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Enjolras was watching him write, sharp cheekbone pillowed on open hand and his eyes half-shut. Aware of his regard, aware too that it meant he had something to say but wasn’t yet ready to say it, Combeferre finished his letter without looking up, blotted his most recent line with sand, shook it loose, and folded up the paper.
Finally; “However ingenious – I don’t think it will answer the purpose. We have made our approaches, and been rebuffed. You think that you can persuade them with logic this time?”
Combeferre didn’t answer immediately. He busied himself with lifting the candle and tilting it until a hot streak of wax ran like mercury down onto the fold. It wasn’t sealing-wax, but at least it was beeswax, not tallow, and would hold.
When it had set, he said, "Not logic. I think I can incite them to passion, and thence to sympathy.”
“You will hardly speak to them of honour.”
Enjolras said it without undue accent or stress, but it struck a note clear as a bell to the ears of one peculiarly attuned to it, and Combeferre put down the letter.
“Do you think sodomites have none? That because they have more interest in what lies between the thighs of men rather than women, they must in their entirety be tainted? That is a very saintly view: and a peculiar conviction to come from your Catholic-cursing mouth.”
“No such thing,” Enjolras said. “I didn’t say that – but I do believe those who weigh their pleasures more finely than their liberties are unlikely to hear the force of your words. They won’t risk the interruption of their sport for the good of their country.”
“You judge them too harshly,” Combeferre said. “You don’t understand what we ask of them. To share their hiding-places, to share their network of communication: these things are precious. I know; what’s the body when the body politic calls? I know your sentiments, and I share them. But these men don’t merely gratify the flesh. They don’t refuse you their tavern-keepers bribed to secrecy and their safe rooms out of malice or indolence. They have built, of necessity, their own space, and fought for it, and they mean to keep it.”
“I don’t wish to take it,” Enjolras said. Was it Combeferre’s imagination, or did his nostrils pinch a little, imagining the dirty sheets and seamy bedrooms that network might be able to offer them when in need? “I want to share a little, no more: and to share in turn. Necessity makes strange bedfellows. I know the Friends of the People have contacts with the legitimists, in the name of a shared enemy. Should either of us end his government, we will seek to crush out the other – but while we both fight the Orleanais, information flows. I can’t see why they can’t see that our networks could be of aid to them likewise.”
“Perhaps they’re hesitant to gamble their little on our throw. I don’t agree – but again, I don’t blame them.”
“And you think you can persuade them otherwise?”
“I think I can act as a bridge between republicanism and private loves, yes.”
Enjolras looked thoughtful, which always made him look more distant than usual. His eyes fell on Combeferre’s hands as they returned the sand and ink to their accustomed places and depressions in the writing-desk, and then lifted from hands to face when Combeferre closed the lid. “As you are doing now?”
"I would represent to them your concerns, as I have attempted to represent theirs to you.”
“Ours, surely. How can they not see you as a most biased diplomat?”
“I have a foot in both camps,” Combeferre said. His even breath did not disturb the candle-flame. “I am not conflicted in the commitment of my head, but my heart – I can understand their fears.”
Enjolras let out his own breath in belated understanding. A moment passed. "Your heart?” he said quietly. “I thought it was given freely to our cause: I did not know –”
“It is so; only on occasion does it pull at me, and it doesn’t pull me off course. My heart is in what we are about; and with you.”
“With Les Amis?”
“Yes; and with you. My dear, don’t look like that. It wasn’t to disturb you that I thought it best to clarify where my loyalties lie.”
Enjolras bent his head and regarded their twined hands for a long moment. He didn’t withdraw his, and so Combeferre studied in turn the part of his hair, with rueful fondness for the working brain under it, envisaging the rapid galvanisation that must be taking place therein as its owner assimilated what had been said.
He was therefore unprepared when Enjolras looked up as though he had come to a quick conclusion, and more unprepared still when Enjolras leaned forward and brushed his mouth to his own.
