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Chapter Text

When Julién Carraway-Enjolras and Cosette-Fay Enjolras were little, their father would always tell them the same thing. Anytime they got upset at something that seemed unfair to them, whenever they didn’t want to do something, it was the same piece of advice.

 

“Whenever you feel upset, remember that all the people in the world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” He would say.

 

Cosette-Fay never took the words to heart, not really. Julién did. It infected his everyword and every step. They spent their days in the summer heat of Marseilles, Julién brooding, Cosette-Fay speaking with him about the girls and older women she had seen walking down the street.

 

He never did have much an interest in women.

 

Cosette-Fay started introducing herself as Cossie-Fay and that alone, after she had a falling out with their adoptive father. She left Marseilles a few years before Julién did.

 

Julién started going by Enjolras, the last name of the only man who had ever cared for him. He became involved in politics, and read the letters his sister sent.

 

She had made it to America, she said. A man she met in Prague, who she had spent months with. He had offered to marry her, she wrote.

 

“I’ve never spent much time interested in boys, Julién. I think this will be the best I find it.” She told him. It wasn’t much of his business, he thought. Cosette-Fay always knew what she wanted and how to find it.

 

He became rapidly involved in politics, so often so that he was mistaken that he was mistaken for a politican himself, though it was true that anyone who came to make an accusation quickly repealed it with his reactoin.

 

Enjolras fought for the people, still suffering from their unjust government. His father supported him as much as he ever did, sending money when Enjolras asked, asking gently how Cosette-Fay was doing, though it was never often.

 

He spoke publicly to people that never listened very long. The marrs left by obvious suppressions, how the people needed help. Enjolras always reserved judgement except for the upper class, though the same could not be said for him.

 

It was this that drove him away from France and Paris and Marseilles, that and the death of his father, and to New York. It was this that drove him back to his sister, and to Éponine Thénadier-Baker. It was this that drove him to the man known as M.R.Grantaire-Gatsby, or Gatsby or long island, but the man that Enjolras knew as R.

 

R, who represented everything that Enjolras hated with such scorn and defiance. R, who was not even exempt, from Enjolras’ scorn and hatred, and yet still somehow managed to be an exception and not all at once.

 

Enjolras could hardly believe he was even real.

 

Maybe he wasn’t at all.

