Archive of Our Own ^beta

Courfeyrac hates to see anyone sad. Life is too jolly for all that. Every day is so beautiful and everyone is beautiful and he is beautiful.

He awakens to sunshine and takes care to stay in it. Most days there is some lovely creature in his bed, some days there is not. He will stretch out, and consider how best to spend his hours. Where he is needed. Where he needs.

That day, since there is not much else to do, he pays extra attention at the afternoon club meeting. He has a neat glass of brandy, and his friends are in high spirits to match his own. Marius is still worked up about his girl, about time for him, too, and Enjolras is worked up about the usual topics, with few of them listening; the summer day is too warm.

In the corner, Combeferre is studying, while Jehan sits against him, making daisy-chains from a pile of flowers on the table. Bahorel and Feuilly keep one eye dutifully enough on Enjolras' speech and the other on their card game with Joly and Bossuet. Grantaire alone is attentive, head down at the table with his face turned towards Enjolras, hand curled around his ever-present bottle.

Courfeyrac hates to see anyone sad. When the meeting winds down, he goes to catch Grantaire's elbow, though Enjolras frowns at him. Let him frown. “Grantaire. Will you walk with me a while?” and Grantaire consents, for all of Enjolras' frowning.

Grantaire dips his dark head, and they go outside. On the street at night, Courfeyrac links his arm companionably in Grantaire's. “My goodness, to see Enjolras' face! I wonder that he does not just claim you, and have done with it. The both of you would be improved. Alas.”

Courfeyrac says it frankly, like he says all things, and though Grantaire is hardly one for mincing words he makes a cut-off sort of sound. It's clear the topic is as dead-end as the alleyway they're in, so Courfeyrac says, to help it on its way, “I do not judge, of course, on what you do, or he does, my dear. I only think it a shame.”

They walk on. Grantaire has been trying for words for some time. Finally he says, “Does Enjolras know as you do?”

“Oh, certainly not,” says Courfeyrac, patting the dug-in fingers, as they stroll under lamplight. “Few can be accounted so observant to the many states of love, and so sympathetic to the nature of man, as myself. Enjolras fancies himself a revolutionary, but I could tell him of battles of the heart.” He lays a hand across his own. “Perhaps no one else sees. You hide the truth of it well enough, under teasing. But my true studies are the desires of men and women. It is my gift; in another life I might have had a bow, and tiny wings, and been called a cupid. Come now, Grantaire, you are never shy; does talk of love make you blush so? I have seen you tell Enjolras' very face how much you adore its cast.”

Grantaire's teeth are grit. “He knows it only for a drunken jest. He laughs, or frowns, and repulses me. He is repulsed by me. I do not blame him; I know the feeling well.”

“Yet he watches your retreat,” says Courfeyrac. It hurts to hear someone sounding so low. He thinks it must be a dreadful state to inhabit. “Your presence forces Enjolras to think in the present, more than he would; he is too consumed with past, and future. It is good for him to be reminded that he is a man and not the statue you praise. Even to put you off is a protestation; he has engaged with the idea. Else he would ignore you entirely, as he does anything he deems extraneous and unnecessary.”

As they stroll, Grantaire considers this. “He does take the time to rebuke me,” he says, slowly, as though that were a wonderfully dawning realization. “He takes me to task, and castigates me, and tries to correct me.”

“He wishes for your improvement,” says Courfeyrac, “Yet he understands you little, or how you could improve save to wake up as another kind of person. This becomes for him like a puzzle to be solved, for he would be the savior of man. I know my headstrong friend too well. He reads in you a certain potential, but knows not how to recognize it; you prize what he gives no value, and fail to merit his elevated goals with the validation he is so sure they possess. I think you frighten him, Grantaire, when little else does. You seem to know too much, the way you talk. Sometimes you make him look the boy he is, in the face of your worldly commentary.”

Grantaire looks more startled than talk of adoration had brought. “That was never my intent. I would not seek to detract from--”

“I think you do it to challenge him, to show him that you are listening and know the answers. You have answers he tries not look for, though. That is the quandary. And since he might imagine how you would have him--”

“Courfeyrac!”

“You are right; as I said, it is unlikely that he imagines exactly. But do not underestimate Enjolras' devotion to the classical ideals. He knows your inclination to be Greek; he is very well-read.” Courfeyrac lets himself look satisfied at the half-panicked, half-pleased expression this conjures on Grantaire's face.

