May, 1829

Even from across the room I can see the tension between them. Enjolras has on his Grecian-marble face; the boy's seldom so lovely as when he's fuming. And poor Combeferre is smoldering with simple human frustration -- as who wouldn't, faced with that frosty calm? They're too close, those two. More than brothers, more than lovers, inseparable as a man and his shadow -- but which is the shadow?

Watching them from across the room with eyes as attentive as any lover's, I have my own suspicions.

Combeferre pushes back his chair and stands; though it looks civil enough, there's a stiffness in his shoulders as he turns to leave. Enjolras doesn't even watch him go, but when the door has shut the air of regal disinterest deserts him, and he buries his face in his hands. From wrathful godling to lost little boy, in a blink.

I've an idea of what they were arguing about, and it's mostly my doing. I ought to do something to mend it. So I stand, leaving my half-empty glass where it sits, and cross the room to him. "Julien?"

He looks up. "Courfeyrac."

"Always so formal. D'you mind if I join you?"

"I suppose not."

I slide into the vacant seat. "Pontmercy?"

He blinks, and then shakes his head ruefully. "How did you know?"

"Easily guessed, mon ami."

"I tried to explain." Enjolras rubs his temples. "I know you think well of him, but--"

"I think he's a likable dolt, and he'd never do. You can tell Combeferre I told you so."

He laughs in spite of himself. "Thank you. I wish it were quite that easy."

"Why not?"

"He'll need time to cool off." Enjolras says it calmly, resigned and patient. The way a man speaks of his wife; the way a woman speaks of her husband. "It isn't just Pontmercy, you know. It's... a number of things."

"I see." God, he looks so tired, so bereft, that my heart aches for him. Even the expression is like Combeferre's, when he walked out just now. As close as we are, all of us, no one's ever quite touched what's between them, not even Prouvaire, not even me. And damn it, I love them both. "Are you going home tonight, then?"

Enjolras shrugs. "Where else?"

I love them both, but this one is sitting before me, and he looks so close to breaking. "Come with me?"

He looks at me warily. Perhaps because of Combeferre, perhaps simply by nature, he has always held a little aloof from the rest of us. A trifle incongruous, maybe, in one who laid down the unwritten rules of our fraternity, and who has made intent and breathtaking love to each of us in turn, to bind us to our purpose. But that's his right.

Still, a man can try. "Come home with me, Julien, for tonight. You look... like you could use the company."

"He'll worry," Enjolras says to the tabletop.

As though Combeferre's never left you alone for a night, dear friend? "He knows none of us would let you come to harm. Come home with me. I'm worried about you myself."

Third time is the charm. Almost imperceptibly, he relaxes, lets out a tiny sigh. "All right."

And so, an hour later, I find myself in Enjolras' arms for the second time in my life. His skin is as soft as I remember it; he has the same faint sweet scent, and the same sudden turn of his head, as though shocked by his own passion. But we are alone tonight, with no silent friends to bear witness to what we do, in case I should someday go to the police. Tonight it is only Julien and I.

He lacks the cool confidence of the previous occasion. He is tentative, nervous, seeming almost fragile in the lamplight, and he can hardly bring himself to meet my eyes. And afterward, with his face half-hidden against my shoulder:

"Aimery?"

"Yes?"

A long silence. "I don't know if we're right, sometimes. In any of this. In what we do."

Does he even realize his lover asked me the same thing, months ago, nestled just as close beside me, in almost the same voice? Will I ever understand either of them?

"I think so," I tell him, as I told Combeferre. "At least-- I don't think we're wrong. I-- God, it shouldn't work, but it does, doesn't it? I would die for you, for any of you, as readily as I would for--"

"--for the cause," Enjolras finishes, and sighs. "For liberty."

"Equality."

"Fraternity..."

"Kiss me, brother. Go to sleep."

Never understand either of them. But God, do I love them.

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