 

~~~

 

Enjolras had often been told, throughout his whole life, that he looked like his father. It was a hilarious sentiment, since he and Cosette-Fay looked the same in practically every way except sex, and she never recieved this compliment, and that they were both adopted.

 

Though, it could be true that he did look like his father. He simply wouldn’t know. He was a fairly young man still, of just 22 years, intelligence well beyond this, and looks that had women tripping over themselves to get a look, despite how renowned he was as an enemy of any sort of government.

 

It would have been true that he likely could have held a more enticing life, to the people of high society. He could have had a pleasurable wife, and the riches of the man who had adopted him, and children or whatever it was that men did.

 

Yet it was true that Enjolras had never wanted something less. It was Cossie-Fay, that had inherited the interest in women, never Enjolras.

 

He never fought in the Great War, that much was true, exempt for whatever the legal term for ‘Would not fight for an unjust government’ was. He did however participate in the migration towards to America that came afterward.

 

His father pressed money into his hand, and told him;

 

“Julién, it would be awfully good if you went into something different than what you have started here.”

 

It was his way of saying ‘Don’t stir up trouble.’ Yet, trouble always seemed to go looking for Enjolras first. And still, he figured it best to at least try. Cossie always wrote that bonds were mighty popular in New York, according to her husband, and that was what he decided to do in the end.

 

He stepped off the ship and spoke with the officers who disliked his accent, and Enjolras had the mighty feeling that had he not been blonde with eyes the colour of the sky they might not have let him in at all.

 

They wrote his name down wrong, of course.

 

Julien-Caraway Enjolras, with no accent and just one R, a hilarious irony for what he might find waiting further in, and he accepted the name with a sneer and the attempt to get out of there are soon as he could.

 

The practical thing to be done was to find rooms in the city, but it was warm in May, and Enjolras’ English was mediocre and noody was quite as nice as they ought to be, not that he was ever treated nicely in France.

 

Enjolras met a man in the lower somewhere, he wasn’t entirely sure, who offered to take him to a house within a decent communting distance.

 

It wasn’t very nice, in the end. A weather beaten cardboard bungalow at just 80 American Dollars a month, and he accepted the deal. There was a spanish woman, who was named Musichetta that lived nearby. She would make his bed and cook him breakfast occasionally.

 

The sunshine and the great bursts of leaves that grow on trees- things that grow just as fast in the movies- and Enjolras had the conviction that life began all over again in the summer.

 

He bought books. So many of them they practically didn’t fit on all the shelves in the little cottage, but he somehow managed. There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath giving air.

 

A dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and Enjolras understood though he didn’t understand how he did nor could he explain it.

 

It was simply a matter of chance, that he had rented a home in one of the strangest communities of North America. It was on that slender riotous island that extends itself to the east of New Yrok and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land.

 

20 miles away from the city a pair of enormous œufs, or eggs, being the best way to describe them. They are practically identitical in every way, and seperated only by a courtesy bay, they jut out into the bay of the Long Island Sound.

 

Musichetta had described them as ‘Not quite oval’, when she had described them, and it was an awfully good description, Enjolras though.

 

To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except which we have already described.

 

Enjolras lived at west egg, the less fashionable of the two, though he found this a superficial thought and one of the worst ways to express the bizarre and not a little sinister difference between them.

 

The cottage was at the very tip of the egg, just barely 50 yards from the sound and practically crushed between mansions that cost more than even some French Aristocrats could afford.

 

The one on the right was a factual imitation of a hotel that Enjolras knew in Normandy, with a tower on one side, raw beneath a thin layer of ivy, and a marble swimming pool and 40 acres of lawn and garden.

 

It was, dubbed so, ‘Grantaire’s Mansion.’ though sometimes called by the owner’s actual name of Gatsby-Grantaire. Enjolras had no particular affiliation to either name.

 

He did not know Mr. Gatsby-Grantaire, and he had no intention to know him.

 

His own house was overlooked, but Enjolras had a veiw of the water and a partial view of the neighbors lawn and the irritating proximiting to men with money to spare, all for just 80 dollars a month.

 

Across the courtesy bay the white Versailles of the fashionable east egg glittered and danced along the water and the history of the summer that Enjolras could not possibly forget if he tried perhaps truly begin when he went over there.

 

Of course, the reason he went over was because Cosette-Fay was over there, as she was now called.

 

She had written him first, to come over when she found out where he had lived, only to be overjoyed when she found out he was right across the bay.

 

She had no more accent, which displeased Enjolras, but she had simply said;

 

“They’re not very kind to immigrants, Jules, regardless of what we look like.”

 

She had asked him to call her Cosette, like she had been born, or Cosette-Fay, but never Cossie like he had. He was displeased at this also, but oblidged. It was too childish for a woman of upstanding here. They hardly even knew she had a brother, the papers.

 

Enjolras was burdened to forget he even had a sister.

 

Gabriel Combeferre, the man whom she had married, was a not so horrible person. Enjolras neither disliked nor liked him in particular, though he was pleasant to discuss philosphies with. The largest issue was that he seemed to have no interest in Cosette at all, nor she him.

 

Perhaps this was what she meant when she said this was as good as it got.

 

The Combeferres were enourmously wealthy family. They had lived in Chicago, for a time, but they never told Enjolras why they came East, and he never asked.

 

If Cosette wished to share, she would.

 

Combeferre, as Enjolras called him, it felt too personal to call him by his first name, and it was though he could seperate his sister from the man this way, if he called him that, was a proud man, though not overly proud.

 

If he had the pride they spoke of in shame, he did not display it openly.

 

They had a woman over, the second time that Enjolras came by. Cosette in her large blue dress sat next to him on a small couch, laughing with the woman, who had dark skin and was perhaps just as beautiful as Cosette.

 

She had a scar running down her top lip, and she wore a dark green pantsuit that Enjolras found uncommon for women to wear. It was popular in France, but not so much so, and it seemed entirely unpopular here.

 

Her name was Éponine Thénadier-Baker, he learned, a pleasant woman and a close friend of Cosette’s. Combeferre was entirely uninvolved in their conversation, and they spoke with him gently.

 

Éponine kissed his hand as though he was a girl, and it wasn’t the worst, and that was all there was beside conversation that passed between them.

 

At some point, Combeferre did come over to speak with him, and they spoke about the gentler things, not about women in the slightest.

 

“What do you do, Julién?” He used the name his wife had given him.

 

“I am a man of bonds.”

 

“With who?”

 

Enjolras told him.

 

“Never heard of them.”

 

This annoyed Enjolras.

 

“You will.” He answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.” Enjolras said proudly.

 

“Oh, I’ll stay in the east, Don’t you worry.” He said, sparing the smallest glance at Daisy and quirking his lips like he had imagined someone else there.

 

The night ended with Enjolras astoundedly drunk, a cause which he could not remember. Combeferre had left some time earlier, and Enjolras remembered a conversation about a Gatsby-Grantaire, and that was all.

 

They all seemed rather uninterested and interested at the same point in time which Enjolras found much more interesting than any topic of else that they had discussed at some point of dinner. He felt confused and a little disgusted with the society Cosette seemed to have gotten herself into, as he drove away, still staggering.

 

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light is when he did eventually reach his estate at west egg, parking the little car under its shed and sitting out, dizzy, on th egrass in the yard.

 