But Grantaire says, in defense of his idol, “He would never--”

“He has read the literature,” Courfeyrac repeats. “Since he would save man, he would understand him. Many are the times he has asked me to describe my own adventures, when talk of rebellion has been put to bed.”

Grantaire persists in looking dazed at the idea of Enjolras speaking love, so Courfeyrac goes on. “It is not that he does not lust, I think; I have met some men and women with no natural interest in fleshly things, and he does not speak as they do. It is not that he would not; it is that he will not. I believe – I know – that he considers desire a distraction, an indulgence that must be sacrificed for the greater cause. You saw his reaction to Marius' affair. He is afraid it will lose us Marius. He is afraid.”

Grantaire works his mouth but still cannot work out what to say, and they walk in silence a long moment, admiring a bright crowd of prettily plumaged ladies who bustle past on the boulevard.

Courfeyrac counts three smiles for himself. Then he says to Grantaire, “That is why Enjolras turns a disdainful eye on those who might try him, to discourage the affection from taking root; he must know that he is weak in this, and seeks a shield. He is too passionate already, about indefinite ideas; if he loved it would be as fiercely. It would consume him. He is not a man for idle pleasure.”

With his hand on Grantaire's arm, Courfeyrac can feel the shudder that goes through him. Grantaire tries to duck his head, to hide it. Courfeyrac says, “I am sorry. I speak too boldly, and now I would speak cruelly. Though I would be cruelty, and its remedy.”

He waits. Grantaire says, “Please. I would hear it said.”

They turn the corner onto the street where Courfeyrac takes rooms. At the door, he lets go of Grantaire's arm and leaves him free to follow in and up the stairs. Grantaire does, and Courfeyrac is talking as they move, the motion of his hands animated in an attempt to deflect from the severity of what he has to say. He abhors having to be the bearer of ill news; messengers like him should be shot. But perhaps it will be kinder for Grantaire, in the end.

He says, “I speak so openly with you because I am your friend, and I would have you happier than you have been. The bottles have been too many, as of late; it is a lot even for you, Grantaire, and I think it is because you see how close Enjolras is to the precipice and would rather not see. Combeferre and I have discussed it; we feel his passion is gaining the flavor of zeal, and Jehan has come to me to say that he is frightened with the recent rhetoric. I am afraid that Enjolras will court some catastrophe, even if we are not there beside him. His conviction is such that he has come to feel action must be taken, and soon. He is entirely convinced of his argument now, and looks back already from lofty heights, as though history has already happened.”

They have come to his door, and stand faced-off before it, Grantaire fighting for a neutral face. Courfeyrac guides them inside, then goes to tend the lanterns in the little drawing room. Grantaire trails after, his eyebrows knit and his lip bitten; Courfeyrac pours them two oversize glasses of red wine from the half-full bottle on his bookshelf and motions Grantaire to the seat across him at the table.

The cozy little room has a big window and curtains of handmade lace made by a lovely lace-maker he knows and what spare furniture his father could spare from the billiard room in the country: a low table with two armchairs, made of polished redwood but much worn down with use, a handsome writing-desk, shelves with books and liquors and games to play. On the wall are hung some colorful family portraits as a concession to his mother's visits.

They sit in their own intimate cafe. Courfeyrac resumes his speech because Grantaire is waiting, though he waits for Grantaire to take a drink first. Courfeyrac toasts them, sips from his glass, and sighs. “Combeferre is of the opinion that little can be done, and that we can only hope to temper him, and balance rash action with prudent wisdom, and to be, in short, properly Combeferre, which is, to say, utterly rational. But Combeferre does not lead us, and will not challenge Enjolras unless it is at the quick. Joly has suggested he might be suffering the beginnings of a brain fever, such as been his recent fervor. I say this to you, Grantaire, for I know that you have seen how brightly he is burning; you watch him most. We are losing him.”

Grantaire drinks half the wine. He comes up looking slapped. “We cannot.”

“I cannot see the solution, and I have searched for it. I would be honest with you, for honesty is a virtue, and I need as many virtues as I can cultivate to balance my fair share of sin. It would be better for you if you could forget him. It is terrible for me to say so, but I have said it. He will not look upon you. In another life, perhaps you could have persuaded him; he thinks you witty enough when you are not too drunk.” Grantaire's face has become a cipher. He drinks more. Courfeyrac does too. “But he is past all of this, I fear. He has put himself past our earthly concerns. It would be better for you, Grantaire, to look at someone else a while. Else I am afraid we will lose you with him.”

