Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed; you are all my muses, and I dedicate this delicious piece of fluff to you.
Disclaimer: I want them. But, alas.
When he gets home, Enjolras hears giggling and Prouvaire's soft, lilting voice reciting something that he can't immediately identify. It's coming from the balcony, and when he slides open the glass door, he finds Jehan, in nothing but a pair of white boxer briefs, and Eponine, wearing a sports bra and a pair of white panties. On the white wicker table between them is a glass mixing bowl filled with what looks like teal hair dye, a glass bottle of a champagne-colored liquid, an ashtray with two cigarette butts, and a pack of yellow Spirits. Eponine has her feet in Jehan's lap, smoking what appears to be her third cigarette, and is alternating between laughing and listening intently to Jehan's recitation of what Enjolras finally places to be Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." The tail of Jehan's braid is now teal, as are the tips of Eponine's fingers.
"'Jolras! Come join us!" Eponine looks so happy, so unburdened, and it's enough to make Enjolras put aside the immense load of philosophy homework he has due the next day to pull out another chair to join Jehan and Eponine in their lovely spring afternoon. Eponine pours him a glass of the liquid and after tasting it, he realizes that it's not champagne at all, but white grape juice, crisp, cold, and sweet. The sun is warm on his face, and he follows the example of his friends and pulls off his cotton T-shirt. They giggle and applaud.
"Now, where was I?" Jehan wonders idly, running his thumb across the pad of Eponine's left foot.
"'Who bit detectives in the neck,'" prompted Eponine, taking a drag of her cigarette and using her free hand to take hold of Enjolras's, smiling up at him.
"Ah, yes. We're getting to the good bits. 'Who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in police cars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication…'" Jehan has a good voice for reading poetry, Enjolras thinks, and takes a sip of the juice. He can feel his skin soaking up the sun, and it's the most relaxed he's felt in a while. "'…who howled on their knees,' see, Eponine, it's the title of the poem, told you it was relevant eventually, 'in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts/who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy/who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love—'"
"That's a lovely line," Eponine interrupts, taking a sip of the grape juice. "'Caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love.' Gorgeous."
"Isn't it? Some perceive Ginsberg as crude, but some of the lines he writes are just as lyric and elevated as anything Milton or Shelley wrote." Jehan can see that he's losing Eponine with this, who is not an English major and knows very little about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British poetry. "'…who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose gardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may…'"
"I dunno," Enjolras cuts him off. "That's pretty crude."
"Well, you know what, Mr. Political Science Major? Almost everything brilliant and wonderful has, at one time or another, been deemed crude." Jehan seems prepared to defend his Beats until the death.
"Like, for example?"
"Well, sex. For example. But in the literary world, we have Shakespeare, Byron, Whitman…"
"I'm not denying its literary merit. Just commenting that it is, actually, decently crude," Enjolras grins at Jehan. "You're fearsome when you have a point to prove."
"Allen Ginsberg is my spirit animal," Jehan says with a toss of his head that attempts to be proud and ends up just being adorable. "Besides, if you think that's bad, wait for the next few stanzas. We get the phrase, 'copulated ecstatic and insatiate,' and, 'sweetened the snatches,' and 'cocksman and Adonis of Denver,'…"
Enjolras laughs. "I think I get the point, Jehan. Can we skip some? I like the part about Moloch."
"You're insane," interjects Eponine. "That part terrifies me. It's like I can hear him shouting at me, warning me."
"You were paying attention!" Jehan cries gleefully, freckled face turning up into a fierce smile.
"Well, don't tell anyone; I have a reputation to uphold."
They're so busy bantering and laughing, smoking and sipping grape juice that they don't notice when Courfeyrac comes home; when the glass door slides open, they jump a bit. "So…are we all just getting naked? And no one thought to invite me?"
Jehan laughs. "You certainly may join." Courfeyrac sets down his bag, unbuttons his shirt but doesn't remove it completely, and pulls up a chair so that he's sitting next to Jehan and facing Eponine. Enjolras and Eponine both notice when Courfeyrac puts his hand on Jehan's knee, but neither of them comment. They say to themselves that they'll bring it up later, but change their minds immediately when Courfeyrac leans over and plants a kiss on the smaller boy's lips.
"By the way," Courfeyrac says once he's surfaced from Jehan's kiss, "we're dating." He takes Eponine's pack of cigarettes, removes one, replaces the pack, puts the cigarette between his lips, lights it, and inhales. "And now that he's dated Montparnasse, who lights up, y'know, every seven seconds, he can't bitch at me about bumming 'Ponine's cigs every now and again." Jehan shakes his head, smiling, not even able to fake being angry with Courfeyrac, the boy with whom he's been in love since he first saw him.
Years later, when it's all over, all four of them look back on this afternoon as one of the loveliest ones of their youth. The elegant simplicity of it, four friends in their underwear, smoking, drinking grape juice, reciting poetry, making pretentious remarks, dyeing their hair, massaging each other's feet, sharing kisses, soaking up warmth and light and beauty, imprints the memory so deeply that they each remember it for the rest of their lives.