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Enjolras has never been one to read fantasy novels. Most of his reading is classic in nature, often more for education than story. That isn’t to say he doesn’t read for pleasure—it’s only to say that, perhaps, modern fiction isn’t what entertains him the most. This, he supposes, is why he ends up grabbing John Stewart Mill’s On Liberty, a worn copy, to be certain, the hardcover spine bent and torn from use.
But still readable, and exactly the kind of reading he had stopped by the university library for.
Combeferre is on duty (he loves his job, loves the quiet, loves the opportunity to read) and takes the book with barely an arched brow. “Some light reading for the weekend, Enjolras?”
“Yeah,” he takes the book back when Combeferre hands it over, stamped and scanned. “Midterms are over and I’d really rather not study if I can help it.”
He hums in understanding. “Joly thinks his brain is going to come out of his ears—I think Bousset is worried he might have a panic attack.”
“Advise him not to open a textbook this weekend,” he recommends before saying a quick goodbye and leaving the library behind him, crossing the street at the edge of campus in the direction of his flat. On Liberty is a comfortable weight in his hands—and he’s read excepts before and found himself moved by the vehemence of Mill’s advocacy for the freedom of speech and the right of the people to ignore unjust laws.
(He doesn’t swoon at the thought—but he does sigh, a little.)
When he opens the door to his flat, he stops by the kitchen only briefly to put a pot of popcorn on the stove, crossing the foyer-hallway to his living space to drape himself across the couch and get to his absolutely study-free weekend of reading and not leaving his flat at all. (He sent out a mass text this morning saying, preemptively, that he isn’t going out, don’t bother asking, if you come by his place he’ll ignore you, thanks and have a fantastic weekend, you losers.
Jehan had screencapped the entire message.)
He doesn’t sigh again, but he almost wants to, as he opens the coarse cover of the book, flipping through the blank first page. And—no—he thinks he might just have a—why?—heart attack. Because, under the reiteration of the title on the third page, a new title has been added in pencil.
A Casual Denouncement of Every Piece of Bullshit in this Book it reads, underscored by a signature of a scripted R.
He has half a mind to go back to the library—it’ll be open all weekend, after all, it’s a university library—and return this, perhaps find another book that could relax his mind as thoroughly as he had intended this one to. But, that’s a walk, and he’d really rather not leave—and it’s just a scribble on the first actual page. Nothing special.
So—with a suffering groan waiting in his throat—he turns the page.
And finds the first paragraph bracketed, in pencil, with the words this is a decent introduction, I’ll give him that, that’s all I got for this scrawled in the margin, cramped together in the small space. The first paragraph, as the chicken-scratch had duly noted, is excellent, positing theories and possibilities of the role of people and their interaction with society.
Really good, very good, and for the next three pages, there’s nothing there to bother him. But once “the struggle between authority and liberty” comes up—after having been mentioned on the first page, it’s underlined, an arrow taking it to the margins. Okay, so actually, I did take issue with the intro, it reads, whoops. I’m a lair. But my issue here is, what’s the difference between authority and liberty? Liberty is personal authority over your own actions. Like is authority on its own something terrible? Or is it only when it’s in the hands of the wrong people? (Obviously it’s terrible when in the wrong hands, how can this idiot not see that?) Because what is defined as the wrong people? What about overlapping “liberties”? America’s a prime example of this shit, okay—like you’ve got the freedom of speech, and just wait, I’ll get there, and the freedom of religion—
Enjolras stops there, realizing that he’s not reading the proper paragraph. He’s reading footnotes by some individual who checked out the book to tear it apart for anyone else to read it. (Like a jackass, in his opinion.) He’d gotten distracted.
Distracted enough, in fact, to forget that there was popcorn on the stove that is, most likely, burned, because he can smell it from here.
The page is marked on the sofa as he goes to rescue what’s salvageable and vows that he’ll continue reading Mill’s work when he returns.
(He doesn’t keep this promise, because the minute he gets back, and reopens the book, he finds his eyes drawn back to the handwriting in the margins.)
It’s late evening by the time he gets to the notion of individuality and how it “promotes wellbeing” (which it does) and, of course, this mysterious R has something to say about that.
Individuality is awesome, yeah, whatever, but he calls the Chinese collectivist culture “well-intentioned” but flawed. A) Who is this dickwad to pass judgment on a different culture?