“You do me too much credit,” says Grantaire, “and too little. I have seen the things you describe, and am unchanged.”

Courfeyrac sits back in his chair. Grantaire sounds more decided than even Courfeyrac had warranted him, and he wonders at the depth of it. He thinks Enjolras would rather marvel at the single-mindedness of Grantaire's devotion, and recognize it, if he would but let himself bend to look and see. But he will not.

“Then I am the sorrier for you,” says Courfeyrac, “and as your friend, it is my duty to be of service, that I might not be sorry. Which remedy would you choose? There are many at our disposal. We might stay in, and drink more together, or we might go back out, and seek our entertainment in Montmartre, in the cabarets, and find ourselves charming new friends for the night. Or we could taste the opium from another kind friend I have, and enjoy dreaming far away, a while. Or--”

“There is no remedy,” says Grantaire. “I have tried them all.”

“You lack imagination, or have lost it to cynicism,” says Courfeyrac. “Luckily I have imagination enough for us both, and I am at your disposal. If you would not go out, let us to bed. I know no better balm for a wounded heart, than to meet with an untroubled one, a while.”

Grantaire stares back at him. He appears unsurprised, and also startled. “You are very good, Courfeyrac.”

Courfeyrac glows. He never dislikes compliments, and he grins, and ruffles a hand through his hair. Grantaire's eyes track the movement; his eyes are wholly on him, now, not looking so far away.

Courfeyrac says, “Modesty does not become me, so I must agree with you. I am very, very good.” He stands up, leaving the last sip of wine untouched, and offers Grantaire his arm. Grantaire finishes his own glass in one swallow, then gets up, and hooks his arm into Courfeyrac's. Courfeyrac shows the way to the bedroom.

It is a large chamber with high ceilings and a good bed; he isn't ostentatious, he tries not to be, and the downside of the room is that it lacks windows, but not everything in life can be had. To add light, Courfeyrac has hung several chandeliers, and put thick candles and glass lanterns on what surfaces are to be had. He leaves Grantaire by a bookshelf stuffed with schoolboy memorabilia and begins lighting up the room. He hears the strike of a match, and turns to see Grantaire helping. Soon the air is aglow.

Candlelight flickers on Grantaire's face, the fine lines of it, pushing back the shadows, and Courfeyrac goes to him, and takes Grantaire's face between his hands. He kisses him, softly, the merest extension of a friendly embrace, then tilts back.

“What would you have?” he asks, serious as he's ever sounded. This is Courfeyrac's holy ground, his calling; there should be laughter and lightness in loving, but Grantaire needs a firm, steady hand to help pull him back. Courfeyrac is adept at everything where indoor recreation is concerned – he is an adept. Nothing shocks him. “Would you have me play Enjolras for you? Do you need that? I expect that you have lain with men who looked more like him; but I think I would be quite good in the role. Only Combeferre might act him better in bed, but he never will. I have asked.”

Grantaire's jaw has sagged a little, then more; then he tightens up and shakes his head. “I – I thank you for the offer. But I would not sully the gift of your favor by pretending that you were any other than yourself. Surely you know the prospect of Courfeyrac is enough to entice any man or woman or errant God.”

Courfeyrac smiles, pleased at the answer, and steps in to kiss Grantaire with more assurance, and the rather bold introduction of his tongue. He apprenticed early and mastered the art of kissing by sixteen, or thereabouts; he draws Grantaire down, and has him at a moan in mere seconds, Grantaire's blue eyes going wide, before he proves that he has made an art of kissing, too.

Grantaire often runs off at the mouth about his many conquests, and though Courfeyrac knows him to exaggerate for the club's benefit, his mouth is practiced indeed. It is a simple matter to let arms slide around each other, and allow hands to roam, and by the time they pull back panting, the question of whether they are compatible is answered.

Courfeyrac thinks that this is an extremely good idea, perhaps set to number amongst his best, because Grantaire is already looking better, flushed at the cheek with arousal instead of intoxication, smiling instead of frowning. It is excellent to see him smiling from something that is not sarcasm.

“Tell me, then,” says Courfeyrac, back-stepping them to bed. “Do you like to fuck, or be fucked? Or is it my mouth you would like, or something else? I have many games that we could bring with us. I know even more games to speak. I am very versatile.”

