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Eponine isn't looking for Marius, but she isn't not looking for Marius.
He hasn't been to Musain as much since the Napoleonic incident, but instinct tells her he will return, and there's a better chance of catching him out with the rowdy students. The one Marius lives with from time to time -- Courfeyrac, who carries himself like a prince -- could be that she'll be there to see him leave, and can follow him a while. Maybe he is meeting Marius tonight.
Her frail frame has few attractions left but it lets her slip into places that would keep her out. Eponine squeezes through the half-propped alleyway door, through a sliver of space that would not admit a man. She creeps on silent feet, toe-heel-toe, ghostlike after years of practice.
She'll come here, sometimes, to their private backroom full of smoke. She doesn't pretend to understand all that they say, especially the names of old Gods and kings volleyed about so fast, but she likes to hear them talk.
And she knows more than they know. Than anyone knows she does. Knows enough to keep her opinions to herself, to keep to herself in the shadows. How they would disdain her, if they knew her there.
They're a cheerful bunch of schoolboys, boys more than men, red-faced with drink and round with food. They are themselves a family here. She envies what they have with a hunger more gnawing than the one in her belly. She doesn't come often.
But when Eponine arrives that evening the amusement is waning. They are headed to the old church for a concert, and she overhears heated debate about the promised chorales, each bragging of his predictions or musical acumen, and it is all a clatter as they gather to go.
“Enjolras,” says one of them, it doesn't matter, he is not Marius or the one who sleeps sometimes with Marius close by. “Are you certain you would give up your ticket? It's true that I would like to go, but-- ”
“You must go, Bahorel. I know you will enjoy it, and I have been lucky enough to attend such a concert before. I insist on it. I said how the rain yesterday chilled me, and hasn't left; I must rest, or I fear I will take ill.” It is the addressed man who answers, Enjolras, the one who looks like he should be sitting on a gilded throne instead of trying to topple them. “My friends, I will send you to your choir. For me, an early bed.”
“What about Grantaire?” the concerned young man who pipes up has a high-strung mien, and he steps quickly away from Enjolras when sickness is mentioned.
“What about Grantaire?” echoes the man sprawled across two and a half seats of his own, cheek disdainful of a razor. “What indeed? Joly sings aloud the question on every questioning man's mind. What does Grantaire care for church concerts? What is a ticket? What indeed. Money for paper. Hymns in the dark. Who are they singing to, anyway? Which Gods? Which ones? Have you any proof that they are listening? But the Gods do like music, I suppose, if there are Gods. They were always making a racket. Marsyas the satyr taught himself to play the flute and bragged that he was better than Apollo. He challenged the God of music to a contest and lost. Apollo in his wisdom despised musical contests so he had Marsyas flayed alive. The message? Never get too good at something. Another day, Marsyas found a flute that Athena had made but cast to earth from Olympus. Her cheeks bulged when she played, and the other Gods made fun of her. When Marsyas dared to try her flute, she struck him down in spite. The lesson taken? Never laugh. Orpheus played a song, and was torn apart for it. Such furious critics!”
“Grantaire is drunk,” says their leader, a wall against the speech. All the rest merely shrug their shoulders, as though Grantaire's outbursts are just as much faraway music. Enjolras does not sound amused about the pronouncement; he sounds long-resigned. “I will see to Grantaire. And I will want a full report of the music. I trust there will be no flaying.”
After that, the others leave with shouted hails and promises to meet the next night, and the little party breaks up. Eponine tilts her head, considering the quiet room, where Enjolras is standing waving after his friends, and Grantaire is taking up chairs, head at a dull loll.
She turns to go. Her heart is quick in her breast. Such a group of them could be meeting Marius at the old church. Surely Marius would not miss an evening of songs. Perhaps it had been his idea. Perhaps he is there already. She might have a glimpse of him, tonight.
It has been many days, and she longs to look upon him and see that he is well, see him smiling amongst his friends. They will be in fine spirits. If she runs, taking the best short-cuts, she could even beat them there, and see Marius approach as he went into the concert.
“Did you like my performance?”
The voice is unfamiliar, so she freezes, blinking back. Both men are now on their feet in the middle of the room, squared off and staring.
The voice is Grantaire's, Eponine realizes, because there is no one else in the room save Enjolras, and herself in the shadows; but Grantaire's tone is a clear tenor, and there is no slur in his words, and it sounds -- it sounds unlike the voice she has heard him use.