The wind had blown off, levaing a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the world full of life.

 

There was a cat moving somewhere, Enjolras was too tired and intoxicated to place where exactly, and turning his head to try, he saw he was not alone.

 

Fifty or so feet away a silhouette had emerged from the shadow of his neighbor’s mansion, and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn led Enjolras to believe it was Mr. Grantaire himself, come out to determine what was his in the world that already had too little to give.

 

Enjolras wanted to call out, but his voice would not emerge. He stretched his arms out to the sky, Enjolras saw as he watched, mouth still agape, tongue still silent. It was in a curious way, and as far away as Enjolras was, it was like he was trembling with a laugh.

 

Involuntarily Enjolras looked sewaward, and saw nothing further away than just the smallest green light.

 

When he looked once more for him, he had vanished, and Enjolras was left alone in the quiet darkness.

Chapter Text

Somewhere between West Egg and New York, about halfway perhaps, there is a motorroad that joins the railroad and runs beside for for a fourth of a mile so as to shrink away from this desolate area of land.

 

This is the valley of ashes, a small farm like the south of Paris where ashes grow something from nothing and is filled with grotesque houses, where ashes take this forms and the smoke rises everstill, and the men who mvoe slowly are already crumbling as we speak.

 

Occasionally a car drives through, giving out a ghastly creak and coming to resk, and the men of ash crowd around with their spades and tooks and stir up a crowd of dust so thick you couldn’t see what they were doing even if you were 20/20.

 

Yet above the grey land and the explosions of bleak dust that even the most damned could not conjure up that drift endlessly over it, you can see, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor J. Prouvaire. The eyes of Doctor J. Prouvaire are hazel and large, the irises alone are at least a yard high. They look out of no face but instead from a pair of enormous and hideous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose.

 

Nobody knows where they came from, spectulations of an oculist placing them there and moving away and forgetting about it. Their eyes are perhaps dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain and ash all the same, brooding on the solemn dumping ground.

 

The valley of ashes is bound on one side by a small and disgusting river, and when the bridge is up to let the ships through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the sorry scene for as long as it takes to go through. There is always a halt there for at least a bit, and Enjolras knows this personally because it is how he met Gabriel Combeferre’s lover.

 

Everyone who knew the man must have known he had one, with such little interest in his wife, and still the fact displeased Enjolras a lot, a very fidel and loyal man at the heart. Even Cosette-Fay herself knew.

 

The more interesting fact to much of high society was that it appeared to be a man, of all people. Nobody could prove it, of course, and the Combeferres were powerful people as such that nobody would ever openly question it. This also meant that anywhere where it was private it was discussed. They looked like a man and dressed like a man, but Gabriel Combferre a fae? It was disgusting to many bigoted New Yorkers.

 

Enjolras didn’t see the issue with who someone loved as long as they did so without breaking fidelity to his sister.

 

He had been curious to meet them, though he loathed to admit it, but he did not want to. Enjolras went up to New York one afternoon with Combferre on the train and when they stopped by the trash heaps he jumped to his feet and grabbed Enjolras’ wrist lithely and pulled him from the car.

 

“We should get off.” He insisted, trying to remove the excitement from his voice. “I want you to meet my boy.”

 

It was what confirmed his sex, for Enjolras, if he heard it from the mouth itself. The only reason that Enjolras did go along to meet him was that on a sunday afternoon such as this he had nothing better to do.

 

He followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and they walked back a hundred or so yards, along the road under Doctor Prouvaire’s persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of dyed yellow brick sitting on the edge of the wasteland better described as purgatory.

 

It contained only three shops, one for rent, the next a 24/7 resturant and the third a small garage that Enjolras would not have trusted himself to step into if he had a choice.

 

Repairs. Babet. P. Minette. Cars bought and sold.

 

Enjolras followed Combeferre inside. The interior was unbelieveably bare, the only car really visible was the dust covered wreck of a Ford Truck cowering in an unlit corner.

 

Perhaps it was a front for more shady business, Enjolras thought. The shadow of the garage overlooked as romantic apartments were conceleased overhead and Mr. Babet himself ran it from the office in which he appeared.

 

He was a frail man, Enjolras saw, wiping his hands on a piece of metal that likely belonged in a car. He wouldn’t know. He’d never been the very handsy type.

 

Mr. Babet was not entirely light-skinned, but blonde and anæmic in a way. He could be considered fairly handsome, if that was your type. When he saw Enjolras and Combeferre, a shimmer of hope appeared in his dark brown eyes.

 

“Ah, Babet. My friend.” Combeferre said, smiling with the corners of his mouth upturned, but no light in his eyes, like an actor on stage. “How’s business?”

 

“I can’t complain.” He answered, though it was entirely unconvincing. “When are you going to sell me that car?” He asked Combeferre.

 

“Next week or so, I’ve got a man working on it now.” He fixed his cuff links as he spoke.

 

“Works pretty slow, don’t he?” Babet said, accent that Enjolras could not place thick.

 

“No, he doesn’t.” Combeferre’s tone changed. His hazel eyes met Babet’s, and the man took a step back. No further threat was made.

 

“I don’t mean it like that, exactly.” He trailed off at the start of the next sentence, not finishing. Combeferre glanced around impatiently. Enjolras followed his gaze when it landed on one spot.

 

There was the thickish figure of someone blocked out the light from the office door. Enjolras could only guess that they were about mid 20s, a bit older than he himself.

 

They, or a he, as Enjolras supposed, emerged from behind. His clothes weren’t as riveting as Mr. Babet’s, but they were perhaps close to Combeferre’s style of fashion, he found.

 

His face was tanned, like Musichetta’s, he found. Spanish, maybe. But when he spoke his voice was high, but not accented. Enjolras dismissed it without much other thought. He contained no facet or gleam of beauty in Enjolras’ eyes, but there was a perceptible vitality around him as if he was continually shining despite not being in the light.

 

He smiled slowly and walked around Babet, Enjolras picking up on the rings on both of their fingers. Married? That wasn’t legal. Enjolras looked at the other man again.

 

His hair was dark, black and curly, and it hung low around his nape, like he had cut it so short himself. His clothes weren’t baggy, shirt one that Enjolras had seen at a dressing store downtown, male, though if you looked at it from the right angle you could almost see-

 

ah.

 

The high society rumours flooded back to his mind. Man or woman? It was undeniable that this man was, well, a man, yet that was not how he had been percieved for some time, Enjolras thought.

 

He didn’t know if there was an american word for them. It didn’t bother him.

 

It was almost as if he was a ghost as he shook hands with Combeferre, looking him flush in the eye. He wet his lips and without turning around he spoke his husband in a soft voice.

 

“Get some chairs, would you, so we can sit down.” He asked, not entirely unpolitely. Babet made a scoffing noise before remarking;

 

“Not while you’re wearing that sort of clothes.” He hissed, and Enjolras got the feeling he was entirely sort of the man that Enjolras wanted to avoid. “Go change into something respectable, like a woman.”

 

Both Combeferre and the other man made a face, Combeferre’s less perceptible than his.

 

Regardless, Babet went over towards the little office, mingling immediately with the cement colour of the walls.

 

Combeferre leaned down as Babet moved away, a great deal taller than Babet’s husband.

 

“I want to see you,” He laid his tone thick with intent. “Get on the next train.”

 

He replied simply;

 

“All right.”

 

“I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.”

 

He nodded and moved away from him just as Babet emerged with two chairs from his office door.

 

They left after, waiting for him down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before the Fourth of July, at that point, some American holiday they took very seriously. It was what Cosette had said. Enjolras had never understood the point.

 