“You are a wonder,” says Grantaire, full of appreciation. “You are a rare man and friend to have, Courfeyrac.” His pause is barely perceptible. “I would have you, if you are to be had.”

Courfeyrac hopes his expression transmits his delight. He is a little surprised, but not too much, and he wants to shake his head at what Enjolras is missing; it seems a terrible waste. Instead he nods, starting to work on the ties and fastenings of his clothing with all haste. He makes it a race, and Grantaire joins in, laughing, so that when they fall into bed together, one atop the other, then the other atop, they are still laughing.

One of his best ideas, truly. Even had Grantaire not been his dear friend, this is no hardship: Grantaire is not over-built, but his body is fit from sports and his long walks across Paris, and his hardening cock is another substantial joy Enjolras will never know. His cock is outsize, in fact, considering the slender build of the rest of him, and as he takes Grantaire in a knowing hand, Courfeyrac considers what he has agreed to, and feels a building excitement in his belly.

He kisses down Grantaire's body to give and receive a proper greeting, and Grantaire says his name deliciously, and tastes delicious on his tongue. There's hardly any hesitation when Grantaire's fingers slide into his hair and fist there.

Courfeyrac may be better at sucking cock than kissing, even, though he is unsure. He decides to start surveying his bedfellows in the future, as he hums and licks and lavishes Grantaire's spectacular cock with attention. Under his ministrations it has firmed and grown past impressive and borders on obscene. He has ceased feeling sorry for Grantaire and thinks only of what perfectly exquisite agony it will be to fit him in. He feels most sorry for Enjolras.

Courfeyrac moves his mouth away to tease. “You spoke of errant Gods,” he tells Grantaire, who is watching the proceedings dreamy-eyed and slack-jawed, hips pushing helplessly up from the bed when Courfeyrac stops. “You did not say that you were as endowed.”

Grantaire's lips quirk under the blush on his cheeks. “Am I not already accounted a braggart?”

“Modesty is not for men like us,” says Courfeyrac, “and there are certain things a man can be proud of, and be assured of his friend's admiration.”

“Come here,” Grantaire invites, “and I shall return it.”

More than amenable to the proposition, Courfeyrac swings a leg over to straddle Grantaire, facing away, facing the proud length of his cock. He eases onto his hands and knees, and drops his head to resume the motion of his mouth.

Grantaire is up on his elbows, angling his head so that he can give the same favor to Courfeyrac's cock above him. He starts slow, with wet, slick licks before moving to envelop him, his sensitive artist's hand ranging Courfeyrac's thighs and buttocks. Grantaire grips for purchase, then drinks him deep.

It's good like this, very good, and been a space since Courfeyrac tried it last. The position demands open communication and give-and-take, but the rewards are significant: no partner is passive, and each adds and builds to the other's pleasure, and also their own; groans are made as one, and intensity is traded back and forth, so that if one increases suction, or swallows and holds, the other echoes it, and they can climb towards climax together. Grantaire is an entirely enthusiastic companion, skillful as he's claimed to be; hungry, and unashamed of it, now that they are here.

More than this is promised, though, tantalizing as it is, as satisfying as it would be to bring Grantaire to spend in his mouth, and let Grantaire do the same for him; or perhaps Grantaire would want to watch Courfeyrac come to crisis, straddling him facing forwards; but there is more for them to do. He releases Grantaire's cock, sucking air instead into his lungs, and after a breath Grantaire does the same.

Courfeyrac turns around, settling over Grantaire, leaning in close. Underneath him Grantaire is also breathing hard, and his eyes are bright and wicked, and Courfeyrac likes the gleam in them.

“You are a fairy, I think,” says Grantaire, “A prince of the fairies, to love with such grace.”

Grantaire palms a hand from shoulder to belly, tickling lightly at the dip of his abdomen, just enough to tickle. Courfeyrac relents into a merry laugh. “Another sort of woodland creature, perhaps,” Courfeyrac says. If he were a peacock, his feathers would be showing. “I am a satyr in your service.”

More the fool Enjolras. In bed Grantaire has a concentration, and also a levity, that he does not display otherwise. He is comfortable and affectionate, quick to initiate and reciprocate, scrupulously attentive. A man born to love and loyalty, who sees all the small, sad, soft things, and has gotten lost in looking.

