Grantaire knew one thing for certain about his life, and that was that he was going to Hell. He was a sceptic, and so would be repulsed from the gates of Heaven, or perhaps he himself repudiated Heaven because he was a sceptic; it mattered not which, for his eternal torment in the flames of the inferno was a foregone conclusion.

Grantaire's life has been on a downward trajectory since he first slid from his mother's womb, bathed in blood and shit and original sin, and soon he would be descending (transcending?) further than even the mortal realm allowed, to the place reserved for him beside the Devil. What did it matter to him whether he died riddled with grape-shot tomorrow at the barricade, or in a few years' time in a gutter? It made no nevermind to the Eternal, and certainly not to cynical Grantaire, who took a fortifying swig of brandy as he reflected. A quick, unsteady glance around the back room of the Café told him that his friends were otherwise occupied and the loss of his voice to private reverie would not be noted.

Looking back down the years of his young life, the reluctant revolutionary tried to count up his sins; the effort made his head hurt. Each Commandment broken at least twice over, the seven deadly sins practised weekly, sins of the flesh, sins of the mind, mortal sins, venial sins… His last confession would take months, thus he had not bothered to make one.

He felt weary, old before his time and heavy with a sinner's heart. He welcomed the opportunity presented by the barricade, to die for a cause or live and see the world reborn!

"Hah!" Grantaire scoffed into the neck of his bottle. No wide-eyed revolutionary he.

He preferred to go back to counting his sins, weighing the stones that would drag him down from Heaven's gates.

At seven years old he had stolen a bunch of black grapes from a stall near his house, and eaten the fruits covertly under the shelter of a crumbling brick wall, every moment dreading his inevitable capture by the gendarmerie, his imprisonment, his execution for law-breaking, followed by his subsequent expulsion from Heaven for the sin of stealing. The juice that dribbled down his chin had felt to him like the very blood of Christ; the thrill of danger giving the very first hot tingles of animation to his penis. But he had not been caught, not imprisoned, not executed, not cast out from the Kingdom of Heaven – he had not even been reprimanded by his mother for spilling the dark juice down the front of his smock. It had been a disappointing first brush with the Devil, but an instructive one.

Grantaire felt that this unpunished act of theft, this petty larceny of childhood, had marked the beginning of his fall from grace. He took another swig of brandy, feeling the warmth of it wash over his cheeks as he reminisced. Perhaps it had been…

At nine years old he had got into a fight with another boy. The boy had been a beggar, a pauper, who had jeered at Grantaire carrying his books to his lessons, accusing the young scholar of being soft; Grantaire's fist had not been soft, and this time he had been reprimanded for his dishevelled and dusty clothes, damaged in the ensuing scuffle. Moreover, he had mourned the loss of his school books, torn to strips as they were. However, the irritation of his mother had been nothing compared to the savage joy that had awakened within him at the sight of blood pumping from the other boy's broken nose, the heat that had roared through his veins as he straddled the pauper and beat him until he had been dragged off by the urchin's comrades and beaten bloody himself. Since that day Grantaire had never been far from a brawl or a bar fight, though he was always careful – circumstances permitting – to put aside his books first.

At fourteen he had lost his virginity to a girl no more beautiful than himself, if no uglier, in that wide-eyed and clumsy way of all children who play at being adults. The clandestine act had lasted no more than three minutes from beginning to end, and yet the terror of it had stayed with him for weeks. Of course, he had indulged in furtive, guilt-ridden self abuse before then, and he understood the mechanics of sex just as well as any fourteen year old boy, but taking part in the act itself had seemed so final, so condemning… It had put the fear of God into him, as well as fear of his mother, whom he was certain could all but smell the sin on him, and fear of his paramour's brother who had threatened to wring his neck if he was ever again seen within two leagues of the girl…

It had also awakened a deeper fear in young Grantaire, one which he refused to recognise except when his mind wandered in dreams; a fear of the fact that despite how good he had felt sliding into the warm, wet, tightness of the girl, it had been nothing – nothing! – compared to the ecstasy that had thrummed through his veins when he had first straddled that pauper boy's chest and beaten him bloody. The blood was not so exciting he supposed – the girl had bled too, a little – but it was just so different…

Boys were loud and rough and boisterous, in short, exciting. Whereas girls were reticent at best, unschooled at worst, always giggling and moving about in packs like dogs. Their bodies were soft but their tongues were sharp, and the more Grantaire knew of them the less he liked. Which steered him back to his original train of thought, the source of all his agonising and the reason that the bottle in his sweaty palm was the fourth of the night.

Enjolras.

Enjolras was Grantaire's single greatest failing, the source of all his sin and yet also the only saviour that had ever appeared to him. Enjolras was Christ, Enjolras was an angel, Enjolras was to him Achilles, Pollux, Orestes, Alexander… Grantaire shuddered as he tried to halt his dismal thoughts which yet hurried on; You are but Patrocles in his vanity, Castor in his mortality, Pylades in his provocation, Hephaestion in his temper…

Enjolras.

His Apollo, his divinity.

Grantaire believed in nothing but he believed in Enjolras, and he believed in dying for what one believes in. So he took another fortifying swig of the brandy bottle he was holding, and chased back the tears that would betray him to his fellow Amis, all assembled around him and for once quiet, each lost to his own reverie on their last night on earth.

Grantaire knew it was so; they all knew. Enjolras knew, but denied. Death would come for them tomorrow, one by one. For tonight, they were together, separated only by their mutual silence.