“Excuse you!” Enjolras snorts, “you might want to watch your tongue when referring to philosophers that could educate you from their graves, all right?”
And B), he continues reading, social support and community ties are really important. For example, I know my stellar personality wouldn’t be what it is today without my family. (Enjolras rolls his eyes to his ceiling and mutters a prayer of “please” under his breath.) There is a small space in the margin before the train of thought continues. Because I had a shitty family—or parents, anyway, and frankly, I could have turned out better. Sorry, Mom, if you ever find this copy of this book—which is unlikely, because what, exactly, do you read?
Enjolras frowns, flipping back five or six pages and the handwriting is the same, but no longer in a straight line, instead descending downward to the right, looping around the letters of the words closest to the margin.
My sister is great though.
That’s the last comment in the book—in the margins anyway, and it’s at midnight that he realises it was almost like having a conversation.
(Oh Christ that sounds pathetic.)
The last page of the book, just before the timestamp card on the back cover, the handwriting makes a return, crisp and straight and cramped like before.
This book is still bullshit.
Enjolras feels his lips twitch in nothing-like-a-smile.
-
On Liberty is still on his couch, but students have a four book limit that they can check out, and one in the morning finds him leaving his flat, crossing the street and sticking to the lighted areas until he reaches the library (thank God for twenty-four hour institutions). Cosette is actually the nightshift assistant, sitting behind the desk while she scribbles on a notepad for some class or another. “Hello Cosette,” Enjolras greets (a little formally, but they’re not exactly close), keeping his voice at a conversational level. No one else is here, after all.
“I thought you weren’t leaving your flat?” She calls after him.
“I finished the book I borrowed. It was interesting,” he says over his shoulder, grabbing a book on Kantian ethics (which is debatably worth reading) and a book merely entitled Religion and Liberty, another abused hardcover that looks like it’ll last until at least Sunday evening. Combined with the Kant work, he should be fine.
“These please,” Enjolras hands Cosette the books upon his return. “And, if you could, please don’t tell anyone I left my house.”
Cosette smiles and he can see, for a moment, why Marius may have stumbled over his own feet the first time he saw her. “Sure. Enjoy your, ah, light reading.”
Enjolras huffs a laugh. “Combeferre called it the same thing.”
-
He doesn’t admit it as he opens the Kant book (a collection of essays detailing his ethical theory, which still makes Enjolras grimace upon some readings), but he thinks he might miss the derisive commentary of—
Oh you have got to be kidding.
Kant Should Have Been Kicked in the Teeth: A Collection of Essays. Presented and narrated by yours truly, R.
(I’m more of a Nihilist myself.)
Enjolras isn’t sure if he feels annoyed or relieved and then is moderately concerned about any kind of relief he might feel. (It’s from midterm stress, he considers, that he missed a voice—for a split second—that he’s never even heard.)
But he flips the page and finds scrawl framing the text in a halo—and, he’s ashamed to admit, he starts reading that first.
Kant reminds me of a really shitty romantic comedy that doesn’t get any better. I mean, I hate RomComs, they’re shit regardless, and I hate the term RomCom almost as much as the movies themselves—but I digress. Kant emphasizes duty like some raging testosterone dickmunch from a terrible movie and says that everyone has these obligations and then—wait, okay not there yet. See pg. 98, there’s an essay there that actually relates to this point. Holla.
Enjolras actually does laugh at that, weighing his options of continuing apace or skipping ahead to page 98.
Continuing apace wins—but only just.
And the scrawl starts listing to the right, again.
Wow, part of it reads, I am probably too drunk to be writing about shitty ethical ideas.
A pause, a space. And then, I’m pretty much always drunk tho so. Onward, let’s talk this fucker off a ledge, amirite?
Kant’s ideas all run together, eventually. Duty is good (this fuvcker tho really what’s my duty huh what am I good for) and anything done based off emotion is morally questionable (whoops fuck me running, R writes).
Enjolras falls asleep on his sofa, the half empty bowl of burnt popcorn resting on the coffee table.
He dreams of Immanuel Kant arguing with a drunken idiot in a fleece hoodie, their face obscured in shadow.