“I have not yet seen enough to judge,” says Enjolras, and the way he's speaking also rings different to her ear. She has never heard him tease, not the man who burned with fiery ideals and powderkeg ideas. He has ever been unbending.
But he is teasing. And he is saying something else she startles to recognize.
“I liked yours very much. How I ached in sympathy to bathe your fevered brow.”
Eponine blinks again, and they are in each other's arms, mouth sealed to mouth, tousled heads together of black and gold. Their mouths look very hungry. She knows it when she sees it.
Their hands are intimate, running familiar over their strong young bodies, touching here, tugging fabric aside there to graze fingertips or lips to skin. They are neither sick nor drunk. They are tearing each other apart. They are Furies. They are trying to climb up, over, around, into one another. She has never seen anything like them.
She does not remember the last time she felt such a thrill of surprise go through her. Nothing has been surprising for Eponine for years she has ceased counting. She knows her way around how people are.
She has seen or heard or felt herself all that man could want to do. To see one man reach for another as he would a woman is nothing new to her. She has been in enough alleys, in narrow dark cafes, slipped past countless windows; it is another thing that men do, no more, no less.
It is only that these two surprise her. She has snuck into gatherings many times before, and has never heard the pair do anything but spar: contempt and resignation from Enjolras and sarcastic prostrations from Grantaire.
She has thought them the least close in the club; but they are playing all who listened to them for fools. They are fooling their friends, too, she saw it with her own eyes: the door barely allowed to close before Grantaire sprung up, and Enjolras' arms around him.
“I thought that they would never, ever leave,” Grantaire is saying, teeth dragging Enjolras' collarbone. “I kept the speech short, for me. Do you think anyone noticed?”
“Combeferre likely saw that you were not really consuming over-much. He sees the details others do not.” Enjolras cants his head so that Grantaire can trail the biting kissing up his neck. “But he will not think I lied to ease their departure.”
“Oh, say that again. It drives me mad in the good way. Humor me but once, Enjolras.”
“I lied. I diverted. For better truths.”
The noise from Grantaire makes Eponine's cheeks flush. “To make you a confessed sinner! Ah, I am complete. Come back, I am not done with your lower lip. It is always so stubborn.”
She knows that she should go, at once, that far too much has been seen and heard already. She must go. It is difficult to watch them, and to breathe.
This isn't for her, here, this is something that is hidden but bright, like buried treasure. Valued. A fool could see how they were looking at each other. That is why it is so hard for her to turn away.
They are handsome apart, but together they are very beautiful. They reflect like dark and light. Night and day and sun and moon, until wrapped up in their embrace they are like the paintings Eponine sees when she can find a discarded ticket to the great museums of Paris.
In the gutters outside the inns and hotels of foreign tourists she will often have luck, and steal in to see the statues like men alive from past worlds, and the paint in such a brilliant spectrum that it hurts her eyes to look too long; she is unused to so many colors.
She thinks on the sights she has seen at the museums because they are like that, Enjolras and Grantaire, and this she has not seen but once before. They gaze like the epic lovers in bronze and stone, holding each other up, seeking hands and mouths and murmured words that only they can hear.
That they love each other is the constant. She has seen Marius look upon Cosette like this, and Cosette return it. Between them, these people who loved, they have everything that Eponine has ever wanted.
She does not begrudge Cosette. She envies her, and hates her, and loves her, and knows that Cosette has what she is due. Cosette is good; she will be good to Marius; Eponine would have tried to be good but she is so unlucky.
Only imagine though, for a moment, just a moment to herself, that Marius might look at her as he does Cosette.
Better, better: that he would look at her like Grantaire is looking at Enjolras, and Enjolras at Grantaire. Would Marius let her push him gently into a chair, as Grantaire does Enjolras, let her sling herself laughing over his lap? She would do it. Oh, how she would climb up.
See how Grantaire puts his hand with reverence into Enjolras' hair? Her smile would be the same as Grantaire's, smug, and Marius' hair would be as soft, she knows. It is a shorter cut, and easy to run her fingers through.
In a world where Eponine is the girl she was raised for years to be: she would have a fine dress, and a finer education, and tell Marius witty things about Gods and kings and monsters while she kissed his kind mouth.
See how Enjolras puts his arms around Grantaire, to better hold him in place? Marius would fix her to him like that. He would say smart, eloquent, insightful things, like Enjolras, and she would banter, like Grantaire.
Or he would say, like Grantaire, “You are exquisite, a Nile-washed gem, a shell from the bottom of the ocean, a piece of the risen moon, the obsidian heart of a burning volcano, a falcon soaring spread-winged. How I worship you.” And Eponine, like Enjolras, would toss her proud head and look vain, but let him know by the gleam of her eye and a wink that she loved him in return.
How strange and wonderful to see what they might do. She has never seen love being made, not like this. It is not in most windows where she lives.
How much would Marius know? These men are skillful. Surely they share a regular bed. They seem to know just where to reach, where to tease, where to lick and suck and how best to stroke. She and Marius would learn it together, but he would be the more innocent at first.
Eponine would show him all she has learned of what men and women desired. That would be different from playing at being a lady. He wants this from her anyway. She saw it in his eyes before he saw Cosette. She saw it when they met. His gentle eyes on her bared breast, trying not to see her, seeing too well.
Now she has seen for certain Marius is more for love than revolution. She would have guessed it. He lives to meet Cosette's shy smile at the garden wall. Cosette gleams pure behind the wrought-iron bars. Cosette will be sweet. But she knows nothing. In this, in this alone, Eponine knows herself to be the better for Marius. Cosette will love him well, but not as Eponine would have, wild in his lap, like Grantaire is wild on Enjolras.
But who are Enjolras and Grantaire? Anyone could do what they are doing, with practice. Only it might take a while.
A while to get Marius like Enjolras in the chair, with his bronze legs wide and Grantaire fit between them, both supplicant and priest, masterful at his task. At first, Marius would be shy; but he would trust her, he always does, and she could swallow him down to have him like that. She would want to. She wants to very much.
She does not mean to slip a hand between her legs, watching them, but her body quickens with the sight. A rare, lovely sensation echoes low in her belly. Her heart kicks harder now than the idea of seeing Marius at the church. She could not dream about this without witnessing it first. She did not know so much was possible. Grantaire is much to be admired.
He has a fluid grace, and she likes the way Enjolras' hands tangle in his unkempt hair, make a knot of it. Grantaire's bowed head and lips go up and down, and Enjolras' hips go up and down, and both of them are making the most spectacular exclamations. And she knows she should go. She knows. Who is she to watch two statues, to spy on Gods and kings?
And yet. So few things surprise her, and fewer that are thrilling. Like the museum guards, like the statues also, they will never know or care that she is there. No one knows or cares. She watches. She aches and rocks against her fingers and finds release with them. In the corner, it is dangerous. There is only the shadow of the wine cabinet to hide her. But they never look. Eponine closes her eyes at the finish, over fireworks, so that she can see only Marius. A long while later she opens them.
One year when she was a girl there was a nice old painter, over-fond of absinthe, who would come into the inn every week, and on credit from her father show Eponine some sketching. Fine ladies drew at pictures, her father knew. She had liked it even better than reading and lettering.
If she had the tools to draw, she would choose to draw the canvas of the room with its few candles and lanterns on scattered tables, and Enjolras boneless in his chair, with Grantaire's dark head resting on his thigh. They stay like that so long she might have drawn it.
“The verdict?”
“Magnificently acted, Grantaire. I cannot recall when I was last witness to a more splendid performance. It was important to stay through to see the end.”
“Better than a church concert, at least.” Grantaire has Enjolras' hand, is pressing a kiss to the palm of it. Somehow it's harder for her to watch the little gesture than the height of their loving. “And I beg you to recall last Tuesday.”
Eponine tries to sort herself out as they stand to fix clothing, trading kisses and quips. Her pulse remains a race, her cheek must be scarlet; she has stayed so long that she has missed all chance of catching a glimpse of Marius going to meet his friends. She does not regret it. She has had the chance to see what they might be, what they could do, if they were something else. If he were hers.
What are Enjolras and Grantaire? They are in love. What is Eponine? In love. What is Marius? In love. It is such a little step.
“I must have words with a few in the front before tomorrow's meeting,” Enjolras is saying, letting Grantaire drape the red length of his jacket around his shoulders. Grantaire fusses with the angle of it until it looks jaunty. “Would you wait, or meet me back at your rooms?”
“Ours. One day you shall say so. And I will wait, of course. Where goes the baying dog without his fox?” But Grantaire's tone is light, impossibly fond. “I will clean some of the mess I so cleverly made, and come to hear you speak. You know I cannot bear long without hearing you talk of the rights of man and our inhumane condition and our infinite options for improvement. I could never fall asleep at night without it.”
Enjolras shakes his head and laughs in the same breath, and tilts close to kiss Grantaire's still-moving mouth. “You are incorrigible.”
