#les mis fics

“Love!” Courfeyrac gasped. “Impossible! Surely I would know already if he were in love. Marius is not a man suited to keep such momentous secrets.”

“Well, we’ve all of us yet to be arrested,” Prouvaire said, shrugging his shoulders with a nonchalant ease that belied the grave weight of his words. “Evidently, he does know how to keep at least one momentous secret.”

“Now that is a different matter entirely,” Courfeyrac said, drawing away with a touch of hurt. “Come now, my friend, I know better than to bring around a man I would not trust with my own life.”

“Oh, pray do not misunderstand me,” Prouvraids said, reaching across the table to lay a gentle hand on Courfeyrac’s arm. “I certainly do not mistrust your judgment, especially in the valour and trustworthiness of a man. I merely wish to point out that you contradict your own assessment of Pontmercy.”

“Marius cannot be trusted to keep a single secret about matters of the heart,” Courfeyrac amended, “especially his own. He all but writes his emotions across his forehead in ink.”

“Ah, but that is simply passion that must make itself known!” Prouvaire declared, a dreamy sort of look falling over his gaze. “He has much of that, as he aptly demonstrated at his first—and to date only—meeting within these rooms.”

“Why, Citizen Prouvaire, my republican friend,” Courfeyrac said, gleefully emphasizing each word, “are you praising Marius for his exaltation of the Emperor himself?”

Prouvaire sniffed with a touch of disdain, or perhaps offense. “I am more than capable of admiring the heights of a man’s passion, while also despising the recipient of that passion. It takes a man of great courage and great conviction and great passion to make his case so valiantly. And in face of Enjolras and Combeferre both, no less!”

“A combination to be feared, to be sure,” Courfeyrac agreed easily. There was, after all, a good reason one was their leader and the latter his complement. “They were rather at top form that day, as well. Their best repartées in months, perhaps.”

“And yet Pontmercy did not flee! Even after Enjolras’s flawless retort. My mother is the republic, indeed.” Prouvaire let out a sigh of admiration. “That is a mark of passion, my friend. It will be a lucky woman indeed, she who is the target of his love.”

“Do not declare the case solved in such haste,” Courfeyrac insisted, rapping on the table with a half-closed fist. “I still maintain that he would have told me, were he truly in love. Or given himself away by some other sign, at the very least.”

“I do not doubt he would confide in you, should he suspect the inclinations of his own heart,” Prouvaire agreed easily. “Only it may be that he himself does not yet recognize it as love. How long has he been acting in such odd ways?”

“Depends by what measure you mean to ask. By the standards of the average man? For as long as I have known him.” Courfeyrac paused a moment to comb through his recollections. “By the strange standards of one Marius Pontmercy? Perhaps a day or two at most.”

“Et voila,” Prouvaire said, with all the satisfaction of a lawyer who has found the winning argument. “Our M. Pontmercy is in love, only he does not know it yet as love. Perhaps it is his first, even! Ah, but nothing can compare to the sweetness of such youth, such novelty. Who knows? If all goes as he wishes, perhaps we will see one of our friends married before some fateful day arrives for us all.”

Courfeyrac sat upright, aghast. “Come now! We have yet to confirm if love is indeed the cause for Marius’s strangeness, and here you are already pealing his wedding bells! And before anyone else, to boot. I am not certain if you give Marius too much credit or the rest of us not enough, but I am quite certain the credit is misplaced somewhere.” Here, he paused a moment to consider, then began to account for their friends one by one. “I grant we shall likely never see Enjolras marry — any more than he is already married to the Future of France itself, that is. Combeferre is too far like Enjolras in this matter, for all my best efforts. Though it is not only the great cause that claims his focus; rather, he is far too busy with all the rest that life has to offer to enjoy some of her sweetest fruits to the fullest, at least of yet. Grantaire, the poor fellow, struggles nearly as much to keep a woman as he does to pretend he does not wish to. Feuilly, alas, has certainly the heart and the passion to keep a woman well-pleased with ease, but not the means. Ah! But what of Joly and Bossuet and their Musichetta?”

Prouvaire smiled indulgently. “One of them would surely marry Musichetta—if only they could decide which of them is to marry her. I, for one, rather think Musichetta will sooner declare it all a bore not worth their endless debating. What matters of the official seal of marriage, when they all are radical revolutionaries intent on overthrowing that very government? Now, I admit Bahorel and his laughing mistress may save us yet from collective bachelorhood. But I suspect Bahorel cares too little for formality and detests the very hint of lawyers too much to ever wed properly.”

“You discount me so easily?” Courfeyrac said, a hand pressed to his heart with mock indignation.

“My dearest friend,” Prouvaire said, with a sweet sincerity that did nothing to dim the perceptive gleam of his eyes, “you are a little too fond of your mistresses, I think, to settle on one just yet.”

“You wound me, and yet I find I cannot deny the truth of your assessment,” Courfeyrac admitted rather easily. “Alright, so I am a lost cause—or at the very least a distant hope for the future. What of yourself?”

“I have borrowed of your problems, and some of Combeferre’s. That is to say, I am certainly not immune to the charms of a pretty grisette, but not yet particularly fond of one—and I have too many other companions to occupy my thoughts to truly keep a woman happy.” A somber mood descended rather suddenly upon him, as he added, “There is also the added matter of discretion. Friends of the future such as ourselves much take care with our close associates, lest we give away too much of our hearts and our secrets to the wrong person. In this matter Pontmercy is luckier than us, as he is not so deeply embedded in the inner workings. He has the liberty yet to be a little cavalier with his affections, and risk breaking nothing more than his own heart, precious as that is.”

Courfeyrac suppressed a frown, saddened by the sudden turn of his friend’s mood. He could not argue with the content of Prouvaire’s words, perhaps, but he could argue with their dark sentiments. Primarily by taking a deliberately light and carefree tone, as he declared, “Ah-ah! You simply must give me more time. I am certain I shall disabuse him of his Napoleonic heart and bring him around to our perspective someday. Have a little faith in me, and in him.”