Combeferre made small talk with Enjolras.

 

“Terrible place, isn’t it.” He exchanged a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.

 

“Awful.”

 

“It does him good to get away.”

 

“I can tell. Wouldn’t his husband object?”

 

“Minette? He thinks he goes to see his brother in New York. He’s so blinded by hate he doesn’t see anything other than it.”

 

Enjolras briefly remembers Combeferre saying some hateful things spread out over dinners, but there are worse people, and he says nothing. He wasn’t here to get arrested multiple times, and he liked seeing his sister.

 

It came to be that Gabriel Combeferre and his man and Enjolras went up to New York, or not quite together, for Mr. Courfeyrac, as Combeferre said his name was, sat discreetly in another car.

 

Combeferre deferred that much to the sensibilites to the possibility of the East Eggers that might be on the train also.

 

At the news stand Courfeyrac bought a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving picture magazine. In the station drug store, some cold cream and a flash of perfume. Upstairs in the solemn echoing drive he let four taxi cabs drive away before he selected one, lavender coloured with grey upholstery, and in this they slid out from the mass of the station to the sunshine that burnt Enjolras’ eyes.

 

They drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft and almost aesthetic, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner.

 

“Hold on.” Enjolras says. “I have to leave you here.”

 

“I’d much rather you didn’t.” Combeferre said, which was really him saying that he didn’t. “Félix will be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment.” He turned to Courfeyrac, and Courfeyrac did indeed turn to Enjolras in turn.

 

“Come on.” He urged. “I’ll telephone my sister Magnon. She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.”

 

“Well, I’d like to, but-” Enjolras lied.

 

They went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of flats. Throwing a regal glance around with his dark blue eyes, Courfeyrac gathered up his stuff and went inside.

 

“I’ll have Feuilly and Bahorel come up.” He said, when they entered in the elevator, rising steadily. “And of course I will call up my sister too.”

 

The flat was on the top floor, a small little living room with a dining room attached, and just a bedroom and a bath. The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of random furniture.

 

There was only one painting, a print perhaps, of a Monet. Several copies of the magazine that Courfeyrac had bought earlier lay on the table with a book that Enjolras didn’t know and a scandal magazine of Broadway.

 

Combeferre brought out a bottle of whiskey from behind a locked door. There always seemed to be some alcohol, wherever he was.

 

Enjolras had been drunk not very often in his life, just thrice, and the third time was that afternoon. Everything that happened after he brought the whiskey out was much a blur.

 

Company arrived to the door very quickly.

 

The sister, Magnon, was a slender woman, older than Courfeyrac, maybe thirty or so. She was entirely unappealing to Enjolras. She came in with such a haste and looked around so possessively it was maybe her that lived there. When he asked she laughed informally as though they were friends, and repeated his question aloud, and told me she lived with a ‘girlfriend’ at a hotel.

 

Feuilly was a pale, red-headed man from the flat below. He had a workers cap on, and had just shaved, for there was a white spot of lather on his cheeks. He was the most respectful in his greeting, to everyone in the room.

 

He was a worksman, Enjolras learned, whatever that meant. He supposed Feuilly picked up odd jobs whereever, as many people seemed to.

 

Bahorel, which he lived with, a friend perhaps, was tall and built like an ice box. Enjolras could not like him very much. He was prideful, but not in the way that he deserved to be so.

 

Courfeyrac had changed his shirt some time before, now wearing a pale yellow shirt that hid the more feminine aspects of his figure better than the black one had. The personality he donned also seemed to change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted to a hauter. His laughter, gestures, even his assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as he expanded the room grew smaller around him, even if there wasn’t enough space to fit it.

 

At some point Combeferre stood, yawning and getting to his feet.

 

“You three have something to drink.” He spoke. “Get some more ice and mineral water, Felix, before everybody goes to sleep.

 

Courfeyrac made a joke about the ice water, but Enjolras didn’t really hear it, and he swept into the kitchen before Enjolras had a chance to ask about it.

 

“I’ve done some things out on Long Island.” Feuilly commented. Combeferre said nothing.

 

The sister Magnon sat down beside Enjolras on the couch.

 

“Do you live down on Long Island as well?” She asked.

 

“I live at west egg.” Enjolras replied.

 

“Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. A man named Grantaire’s. Do you know him?”

 

“It’s Gatsby, from what I’ve heard.” Bahorel commented. He was ignored.

 

“I live next door to him.

 

“Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of the devil, or something. That’s where the money comes from.”

 

Enjolras didn’t buy it. Gossip was the worst thing of all.

 

“Really?” He said noncomittally.

 

She nodded.

 

“I’m scared of him. I’d hate to have him get anything on me.” She continued talking. Enjolras didn’t understand why she kept doing that.

 

Courfeyrac and Combeferre disappeared and reappeared at points, and Feuilly and Bahorel were such odd fellows that Enjolras had to imbibe more just to deal with it. It was entirely odd that almost everyone in this room was queer.

 

The bottle of whiskey- a second one by now- was now in constant demand by all present, excepting Magnon, who ‘Felt just as good on nothing at all’. She made constant rejected advances on Enjolras, who moved further away each time.

 

He kept trying to escape to get out and walk back to his home or simply around town, but everytime he stood he was dizzy and somehow became entangled in some new conversation.

 

There was one about Babet, Enjolras thought he heard, about his treatment of his husband, and it was mildly interesting, considering the way Courfeyrac pursed his lips and pulled his sleeves down, but Enjolras couldn’t focus his mind to think about it.

 

High over the city the yellow windows must have contributed to the the sharing of human indecency in the late hours, and the casual watcher imbibed in it too and Enjolras was so drunk he was him too, looking up and wondering.

 

He was and he wasn’t, with every drink, switching between real and unreal.

 

Courfeyrac pulled his chair close to Enjolras’ as he recounted his first meeting with Combeferre.

 

“It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones on the train. I was going up to new york, as a woman, still curious you know, and I’m assuming you know, considering the contents of everyone in the room. I wanted to see my friend, Marius, poor fellow, left America some time ago. He had a dress suit on and patent leather shoes and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me, white shirt-front pressed against my arm. I lied, saying I’d have to fetch the police, but he knew I was lying. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t getting on another train.”

 

Courfeyrac took a swig.

 

“The only thing I turned over in my mind was that you can’t live for forever.”

 

He turned to Bahorel and the room rang full of artificial laughter again.

 

It was nine oclock, then, and almost immediately afterward Enjolras looked at his watch and found it was ten. Feuilly was asleep on a chair with his fists clenched in his lap.

 

Enjolras wiped his cheek with his handkerchief where a spot of cream had bothered him all afternoon.

 

People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere and then lost each other, searched for each other and found them there all along.

 

Magnon fell, at some point, heel broken and drunk out of her mind. She was even less appealing covered in blood.

 

There were bloody towels along and upon the bathroom floor, and Courfeyrac scolding her for being so uncareful. There were broken wails of pain, but Enjolras’ hearing had long since gone from all the talking.

 

Feuilly awoke from his daze, at some point, and when he had gone halfway he stared at the scene, before turning to Enjolras and taking his hat and going out the door.

 

Enjolras grabbed his and followed him.

 

“Come to lunch, some day.” He suggested, as they went down in the elevator.

 

“Where?” Enjolras asked.

 

“Anywhere.”

 

“Refrain from touching in the elevator.” The elevator boy snapped.

 

“I beg your pardon.” Said Feuilly with dignity. “I wasn’t aware it wasn’t allowed.”

 

“All right.” Enjolras agreed, although he had no plans to follow through.

 

