Written by me.
Translated by Elwen_Rhiannon.

Author's note: Knowing "The Fall" before reading this fic is not necessary, although it may explain some of the literary references used in it, mainly the fragment about Condorcet.

Paper will remember

The weather on this spring afternoon didn't look too welcoming: a drizzle beyond the window could take away any willingness for a walk. It was too dark to read: candlelight was forcing him to look hard on a text, giving him too often headaches. Combeferre looked around him, deciding on the only one thing coming to his mind at the moment and in such circumstances: sorting his books. It was his usual occupation on dark and rainy days. Anyway, he had to do it at least once a month if he wanted to find some space for himself, not to mention his other collections, in his cramped flat. He wasn't expecting any visitors: he was meeting everyone in cafés, wine-shops and sometimes parks. Not here. Left to himself, he was working with determination in a half-light of one single candle, positioned in a way to not let any of the books catch fire. The closest neighbourhood of the candle was actually the only place without books or piles of papers; apart from there, they were everywhere.

Initially, when he heard the knocking, he intended to ignore it. He went to open the door and let the unexpected guest in when it repeated, more pressing and much louder than before. And at his doorstep was Jehan, as usually dreamy and lost in his own thoughts, giving the mess of books all over the room a semiconscious look, as if everything had been in the best of orders. Contrary to his usual habits, he hadn't forgotten to put on a cloak, forgetting only a hat: drops of rain were trickling from his wet hair.

Combeferre looked around himself with embarrassment, seeing piles of books on every single piece of furniture. But before he had time to make at least one armchair free for his friend, Jehan threw away his coat and laid like a cat in the middle of the floor, among Combeferre's collection of minerals and the volumes he had taken from the bookshelves. In a slow, lazy motion he loosened his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt, just by the neck. He yawned, stretched himself and stayed like this, closing his eyes as he did when he was composing a poem or trying to follow a melody. Combeferre knew that there was nothing offensive nor disrespectful in this kind of behaviour: forgetting his usual shyness in the company of a friend and being truly himself was a sign of Jehan's trust. He also knew he shouldn't interrupt him in such situations.

Therefore, instead of talking to his guest, he continued with sorting the volumes, trying not to look at Jehan. In his company, this relatively easy occupation suddenly started to require an almost inhuman strength and control.

„The more time you spend with them, the better you start to understand them without words, just by touching them," murmured Jehan suddenly, leaning back against an obviously used volume of Racine. His brown, badly cut hair spread on a worn cover. Combeferre suddenly found himself fighting the need to come to his friend, stroke his hair and delicately take Racine out from under Jehan's head. Not necessarily to protect the book.

„You mean books or women?" asked Combeferre absent-mindedly, mechanically reading the titles on the volumes he was outing on a bookshelf. The Cid, Horace, Cinna... almost all by Corneille, with just one piece missing. He looked at the spines of the books around him for a longer while, finally discovering by groping the one he was searching for, dusty and thrown away on his desk. He wiped a cover of the sixth volume of Corneille's Works with his own cuff and added it to the rest.

Jehan didn't answer. He put a palm under his back and pulled out a book he was laying on. He opened it in an accidental place and started to leaf through it, watching the pages carefully. He frowned.

„I've always admired people able to read like this. No underlining, no notices on margins, none of these things. It's strange, André, but you know, your books look as if you've never been reading them. As if you were afraid of what you might leave in them, or what they could awaken in you. Even if I know it's not true."

Combeferre hesitated and secretly slipped a little book he was holding at the moment as deeply as possible under other ones of similar size, covering them with his collection of birds' eggs.

„It's not like that, Jehan," he contradicted in tired voice, casting a furtive glance at his friend. „It's the truth, you know. It's better not to leave anything in them, anything at all. You don't have to be afraid then of an unwanted person reading it. Compromitation, deconspiration, evidence against you and here you are in Conciergerie. Or in some other place."