Courfeyrac kisses Grantaire again, full of the satisfaction between them, and he catches at Grantaire's lower lip with his teeth before he lets go. He says, “How would a satyr best satiate his Dionysos? Shall we couple as beasts in the forest do?”

Grantaire looks speculative. Then he reaches up, to draw Courfeyrac decisively to his chest, then turns them so they align sideways, locked at hip and knee. He smooths a hand over Courfeyrac's thigh. He is speaking low against the back of Courfeyrac's neck. “Dionysos was partial to thighs, you know. He would have praised yours. He was born out of Zeus' thigh after Zeus sewed him there, after jealous Hera tricked his mother Semele into forcing the God to reveal himself in all his Godhood. The sight set her alight, and she burned up; but Zeus rescued their child, and bore Dionysos himself; 'with shrinking hands he cut the incision in his thigh and carried him in his man’s womb, father and gracious mother at once.'”

“The Dionysiaca,” agrees Courfeyrac.

Grantaire's hand slides up Courfeyrac's flank, squeezes. “Yes,” he breathes. “You know it?”

“A little. The beginning, to sit Greek exams, first year.” Courfeyrac wriggles, his wanting body hot to the sound of Grantaire's murmur so close, and the boldness of his touch. He breaks their lines only to roll over for the vial of oil kept in the drawers by the bed, which Grantaire reaches for before he has a chance to pass it.

Courfeyrac smiles, and bows low to his audience of one. He recites: “'Bring me the fennel, rattle the cymbals, ye Muses! put in my hand the wand of Dionysos whom I sing.'”

Grantaire chuckles, and applauds, and gasps when Courfeyrac makes his fingers into a ring around his cock. “'But bring me a partner for your dance in the neighboring island of Paros,'" says Grantaire, putting his hand to Courfeyrac's changeable face, "'Proteus of many turns, that he may appear in all his diversity of shapes, since I twang my harp to a diversity of songs.'”

Grantaire gets the vial uncorked, tipping it over to spill over his cock, and be caught and spread by Courfeyrac's fingers. He slicks his own, and guides Courfeyrac by the wrist back down beside him.

“'For if, as a serpent, he should glide along his winding trail,'” Courfeyrac prompts, encouraging, and Grantaire obliges, aiming one finger in quest, “'I will sing my god’s achievement, how with...ah! with ivy-wreathed wand he destroyed the horrid hosts –' yes, two now, go to, just so – 'he destroyed the horrid hosts of Giants serpent-haired.' Grantaire!”

“A better rhyme than Nonnus made,” Grantaire purrs, setting teeth to Courfeyrac's shoulder while his busy fingers work. He is steady at the approach, and studied, knowing just where to press, and when to crook, so that Courfeyrac sparks all over and writhes, his head going back; and Grantaire turns his lips into the chaos of Courfeyrac's hair and speaks the next against his scalp: “'If as a lion he shake his bristling mane--'” and Grantaire adds a third finger, then, impossibly, a fourth.

So that Courfeyrac, who had been straining to recall the next lines of the verse, suddenly remembers, and his whole body is straining, shaking, more full-up than it has ever been, and he cries out on cue: “'I will cry “Euoi!” to Bacchos' and – fuck, fuck, that is so good – I – oh – I –“

“The beginning is very good,” Grantaire says, slipping his free hand around Courfeyrac's shoulder to twist and tease a nipple; his fingers are wet: he must have licked them first. Courfeyrac croons for him, body strung and tuned now for Grantaire to play. “Epic poetry. But you should have read on. Shall I tell you how Dionysos loved the satyr Ampelos?”

“In word and deed,” says Courfeyrac. “Come, I must know if I can fit you. Do you think I can?”

Grantaire bites his neck in answer, and starts to take back his tricky fingers. He licks a line up to Courfeyrac's ear, and licks the fleshy part of it. “Dionysos had many lovers,” he explains, “but Ampelos was important. Anyway, he was very beautiful. You are as fine, surely, to gaze upon.”

He puts a hand under Courfeyrac's thigh and draws it up, and Courfeyrac keeps it there, so that Grantaire's hand disappears again, and then Courfeyrac is groaning: Grantaire breaches him slowly; he must; but even the first of it is broader than he thought. He does not think he has been with anyone so big, and it is an exquisite burn as Grantaire pushes in.