~~~

 

He stood beside his bed and he was sitting up in Feuilly’s sheets clad in just his underwear, looking through old photographs, still drunk out of his mind.

 

Then he was hald alseep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning tribune, and waiting for the Four O’Clock train.

Chapter Text

There always seemed to be music from the neighbor’s mansion during the summer nights. In his hidden gardens men and women came and went like moths among the whispering and the champagne and the stars.

 

At high tide one afternoon Enjolras watched one of his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while two motor boats slit the waters of the Sound, dancing like ducks on the water.

 

Some weekends his multitudes of cars were filled to the brim so much Enjolras was sure someone would fall out and be run over, and yet no-one ever was.

 

On every monday there were multitudes of servants, a few that Enjolras saw himself, though he was sure there were more, that came and went just as much as the guests, repairing all the damages caused by the people.

 

Enjolras assumed the man likes fruits very much, or he had scurvy and something of the like, because every friday or so crates upon crates of oranges and lemons arrived from New York, and every monday againt they were gone, just as they had arrived.

 

At somepoint, Enjolras subconciously started keeping track of who came when and why. Once a fortnight, or so, they were never exactly on time, caterers came down with hundreds of feet of canvas and coloured lights to make an art display of the Garden.

 

There was buffet tables garnished with foods from all across, enough to feed people for days. It angered Enjolras, and he looked away, unable to gather the courage to talk to his neighbor about it.

 

Don’t get in trouble, Enjolras, They had said. Stay out of others ways.

 

By seven o’clock there was always an orchestra or musician of the sort, always more than one or two, playing for the party. Cars from as far as Jersey are parked 5 deep to the spot, and the bar is in full swing.

 

Floating rounds of cocktails danced from person to person, lip to lip, mouth to mouth. The air is always alive with chatter and laughter and innuendos and gossip you would not state elsewhere.

 

Men meet women and they part without knowing each other’s names, and women meet women and they dance before they get lost in the crowd, unseen. Men meet men and they hide in the garden snickering as they dart between bushes where other lovers hide.

 

The Earth will lurch away from the sun in the early hours of the evening and the lights will grow so bright as to blind you. It is a mess of stimulation, a thousand things happening at once, unable to differentiate between one item and the next.

 

The Party has only really begun when you can’t remember your own name.

 

The first time Enjolras ever went to one of Grantaire’s house he was one of the few people there that had been invited. Nobody really was invited. You simply showed up and weren’t turned away.

 

They got cars or trains or some sort of transport out to long island and somehow they ended up at his door. Once there they could claim anything, they could be Gatsby-Grantaire’s second cousin, or his mother, or a friend of a friend of a friend and nobody bat an eye.

 

Most people came and went without having met Grantaire at all, just for the party and the heart that beats for the thrill.

 

No, but Enjolras had indeed been invited. A chauffeur in a uniform of lilac had crossed his lawn, overgrown with flowers that Musichetta said made it look more welcoming in the summer, with a note from ‘his employer.’ It read just this;

 

“The honour would be entirely mine if you would attend my little party tonight.

I have seen you a few times before and intended to ask long ago, but some innaculate combination of forces prevented it.

Yours,

M. R. Gatsby-Grantaire.”

 

It was a long name and a long message, but Enjolras had never been one to decline an invitation, improper at it’s very best, and so he put on a white shirt he had not worn in a year or so and went over to his lawn just a bit after seven.

