, to see what he thought.
It was only then Enjolras realised that he'd been holding Grantaire's wrist for the length of his speech, and wild ungovernable Grantaire had been letting him. He released him at once, and Grantaire blinked twice, looking as surprised as he.
“Your pardon,” Enjolras said stupidly. The muscle and sinew in his arm felt strange from holding the same position so long. Embarrassment pricked him to add sharply, like he had intended precisely what he'd done, “If you insist on disrupting our meetings with your bibulousness, you cannot grudge what steps I take to prevent you.”
Grantaire didn't reply, reaching for the bottle as though Enjolras had never intervened at all. His expression dared Enjolras to protest, but Enjolras didn't stop him this time. The meeting was over, and he had no rights over Grantaire's person, however insolently he drank wine right from the neck of the bottle without troubling himself for a glass.
He frowned and turned aside, but from the corner of his eye he saw Grantaire touching the skin where Enjolras's hand had held him, tracing the invisible circle like a convict the faded mark of his shackles, and the look on his face was almost reverent.
Enjolras possibly should have thought more on that, but he was busy; he had lectures and examinations and meetings and demonstrations, he had streets beginning to teem with anger instead of simple resignation, he had the Orléanists making foolish moves and throwing away whatever goodwill they'd won –
So he didn't, but the next time Grantaire deafened and bored them all with a ranting complaint, Enjolras put half-finished thought into action and took his wrist, and watched as his train of argument petered out half-spoken. The sudden change in Grantaire was like an enchantment, a gamecock drawn up for a fight soothing into a turtledove.
It was useful to be able to touch Grantaire's wrist with two fingers and watch him falter; to hold it curled in his hand and feel Grantaire's pulse flicker against his fingertips like a trapped moth. Sometimes, when Enjolras was truly out of temper, his nails pressed slightly, conveying his displeasure; and it began to seem that the tighter Enjolras held him, the more still Grantaire went, and the more he leaned towards him. It became such a habit that Enjolras often forgot he was doing it, and found himself absently brushing the fine skin with his thumb like a caress, and turned to meet Grantaire staring at him with his blue eyes dark and slightly mad in their intensity.
It was a sort of magic he'd stumbled onto, this trick of making Grantaire go quiet. He should have used it sparingly. He should have at least reserved it for their more private quarrels, the ones drawn away from the main meetings, the quick exchanges at the table that often went without being overheard. Grantaire liked an audience when he went Enjolras-baiting, but he didn't need one.
He knew it had gone too far one night upstairs at the Musain; a quiet night, with nothing on their agenda but convivial brotherhood. There was no reason to fight, but Grantaire was as full of trouble as a pot of water coming to boil, restlessly waspish, turning from one sacred ideal to tear down another.
“If you will not behave, you will leave,” Enjolras told him, and Grantaire gave him his brightest smile, sharp as a knife in an alleyway.
“Will you make me? You're welcome to try, but you would fail. You're taller, certainly, and no one has ever denied that you are well-made – least of all I – but in the ring I could throw you three times out of three and not work up a sweat. That's the problem with stiff necks and unbowing spines; you can't bend, and therefore must break.”
“You might hold the strength of the body over that of the mind,” Enjolras said, “but that's not a struggle I would value winning.”
“A shame, for I would enjoy a bout. Clean and honest fighting, body to body – but what do you know of that?”
The others were watching them, and Grantaire's smile was maddening, as if he truly was daring Enjolras to strip down and turn the floor of the Musain into one of his wrestling hells.
Enjolras could hear the others latching on to his meaning, making jests and calculating odds, offering bets on the probable winner. Courfeyrac, the traitor, had pulled his betting book from his breast pocket and borrowed a stump of pencil from Jehan.
“Enough,” he said repressively, and put out his hand.
Grantaire was tractable the rest of the night and it went well, slipping back into the friendly gathering full of discussion Enjolras had envisaged, without their resident imp of perversity trying to poke it into a hornet's nest.
When the quiet late evening turned into early morning, most of them were still there, although admittedly several were asleep in their chairs or on the surface of the tables. The music had long ago stopped, and the fire had almost died, and it was at moments like these that Enjolras felt closest to these friends of his, these men of good heart who thought and felt as he did in a world full of those too stupid or too disaffected or too malignant to care.
He even had enough goodwill to spare for his own particular bane, sleeping with his dark head buried in his arms. His wrist wasn't available, so Enjolras contented himself with a curl or two, winding them around his fingers as he discussed the changing temperament of the city with Bahorel and Feuilly.
They were springy and surprisingly silken, and once or twice Enjolras found himself distracted from his conversation by their softness; but the hour was late, and he was tired, and it really was time they all went home to their beds.
Back at his lodgings, Combeferre took off his coat and stood by the fireplace. Courfeyrac, who had pushed a dazed Marius off onto Bossuet to see home and followed them, had now commandeered an armchair, throwing himself untidily across it and hooking his knees over one arm. One leg swung back and forth, keeping a beat.
“Power corrupts,” Combeferre remarked, hands clasped loosely behind his back. He sounded like he was simply picking up the thread dropped at the Musain, a gently professorial meandering. “We've had this conversation many times, haven't we? When power is placed in the hands of a single person, with no checks and balances upon that power, relying only on their will to wield it – it cannot but go ill.”
“Allow me to provide the footnote,” Courfeyrac said from the chair. “Grantaire is not your dog, Enjolras. You cannot train him to heel.”
It was said kindly enough, but it was meant to shock, and it did, like a sudden slap. And the worst of it was that it set off a train of conjecture in Enjolras's head unwilling; Grantaire leaning against his knee like a hunting hound, tense coiled body gone lax and sweet, letting Enjolras stroke his hair. Perhaps Grantaire would hum a little in his throat – he had a good voice, deep and true, and it was yet another careless waste that he never used it for anything but arguing and vulgar drinking songs. Perhaps he would turn his face into Enjolas's hand, and kiss his palm –
His friends were looking at him.
“He's better,” Enjolras said defensively. “He drinks less, and rarely to the point of unconsciousness, and he has ceased to shout or argue or fight as often–”
“Indeed,” Courfeyrac said, lifting a speaking eyebrow. “He's not himself.”
That cut Enjolras short and left him wordless, and it was Combeferre's turn.
“You do it for Grantaire's own good?” he asked, with a scepticism worthy of their conversation's subject. “That has never been a particular object of yours, and I cannot think, even if you mean well, you know what you are playing at.”
“Of course he does not know,” Courfeyrac said, and threw out a despairing hand in his direction. “Look at him! He is fumbling in the dark like a stripling.”
“If I am doing wrong, I will stop it,” Enjolras said. They had spoken over his head long enough. They had spoken of this long enough. It had been such a wordless, nameless thing, half-imagined and wholly private, between him and Grantaire alone – he did not like them talking about it. “You do well to correct me; I will correct myself in turn. Good night.”
He was careful after that. Grantaire could be as wild and willful as he wished, and Enjolras would not stop him. Or, as it turned out, he would and could be drawn into argument, but he would not go beyond the bounds he had set himself. Even when Grantaire waylaid him outside the Musain and would not be brushed easily aside.
“Sweet Antinous,” Grantaire said, and his wine-red mouth smiled, but his eyes were tigerish, “you walk away from a debate failing to drive home your point? You? Are you ill?”
“I have done nothing but wrangle with you all evening,” Enjolras said. “Can you wonder if I'm tired of it?”
It had been a week, and he had not touched Grantaire, no matter how he pricked and prodded and taunted; and when that failed, had drunk himself stupid and belligerent with his eyes on Enjolras all the while. One night he had picked a fight with a stranger in the street outside the cafe where they were standing now, loud enough to be heard even over the music upstairs, and turned up the next day with a bruise shading his eye and swollen knuckles.
It was now going a little brown, and it made him look like rough, like a worker. When he smiled tonight he showed his teeth, and his chin was unshaven, and the full effect was something fierce.
Looking at him, Enjolras couldn't understand how Combeferre or Courfeyrac believed there was anything within his power to damage this man; he could barely remember Grantaire going milky calm under his touch. It was like a strange dream that made no sense and had faded on waking.
“Fight with me some more - à l'outrance, if you will.” Enjolras raised an eyebrow, and Grantaire's smile went slightly crooked. "Oh, you could slay me with a word. Don't doubt your powers.”
That was uncomfortably close to what Enjolras had been thinking. “Could I?” he asked. “What could I do to injure you? You do that well enough yourself.”
“If it displeases you,” Grantaire said; “– if it displeases you–”
“Say the word? But you never listen,” Enjolras said in an explosion of tightly-held frustration, and his hands curled themselves into fists, and he found he had taken half a step forward without his feet consulting his brain.
Grantaire looked startled, and then a moment later, strangely satisfied. “I listen,” he said. “But I don't obey. Does that bother you so much?”
They looked at each other in the dark street, and Enjolras was suddenly and fervently glad that few of their friends lingered upstairs and were unlikely to pass them, and that Combeferre had already taken himself and his grave judging eyes home with a headache.
Grantaire looked steadily back, and took his own turn moving closer.
Enjolras lifted his hand; he wasn't sure whether it was to push him away, or perhaps to settle on his sleeve and draw him closer. In a spasm of indecision it curled into itself and straightened again, and in the end he reached out to touch the edge of the bruise darkening Grantaire's eye.
Grantaire let him. He didn't move a fraction; in fact, he seemed to have frozen where he stood, like a man afraid to startle a bird that had begun to eat from his hand. Only his eyelids moved, shuttering briefly before opening again.
Enjolras traced the shape of it carefully, keeping to the side of the skin that hadn't turned bilious shades of purple and brown and creeping yellow. Then he touched the bruise itself. It didn't feel any different under his fingers, but something had changed in the way Grantaire was breathing, and Enjolras realised that he was holding his own breath.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not much.” The unmarked side of his face was yellow-gold from the thrown light of a nearby lamp. “Press harder, and it will.”
“I don't,” Enjolras began, and faltered. He couldn't lie with Grantaire looking at him like that, almost daring him to. Instead of finishing his sentence he increased the pressure of his touch by incremental degrees – softly, softly – and was rewarded with a sharp indrawn breath.
The sound reminded him what he was doing, and he tore his hand away as though the softness of Grantaire's skin had burned and thrust it in his pocket. “I should go,” he said. “I should – I must go.”
“It's beginning to be a habit for you, walking away from challenges,” Grantaire observed, tilting his head the way he did when he was about to say something provoking. “Coward.”
It struck too raw, and Enjolras did what he always did when attacked and struck back harder. “How can you call me that? I am working to effect change, I am willing to spend, to give my life – how can you say that, who sits all day in cafes and does nothing but waste his?”
“Mm,” Grantaire said, and he had stepped closer again. There was a foot of space between them now, no more. “And what changes have you wrought, mighty shaper of new worlds? You are like an ant trying to stop the sea coming in all alone, and all you can carry is one little grain of sand. We killed a king, and got a council of little kings; we set up an Emperor, and then we tore him down and welcomed the Bourbons home; and now Bourbon replaces Bourbon - under another name, but the tiger does not change its stripes, does it? Thousands died for each, and all they did was exchange one for another, and that is no change at all.”
He'd taken phrases and logic from Enjolras's own speech and woven them from a spur to action into a license to sit, drink and be idle, and watch the world continue to spin as it would whether you raised a finger or not, and that made Enjolras want to throttle him, or at least shove him backwards until his back fetched up against the wall.
He was taller. Grantaire might know more holds and throws, but with the element of surprise and the advantage of height and reach, Enjolras could do much. So he shoved, and Grantaire went, and Enjolras stepped forward after him into the shadows.
The impact certainly startled Grantaire – for all of a moment. Some of his hair had fallen into his face and he laughed with genuine delight. “Well done! What clean fighting is this!”
“I like you better when you're quiet,” Enjolras said, vicious, before he could think better of it.
He would have taken it back, but Grantaire's laughter stopped, and when his edged smile came back it cut sharper. “Oh, I know.”
Half a foot, maybe. Enjolras's hands were still curled around Grantaire's shoulders where he had seized him. The linen of Grantaire's shirt was soft and crumpled under his touch, a thin layer between them. He would not go further. He would not.
“I have not used you as I should lately,” he said. It was a confession that should have taken away at least a little of the binding pressure that had been slowly tightening around his chest ever since he had stumbled onto the trick of making Grantaire go quiet, but it didn't. He still felt as if no matter how deeply he breathed he could never draw a full lungful.
“No, you haven't,” Grantaire agreed easily enough; too easily. “You've barely looked at me this past week, except when I've made you. I like it better when you're looking, Enjolras. And if you like me quiet – shut me up."
It was a new line of attack, a new form of challenge. Enjolras been stupid to imagine that he had found a weapon that would give him the upper hand with Grantaire, even if it were not so dishonorable – stupid not to have foreseen that it could and would be turned back upon him like this. He wanted to shut Grantaire's mouth so badly it was an ache.
Grantaire was waiting expectantly. When Enjolras failed to move, the eager look started to fade, and the line of his mouth went acid.
“Tell me about the future then instead, little demagogue. You want to tear down this latest Louis – and now seems like such a good time, doesn't it? He's weakened; Madame la Duchesse is gathering the legitimists to her banner. What support shall he have, who will never have the love of republicans, who has earned the loathing of those who call themselves Royalists, who is losing the center ground on which he stands even as he tries to secure it? Tear him down, and you only leave a vacuum. If he's not succeeded by his son, or little dispossessed Dieudonné, who do you think will take his place? Do you think the people will have their way again? I tell you, we will jump from frying pan to fire and have ourselves another Directory, or invite the Eaglet home and have ourselves another Buonaparte – forgive me, 'First Consul' –”
“Never,” Enjolras snarled. His grip tightened, and Grantaire's face changed. Not into the gleeful triumph that always made Enjolras want to actually throttle him, but to that faintly satisfied cream-fed expression that showed itself in lowering eyelids and slightly parted lips.
It was only a flicker of the drowsy, dreaming look Enjolras had been courting accidentally for weeks, but it was there, and –
The gap between them vanished further. Enjolras needed to end whatever aberration had seized him; instead he continued to hold Grantaire pinned captive to the wall.
“People like to be ruled,” Grantaire said, as though he'd proved his point with that little demonstration, and his eyes shone with a kind of brilliant bitter delight. “Admit it. There's something about the human nature that welcomes an oppressor. I can testify to it."
“You're wrong,” Enjolras said furiously, because he needed it to be true; “you're wrong.”
The sound Grantaire made when his fingertips pressed hard between muscle and bone was a low and terrible one, and Enjolras gave into lunacy and took Grantaire's lip in his teeth.
It wasn't a kiss. It wasn't a tenderness, or a mark of affection. It was a hard press of mouths and it wasn't kind or reverent at all; therefore it could not possibly count as a kiss. The eager curve of Grantaire's body pressed itself to him, and Enjolras did what he'd been desperate to do all week and sought for skin. He kept Grantaire in place with his body and his hips, and fumbled with his waistcoat; under its thick broadcloth was more crumpled linen, warm from his body, and under that was a warmer and smoother surface yet. His hands settled around Grantaire's waist, hidden like a secret under his clothes.
“Thank God you don't wear the points of your collar turned up,” Grantaire muttered against his ear, which made no sense until his mouth found the edge of Enjolras's jaw, then moved lower.
Enjolras arched against him helplessly as Grantaire applied his teeth and hot tongue to the skin just below his ear, spine curving like a bow being drawn, and set his own teeth in his lip in trying not to make any sound. The windows of the tavern were open, a floor above them; they were standing in shadow and it was late enough that the street was empty and most of the doors and windows shuttered, but above them –
Somehow his thigh had found the parting between Grantaire's, and it was Grantaire's turn to make foolish noise.
“Hush–”
“How can you expect that of me, when you send me to heaven against your hip?” Grantaire demanded, outraged, and in lieu of finding his wrists Enjolras bit his mouth silent.
They moved together, and Grantaire was quiet and eager and hot under him. When Enjolras at last lifted his head, his eyes had gone dark and raptly blind.
Seeing that look on Grantaire's face again sent a tongue of fire running down his spine, and he would have moved again, but Grantaire's hand on his hip stayed him.
“Oh, I begin to see,” he said, and he seemed to look through Enjolras even as he fixated upon him. “You come to bring not peace, but the sword.”
“If that is a pun, it is truly unfortunate,” Enjolras observed, and shifted, pressing home his point. The movement brought him to close to culmination, and the next and the next closer still; they made Grantaire shudder as well, lashes lowering, and the conversation died as they rocked together.
When release came, it was sweet and sudden. Grantaire shuddered again at the sound of it, pressed against Enjolras harder, and gasped out his own. For long moments, neither of them moved, nor said anything more.
Then Grainaire lifted his head and looked him straight in the eye. “You don't – you see no future, do you?” he asked. “Not for this, or you would never have allowed it – and you have no true vision of the new world you would midwife into existence; all that matters to you is that it comes. You don't expect to see it born.”
Stupor fled; madness lifted. Enjolras pulled himself away and his hands came free last of all, still craving a human warmth he could not allow if he meant to see his purpose through.
It was a truth he had already recognised and at last accepted. There would be no place for someone like Enjolras in the sort of world he wanted to see, but that didn't matter. Combeferre would take his place, and he would be better fitted for it. His friends did not understand yet, he had yet to lead them there; but of course Grantaire had made that leap – he listened, and he stored each word for future ammunition like they were bullets, telling them over like the beads of a rosary.
“Oh, God,” Grantaire said now, sounding sick. Enjolras couldn't tell whether it was for the conclusion he had already come to, or the realisation that with it the enchantment had been broken, the fey mood fled beyond recall. “Oh, you incredible fool.” That was muttered so low it was surely self-directed.
His swollen and bitten lips vanished for a moment between his teeth, and his eyes closed; not in pleasure this time, but in apparent and abject distress. Then they opened, and fixed Enjolras. “Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophi – you're a match. It can't be done; not if you were the Archangel Michael himself. Fate is a wheel that only runs from bottom to top to in order run back again, and so is History. You wish to jar it from its track, but you can't.”
“Of course you would say that,” Enjolras said, and his voice was uneven, still ragged with what had happened just before. “You don't believe in anything, and your opinion therefore counts for nothing with me – But I will do it.”
“You'll try,” Grantaire agreed. “You'll try, and you'll be glorious to behold, up until the point you fail–”
“Don't speak,” Enjolras said. “Don't talk – for once just be quiet.” He put out his hand, more in desperation than to touch, and wonder of wonders, he was obeyed. Then Grantaire held out his arm, offering, and for a moment – for a moment Enjolras took it.
Grantaire didn't slip into whatever strange dream Enjolras's touch had so often kindled in him, and his expression stayed focused and solemn; but he was quiet, watching Enjolras battle doubt in himself and put it away. His pulse beat against Enjolras's fingers, too fast, and the skin inside his wrist was sweet and yielding; addictive as laudanum, and as corrosive to action.
It was with renewed purpose that Enjolras released him at last. It was right; if he held a small fluttering insect inside his hand, wings batting madly against its trap, he would do the same. Let it go into the air, and float free; it was his own pledge and promise that Grantaire was wrong, that the human impulse was to reach out for freedom, and not to master or to bend the neck to mastery. Choice existed. Men clasped hands palm to palm. Not everyone was as horribly willing to accept the world as it was as Grantaire was, to submit so tamely -
“Go home,” he said. “Go to bed. We will speak in the morning.”
"We won't,” Grantaire said, fatalistic but accepting.
(“Do you permit it?” he would ask weeks later, the ringing certainty in his voice faltering just a little, and into the space between them Enjolras would put out his hand.)