Shhhhhhh!
Marius is cheating.
Marius doesn't mean to. He loves Cosette with every bit and piece of himself, and her sweetness and innocence. He loves her long, chestnut brown hair, and her wide, sapphire blue eyes, and her pink lips, and her porcelain skin.
He loves the long nights they spend together, talking of their plans, and their past lives. He knows that her real name is Euphrasie, and she doesn't like the name Cosette. He knows that she was a slave as a child, but then she was rescued by her father, and that she grew up in a convent. He knows that she lost her mother at an early age, and that her mother (Fantine, she calls her) had the most beautiful blonde hair in the world. And he knows from Cosette's tales of her and her adoptive father's long talks about her mother that Cosette looks a lot like her mother, but with chestnut colored hair instead of blonde.
He knows that 'Ponine wasn't always ragged and fiery, that she and her sister used to be rich and beautiful and rosy and plump-but also mean spirited and bratty and selfish. Marius has tried to think of Éponine as a child, as a rich child, but all he can see is Éponine as she is now.
But, he occasionally grows bored, bored of her pink lips and virginal white dresses and white gloves and straw bonnets and her sweetness. And when that happens, he runs out and finds Éponine, and then it's chaos and havoc and mayhem and awkward and painful and exciting and fun. Éponine is just so different, so fiery, with her tangled blonde hair and her rough, freckled skin, her callused, blistered hands and the fire in her brown eyes. She is unafraid and eager and receives him eagerly, as though she's desired him for a long time, and he realizes that she has desired him for a long time, and then he thinks that maybe he should go home to Cosette and her alabaster skin and her pink lips and her blue eyes, but then Éponine is just so willing, and being with her is never boring, and sometimes, he wants her to slow down, but she just keeps going, going like a comet.
He finds that he can't pick who's touch he prefers, the rough, clumsy, seductive touch of Éponine, or the soft, careful touch of his true love, his one and only (although she's not really his one and only anymore), Cosette. The feeling of holding Cosette in his arms, of kissing her anad twirling her around, is entirely contrasting to Éponine's rough, careless sex. And that's what it is, (that's what he is, a man who wasn't satisfied with his beautiful wife and sought out a neighborhood whore.) And he knows that 'Ponine is more than a neighborhood whore, she brought him and Cosette together, but he doesn't care, he doesn't care.
And he realizes that he loves Cosette, loves her like nothing else, and he always will, but for now he is content with his two women, the Lark and the Rose in Misery.
Wow...I really made Marius a jerk.
Let the record show that my OTP is Marius and Cosette. I got this idea because I was doodling Les Mis stuff on my notebook, and first I drew Éponine's death, and then I drew Cosette and Marius being adorable. And then I thought, "Holding Éponine and holding Cosette must be so different..." which inspired me to write this.
I'm not Victor Hugo.