 

He felt rather ill at ease, amongst the people, wandering around, flappers dancing without a care. The only people he perhaps recognized were fleeting faces he might have seen on a train.

 

Enjolras had first asked upon arrival where to find Gatsby, to greet him and thank him, but the people he asked looked at him with amusement and amazement and denied so quickly any knowledge of his movement that Enjolras felt his face burn and he disappeared off to the side.

 

It might have been better to get splendidly drunk a fourth time, he thought, just from the embarassment when Enjolras found a face he did know.

 

Éponine Baker-Thénadier stood at the top of the balcony, near where steps descended delicately. She looked similar to how Enjolras had last seen her, brown hair done up in a bun, though she now donned a dark blue pantsuit, decorated with shimmering crystals of all sorts.

 

He scooted his way through the passers-by, making his way towards the steps.

 

“Hello.” Enjolras said, using a voice tone louder than he normally would, though it seemed as though he had shouted with how loud it echoed. Éponine smiled, a delicate thing, like she was happy to see Enjolras, but it was nothing like the smile she had worn, more acute to a grin, with Cosette.

 

“I thought you might be here.” She responded, meeting Enjolras halfway down the stairs. “Cosette kept saying how you lived next door.” She spoke incordially, talking with him like close friends.

 

It was odd.

 

She spoke delicately with two girls in yellow dresses that came up to talk to her about her golf tournament in the week prior. Enjolras remembered noting that she had lost, displayed in the papers. Was it the right thing to say he was sorry? They didn’t know each other very well.

 

They parted their ways, and Éponine came back to sling her arm over Enjolras’ shoulders, although he was a man of just 5,11 and she could not have been taller than 5,8.

 

She snatched up a glass of champagne, carried around, and drank it in a single gulp. It was an impressive feat. Enjolras had attempted it once on a dare from Cosette when they were just 16 and had ended up choking so bad he thought he had died.

 

They danced more of a walk around, Éponine laughing at the smallest of jokes from people who came up to her, and Enjolras felt so dreadfully unaware of anyone he was sure he was red in the face, but it was better to be with her than to be alone.

 

At some point they had sat at a table, bordering one of the Garden Hedges. There were three men there, and the girls from earlier there. All of the men were Mr. Mumble, which dutifully confused Enjolras.

 

He haughtily considered going back to France if every man he met here had the same name.

 

They placed drinks in front of him, though he seldom drank. Éponine spoke of dresses and tops and evening gowns and things that he thought Cosette might be heavily interested in.

 

He only manages to pick up back on the conversation, completely zoned out, near the end.

 

“There’s something about a fellow that’ll do a thing like that,” said one of the girls eagerly. “He doesn’t want trouble with anybody.”

 

“Who doesn’t?” Enjolras asked, trying to make his voice sound as American as possible. He got some odd looks.

 

“Grantaire. Somebody told me-”

 

The two women and Éponine leaned in, sharing secrets conspiratorially.

 

She continued.

 

“Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.”

 

A thrill passed over all 6 or so, however many were sat at that table in the end. Enjolras’ body seemed to hold a slight tremble in it.

 

“I don’t think it’s so much as in cold blood,” The other girl said. “It’s more that he was a German spy during the war.”

 

One of the men, the Mumbles, turned to Enjolras, inquistorially.

 

“You wouldn’t know anything about this? With your proximity?”

 

It was an odd question, in nature. Enjolras had rarely ever been to germany, certainly not during the war. He wasn’t even german remotely. There was enough French in his blood it could have inbred.

 

“No. I do not.” He said, scowling at the question. The man put his hands up at Enjolras’ blatant displeasure.

 

“I’m just checking. Hard to know with all these people nowadays.” He spat the word people like he wanted to say something else but didn’t, and Enjolras wanted to be anywhere else but there, but he didn’t leave.

 

The rest of the people moved on. Enjolras wondered if they shared his viewpoint, but he didn’t ask.

 

“I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Germany.” Another Mumble added.

 

“Oh no,” said the original girl. “it couldn’t be that, because he was in the American army during the war.” She assured, and nobody could really prove anything at all. “You look at him sometime when he thinks nobody’s looking at him. I’ll bet he killed a man.”

 

She seemed to try and imitate it, and the other girl shivered, and they all looked around for the man himself.

 

No one could find him, of course, despite their flicking eyes. A dinner came out, and they moved from today to table, Éponine inviting Enjolras to join her wherever she switched, although they never really spoke with each other personally.

 

They spoke quietly, much less gossip at the last table than there had been at the first, a quiet interest, but it was polite, like they were conveying information silently instead of out loud.

 

At some point Éponine folded up her serviette in her lap, dabbing at her mouth and putting it down, leaning over to Enjolras.

 

“Let’s get out.” She said, after a half hour or so. “This is much to polite for me.”

 

Enjolras did dutifully agree, his tongue hurt from where he had bit it so hard to keep from remarking about the horrid takes that some of the people said, for the sake of keeping the peace.

 

They got up, and Éponine laughed, a deep sound, making comments about how they ought to find their host. Enjolras of course, had never met him, and Enjolras did believe it was right to find him, so he followed.

 

The bar was empty of any sighting of Gatsby-Grantaire, although Enjolras had no idea who they were looking for, outside of a man.

 

Éponine did not find him on the steps, and Enjolras did not find him on the veranda. On chance they tried and important-looking door, and walked into a library, styled like a medieval church, and it was so beautiful Enjolras could have spent hours in here.

 

He ran his hands over the books, the spines making his fingers tingle and his heart beating fast. Perhaps he would come back just to read through all of the books.

 

Enjolras jumped with surprise at one point, rounding a corner and seeing someone else he had not expected.