Jehan was kneeling on a floor, with his back turned on Combeferre, inhaling the scent of the book he was holding with his eyes closed. His lips were touching its spine and Combeferre thought suddenly that his friend is probably the only person in the world able to absorb a book like this: with all senses, loosing himself in a scent and a texture of the pages, learning by heart every little defect of the binding. Each of Jehan's books must have known well the warmth of his cheeks and the delicate touch of his fingertips. Suddenly Combeferre felt a pang of jealousy.

„If you're looking at it like this, maybe you're right. In some way. Though I think you don't have to be afraid of paper, André," said Jehan, opening his eyes, with a book slipping from his hand. „Paper is patient. It will listen to you better than anyone, including myself."

„You think so?" inquired Combeferre quietly, stopping to arrange the books for a moment.

„I do. But you know, there's one condition. If you want to take, you have to give something as well, some part of you," whispered Jehan, staring at something distant, as if he hasn't seen his friend anymore. „It's always like this. You sign a pact and not always with your blood. It can be wine you were drinking, an imprint of your finger or a hair, anything. You have to sacrifice something that is yours. They will listen to you then. It's always been working like this. Gods never give anything for free."

Combeferre moved uneasily. This Jehan was strange, hard to follow and unable to catch, as if he was slipping out beyond the borders of this world to wander in some space between gods and mortals. The impression passed with Jehan turning towards him with his usual gentleness.

„I've learned to sleep with a book under my pillow before the last few lectures," he said with a melancholic smile and his eyes losing this half conscious, ghostly brightness that was giving his face an impression of something from another world.

Combeferre lifted his eyebrows, putting another volume on a bookshelf, this time openly: there was no need to hide this one from anyone. Just a handbook of medicine, written in a simple, scholar language, without any notices, indeed. Perfectly impersonal, just as it should be.

„Does it help?" he asked after a while.

„Every time, you'd be surprised. Though maybe not in the way you think," Jehan lifted himself up on his elbow and looked seriously into his friend's face. „It's not that I believe that if you fall asleep on a book, you will learn its essence. It's just that you at least know then that something, some... body is right next to you. It's easier with a book than with a woman."

Combeferre forced himself to not say anything about Jehan's last lover: he knew that his friend doesn't like to confess anything concerning them both together, even to him. Besides, Jehan's face told him everything he could ask about and didn't really want to know.

„I recently spilled wine on my beloved edition of Chénier," confessed Jehan quietly, lowering his eyes. „The one with green cover, you know... On the day when she left me. Now I'm afraid to open it. But you know, one day it'll go away and I'll be able to remember her laughter and bright hair without bitterness. One day. For sure. Not yet."

Combeferre put away the volume he was holding, sighed and sat on a small pile of books next to Jehan, rubbing his forehead with a hand dirty with dust.

„I can keep it for you, if you want to," he said gently. „Or you can borrow mine."

Jehan was looking at him for a moment, as if he was considering his offer, then lifted a hand and touched Combeferre's face.

„Your forehead is dirty, André, have you known? Right here..."

Combeferre stopped breathing, following every single movement of Jehan's palm. He was waiting, not hurrying him in anything and trying not to frighten him away. It was as if the time had stopped and one second meant more than all they had said to each other during the five years of their acquaintance. Every single breath and every movement brought a danger of their return to that ordinary world.

Suddenly a pile of books pushed by somebody's knee fell down with a thud and they jumped away from each other, frightened as two schoolboys caught during some innocent prank. They bent clumsily, organising the books around them and separating from each other with a hastily built paper barricade. Combeferre heard his heart beating fast while seeing his friend putting something slowly on his knees.

„Von Ramdohr, Venus Urania*," read Jehan slowly, touching each one of the golden letters with his fingers as if he was trying to learn every difference in their structure by heart. „I'd like to learn German some day. Have you read it?"

„Not yet. Actually, I have it by accident," lied Combeferre without blinking, calmly bearing Jehan's look. Some things are better left in secret.