Each man counted his sins. Grantaire thought he saw Enjolras tick off the five fingers of one hand then nod, resolute; what sins could Apollo have committed, what five transgressions could that man of marble have made? It could not be sins that he was counting; perhaps he counted only the hours until their barricade would be stormed, all of them slaughtered, their bodies dumped unceremoniously in the unconsecrated pits outside the city walls reserved for traitors and whores. No matter, Grantaire had been both in his time and regretted neither.

One by one the Amis drifted off. Courfeyrac took a sudden fancy to Louison, the dish washer girl who worked at the Café Musain, and followed her to her rooms for one last night of pleasure. Joly and Bossuet made their excuses of replenishing gun powder stocks and left together, fooling no one. Bahorel was already unconscious, having been injured in a brief hand-to-hand skirmish with National Guardsmen earlier in the day; Feuilly had fallen asleep with concern on his face and his hand tangled in Bahorel's short, scrubby hair, Joly dozing on his shoulder. Jehan had petitioned for permission to take one last walk to see the flowers, which had been granted; Marius had accompanied him with tears in his eyes, no doubt mooning over his lost love. Combeferre was already outside, taking the watch as Enjolras had instructed. Finally it was just Grantaire and his Apollo left in the smoke-stained room at the back of the Café.

"Enjolras?"

"Yes?"

The Apollo of the Amis sat hunched over a table as though he were writing, but no paper was spread beneath his lithe fingers; they caressed only the scored wood of the table top.

"If, tomorrow, we-"

"You do not know what you say."

Grantaire was hurt by Enjolras' quick interruption of him, by the cold dismissal in his voice. But he persevered. As usual.

"If tomorrow-"

"Tomorrow we will triumph. Let no more be said."

Grantaire lapsed into silence; the steely edge to his golden god's voice as Enjolras affirmed his beliefs had been enough to tell the sceptic that those beliefs were tinted with doubt now, even in the mind of Apollo.

"But a word, I beg you."

The minute inclination of Enjolras' head to that request thrilled Grantaire in more than just a scholarly way.

"If tomorrow we should fall-" to see a god flinch at mere words! That was truly something! But Grantaire pressed on "-I would have you know that – that – I…"

"You have believed in the cause all along?" demanded Enjolras caustically, his blue eyes raking over Grantaire with a coldness that made the alcoholic shiver.

"No," he murmured bashfully in a voice that had meant to be stern, "No. I would have you know that though I do not believe in your cause – though I never have, as you well know – I believe in… in you."

He was a gristette. A doting chid. Worse, he was a man who had not the courage of his sex, nor the inclinations. He was a man inclined to women's feelings and women's thoughts, and was it not just one more sin to add to his ever accumulating list that he thought of Enjolras as a woman must?

Grantaire was not so naïve as to misunderstand that sexual relations could not take place between two men, but he was also not so naïve as to think that such a sordid, unnatural act could not bring down the wrath of God (whom he resolutely did not believe in) upon such sinners as those men who lay with one another as man and wife. He had stumbled down alleyways in his drunkenness and seen what happened in the blackness of night when sufficient money was exchanged; he himself when in dire straits had known other men in his debauchery; but never had he dared imagine that Enjolras could commit such crimes against heaven as he had done.

Enjolras was staring at him, those blue eyes not so cold now (or did he imagine it? Imagine the warmth of a clear summer's day playing over those glistening orbs?).

"You believe in me?" he asked quietly, his voice hoarse from the hours of shouting that had preceded this moment; hours of rallying troops who had not come willingly, and who would slip away into the night unseen before the tumult of the dawn, Grantaire knew. He continued;

"You believe in me?" he repeated, "I am but a man-" the god Apollo faltered, a gleam of sweat upon his lofty, golden brow, "I am a man like any other. You disdain our God in Heaven yet you believe in me? How can this be so? You critic, you sceptic, you cynic, you-"

But Enjolras never finished his sentence, for it was taken from him by Grantaire's lips. The drunkard was drunk, as was his manner of being, and he had not been able to stop himself once the suggestion of one last chance had entered his sodden mind. He pressed his wine-stained lips to those of his Apollo, his god, his prophet, his love, and pressed and pressed and pressed. He inhaled the scent of the divine; tasted the essence of ichor; felt the flinching blushes of the virgin Madonna under his grasp.

Then he was flung backwards, repelled, exiled.

"What-" began Enjolras, panting, the colour of his lips excited to crimson, the colour of his cheeks high, the mere press of their bodies enough to awaken a stirring in his trousers, or so thought Grantaire, now panting himself and staring fixedly, unashamedly, at his Apollo on their last night on earth, his pupils wide with lust and guilt and condemnation.

"I believe in you," affirmed Grantaire simply, in his voice roughened by years of smoke and brandy, "I mock your crusade, your revolution, but I believe in you," and despite Enjolras' silent look of disdain he took one last fortifying swig of brandy before letting the bottle drop to the floor with a crash, "I have believed in you since the stars first lit the sky, since man first discovered fire and heat and light and incendiary politics. Every moment that you have walked this earth I have sought you – consciously or not – and now – tonight - I have found you and I have found the courage to tell you that I – I believe in you."

"Everyone believes in me," said Enjolras quietly.

Grantaire took his meaning.

"I love you," he rejoined, quietly too, yet with the fierceness of naked truth in his hoarse voice.

"I love my country," said Apollo, blue eyes glazed and looking anywhere but at the sad sceptic before him.

"I know."