Grantaire is talking of his God as he moves. “'Once while hunting in the shady lurking wood he was delighted by the rosy form of a young comrade,'” he pronounces, while Courfeyrac, making many noises, accepts more of his inches. Grantaire's hand comes back around, helping to hold his leg at the knee. “For...oh, you are tight; you cinch me too close; oh...'For Ampelos was a merry boy who had grown up already on the Phrygian hills, a new sprout of the Loves.'”

Grantaire sighs as he comes flush against him at last. He rolls his hips, to test them, and Courfeyrac keens, nearly past his endurance and barely begun. Grantaire stays like that a while, letting him adjust, aligning angles, so that they fit together as spoons in a drawer. He wraps his arms around him. “Ah, Courfeyrac. You are perfection. You are exaltation.”

Courfeyrac cannot speak as such; all his sentences are coming out as sounds; all he can conceptualize is the long thick hardness of Grantaire sheathed in him. When he recovers some wits beyond the concepts of fuck and cock Courfeyrac tries rocking back and that is the thing to do; that gets his body ready to dance and gets a moan out of Grantaire.

“Fuck,” Courfeyrac says, managing at least to vocalize the sentiment.

But even when loving Grantaire never loses his speech or proclivity for it. “'Dionysos fucked Ampelos, for Ampelos was 'the golden flower of youth: curling clusters of hair ran loose behind over his silvery-glistering shoulders.'” He bites along Courfeyrac's sweat-slick shoulder for emphasis. Grantaire pulls up, and his second thrust back in, and his third, are not so slow; and the fourth is even faster, and the fifth has Courfeyrac scrabbling at the coverlet.

“'Unshadowed light flashed from him, like the shining moon when she pierces a damp cloud and shows within it.'” Grantaire starts to fuck him in earnest, fingers digging into Courfeyrac's hip for purchase. His cock is enormous and, given passage, relentless. This is the best idea Courfeyrac has had all year. In years. He opens his mouth, voicing desperate approval.

“'From his rosy lips escaped a voice breathing honey,'” Grantaire tells Courfeyrac's skin, where his teeth are leaving marks.

“Oh, God,” pants Courfeyrac, then amends for the occasion, “Gods, Goddesses, all of them. Every one. Christ. Yes. You fuck so well, Grantaire. Bacchos indeed! You might have told me that you did; imagine the time we have wasted in taking in plays together, and operas and drinks, when we might have been fucking.”

“'Dionysos took Ampelos as playmate in his dainty sports,'” Grantaire replies, naughtily. He has uncovered a rhythm that lets him thrust at an angle to make Courfeyrac swear, and bite his lip, and urge him still further on. Grantaire's grip transfers from his thigh to his cock, and when he matches stroke for stroke, Courfeyrac forgets what he has ever been or done before save be seized like this.

Grantaire is saying, somewhere very close and inside him, “'In admiration of his beauty Dionysos spoke to Ampelos as a man, artfully concealing his divine nature, and asked him: What father begat you? What immortal womb brought you forth? Which of the Graces gave you birth? What – what handsome Apollo made you?'”

And the world is starting to spin, and the words are fading in and out, with Grantaire's cock going in and out, and even Grantaire is beginning to lose the track of his poetry. It emerges in fits and starts, when he is not mouthing at Courfeyrac's throat.

“'If you come another Eros, unwinged, without arrows, without quiver, which of the Blessed slept with Aphrodite and bred you?'” Grantaire is so deep; none have pressed so far before. Grantaire circles them together. “...'Of if you are the one they call Hermes come from the sky --”

They are too close to the thick of it, then, so Grantaire pauses, and draws almost completely out. Courfeyrac makes a sound of negation, and follows, riding back on him, and then again, taking control of their motion, driving hard on Grantaire as he is being driven. Grantaire manages, “-- show me your light wings, and the lively soles of your shoes--'”

“You have undone me – you are undoing--”

Grantaire snaps his hips and does not stop; his hand on Courfeyrac's cock quickens. “'How is it you wear the hair uncut falling along your neck?'”

His cock cleaves close; they are so close, Courfeyrac is unraveling in Grantaire's embrace, against the strength of his body, clenching down as he gives himself over so that Grantaire will join him in release, the relief he so profoundly needs.

Because Grantaire is saying, too softly, “'Can you be Phoibos himself come to me without harp, without bow, Phoibos shaking the locks of his unshorn hair unbound?'” so Courfeyrac turns his head, to kiss his lips quiet, and Grantaire holds onto him and spills himself, submerged.

