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breadvidence · 1 month ago

Text

Lull

@megab was kind enough to bid on my little talent for the Bishop Myriel Fundraiser and requested I provide some Enjolras/Feuilly, with a preference for modern AU, romance, and low sadness content. Set post some kind of barricade, rated G. Thank you again, @megab, this was an excellent challenge for me—I hope you're pleased! (Find it also on AO3.)

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Enjolras offers Feuilly the vape across the center console of the van, caught, as he’s been caught for years, by the contrast between Feuilly’s heavy, hairy knuckles and rough skin and the delicacy with which he moves. When their hands brush, it’s little more than a stirring, a breath, yet very warm. Nicotine always grants him a moment of pure focus, and that is a very fine thing to spend attention on. They’ve talked the last two hours in spirals on school history curricula, age appropriateness and accuracy, facts versus principles versus play, a conversation that would’ve been a debate full of presumptions and ignorance about each other three years ago and is now a collaborative fantastical, familiar lines padded each time by new knowledge, moving ever closer to an actionable theory. He recalls, with a shock of humor, having years ago been cautious of Feuilly’s frank militancy around the topic of children’s education, how he braced himself for debate of his own disinterest in family life. It’s unserious, today, with the windows cracked to let the last of the evening into the cab, seeking the light of knowledge while the world slowly dwindles to what’s caught in the headlights. They have disagreed about the year when a person most benefits from learning the rhythms of agriculture and the flowering season of sweet peas, ’til finding common ground that their mutual adult ignorance on the topic is a shame. Somehow, this is an extension from the topic of Mendel’s genius, his lies, their persistent place in the classroom.

Feuilly sweeps his left hand along the wheel: the rasp of calluses on worn vinyl, the soft chuck of the turn signal lever, the van’s frantic blatting. Enjolras says, “Marius’ future father-in-law knows some. You haven’t seen the garden at that house, yet. Maybe an ask that would get him to speak—I ought to text Courfeyrac; it’s a harder pet project than Marius ever was, that old man, and I don’t mind collaborating.”

This earns a neutral hum. The suspension struggles with the gravel road they’ve turned down and when it’s clear Feuilly has no input Enjolras turns up the music so that it can be heard over the jostle and groan.

The road paces a thorn-hedge he remembers tearing his clothes on as a child for another ten minutes’ of slow going before crooking abruptly left, and there’s the cottage, and beyond the cottage: the sea, sound and smell, brief flashes of light when the clouds bannering the moon allow its shine to reach that far. Feuilly presses the breaks, uncertain, ’til Enjolras directs him to park the van in whatever weed-grown dusty part of the yard suits him; the cottage never had a proper place to put a vehicle, and though his father complained every summer about the car getting filthy, he never materialized his various plans of canopies and concrete pads.

Inside, the power comes on when they flip the breakers, which was not a given. A new water-spot in the kitchen ceiling, mouse droppings in the corners of the cramped bathroom, dust on every surface. Normally his parents hire a maid service before the family visits, but that’s for August, and here he is in July. Gillenormand’s lawyers suggestion to step out of the city, Courfeyrac’s wry concurrence that ducking out of sight from the social media circuit would be beneficial, the impact of fines on his finances: he’s fallen back into the family nest with all the dignity of a cat slipped off the edge of a counter, on his paws and stiffly strolling to his next destination. The proximity to the coast and an org he’s been in contact with about immigrants crossing the Mediterranean promises opportunities to make this sabbatical from Paris a step—if not on the same path he’d been on before—forward. Always forward. He’s not dead yet.

By the light on Feuilly’s phone, they cut on the water out front, go in and run the faucets ’til they’re done sputtering out air.

Feuilly bends closer, expressive face scrunched in consideration. “Does it ever run clear?”

“No. Father invests in a new filtration system every few years, it clogs, and he has to go back to the old faithful, which—” He cuts off the faucet. “—only does so well. There’s gallon jugs of drinking water in the van.”

Feuilly plays his fingers over the wood of a kitchen counter that’s been in use for three centuries, warped and lined and smoothed to unevenness by thousands of passes by knife and hand in the work of feeding others. “When you said your family had a cottage on the Côte d’Azur, I imagined something luxurious. —I see by your expression you have a lot to say about that. ” When he smiles, age has begun to show a stamp at the corner of his eyes. “Come on, let’s get our bags while you talk.”

Enjolras can discuss the price his family rents this cottage out for during the season when not in residence, owning the earth as a symbol of luxury that makes the building somehow irrelevant, the gap between his wealth and wealth, the social games with the richer families up the coast, all more or less by reflex: he thinks about how Feuilly looked at him, fond, present, the tiredness hanging upon his face the strain of the drive and nothing more. In the legalities and failures of the past month, if Feuilly’s love remained all-embracing, sometimes he could be seen in moments of contemplation with a pinch at the corner of his lips, skewing his generous mouth to the side, like a parent faced by a child’s poor choices. He has been gazing on the shadows rather than the light.