Jehan moved a bit and changed his position again: he put Racine under his back and leant a cheek on an edge of a linen bound volume. Hell, read Combeferre wordlessly, with a crooked smile, and put a book away on a bed, as far away from them both as possible. He put his own arm under his friend's head. Jehan didn't seem to notice: he was laying with his eyes closed, breathing steadily, with a calm face even when a strand of Combeferre's hair tickled his forehead. He looked as if he had fallen asleep.

„I've never thought that you have your own Dante," he said suddenly, without opening his eyes, and Combeferre twitched.

„My own Dante?" he repeated, putting books around him with his free hand to hide embarrassment. „I think I've always had it. Is that strange?"

Jehan made a slight movement on Combeferre's shoulder and leant a suddenly flushed cheek on a metal edge of some old volume.

„You borrowed it from me two days ago," he noticed, with a muted voice. His breath left on the metal an almost invisible trace. Maybe this was the reason why Combeferre delicately wiped the trace away with his sleeve and then moved a palm to touch his friend's face. Jehan's cheeks were burning.

„But it's yours that has notices," murmured Combeferre, adjusting his spectacles with consideration. He didn't predict his friend's reaction: Jehan suddenly lifted up his head from Combeferre's shoulder and moved back towards another pile of books. Combeferre instinctively reached an arm towards a friend, making the forgotten spectacles slip down from his nose right onto a pile of strewn papers. His world became unclear, sharp edges changed into a rainbow of blurred colours, with Jehan's brown hair and a white spot of his face somewhere near. Blinded unexpectedly, he didn't have time to react when his friend's fingers suddenly tightened on his shoulders.

„But there isn't everything. André, there is not even a half of this all. There's neither the second, nor the seventh circle of hell... Nothing between the blasphemers and usurpers. I don't believe in purgatory and I don't believe Dante, even if I had to spend eternity in a desert of flaming sand. And," Jehan looked around, loosening his embrace and lifting something from the floor in a nervous movement, „I don't believe him, too. Even if I know that you like him."

Combeferre helplessly reached his arms towards Jehan, budging when instead of his friend's hand he felt a weight of a thick, leather bound volume. He resigned from his attempts to find spectacles and gave the book a lost look of a short-sighted man. He forced himself to decipher the name of the author, though taking into consideration the number of books he owned, it wasn't easy. Let's try... in folio, a crimson-dark red cover, now letters... eight or maybe nine. C, O, N, O? No, not O, rather D. C, O, N, D...

„You're right, I do like him," he admitted quietly. „One can say even a lot. But that doesn't mean I have to always agree with him."

„No?"

„No... not with everything he wrote," Combeferre heard his own voice shaking, being sure that Jehan will sense it as well. "I think he wasn't always right. He didn't know everything."

„No."

Their hands interlaced over a volume of Condorcet, slowly and shyly as never before. Combeferre moved towards Jehan, ignoring a rumble behind his back: a more conscious part of his mind registered a fact that he has just destroyed at least three more piles of books, meaning a few more hours of work, if not more. But now it didn't matter, not with what could happen now.

Then Jehan sighed quietly, leaning back against Combeferre's shoulder, and a volume of Condorcet hit the floor, opening on some page decorated with a print. Jehan's free hand clenched on the cards spasmodically, tearing the paper and crumpling the illustration with a quiet rustle. And Combeferre knew that this tearing will stay with him forever, no matter what happens and whatever comes out of this. Even if the traces made by his lips will disappear from Jehan's neck, even if he will forget himself the taste of his skin on this dark, rainy day. All of this doesn't matter. Paper will remember.

Jehan's hair was smelling of dust and printing ink and a thin fabric of his shirt was giving in easily under impatient fingers. There was no need to search for spectacles now. Jehan's body trembling under his touch was too real.

„That day no farther did we read therein**," murmured Combeferre, snuffing a candle with one blow.

* Venus Urania (1798), a book by Friedrich Wilhelm Basilius von Ramdohr, includes some passages about homosexuality.
** transl. by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.