 

Their hair was long and reddish in nature, braided, though they didn’t look very much like a woman. They had enormous spectacles on, that reminded Enjolras of Crows-eyes, and they were dangling off the edge of the table. They had the oddest fashion sense Enjolras had ever seen.

 

They looked at him only for a second to smile, and maybe they were a bit drunk. They instead turned to Éponine and looked at her from head to foot.

 

“What do you think?” They asked, their voice light and airy.

 

“About what?” She replied, not sounding entirely very happy to be discussing with someone she did not know, especially someone like them.

 

They waved their hands to the bookshelves.

 

“About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They’re real.”

 

“The books?” Enjolras intercut.

 

They nodded.

 

“Absolutely real- have pages and everything. Some very nice poets in here. Yes, very much so. I thought they might be cardboard, or they would simply crumble beneath touch. Matter of fact they’re absolutely real. Pages and- Here! I’ll show you!” They exclaimed, jumping up happuly, and returning with a copy of Love Poems by William Shakespeare.

 

“See!” They cried triumphantly. “It’s a draught of printed matter. Fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too, never drags on. But what do you want? What do you expect?”

 

Enjolras reached out but they snatched it back as quickly as they brought it out, and replaced it on the shelf, muttering something about if one brick left a whole might fall.

 

“Who brought you?” They asked again. “Or did you just come? I was brought. Most people were brought.”

 

Éponine passed a look to Enjolras that simply seemed to say ‘this person is a nutso.’

 

“I was brought by a man named Bossuet. Or maybe it was Lesgles? I can’t remember”. They continued talking, never seeming to stop. “Do you know him? I met him and his partner last night, his name is Joly, but you can’t repeat that. Do you know him? I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library. I love libraries.”

 

“Has it?” Enjolras asked, knowing full well it hadn’t.

 

“A little bit, I think. I can’t tell yet. I’ve only been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They’re real. They’re-”

 

Éponine cut him off.

 

“You told us.”

 

They shook hands, all three, and went back outside, heads still reeling from the completely odd conversation they had had.

 

There was more dancing now in the gardens, among the little lights. More couples of all shapes and sizes, drifts of whispers of gossips floating through the air. By midnight it was true the hilarity of it all had gone through the roof, it was something someone a century later could not begin to comprehend, because it was entirely true you had to have been there to understand it.

 

Champagne was still served in glasses and the two girls that Éponine had spoken with earlier danced for the band at some point, and the moon rose steadily higher and higher, floating in the sound was a triangle of silver shells, shimmering to the sound of music.

 

Enjolras rarely parted from Éponine’s side throughout the night, which is how he found himself sat at a table with a man about his age and a rowdy little girl who laughed at the slighest joke.

 

There was a pause in the entertainment for a moment and the man looked at Enjolras and smiled in an odd way.

 

“Your face is familiar.” He spoke politely. “Might I know you from somewhere?”

 

“I doubt it. I am new to America as a whole.”

 

“No, I am quite sure. France, yes? What part?”

 

“Marseilles, originally.”

 

“Ah, that solves it then. I was deployed there for a time during the Great War.”

 

Enjolras found this mightily interesting, having no recollection of this man whatsoever.

 

“I must apologize, I do not remember you at all.”

 

“Worry not, it was a long time ago now, and I spent more time fighting than I did going around the towns.” He said, though Enjolras had a feeling he was lying, he said nothing. He was a nice enough man, and he hadn’t been downright despicable in the least, so he supposed there were worse people to get along with.

 

They spoke for a while about the towns, and the rainy days where everything seemed wet and grey and horrible. At some point their conversation did shift to American life, and Enjolras assumed he must live in the area because he said that had just bought a hydroplane and was going to try it out in the morning.

 

“Would you like to join me, old sport? Just along the shore on the sound.”

 

“What time?” Enjolras had no intention of experiencing one of the hydroplanes, but he wouldn’t be so rude. It seemed like a mighty dangerous experience.

 

“Any time that suits you best.”

 

Enjolras was about to ask even his name when Éponine reappeared, touching his shoulder and looking around.

 

“Having a gay time now?” She asked, and Enjolras made a mental note to ask Cosette if she had put her up to this. Cosette-Fay had always been so awfully careful of her brother.

 

“Much better.” Enjolras returned to his new acquaintance. “This is an unusual party. I haven’t even seen the host. I live over there-” Enjolras waved his hand at the hedge that blocked the direction to his home. “And this man Grantaire sent over his chauffeur with an invitation.”

 

For a moment Enjolras was looked at with confusion, like the other man could not possible be convinced of what Enjolras was saying.

 

“…I’m Grantaire.” He said suddenly, after a long moment.

 

Enjolras’s face heated up quickly.

 

“Oh.” He said, voice choked. “Pardon, I had no idea.”

 

Grantaire laughed.

 

“I thought you knew, old sport. I’m not a very good host, in the end.” He smiled understandingly, and it was such a beautiful smile, some part of Enjolras thought. It had that rare quality of assurance, like he wasn’t offended in the slightest, just that he found it highly amusing.

 

It seemed to concentrate on just Enjolras, and Enjolras wondered if Grantaire had known all along Enjolras didn’t know.

 

Enjolras could pinpoint the exact moment it vanished, because some part of his chest slowed when it did. Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby-Grantaire identified himself a butler hurried towards him that someone from Chicago was calling him on the wire.

 

He excused himelf with a small bow that included both Enjolras and Éponine.

 

“If you have need for anything, just ask for it.” He urged Enjolras in specifity. “Excuse me. I will rejoin you later.”