It's more than enough to send Courfeyrac over the brink, spurting hot and wet across his belly, eyes locked on Grantaire's to share the truth of their pleasure, and the truth is that they are electric and extraordinary.

Courfeyrac's assignations are always sporting, but no one has shared his bed with as much intensity. He marvels that Grantaire can have such passion to give a friend, and though it is hardly the moment, Courfeyrac feels sorry about Enjolras, whom Grantaire would give uncountably more.

It is strange knowledge to know what Enjolras is missing, now, and seems a unique burden: I have been fucked by the man who would give his life and really quite splendid cock to your keeping, Enjolras, and let me tell you, he is something to be had. He would make you happy; he would try; his world is encompassed of trying that, now. You might not frown at him, and could take him to bed to learn the reasons why men and women want to stay alive, before you try for death. Try him, Courfeyrac would say.

Courfeyrac wonders if he could ever say it, and what Enjolras' face would look like.

Probably he should never say such things, Courfeyrac thinks, as Grantaire is gentle easing out of him. They are not his place to say. His place is here, with Grantaire's fingers trailing lazily through the slick on Courfeyrac's belly. Grantaire’s mouth is open on Courfeyrac's shoulder, sucking irregular patterns of red and pink. Only the patterns start to feel more regular.

“What is that you draw?” he asks Grantaire.

“A bunch of grapes, ripe,” Grantaire says, “The leaves are hard to do. Ampelos died, tricked into riding a bull, and Dionysos' grief was terrible. Nothing could assuage him, until he saw the youth reborn in the form of a green climbing vine. He adorned his temples with his beloved; and the vines gave over a succulent fruit.” Grantaire returns to his artwork a while, while Courfeyrac squirms and giggles at the sensation.

“One day Dionysos took up the grapes, and crushed them between his hands; and in doing so, discovered wine. He gifted this to his followers, a pleasure and a curse, wine. Wine to show truths, and thus compel madness. Wine is the bounty of lost love, Courfeyrac; that is why it is so bittersweet, and so many drink it.”

Courfeyrac takes up Grantaire's hand, pressing light kisses to the knuckle. He will not follow down Grantaire's path. “And what ancient maiden was sacrificed for brandy?” he wants to know.

Grantaire's laugh is low and richly satisfied. They lie still close together, skin to skin, at a lounge. Courfeyrac is content to be held, since Grantaire would keep hold of him; he can sleep in any number of positions relative to another person in his bed. He has no mind for sleeping yet, however; the night is young, and so are they.

“I hope you will consider joining me again, in future days,” Courfeyrac says, while Grantaire keeps making grapes in shades of blood-bruise on his shoulder. “It is true, my schedule is often busy; but you are welcome on days and nights when I am not in company, or to become a member of it, if I am.”

“Courfeyrac,” says Grantaire, nipping at him, “You would tempt a saint, and I am very far from one. You are an Ampelos unbound, and your vintage is heady.”

Courfeyrac grins. “I told you I was good, my friend.”

“You were modest,” murmurs Grantaire. They lie a while grinning, enjoying the reciprocal heat of bodies.

Courfeyrac turns to face Grantaire. “What would Enjolras think,” he says, watching the reaction to the name, quickly hid, “What would he think if I crossed the room at the close of our next meeting, and put my hand to your cheek, and kissed you thus?” It is a small sip of a kiss, but intimate.

Grantaire's blue eyes are rounded. He exhales. “You said as much, that he does not care.”

“That is not what I said. I said that he has put himself above our earthly concerns,” Courfeyrac corrects. “But even Gods get jealous. It is the history of the world. They are often petty, and they covet.” He tilts his head. “Enjolras tells himself he does not want you. But he has never seen another in pursuit of you, or you with anyone not a serving-girl giving a moment's flirtation. He knows me; he will be able to imagine what I have had of you, and you of me. Should we drive him wild, Grantaire, with what he does not have?”

It is a while, but then Grantaire says, “No. We will not flaunt for nothing. If Enjolras sees, he sees. This is not for him, however.”

“No,” agrees Courfeyrac, “it is not,” and they leave it at that, and doze in each others' arms without worry, until it is time to awaken and explore other topics. It has been a lovely day, well spent, thinks Courfeyrac, and the next holds as much promise.

When he dreams, the visions sent are honey-sweet.