Courfeyrac had been the one to volunteer the passenger seat of the van to whoever wanted to assist Enjolras in the move. Grantaire jerked upright, but when Feuilly said, quietly, I’m due for vacation, he laid his head back down with a great air of ruefulness—a few days out of rehab and painfully sober, the third round and this one I’m really going to keep with it, I swear, this time it’s it. He surprised them all, himself included, when he showed to help pack Enjolras’ apartment. An hour into the drive, Feuilly had said, You could argue Grantaire needs more than me, to which Enjolras rejoined, Why should I argue anything when he does it so well himself?, in a tone warmer than it would have been before June.

In truth, Grantaire would have made this trip. Any of them would have, injured or no—even Marius, maybe, with his heart pierced through with love. But he is glad for Feuilly.

The linens will have to be washed and hang-dried, so for tonight they fetch the sleeping bags out of his camping supplies. As he leans over to drag them out from where they’ve shifted, he feels himself watched; catches Feuilly in it when he straightens up, expression obscure in the uncertain light off the van overhead. Through a flush, the awareness of an action not quite yet ready to be deployed, he says, “Will you grab that cooler and bag from Marius’ grandfather? We might as well finish off the perishables. It’ll be a while before the fridge gets actually cold.”

They’ve been watching each other for a while, too busy for that to mean anything. One time, Grantaire asked Enjolras if he were asexual, the words near lost under the froth of a long night of stout; he said yes, then, as the easiest and shortest answer to offer someone who would never have a real stake in the matter. It never occurred to him to wonder whether that got back to Feuilly, a thought which seems abruptly relevant.

The thorn hedge chatters with a wind that pulls the clouds away inland. The moon hangs bare.

They flip a coin for the modestly more comfortable bed in the master bedroom, haggle over the results—you’re the guest against it’s your house—’til Enjolras says, “Let’s revisit the point after the wine. —Would you have argued with the coin if it landed on its edge?”

“Would I have? —He packed us Clicquot,” Feuilly replies, slow, thoughtful. Deferring, too. “I don’t know how to tell if it’s a nice bottle. Do you think it’s a sin to drink it at room temperature?”

“No,” Enjolras replies as he opens the windows and shutters, wrestling against the jasmine vine that’s escaped its trellis and taken up onto the wall of the cottage. The perfume of the flowers, the bottle of wine, the idea of pleasure taken when it presents itself—the memory of the dusty road, the anticipation of sweetness—these concepts won’t marshall to his tongue, and he’s distinctly aware of why he maintains such a robust group of friends; love of them aside, he can borrow their talent when he’s needed them, and the sentiment he wants feels suited to Prouvaire’s kind of wordcraft, not his. “All that matters is to appreciate it, I think.” He retrieves a blanket from the chest in the corner. “Which we can’t do in this stale place. It will take a minute to air out. Follow me?”

Never a given. Always a request. It flatters him that Feuilly says yes, has said yes, but they’ve never had the time to dwell on the fact. Lesgle, a few days before the trip—in his two arm-casts, Enjolras’ day to help him around the house, not the worst injuries any of them walked away with but certainly the least convenient—had asked, What are you going to do, out there isolated?, and Enjolras listed the contacts he’d already made, the plans for the coming months. To which Lesgle said, Nothing that whole first two weeks, huh? Feuilly will have his hands full keeping you occupied. Maybe we should figure out how to fit a third person into the van, distribute the work load, eh?

Enjolras declined that idea, with respect for the utility three-ways provide in Lesgle’s life. A week and a half in Feuilly’s company, in quiet, no Wi-Fi, no television other than what they’re willing to burn data on streaming to their phones. This, and more of this: him with the old woven blanket over his shoulder and the Clicquot by the neck in his hand, Feuilly with the cooler of Grandpère Gillenormand’s idea of road snacks, out to the old flat stone that noses out towards the beach, the one with the ancient olive whose roots buckle over the edge, shielding it from the sight-lines of the cottage. Even without eyes to see, that feels important.

The cork comes free dramatic and loses itself noisily into the dark, logical consequence of all the shaking during the trip. Feuilly comments, philosophical, “It’s biodegradable,” then drinks from the bottle without asking first if Enjolras minds swapping spit. Holds it out to him.

All due respect to Grandpère Gillenormand, it pairs well with pear slices gone a little brown, bite-sized quiches that are probably still safe to eat, soft musky cheese with the fats gone runny in the lukewarm. He sucks some from where it has oozed onto his thumb, prickling aware of Feuilly’s gaze. Comfort with silence is a project of Enjolras’, unevenly worked on; he breaks through the surf’s hush, hush, with, “I don’t want to presume to take up more of your vacation time, but if you stay on another week, I bet we could arrange some in-person meetings with contacts you’ve communicated with for a long while—there’s a woman in Morocco, the one who mostly goes by— What?”