-
Breakfast is taken at noon, unsurprisingly, and consists of a set of toaster waffles and some basic Kantian reading, finishing up the idealism of humans being an end in and of itself. (Entirely untrue! R writes, suddenly—apparently—sober. Not all humans are ends in and of themselves. Some are really, honestly, only means to an end. You can’t see everyone as someone unless you want to drive yourself crazy trying to save the world. Creating a social support system of people you love is probably a better option for anyone that might want to try out this “End in and of themselves” fuckery.)
“You’re incredibly pessimistic,” he complains.
His waffles are duly unimpressed with this.
-
The Kant book rests atop On Liberty, and there’s a joke there somewhere that Enjolras isn’t bored enough to make. He is, however, pathetic enough to wonder that, if he got saddled with this chronically depressed and possibility alcoholic writer twice, maybe he’s gotten it tossed his way a third time.
He won’t admit to opening the book to the center, just to check, but Enjolras will, in fact, confirm that he’s three-for-three and wonders if, perhaps, this individual has jotted ideas down in every book in the Philosophy section of the library.
Religion and Liberty, things that appear to be mutually exclusive in society is written on the inside page. This is probably not flattering to religion.
Or liberty.
But I’m not trying to flatter anyone, so—
Wait, hold on, I’m going to need a beer for this one.
This line brings to mind the fact that Bahorel had left a beer bottle in his fridge the week before when he’d come to study for midterms (Enjolras’ flat is a temple made for studious minds) and, in the spirit of the book, grabs it, reminding himself to either never mention it to Bahorel, or buy him one when he decides to go out after finals (but probably not before).
I’m going to be straightforward here and admit to myself that I’m an atheist. God was some pipedream that some weirdo had when he thought that it would be a good idea to condense many gods into one and control the people because people are sheep. Deep concept, except not at all.
Man, you know, fuck God. Not necessarily people who believe in him, but the people who invented him were shit.
This spiel, contrary to the other two books, is less about the actual content and more revolved around slowly deteriorating coherency and self-depreciation. This one, Enjolras considers as he takes a swig of cheap German beer, is particularly depressing.
They hav eto make ebveryone feel bad for being didffnerent and I said once that conformity wans’t a bad thing but coeem on man diffenrences aren’t bad ehter—the scribbles turn into nonsense, trailing off into nothing but a smear of pencil, and the next ten pages are empty.
Wow it took some balls to be able to write again, is in the margins on page 137, and Enjolras skipped to find the words, all right, because he was unsure if, perhaps, the author had died of alcohol poisoning—what if something had happened? What had happened to them?
I think I might quit drinking.
The date is scribbled beneath it.
And nothing else is written in the book.
-
The next seven days of Enjolras’ life are spent (after having returned the three books he borrowed) in the library, searching the Philosophy section for books. Less than ten percent of the ones he’s checked have been written in extensively, and the ones that are have the same cramped style that his first three choices had.
And so he reads them.
(He learns things about this person—that this person is a male, presumably, or at least identifies as one: “I am literally the worst dude on the planet, probably, for saying this but goddamn I just don’t like dogs—.“ He suddenly knows their favourite colour: “this woman has shit ideas and theories, but she’s got some mad taste in colour.” Shit, he even knows what their major is: “Classics and Philosophy, though I think I might try for an art minor, because, seriously, look at this caricature of this asshat author.”
It’s a good caricature, by the way.)
By the second week of his emotional investment in this supposed man’s life, he realises that (A)—and oh no, he’s thinking in the voice he uses to denote the mysterious dissenter) he might have a problem and (B)) he has no idea how the quitting drinking went.
He has no idea. The book on religion and liberty had been the most recent one, it appears, at any rate, and Enjolras doesn’t know.
This heartstopping epiphany comes to him in the last five minutes of his Philosophy and the Ego class—and, if he were in the right mind and his heart was not running away with his feet (what have I become), he would be more concerned that he just stood up and walked out.
But his heart is running away with his limbs (and it shouldn’t be, he really doesn’t know this person, and it really doesn’t matter—“you can’t care about everyone” he’s read on so many pages in the same scrawl but—), and when his mind catches up with him he’s in the Philosophy section of his favourite of the university libraries, pulling the Religion and Liberty book off the shelf.
A young man with a thin face and defined cheekbones looks up when he stands before the desk, pushing dark curls away from his eyebrows in the process. “What can I do for you?” He asks, his blue eyes flitting from Enjolras’ own to his nose to his cheeks and back to his eyes again.