 

The moment he was gone Enjolras turned to Éponine to tell her of his immense shock. He was still reeling, ears still red from a multitude of reasons. He had perhaps expected him to be a opulant man in his mid forties, rude and with a beard, or perhaps a cane and horrible opinions.

 

It was so much worse than that, Enjolras thought.

 

No, Grantaire was beautiful, Enjolras thought. His age was an estimate at best, perhaps 25 at best, time always had been a struggle, but he had brown hair that was combed back with gel, despite the curls sticking out, tan skin and eyes so green they could have been an emerald in Cosette’s collection.

 

He was built larger than Enjolras true, though not so much so. It was perhaps true that Enjolras could put on some more weight, but it wasn’t though he was skinny to starve.

 

“Who is he?” Enjolras demanded. “Do you know?”

 

“He’s just a man named Gatsby-Grantaire. Nobody is really sure of his first name.”

 

“Where is he from, I mean. And what does he do?” Enjolras asked, all attempts to mask his long accent gone with a reeling mind, words slurred from time and english.

 

“Now you’re started on the subject,” She smirked, bearing her canines that were perhaps sharper than the next persons. “Nobody can really be sure, like anything else about him. Most people haven’t even met him. Some claim he doesn’t even exist.”

 

“He seems very real to me.”

 

Éponine gave him an odd look.

 

“You’re a very odd man, Julién. Perhaps Cossie wasn’t lying when she said you were bound to end up like the next one of these days.” Éponine muttered, using the nickname Enjolras had been asked not to use.

 

He didn’t ask what the next meant. Éponine was just as much a mystery to him as he seemed to be to her.

 

Enjolras would have accepted without question the information that Grantaire came from swamps of New Orleans, or from out north. That was comprehensible. Yet nobody knew, and he came out of nowhere. Not even the children like Enjolras and Cosette could simply drift in out of nowhere and buy a palace on the Long Island Sound.

 

“Regardless, he gives large parties. I keep trying to convince Cosette to come, but she dislikes large parties, it seems.” She said, but she didn’t really sound that upset by it. She seemed to like Cosette very much. “And I like large parties, you know. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” She laughed, and it was directly followed by the boom of a bass drum, making Enjolras jump.

 

The voice of the orchestra leader rang out above all the talking in the garden.

 

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” He yelled out. “At the request of Mr. Gatsby-Grantaire we are going to play for you Mr. Vladimir Tostoff’s latest work. It attracted much attention last may, if you read the papers you will know how big of a sensation it is.”

 

Enjolras had of course, heard the piece before, at a party in Marseilles. He couldn’t be sure who was playing it, if it was Mr. Tostoff him myself, but the composition eluded and confused him, but it didn’t matter.

 

Enjolras’ eyes fell upon Grantaire who was standing at the top of the marble steps and flicking his green eyes from one group to the next, smiling more a tilt of the lips rather than the shining one he had given Enjolras earlier. He supposed he must be pleased.

 

His tanned skin was drawn attractively tight on his face with the smile, and his short hair looked as though he had tried to gel it again in the moments he had parted from Enjolras. There was not one sinister thing about the man, Enjolras could find.

 

The song played and couples swayed and still nobody went up to Grantaire to ask him to dance, and Enjolras wondered why slightly.

 

“I beg your pardon.” Gatsby-Grantaire’s butler said, suddenly standing beside Enjolras and Éponine. He didn’t jump this time.

 

“Miss Baker-Thénadier?” He inquired. “I beg your parden, but Mr. Gatsby-Grantaire would like to speak to you alone.”

 

“How interesting.” She said, but stood up slowly anyway, raising an eyebrow at Enjolras and followed the butler as she followed him towards the house.

 

Then Enjolras was alone and it was almost two. For some time confused and intriguing sounds had come from one of the long windowed rooms that overshadowed the terrace.

 

He avoided some colleague of Éponine’s who kept trying to get Enjolras to join him, and he went inside. The large room was filled to the brim. One of the girls in yellow was playing the piano and a red-haired woman sang beside her. He assumed they must have drank a lot of champagne and during the course of the song she had decided that everything was incredibly sad, which really meant she was just sobbing through the song.

 

She broke down anytime there was a pause in the song, and then took up the lyric again all over.

 

The same couples who had been dancing with each other just hours before now argued with each other, everyone not wanting to go home just yet. Enjolras was one of the few who did, and so he waited for his hat in the hall.

 

As it so went, he saw Éponine and Grantaire come out of the library together, though they did not look at each other. He said some last word to her, face tight as though they were speaking but didn’t want to move their faces.

 

She saw Enjolras first, and marched toward him, leaning towards him again, drunk in her steps. She yawned, as her group called her over, but not before slapping him on the shoulder.

 

“Please come see me.” A hiccup. “Phone book, under the name of Mme. Thénadier.”

 

She hurried off before she had even finished her sentence.

 

Enjolras did feel partially rather ashamed that on his first appearance at a party he had stayed so late, and it was the right thing to apologize. Somehow he got lumped into a group of people who had found him.

 

When they did get to speak, the only thing Grantaire did was give Enjolras a crooked smile, and say;

 

“Don’t mention it.” A pat on the shoulder. “Don’t give it another thought either, old sport.”

 

He moved to leave, before turning back to speak once more.

 

“And don’t forget we’re going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.”

 

His butler reappeared, mentioning how someone else wanted him on the phone, and he said a jovial good night to a still slightly confused Enjolras.

 

Enjolras walked down the drive, exhausted and having trouble finding his footing, waving to the person who had worn the crows-eyes glasses as they drove away, and was blowing him kisses.

 

They were awfully odd.

 

The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and Enjolras did eventually make his way home, perhaps at half past three. He glanced back just once. A wafer of the moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, amking the night fine as before and surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden.