Thank you so much for all your support! I can't even begin to describe how happy your reviews, alerts, and favorites make me. It's been such a shitty week, but you all manage to make me smile when I get those emails.

If I could, I would give you your very own Enjolras; but until I figure out how to do that, you'll have to deal with my interpretation of him.

Eponine is seventeen weeks pregnant!

Enjoy!

"This is ludicrous." Enjolras muttered as he helped me in the spare bedroom.

Another room I was truly excited about. Not only did we have a kitchen table, but we also had a spare bedroom. And a guest bathroom. I mean, sure, it was all quite simple compared to the setting Enjolras and Elle grew up in. In my perspective, though, it was like my own little mansion. The Inn had plenty of rooms and bathrooms, but they were strictly for guests and clients. My father and mama had their own room, Azelma and I had our own room, and we all shared a bathroom. In the maisonette, every room was mine to do with as I pleased. If I wanted to make a cup of tea in the kitchen, I could drink it in the parlor. If I wanted to pen a letter to mama, I could do so in one of the spare bedrooms. If I wanted to read a book from Enjolras's study, I could do so in the bathroom. None of the rooms were off limits. Well, technically, Enjolras's study was. But let's be honest, was I really going to listen to that minor detail? No. Of course not. Anyway, liberty of will for the rooms had me making an executive decision about the one across the hall from the master bedroom and next to the nursery. It would be Grantaire's.

"We already call that bathroom his, we might as well give him a room to go along with it."

"He has a room." Enjolras bit lightly. "It's back at the flat, where he belongs."

"Oh, hush." I tsked him. "You know you can't imagine a life without him."

"I'm not kicking him out of my life," Enjolras tried to reason. He stopped messing with a pillow and leaned against the wall next to the bed. "Grantaire is like your favorite book." I looked over my shoulder at him. "It's your favorite, so you always keep it even if you don't necessarily read it anymore. You just keep it around for the emotional attachment to it. Sitting on the far left of the bottom shelf for security and foundation." He paused, staring hard at the floor. "Does that make sense?" He asked, looking up at me.

I nodded, "Grantaire's your favorite."

He just stared at me, not anything else. So I smirked at him, because I didn't know what else to do.

"Come now," I said, finally cracking under the intensity of his gaze. "He'll be here any minute now, and you haven't even fussed over the dust that settled since we walked in."

"You're a good person." Enjolras told me before moving back to his fluffing of the pillows.

I shifted uncomfortably and excused myself, pretending I smelt something that unsettled me. Enjolras would have these moments were he would completely surprise me, catching me off guard. I mean, living with and loving Enjolras was an adventure in and of itself, but these new moments were really, well, new. I'd be listening to him go on about some speech he was intending to give to the cattle, or a part of a speech he wanted to incorporate into the meetings somehow, and then he would level me with a comment, kiss, or touch. And I would just sit there, unaccustomed to his forward advances, trying to figure out what he was up to. He didn't even necessarily have to be up to something. I didn't know how to handle his new actions. It wasn't that I thought he was incapable of doing something just to be sweet; but I'd hardly known him to be like this in the past, so the suddenness of them had me a little cautious. Old habits die hard.

Enjolras appeared at the top of the stairs, and I stood up erect when several loud noises came from the hall. He followed me as we hurried to see what the commotion was over. Of course. Of course. Grantaire lay in a heap at the foot of a miniscule staircase while Combferre and Marius went after him, and a wide-eyed and bloodied Courfeyrac stood at the top with his hands up in surrender.

"I barely touched him." Courfeyrac breathed nervously as Enjolras went down to help the other two.

"Liar!" Grantaire coughed out. "He's trying to kill me!"

Enjolras grimaced as he and Marius supported Grantaire's weight between the two of them. "I doubt that."

"He's been drinking since we got to the Musain this morning." Marius explained.

"Mixing wine and brandy." Combferre told us once Enjolras lead everyone in. I walked with Courfeyrac and Combferre, trying to get a good look at Courfeyrac past the blood. "Together mostly." Combferre added with a disgusted gag.

"Would I be a burden to ask for a cleaning?" Courfeyrac asked quietly.

"Go home, traitor!" Grantaire shouted, attempting to get to his feet for a go at Courfeyrac; but his lost equilibrium had him colliding into a bookshelf. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn't help but laugh at the look on Ejolras's face when all of his books came tumbling down.