“Can you tell me the last person to check out this book?” He holds it up, tapping his index finger against the title. “Besides me. I was the most recent—but the one before me.”
“Uh, well. It’s not a Self-Help book, so I’m not sure of the—policies. Here, let me see.” He holds out a hand and takes the book from Enjolras, flipping to the back to examine the timestamp card.
And his face burns red as he breathes a curse of fuck me running god damn it Courfeyrac you son of a bitch and shuts the back cover with more force than he needs. “This book,” he says carefully, “wasn’t meant to be returned. Uh. It’s—I checked it out. Do you have a complaint you want to file?” He looks at Enjolras balefully, backing up in the rolling chair so that he can reach behind the desk for any appropriate paperwork.
His hand is trembling slightly.
(Oh. Oh.)
“No,” Enjolras says quickly, and—this is ridiculous, physiology is ridiculous, because his heart is just—it’s racing. “No, I don’t want to—ah. Did you do it?”
“Do what?” He holds the book in front of him like a shield. “Are you asking about the writing? Because, wow, I am really—like really sorry, so—“
“Stop drinking,” He asks quietly. “Did you stop drinking?”
The man’s face slackens, pulled expressionless by an unseen hand, before his skin goes red again and he splutters. “What—why—did you actually read this shit—Enjolras—“
He’s taken aback, blinking like a fool at the man behind the counter. “You know me?”
“I’m in your Roman Classics class on Mondays and Wednesdays,” he mutters from the side of his mouth, talking to the back cover of the book rather than to him. “Grantaire, back row to the left.”
(Grantiare—Grand R—R.)
“I need your phone number.”
(That is not at all what I meant to say out loud.)
“Look,” Grantaire lowers the book, reaching again for basic paperwork, “you really don’t need that to file a complaint or anything—“
“You’re not following me,” Enjolras places both his hands on the wooden desk, tapping his fingers arhythmically in time with his pulse. “I need your phone number. So that I can talk to you. Perhaps ask you out. Maybe debate philosophy and politics with you, because you are sorely mistaken on some points.”
“Excuse you, but sunlight doesn’t shine out of your ass, what makes your opinions better than—“
“Shh.” Grantaire shhes. “I am asking for your phone number.”
“Not that I’m questioning your judgment—though I totally am—but you don’t even know me,” Grantaire’s face, a grimace of disbelief, fits perfectly with an image of a person Enjolras hadn’t realized he was making. The voice—is something that is better than expected, less nasally than he’d figured.
“Your favourite colour is green. You dislike romantic comedies, you dislike the title RomCom more than the movies themselves. You’re an atheistic Nihilist and Kant would be better off if he were missing a few of his molars after a foot to the face. Your views on freedom and a person’s autonomy leave much to be desired, though your points are certainly valid ones. They just happen to be errs on the side of pessimism.”
Grantaire’s jaw is slack when Enjolras finishes his recitation, but, technically, he isn’t done. “And I would like your phone number so that you can tell me all these things yourself. I think I’d like that more.”
In a stupor, Grantaire moves, pushing the chair to the end of the desk, returning with a pen in hand to jot his number on a free bookmark. (At least he won’t lose it that way, he supposes.)
The penmanship is exactly has he’d known it’d be.
“Thank you,” Enjolras says, folding the bookmark to tuck in his pocket so he doesn’t look too eager to put it in his phone.
But when he steps out of eyesight, he pulls it back out, tapping the number into his contacts under the shorthanded, but emotionally significant R.
So, he ends up texting (even though it will blow his cover of aloofness), did you stop? (Six weeks had passed since the scribbled date, and he’s never tried to cease an addiction before.)
R: I didn’t do so hot the first two weeks. 4 weeks clean at the moment.
That’s something, he replies.
R: Uh. I guess.
Do you want to get coffee after your shift?
R: I never thought you’d ask me that. Ever. How are you even real.
R: How are you even real and so idealistic.
R: What part of Paris are you from
R: is it something in the water?
Enjolras allows himself a smile, resting his weight against the brick structure of the library, and figures that he and Grantaire have a lot of catching up to do. There are plenty of blanks to fill in. But—and Enjolras is known for his idealism, not his optimism—he thinks this could turn into something.
The surprise, of course, will be what, exactly, it turns into.