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Enjolras is in shirtsleeves and loose breeches, his waistcoat half-undone, sitting at his desk and penning a letter, when Grantaire enters his room without knocking. He merely glances up to ascertain the identity of the intruder before turning back to his writing, an enquiry into the mood of the people of the town in which his contact lives, their potential response to his propositions. His desk is the only part of his room not clean, minimal, ascetic: paper after paper is strewn across its surface, printed and handwritten, letters from his comrades and pamphlets he himself has written and copies of the readings which form his Bible: Rousseau, Saint-Just, Fénelon, constitutions and Contracts and the Rights of Man.
Grantaire sprawls himself uninvited on the edge of the low, bare bed in the corner, draping his coat across the chair beside it. He says, “Am I intruding?”
I include in this missive a selection of literature you might use to demonstrate our aims and our convictions, but am confident you possess more such pamphlets that can be put to use among the people who have not yet encountered them, Enjolras writes, and then after a moment says aloud: “Yes.”
“I can leave,” Grantaire replies, and it sounds as if he would prefer to do no such thing, but will defer to Enjolras’ word if it is given, as he always does.
“You do not need to,” says Enjolras curtly, “only give me a moment to finish this.”
There is a stirring amongst the masses, brother. You, too, have felt it; in the slums, the very mud of the streets, the back alleys and the basements, ‘Revolution’ is the whisper in the mouths of the oppressed. The people of France will not fail us.
“Robespierre’s speech to the Convention of 1792, Against Granting the King a Trial,” Enjolras says after a moment filled only with the scratching of the nib of his pen. “Do you know it?”
“Not in full, but well enough,” is the answer from the bed behind him.
“Very well.”
I await your report as soon as you can get it to me. You carry the faith of our fraternity with you.
Lifting the paper off the desk, Enjolras blows gently on the ink then replaces the pages to dry atop of the stack of books at the back of his desk. When he turns around Grantaire is slumped back against the wall, one leg outstretched and the other bent at the knee, a hand on his thigh, looking at Enjolras with a lazy smile that does not hide the intensity in his gaze.
Enjolras crosses the room in three steps, beckons Grantaire forward to sit on the edge of the bed. He lets his gaze take in Grantaire’s appearance, head to toe, then extends a hand as though addressing a crowd, and orders: “If you will.”
Grantaire closes his eyes briefly and then opens them again, as though he cannot bear to look away. Enjolras watches his face as he begins to speak, a recitation by heart: “you are not judges; you are only, you can be only, statesmen, and the representatives of the nation. You have a measure of public safety to take, an act of national providence to perform.”
The knot of Grantaire’s cravat loosens easily under Enjolras’ fingers; he undoes the first three buttons of Grantaire’s waistcoat and lets his hand rest lightly at the base of Grantaire’s neck. Grantaire’s eyes haven’t closed throughout, following the movement of Enjolras’ hands or fixing themselves unblinking on his face, but his dark eyelashes quiver at the touch on his neck. Enjolras runs the tip of one finger along Grantaire’s jawline as though he holds a knife.
As if in response to an unspoken sentence, Grantaire says, “A dethroned king, in a Republic, is good only for two purposes—to trouble the tranquillity of the State and to unsettle liberty, or to establish both.”
Enjolras unbuttons Grantaire’s waistcoat entirely, pushes it open and runs both hands down Grantaire’s torso, feeling the body under his palms push itself infinitesimally towards him as if trying- and barely succeeding- to restrain itself from complete abandon.
“Louis has been dethroned for his crimes,” Grantaire murmurs, and the hand resting at the top of his thigh twitches; Enjolras thinks that probably it wants to touch him and knows it ought not, at least not yet. “Louis denounced the French people as rebels; victory and the people have decided that he was the rebel: hence Louis cannot be judged; he is judged already.”
Briefly, Enjolras covers Grantaire’s hand with his own, working open the button at each hip and pressing the heel of his hand against the front of Grantaire’s breeches as he undoes the button at Grantaire’s waistband. “Good,” he says, “continue.”
“When a nation has been forced to resort to the right of insurrection it returns to a state of nature as regards its tyrant. How can the latter invoke the social contract? He has annihilated it,” Grantaire recites, and he speaks the last sentence almost as if he believes it; or perhaps the change in his tone is simply because Enjolras has pulled down the fall-front of his breeches and wrapped a hand around his hardening prick.
It is a moment before Grantaire speaks again, occupied as he is with breathing very deeply and sharply, as though in a state of shock, and moistening his lips with his tongue, and staring at Enjolras like he cannot believe the situation in which he finds himself. Enjolras gives him time, idly curling and reshaping the grasp of his hand, watching how Grantaire reacts to the movement of his fingers.
“When a king has been annihilated by the people,” Grantaire says eventually, his tone now less steady, “who has the right to resuscitate him in order to make of him a new pretext for rebellion?”
Enjolras steps off the bed and gets on his knees.
“In the eyes of liberty there is none more vile,” and Grantaire’s eyes are back on Enjolras, unwavering, his voice lowered to a whisper that becomes all the more intimate for its content, “in the eyes of humanity there is none more guilty.”
Shifting his posture on the floorboards so his back is upright and his balance steady, Enjolras tightens his grasp on Grantaire’s prick, glances upward to watch Grantaire’s eyes widen as he presses his lips to the head of it. When no further quote is forthcoming, and Grantaire simply stares at Enjolras as though frozen in place, Enjolras straightens his neck and prompts: “A great cause…”
“A great-” Grantaire repeats, swallows audibly, and makes a second attempt: “A great cause is a project of popular law; a great cause is that of an unfortunate oppressed by despotism.”
Enjolras lifts his free hand from his side to rest near the top of Grantaire’s thigh, his palms heated by the skin under the now loosened breeches, his own breathing now perhaps shallower, faster than usual. He leans further forward this time, to take Grantaire into his mouth in one movement even as Grantaire quotes: “Are you afraid of- ah- of wounding popular opinion? As if the people were a vile-- troop of slaves,” and here his hips shiver, Enjolras feels it and does not cease his attentions, “attached to the tyrant whom they have proscribed, desiring to wallow in baseness and servitude--”
Each sentence ends with a harsh, unsteady exhalation now, and is punctuated in all the wrong places with the same; Grantaire’s rhetoric is no longer spoken as though he is acting for an audience, or conversely in a tone so cynical as to lend it a veneer of falsehood: not under these circumstances.
“Of what importance-- to the people, is the contemptible person-- of the last of the kings?” Grantaire says, his hand quivering, unsteady, against the side of Enjolras’ head; Enjolras would berate Grantaire for quoting out of order if it were not for the fact that his mouth is occupied. He ducks his head low enough that his lips press against his own curled fingers.
“This question requires not-- not genius, but only good faith: it is less a matter of s- self-enlightenment than of not wilfully-- ah-- blinding oneself--” and Enjolras glances up at Grantaire as he gasps that out, meets Grantaire’s eyes briefly and hopes Grantaire is reflecting at least somewhat on the content of the phrases that leave his mouth, the concepts he’s groaning.
“The Republic; and Louis still lives!” and Grantaire cards his fingers through Enjolras’ hair, hand shivering as though he should like to pull it but won’t permit himself to, “and you still, God, God, still place the person of the king-- between us and liberty!”
Grantaire’s sentences are growing shorter and shorter, his wordless interjections more and more frequent, and Enjolras will not let him finish before he finishes the speech. He pulls his head back all at once, keeping his fist tight around the base of Grantaire’s prick. The hand in his hair tightens, desperate, and Enjolras licks his lips and pronounces as calmly as he is able: “Let us fear to make criminals of ourselves on account of our scruples; let us fear that by showing too much indulgence for the guilty we may put ourselves in his place.”
“Louis must die,” says Grantaire, almost immediately after Enjolras has finished speaking, pressing his lips so tightly together they have grown paler in colour, his hips shifting incessantly where he sits.
Enjolras murmurs against the head of Grantaire’s prick, “Because?”
“—because,” Grantaire follows, his voice sounding almost strangled, and Enjolras meets Grantaire’s eyes directly before taking him into his mouth again, this time without hesitation or restraint, “because the country must live—”
The last word becomes a groan, a series of rapid shuddering breaths, and Grantaire’s hand curls tight in Enjolras’ hair before he falls back onto the bed as though folding inwards on himself. Enjolras stands upright, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand; the fingers that were gripping Enjolras’ hair stroke down his arm, rub his wrist and touch his knuckles, and rest pressing against the front of his breeches.
“I ask that this event be commemorated by a monument,” says Enjolras, with a slight frown, and Grantaire looks bemused for a moment before, apparently, realising the source of Enjolras’ words. He sits upright, pulls Enjolras into his lap with a grin that looks almost wondering, and the button at the waist of Enjolras’ breeches is worked open as Grantaire, his voice light and amused, continues, “to nourish in the hearts of the people the consciousness of their rights, and the horror of tyrants…”
Enjolras will allow himself the time to let Grantaire do as he wishes, today; perhaps he will permit himself to enjoy it. He finishes speaking in the voice he’d use to woo a crowd, the voice he’ll take to war: “and in the souls of tyrants, terror of the people’s justice.”
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