“I am not yet satisfied,” Grantaire reminds. With an arc of his ink-black eyebrow and arch flair, he recites: “All the world's our stage, Enjolras. 'And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances.'”
Eponine thinks Enjolras is almost blushing when he murmurs, “The Bard was wise,” and hurries off to get his business fast completed.
When he is gone Grantaire stares after him a moment, then sighs, then grins, then rakes all his hair back and pulls on it, then grins again and starts collecting bottles.
She would try to flee but Grantaire is blocking the entrance to the passageway and coming closer. He means for the wine cabinet, his arms full of green glass, and she is lost. She tries to push herself back into the wall, heart in her throat.
Grantaire swings open the cabinet and has put most of them away, caught in his own reverie, when he notices her crouch.
“Oh,” he says, keeping at the task. “Hello. We are quite out of Mariuses here tonight.”
Eponine gapes at him. He does not kick at her, or yell for her to get away. He arranges the last bottle on the rack and offers her a hand, which she takes after prolonged examination. He draws her up and lets her go.
She is very glad, then, that it is Grantaire who stumbled upon her. She knows his lover to be a just man, but she thinks Enjolras might have hauled her to her feet with sharp words and cast her quickly out for the affront to their honor.
And that Grantaire has seen enough of her to see how she watches Marius, when Marius himself does not see --
“Sorry, I am sorry,” hastens Eponine, “Monsieur, I—I do apologize-- ”
“I am unaware of the affront.” Grantaire closes the wine cabinet, and when he turns back to her, his expression is mostly amused. It is also a touch plaintive. “Tell me, Eponine. I must know. What is your review? I invoke your honesty, which they say you are known for.”
They. They. Him. Has Marius spoken her name here, aloud, said it to his friends? Eponine is honest, though she may not look it. You can trust her, because I do.
For a moment Eponine has no voice, she is so struck. Then she colors, but it is a prettier pink, she thinks, the way she used to blush. When she discovers her nerve, which is never far, she says, “Monsieur Grantaire, you were extraordinary. I would think you trained in the cabarets of Pigalle.”
Grantaire's laughter has the peal of bells. He puts a hand over his heart. “How you do relieve me. I worry, constantly. It is excellent to have an impartial critic. All men and women should have one.”
She allows for a smile in return, reveling in his secrets, knowing he trusts her to keep what she has spied to herself without admonishment. Since he is kind, perhaps he will even help her. “Your friends--”
“Marius is with them, listening to the caterwaul. Afterward you will find them at the Corinthe. The conversation will be insufferably pretentious on the subject of music, but there will be singing, at least.”
“Thank you,” Eponine says. If she were someone else she would press his hand in thanks. Cosette would brush his hand, like a feather. “Thank you.”
“We are similar,” says Grantaire, starting a speech. “We both see too much, that others look away from, or would seek to change. You and I, we have the right idea about what is worth living for, if we must live like this. All the research suggests we must.” He moves over to unhook his green vest from the chair and shrugs it on.
“I have been you,” he says to Eponine, “I am still. Who am I to tell you not to gaze upon Marius, if you would? If it makes you happier than you would be? Long did I follow Enjolras before he saw me. You may call me Eurydice and be done with it. Marius is in love with puppy eyes and sighs. But they say she is to go across the water. And he is in danger of being swept into my darling's plans to smite the Gods. Before he tries that a man must live a little. Yet I would not seek to direct you. I am a poor pilot.”
Again she cannot speak. She thanks him once more, with her eyes, and they share a nod.
“You know, Mademoiselle,” says Grantaire, shifting from cynicism over to sly good humor, as he would, “you might have said something to make yourself known. Did you enjoy it? Perhaps you should have joined us. It is true that Enjolras is entirely traditional; he is very set in his ancient ways; but I am a different sort. I seek equilibrium. I will try anything, once or twice or three times. You really might have said.”
He is not being serious, Eponine thinks, but it is given over warmly, meant to be a compliment. She is not used to getting compliments. She nearly does not know how to take it on.
But Eponine is a Thénardier. Her tongue is tarnished silver. “I am quick to act, monsieur,” she tells Grantaire, “and tonight you took your time. It remains to be seen if you could keep a stride of me.” Her slight curtsy is ironic.
His head tips back, and he laughs merrily again; they laugh like that together, like bells. He offers her his arm, a gallant escort to the door that leads down into the alleyway. Then Grantaire goes to look after his love, and Eponine to her own.