"I'll help, 'Ponine." Marius offered.

"I'll never talk to you again if you help him, Thenardier." Grantaire threatened while Enjolras scrambled to pick up his books, leaving the drunk a mess on the floor.

"Shut up, Grantaire." I snapped. "Otherwise I'll call for Cade to come help you."

Grantaire and Enjolras frowned at me. Well, I wasn't actually planning on it. Marius and I sat on the edge of the tub as Courfeyrac cleared up his blood in the basin in Grantaire's bathroom. Marius said that Courfeyrac and Grantaire had been fine up until they reached the maisonette, and Grantaire turned around, they assumed for a thanks, but ended up delivering a blow right to Courfeyrac's cheek. The boy at the basin said he thought Grantaire was going for his nose, but his lack of coordination had the fist landing there instead. Not that he was too upset over it. "Grantaire never was one for sharing," He said bitterly. I sneered at his back. I would have given him a good fist to the face if he had proposed sharing my sister. Marius added that Grantaire fell down the stairs when Courfeyrac pushed the drunk off of him as he tried biting him. I bit back a laugh this time. I could only imagine Grantaire trying to attack like a watchdog.

Marius left to dump the water as I checked over Courfeyrac's face to make sure nothing was terribly out of place. I wasn't as qualified as Joly, or even Combferre, but I hardly thought anything looked broken. He did look to be storing some nuts in his left cheek like a squirrel, but I figured that was just the swelling from Grantaire's poorly aimed blow. His neck was a little red. I guessed Grantaire had him by the neck at one point. His nose, which had been bleeding earlier, looked fine. He told me that he was prone to nose bleeds, so it had probably been a coincidence that his nose started bleeding when Grantaire roughed him up. I shrugged. I didn't really care either way.

"Enjolras is pouring some coffee down Grantaire's throat," Marius announced when he walked back in with the basin. "You'd probably take advantage of the opportunity by sneaking out the front now."

I held Courfeyrac's coat out for him as he hurried to get his waistcoat on.

"Merci, Eponine." He kissed my cheeks and booked it out like he was going to be late.

"I don't think Grantaire was going for his nose." Marius told me as we descended the stairs.

"Why's that?"

"Courfeyrac's always talking about how ladies love his bone structure, and now you can barely make it out with that swelling." Marius chuckled. "Grantaire may be more brilliant drunk than sober."

"How sad." I mumbled.

"Makes for great entertainment, though." Until he drinks one too many and ends up face down in a ditch, breathing his last breath. My stomach turned at the thought, and my heart severed another tie to Marius. What had I made for then? A great errand runner?

Enjolras, Combferre and Marius retreated to the study, leaving me to care for the drunken mess. Not that I minded. I'd seen worse from Grantaire, and I'd help him through anything. Besides, I knew what it was like to feel like you were staring at the tip of a barrel because of lost love. Or unrequited, whatever. So I sat with him in the kitchen in silence as he stared into his coffee, much like he had stared at the water the other week. I didn't push him along this time, though. I just let us go on in a comfortable silence, only hearing the noises from outside rush in through the window. Neither of us seemed to take issue with the silence. Grantaire looked content to analyze his drink, and I was content in analyzing him.

"You can hardly tell." Grantaire said hoarsely after a while.

"Tell?"

"That you're pregnant." He clarified, taking a tiny sip of coffee. "You can hardly tell you're with child."

"Joly doesn't think I'll show much at all until later." I shrugged. "Because I'm so small anyway."

And then he was silent again.

The next time Grantaire had Enjolras jumping out of our routine was later that night. It must have been an hour after we had started to doze off. Enjolras had his arm tightly around me, his breath warm on the back of my shoulder. We had taken to falling asleep like that. It made him feel like he was in control of everything, and that made him happy; so I was more than willingly to let him have that control. Besides, if we were doing more strenuous activities, I would be the one in control. Anyway, I hadn't even begun dreaming yet when I heard Enjolras hissing my name. I almost slept right through it, acting as if I was just imagining him saying my name in a dream. Something in his tone, though, had be stirring. He was already climbing out of bed by the time I managed to wake myself up to alertness.

"I think Grantaire is having a night terror again." His voice was heavy with sleep. "Will you go warm some milk up for him?"

"No," I whispered, pulling on a robe. "You go warm the milk up, and I'll go to him."

Enjolras considered me for a moment.

"Don't think like that." I snapped. "You know I wouldn't." I chastised lightly. "Please go get the milk."

He nodded before we both left the room. Grantaire was sitting up, leaning against his head board as he blinked rapidly at the darkened ceiling. His face illuminated by my candle gave him a haunting appearance. He was clutching fistfuls of bedding as he tried to slow his breathing down, but it didn't look to be working. I noticed his blinking stop momentarily and took it as a sign he recognized my presence. Quietly, so quiet that I almost didn't hear him, he apologized for waking me. I told him to think nothing of it and disappeared into his bathroom to fetch some rags. He was still in the same position when I returned and dampened the rags with the water from the basin on the manity-he refused to call it a vanity, for those were for ladies-in the corner. I moved the nightstand so that I could sit next to him with the candle and rags on the stand.

"You should really see a doctor for these, Grantaire." I said, pulling on his ear so he'd stop staring up as if waiting for his maker to take him.

"The doctor will just bill me after telling me what I already know." He mumbled roughly.

I laid a cold rag over his head. "Then perhaps heed his warning?"

"Then I can't drink."

"So don't drink."

"It's a dilemma. If I stop drinking, I start having night terrors. If I have night terrors, I start drinking. If I start drinking, les Amis laugh. If they laugh, I keep going. If I keep going, I piss Enjolras off. If I piss Enjolras off, I stop drinking. And then it repeats. It's a cold circle."

"You don't have to keep drinking just because les Amis find it amusing."

"I find their laughs annoying, I have to drink to drown them out."

"You're impossible, that's what you are."

"Where is your baby's daddy anyway?" Grantaire asked distractedly after I told him to take his nightshirt off. He gathered the sheets more securely around his lower half. I snorted. When had he ever been shy?

"Getting you some warm milk." I said, pressing a new rag to his cheeks while I held his face still by gripping his chin.

Grantaire wrinkled his nose. "Isn't that a woman's chore?"

"Would you rather him wipe you down?" I challenged.

"Fair enough." Grantaire snickered.

"Grantaire?"

"Hm?" His eyes were closed and a half smile was gracing his face while I kept at wiping away his sweat.

"What goes on in them?" I asked. "In your terrors, what makes them so terrible?"

"It's just-"

"I added some honey to the milk, because that's what my mother did to get Elle and I to sleep on restless nights." Enjolras. Man of the most inopportune moments.

"That's very kind of you, my pet." Grantaire regarded him in a way you would a child. Enjolras frowned at his friend's mocking.

"Was it really necessary to undress him, Eponine?" Enjolras gave me and the drunk a skeptical look. Oh dear God above! Honestly.

"Well, I just couldn't help but use his feverish body as an excuse to ogle his brawny physique." I stood up briskly. "Forgive me if my history plagues my present." I slapped the wet rag I had been holding onto his chest and slammed our bedroom door shut behind me, locking it. He could sleep on the couch for all I cared.

.

Enjolras thumbed through the bookshelf in the parlor as I helped Grantaire look presentable for going to some of his favorite crawls to recruit for les Amis. He promised Enjolras that he would step up his game for the good of "your cause", not that he ever really had game or conviction for the cause, since we were giving him free board here. Enjolras had spent the better part of a night going through different things that Grantaire could possibly not mess up. He talked for at least four hours. Not really bouncing ideas off of me, more like talking aloud and nodding when I shot something down. Finally he settled on the drunk recruiting people who went to the same bars as he. Enjolras figured that Grantaire went by them so much that he was bound to have friends or acquaintances who would listen when he spoke. By the time I had thought it through, though, thinking that drunks have selective hearing, I was too late to voice my concern to Enjolras. He was already sleeping. Snoring, actually.

So I tried helping Grantaire at least look like he knew a thing or two. Not even that. I knew he knew what he was supposed to talk about. He just didn't care. If he looked like he cared, though, maybe he could find some luck. If he looked like he didn't believe that he was being led to his slaughter, maybe he could find some more cattle to lead to the slaughterhouse.

Oh, that's terrible, isn't it? I swallowed the thought, smoothing out the nonexistent wrinkles in Grantaire's waistcoat. Enjolras shot a look over his shoulder again, the third one in the matter of minutes. It wasn't the same look he had grown accustom to giving us these past couple days, the one his sleep-deprived brain was torturing him over. Now he looked like he was trying to figure out what was out of place since he couldn't clearly see it. A smile spread across my face when I realized what was troubling him.

"Alright, comrades," Grantaire pinned a badge to his coat, mocking Enjolras without getting the man's full attention, only a glance. "When I return, there shall be legions of young men awaiting the word of Apollo." Grantaire bowed. I watched him closely as he did and then as he walked away. This was a really bad idea. I could just feel it.

"He won't be back tonight." I told Enjolras, who was still stumped at the bookshelf. "You should call for Joly to trail him."

"Joly's..." Enjolras trailed off. "Joly's preoccupied tonight."

I paused. Preoccupied? "Then I'll have Cade do it."

"Because that will go over well." He muttered sardonically, dropping to a squat to look at the next shelf.

"Yes, well, it'll be better than Grantaire waking up alone in a ditch tomorrow morning." I snapped.

"Grantaire is fine, 'Ponine." Enjolras sighed.

"Because he makes for great entertainment when he's drunk?" I hissed.

Enjolras came back up from his position and turned to face me with a frown, "Don't put words into my mouth. Especially Pontmercy's." He turned back around.

"There's nothing wrong with the damn organization, Enjolras!" I cried, fed up with his quest to find what was askew. "And Grantaire is going to screw this up, you know it."

"He'll be fine." Enjolras repeated. "For someone who thinks so highly of him, you sure have no faith in his abilities."

"Oh, please." I snorted. "My recognition of his inabilities is better than you giving him false hope."

"I give him false hope?" He retorted skeptically. I raised my eyebrows in response. Enjolras sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. "Yes, he has a tendency to stray from the point, and he doesn't care more than he cares. But I can't turn a cheek to him just because he's made mistakes in the past. If he wants to prove himself to the cause, then who am I to try and stop him?"

"He's not trying to prove himself to the cause, Enjolas." I folded my arms. "He's just looking for your approval. Now you've gone and given him this impossible task, so when he fails, he's just going to drown his sorrows in a bottle of brandy. Top that, he'll go to the brandy before he disappoints you, because he'll over think. I bet you he's on his way to one of those bars right now, thinking how he's going to screw this all up, so by the time he gets there, he'll already have the bartender waiting with his regular."

Whether he didn't want to believe or he didn't believe me, Enjolras turned his back to me again and went to the desk on the other side of the room. I stared at him as his fingers danced along the handle of one of the drawers. He started to open it but then shut it before I could even blink. Then just as swiftly as he had crossed to the other side of the room, he was back on my side. My breath caught in my throat at his sudden closeness. One of his arms circled around my waist, eliminating any distance between us; and his free hand came up to my face, gently stroking his thumb over my cheek. He could probably feel my face heating up under his touch. Hell, he could probably see my face heating up. He was like marble, though, aside from the slight curve to his lips. His lips, which I found were increasingly difficult to look away from. What was he doing? Was he so calm? Why was I so nervous? I felt the pressure from his thumb increase. I didn't know if it was because I had moved my head a fraction closer to him or because he was pressing harder. Oh, damn it all to hell, I just wanted him to kiss me. Or have his way with me. Whatever. Both.

"I want to try something." Enjolras whispered against my lips.

I bit back a whimper at the feel of his lips ghosting over my mine and that breath of his that tickled the hairs on my face. I think I nodded. I'm sure I did, because I would have had to be an idiot to say no. Enjolras took my hands and placed them on either of his sides, mumbling for me not to move them. I nodded again. I knew for sure this time, because a lock of hair slipped from behind my ear at the movement. And I was well aware of it slipping, because Enjolras took his sweet old time putting it back before caressing my face. He had one thumb on the underside of my jaw, so he could tilt my face up towards him. I watched him intently before my eyes fluttered shut as he got closer to my lips. I could feel his eyes shifting to different areas of my face, studying me as he moved at the pace of a snail. I didn't mind so much. It wasn't a gawking study. It was like he was truly interested in how I reacted to him. And, well, I was quite interested to reacting to him.