He smiles, shaking his head. There’s an uneasy edge to it. “They’re not skittish of you, with all…” He gestures to encompass this exile.

“She was never interested in the mainstream politics of it all. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. That game—sometimes it felt like the wickedest way forward. Like an execution, though I don’t know of what.”

He hitches up a shoulder, picks up a crushed cookie from the bottom of the bag, individually packaged, unlabeled, so many crumbs. Drops it. “It seemed like a viable path for so long. —And now we have treats from Grandpère Gillenormand, but none from—” And here he names some powerful people who could not be called personal friends, invested in the cause to variable degrees, who have declined to attach their names to a young men’s scandal. “—who haven’t even invested a bag of chips.” He looks up, smiles crooked “I’ve complained about it already, I know, but nobody’s given me an adequate answer.”

“Combeferre tried.”

“Combeferre was witty. I love him for that.” He dwells, a moment, in one of those silences that invites no comment. “You’re not bitter.”

“I acted knowing what doors would be closed. I’m alive and free. In any case, Lesgle tells me it’s his kind of luck come to me; that politicking is no better than lawyering, in the end.”

It’s money’s privilege that he’s on the coast rather than in a prison, a more impressive shuffling under the carpet than Enjolras has seen among his parents’ friends but not by much. Feuilly is too much a practical to reject an escape, and too sharp an intellect not to question it. With his eyes fixed first towards the sound of the surf, then with one squinted down into the neck of the bottle, he says, “There’s something undignified in being shuffled aside. Like we’ll be forgotten. If I didn’t believe in the future you’ve described, I wouldn’t be here—I mean that two ways; I wouldn’t be having to rebuild all my networks after our failure, but I also wouldn’t…” He hesitates. “I wouldn’t still be out here, sitting on an old blanket, wondering whether we’ll stumble on our way back to the house. It’s a very hard thing to love, sometimes.” He raps his knuckles against the blanket, the stone beneath.

“I trust your judgment,” he says, solemn, and reaches out to tuck Feuilly’s big hand safely into his, before he can rough those knuckles again. “Though I think we emptied that bottle quicker than we should have. We’ll have to linger out here a while, make sure we have time to get steady.”

“One bottle between the two of us won’t have—” Then he stops, considering, as Enjolras—a little clumsy, but with intent—laces their fingers. “Ah.”

“Lesgle was very worried I wouldn’t have enough to keep me distracted.”

“Was he?”

He makes a low noise of agreement. “But I thought it might be a good time to explore some questions I haven’t taken the time for in the past.”

“Please,” Feuilly says, the tone of his voice like the first drag off a cigarette, smoke and heat and nerve-awakening, “never let someone convince you that you’re smooth.” Then he leans in, catching Enjolras’ surprised laugh with a press of lips. Leans back enough to have space to mutter, “Since there’s nothing else on my to-do list, guess I’ll make my move—really. I’ve heard you speechify, you can do better than—”

Each word soughs air across his lips, the skin there alive to every current as they’ve never been before, and if there was strangeness and damp and more softness than expected and the scratch of their stubble against each other, Enjolras can see his way to understanding the cultural hyperfocus, so he takes Feuilly’s face in his hands and kisses him with purpose. The first touch of a tongue startles him, but Feuilly loops an arm around his shoulders, steadying. When he reciprocates the touch, slides a hand across his cheek, down his throat, it stuns him: the heat, the power of his throbbing heart, the catch and kick of his breath. All the same, he has to interrupt—it must be said— “Balancing organizing direct action with conventional politics did consume time I would have put towards interpersonal connections, which was one of the losses I considered a necessary—”

Feuilly kisses him again, on the point of his jaw, in a manner that ought not really interrupt him. It does. As Feuilly has served to do in the past, his argument adjusts Enjolras’ understanding of the breadth of the issue: namely, it seemed a matter of explaining why they have only now kissed, which words could adequately address; and now, after another brush of lips, to his cheek, ticklishly beneath his ear, he perceives this to be a matter better handled by action.

But one might plan, first. “We can zip the sleeping bags together,” he says, “and both sleep on the better bed.”

“Practical,” Feuilly replies, and gathers him close. “We will.” The moonlight softens his face to boyishness, his eyes are wide and pupil-blown in the dark, and if there has been bitterness, and failure, and hurt, and a shadowy place traversed: their blood is in them yet, and they are together, and before the future makes its demands, they may have a little of the present.

#les mis #les misérables #bishop myriel fundraiser #feuilly/enjolras #fanfic (mine)

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