Combeferre stiffened against the sofa, and only breathed again when the fair head lifted, leaving the imprint of its cool, virginal kiss behind. “My dear –”
“I expect I did that badly,” Enjolras said, straightening. He looked unusually uncertain.
Combeferre set the lap-desk down on the floor, where it would be safe from further alarums, and called upon his customary calm. “Not at all. You were kind condescension itself.”
“I did not mean to condescend –”
“But you meant to be kind.”
“I suppose I did.”
At moments like this Combeferre was forcibly reminded of how young Enjolras truly was, a fair flushed student of twenty-two, and not the severe and eternal revolutionary who might have witnessed the rise and fall of the Republic in one burning unblinking glance. “Enjolras,” he said, almost tempted to laugh, “if you would be kind –”
“I will be quiet?” Enjolras said, divining his thought. “I will; but I believe I must apologise first. What I said before –”
“I have never blamed the ignorant for their lack of education.” Combeferre cleared his throat. “And I can appreciate the intent behind the gesture. I do appreciate it. Now, perhaps, we can discuss the Friends of the People, and what dealings they have with the Carlists?”
“Is there anything I can offer?”
“I require nothing.” Enjolras’s friendship, and now his understanding, were sufficient. “I only wanted you to know.”
“That is not my understanding of how - of how such things work.”
“We have agreed that you know little of 'such things',” Combeferre said, pinching the words into tart quotation. Clearly the legitimists would have to wait. “That is precisely why I am your envoy to these men, and theirs to you.”
”- And are you acquainted with them?”
“Pardon; are you inquiring about my knowledge of 'such things', or asking whether those we would address are my intimates?”
“Combeferre,” Enjolras said, a look on his face almost like pain at this sharpness, too close to pity. He repossessed himself of Combeferre’s hand. It was characteristic of him to choose action when his words were failing him. “I meant what I understood of the heart, not the body. I know a little of one, and nothing of the other: I would not presume to speak of it.”
Combeferre closed his eyes. “I’m sorry; this conversation touches me on the quick, and I would like to leave it quicker still, and obscure it with kicked-up dust as we go forward. If you would be kind,” he said, and Enjolras kissed his hand. “Enjolras –?”
Enjolras kissed his hand again, quite deliberately. “I would be kind,” he said, “but I would not condescend; that implies a bending from high to low, and we are equal, save in height. Perhaps I would condescend, but in the bending of my neck alone. If I may?”
He pressed their foreheads together, and then, after a moment, their mouths.
It was quite stiff, again a mere convergence of parts; and yet not mere at all. Even if Combeferre hadn’t known it, that Enjolras knew little of this was obvious. His bravery in attempting it anyway was humbling.
The hand Combeferre had curled in his sleeve to push him away rose instead to clasp the back of his neck and keep him in place. He kissed Enjolras’s upper lip, singularly, and then his lower. He felt rather than saw Enjolras’s mouth curve in a smile, and touched his tongue to the split of it.
This was part of the common inheritance of humanity Enjolras had never sought a share of, but he didn’t draw away when Combeferre held his face steady and sought out the lustrous interior of his cheek, the smooth pearl of his teeth. The vaulted roof of his mouth had been made for worship. Indeed, after a period, Enjolras attempted an exploration of his own.
Combeferre kissed his earnest mouth back, was kissed in turn again; they traded parts back and forth and back again until the turns became inseparable. At last, the thick cloud of feeling parting a little, shafts of mental light became obvious once more. Combeferre could hear his own breath coming fast through his nose, and knew himself to be half-roused, and that he must either remove himself from the situation entirely or press forward.
“My dear,” he said, drawing away. Enjolras’s white cheek was roughened from the scratch of evening beard, and his mouth red from being kissed. His eyes, however, kept their secrets, even when Combeferre sought them out. Was he similarly moved? Was this, still, a kindness?
Combeferre did not know; so he put his hand to Enjolras’s hip and said “If I may?”
Enjolras dipped his chin in assent, so Combeferre slid his hand along his flank when he kissed him again. He flinched, nevertheless, when Combeferre cupped him through the gathered cloth of his trousers.
Surprise, or aversion? His flesh had quickened, and so had his breath. Combeferre said, “Is this something you wish to know?”
“I am a blank slate, and you may instruct at leisure,” Enjolras answered.
“Wordplay, at this moment,” Combeferre said in wonder, and then “You’ve never–?”
“In sleep,” Enjolras said, “or so I must presume.” Humbling, and touching, too. “Testimony being so provided,” Enjolras added, smiling slightly, and Combeferre was less touched: but the smile was contagious.
“I have testimony of my own,” he said, tightening his grip; “to hand, so to speak.”
“Wordplay,” Enjolras echoed, and then “oh;” and then, as Combeferre continued to testify at length, released at last a more guttural sound that was gratifying affirmative.
If Combeferre had an ear less finely tuned, he might have taken it as that alone, but that muttered sigh had been a name, choked off, and one seemingly made to be so murmured – one not his own.
“Ah,” he said, one hand still curled around the back of Enjolras’s neck, the other still resting familiarly on the fork of his trousers. He took a breath, and stepped back from the living waxwork that had briefly been beating flesh against him.
“Combeferre,” Enjolras said, opening his eyes, but it was rather late to amend his words.
“Don’t apologise,” he said, seeing Enjolras’s mouth open to do so. “You needn’t apologise for it. I’m the last to expect such a thing from anyone. Who knows better than I that it can’t be helped where our heart affixes itself?”
“My heart does not affix itself in that direction,” Enjolras said, sounding appalled at the thought. Combeferre wondered whether he had even known that that name lived on his lips. How could he, when he had walled up that human instinct in plaster, and let the wall be breached only in his sleep? “If I could affix that organ anywhere, it would be to your breast, and nowhere else. I do affix it there.” He pressed his fist into the centre of Combeferre’s chest, thumped his knuckles against it like the rattle of a sabre against shield.
Combeferre covered his fist with his hand, held it for a moment, and then moved it sideways, gentle but inexorable. “The heart is in fact a little to the left. The Divine does not observe a perfect symmetry in these matters.”
Enjolras drew back, although it wasn’t at him Combeferre had levelled that particular irony. “I know where I love,” he said. “Patria; and my friends. And you, chief among their number. I know where I love, and if it is not precisely as you love, I still love.”
“I don’t say you love him. Only that you want him.”
“I didn’t know I did.” His face tightened. “I don’t want to.”
“Nevertheless.”
Enjolras bowed his head. Even without words, the stubborn toiling of his brain was loud. Under the massed fair curls it was working in circles. Combeferre wanted to kiss the frown on his brow, but he wouldn’t, now.
When Enjolras finally lifted his face again, his blue eyes were no longer distant, their luminance no longer veiled. “Combeferre, I would never knowingly have given you false coin.”
“I know.” He was still holding Enjolras’s fist to his breast. Now he released it. “You hold my heart, and now you know it. We will leave it there. And perhaps we can finally discuss the Carlists?”
Enjolras made a rude sound, dispensing with the Carlists. “I’d rather work with the Orleanais! I give the Amis du Peuple their due for their pamphlet-work, but anyone who makes common cause with the duchess is either an idiot or a traitor.”
“Certainly a traitor,” Combeferre said. They had drawn apart; Enjolras’s hand had returned to his side.
A half-smile. “To us, as well as to Louis-Philippe.”
“The effective practice of politics does require such horse-trading. To practice politics and remain ideologically pure; that is impossible.”
“I say it can be done,” Enjolras said, with the same fierceness he had repudiated the betrayal of his mouth and affirmed the purity of his heart.
To doubt him when he spoke like that was to doubt the force of gravity, so Combeferre smiled, and didn’t argue; but again, he thought it unlikely.