"Don't." He breathed. His lips couldn't have been more than a few millimeters away from my lips. I didn't know what he was talking about. My mind was too cloudy with his scent and heat and physical being. I was curious to find out, though.

Not knowing what to do with them, since he told me not to move them, I fisted my hands into the material of Enjolras' waistcoat as I felt his lips hover a breath above mine before he finally placed one soft and innocent kiss on my top lip. The kiss was so mesmerizing even though there was hardly anything to it. I tried deepening the kiss, but I felt a slight pressure on my face. Don't. He was telling me not to take control of the situation. He was telling me that he wanted this moment. It was bittersweet. I didn't know why I listened to him, though. I could have taken control, and Enjolras would have followed me to the bedroom and back until my heart's desire was content. But I was intrigued. I wanted to know what he was doing, why he was doing it, what brought it on, and how far he planned on taking it.

The entire thing was almost as if the a warm breeze was playing a mind trick on me. His lips were barely a memory on mine. A sliver of warmth still in the places his lips last touched, but I could no longer feel the pressure of them. But it wasn't the wind, it was Enjolras. It seemed to take hours just to get to that point. In reality, it hadn't been more than three minutes from the time he held me to when he placed a gentle butterfly kiss on my top lip, bottom lip, and then encores for both. His nose nudged mine each time he switched lips. Although I was unaware of it mostly, I knew his body had moved an inch closer to mine from the new stance he had. Of course, it took my mind way too long to comprehend it.

Enjolras' hands were on mine again. He moved them to wrap around his waist and then up his back, flattening them when I instinctively had them curled, as he deepened the kiss from barely there to something a little more intimate. His hands moved back from the current position. Both of his thumbs were at the back of my jaw, some of his fingers flirting with my hairline, and the rest were lightly grazing over the skin of my neck. Sending chills up and down my spine with tracks of gooseflesh in their wake.

I tried really hard not to respond to his kisses. Well, not respond, but not take the control that I wanted to take. I managed somehow, though. The kiss never got out of hand. I don't even think tongue was involved. In a way, it was exploratory. We hadn't kissed like that at all up til this point, and I had a strong feeling that was the entire point Enjolras was trying to make. Even as the kisses deepened to their furthest extent, which shouldn't have clouded my mind as much as they did, I could barely form a thought or think of forming a thought. So I sank into the kiss. Let Enjolras have full control. But when I gave him that full control, he came to a sudden stop.

"Huh," A small smile spread across his face as he felt his lips. I blinked at his own swollen lips and wondered if mine were similar.

"What was that about?" I choked out, my voice not quite sounding like it should. His smile turned into a deep smirk at my tone.

"That's how I like it."

"Do you have a lot of experience kissing like that?" I teased, but I was a little afraid to hear the answer. Which caught me off guard. This was Enjolras. His pillow is probably the only thing that'd experienced it before I had.

"Not like that." He mumbled, brushing a stray hair from my face and placing another soft, chaste kiss on my lips.

"So that's it?" I coughed as he untangled himself from me and started gathering his things. "You're just going to leave me all hot and bothered to write in the margins of your romance novels?"

He sent me a look that reaffirmed my suspicion that this pregnancy was making me ridiculous.

"You know my feelings." About me and about boundaries drawn by the baby. "Besides, you can teach me something tomorrow."

"You're downgrading our relationship to a learning experiment?"

He shrugged, "I think I've proven learning can be fun." And then he disappeared into his study.

I failed to see what was so fun about being left like hit and run first kiss victim. I stared at his closed door for a few more moments before turning around and rearranging anything I could possibly rearrange. What was I supposed to teach him, though? Not that I thought he knew more than me, because I definitely had him beat in some areas. But how could I follow that? It just wasn't possible. Especially since most mind blowing things I could teach him were off limits since he has the whole irrational fear of hurting the baby or the baby seeing his penis or whatever his insecurity was. I retreated to the nursery and sat at the chair by the window, watching the street and waiting for inspiration.

"Called it." I mumbled God knows how much later, after the maisonette had been dead silent for a while, as I watched a man with Enjolras' hair, build, and coat pull on a hat. A hat that looked just like Enjolras'. The man was leaving the complex, looking left to right, and starting in the direction of Grantaire's closest haunt.

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