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The meeting broke up and those with places to be filtered out accordingly. Joly, Bossuet, and Grantaire remained in their corner like usual, bottles of wine in front of them, but they were unexpectedly joined by Courfeyrac, who pulled a chair up to their table. “Is your mistress busy this eve?” Joly asked.
“What, Marius?” Courfeyrac asked with a wink, to the general laughter of the table.
Bossuet set his wine down on the table with a thud. “Do not tell me he is still infatuated with that poor girl. Does he yet know her name?”
Courfeyrac sighed dramatically and shook his head. “Alas, no, though this has not yet stopped him in his quest. But let us turn our minds to more cheerful things. I have learned in a salon of a most marvelous game, a game of truths and daring feats.”
“A game?” Grantaire asked, his interest piqued. “What sort of game? And for what sort of stakes?”
“The kind you find yourself most acquainted with, Capital R,” Courfeyrac told him. “A drinking game. The rules are simple — one must choose either a truth, and answer the question forthwith, or a dare, and do the action therein demanded. If one will not answer or will not complete the dare, one must drink.”
Bossuet nodded sagaciously. “But is four enough to play? The game seems more amusing with more people, does it not?”
Courfeyrac nodded and glanced around. “Indeed, you are right, but most appeared to have run off this night, except for, well…Enjolras!” He shouted Enjolras’s name, beaming when the blond raised his head from what he was working on to scowl in Courfeyrac’s direction. “Join us, friend. We’ve a drinking game before us and fifth party is never amiss. Your work will keep.”
Grantaire snorted as he picked up his wine bottle. “If your wish is for Enjolras to join us in a drinking game, you may as well dare him to that effect. It is the only thing that will bring him hither.”
Enjolras switched his scowl to Grantaire, who met his gaze evenly, with a small smirk of his own, half-raising his wine bottle in a mock salute, and stood, sauntering over to their table and plopping down in an open chair. “A drinking game?” he asked mildly. “Dare I ask the rules, and what benefit I may be?”
Joly giggled, already having drunk much wine. “You may indeed dare, for that is the name of the game!”
As Enjolras merely raised an eyebrow at Joly, Grantaire nudged Enjolras in the side and bent forward to whisper the rules to Enjolras, his hand resting lightly on Enjolras’s arm. Courfeyrac saw the gesture and nudged Bossuet, who rolled his eyes and muttered in an undertone, “Perhaps we should use the rules of the evening to get them to admit what all of Paris already knows, as if their relationship were somehow a secret.”
Clearly, Courfeyrac took the words to heart, and after Bossuet was forced to reveal that he had once purchased a wig that turned out to be made of rat fur (and had worn it in public on a number of occasions), and Joly was dared to flirt with their waitress using only phrases from The Social Contract (it goes without saying who devised that dare), Courfeyrac turned to Enjolras, and asked magnanimously, “Enjolras, my dear man, truth or dare?”
After a long moment’s consideration, Enjolras said, “Dare, provided I am not dared to infringe on the rights of another.”
Courfeyrac smirked at him. “Oh, I daresay that no one would protest this. Very well — I dare you to kiss Grantaire.”
Joly and Bossuet quickly hid their laughter behind their hands, and Grantaire turned to Enjolras, eyebrows raised. “If I need give consent—” he started, but Enjolras cut him off by kissing him. It was a gentle kiss, sweet even, and as familiar as any that the two had shared over the course of their courtship. But here, now, with their friends as witnesses, it meant more than the casual kisses they shared in their apartment, and when they broke apart, the look on Grantaire’s face was impossibly gentle, his smile soft, his eyes shining with unspoken joy.
Enjolras squeezed Grantaire’s arm before turning to meet Courfeyrac’s smirk with one of his own, and reached out to pluck the bottle of wine from his fingers, draining it in one long gulp. Courfeyrac chortled and slapped him on the shoulder in a comradely way. “Your point is well proven,” he told Enjolras. “Now, pick your own unsuspecting victim.”
“Grantaire,” Enjolras said, still grinning. “Truth or dare?”
Grantaire tipped a wink at Joly, who giggled, and said loudly, “I have been kissed by a god, and feel no other feat will this evening compare. Truth, then — let my lips whisper the sweetest truths as prayers or fervent pledges of fealty, let my voice be lifted in praise as David’s unto the Lord, let—”
Bossuet smacked him on the arm, and Grantaire bit off his sentence to stick his tongue out at Bossuet, who reciprocated, as Enjolras cleared his throat. Later, he would never know what possessed him to ask this question, whether it was the sweetness of the wine or the sweetness of Grantaire’s lips, or even just the leftover rush from the successful meeting earlier. “Answer this truthfully, then — do you believe our revolution will succeed?”
Silence fell among the men as they stared from Grantaire to Enjolras, the ghosts of their previous smiles etched on their faces. Grantaire’s grip on his wine bottle tightened, and he took a long pull before letting out a rough approximation of his normal laugh. “Truly you are Apollo, god of prophecy, for you ask a question to which you already know the answer. I believe in but one certainty, my full glass.”
If possible, the silence that met that pronouncement was more awkward than previously, and it was only broken by Joly saying loudly, “Bossuet, I believe it is your turn.”
“Indeed,” Grantaire said, his eyes not leaving Enjolras’s. “Carry on, friends. If you will excuse me, though, I need have a word with Enjolras. Outside. Alone.”
Enjolras could barely stand before Grantaire grabbed his arm in a vice-like grip and yanked him outside, to the alley that ran beside the Musain. When they were alone, Grantaire whirled to face him, his expression livid. “How dare you,” he seethed. “Using what should have been amusement among friends to, what, embarrass me? To try to prove a point?”
Holding up his hands placatingly, Enjolras started, “That is not what I intended—” but Grantaire did not let him continue.
"What answer did you expect me to give?” Grantaire demanded, his eyes dark, his mouth a thin, angry line. There was no hint of the laughing, warm Grantaire whose hand had lingered on Enjolras’s arm earlier, no sign of the Grantaire whose expression had been impossibly soft when Enjolras had kissed him in front of their friends.
Enjolras shook his head. “I do not know,” he answered, trying not to let his frustration color his tone. “I merely thought…”
He trailed off, but rather than placate Grantaire with his admittance of his own lack of thinking, the opposite seemed true. Grantaire took a step back. “What?” he spat. “Did you think that because I rut against you like a bitch in heat I must too have taken on your cause as my own? Do not flatter yourself, monsieur, you are not that good a lover.”
Enjolras colored and took a step back as well, trying to find words to properly articulate what he meant, despite the fact that he almost felt like crying. “I am not naïve enough to think my actions in bed would change your mind, or that our relationship would automatically change how you felt towards our cause. I had just hoped that spending more time together might inspire you. That is all.”
Grantaire laughed, a brief, bitter bark. “Ah, but Enjolras, you also have been spending more time with me. Do not tell me that time has dulled your revolutionary spark. But nay, I know better than that. You presume that you would inspire me, but never that I would rub off on you.” Enjolras opened his mouth as if to protest, but Grantaire waved his hand dismissively. “In truth, I would have it no other way. I am a vessel, to be shaped by the will of the divine Apollo, and unworthy as ever to have even a hint of the same effect on you.”
“Grantaire.” Enjolras’s voice was sharp, and Grantaire recoiled, only staying in place when Enjolras reached out to grab his arm. “You do not know what you are saying. You have had too much wine, and I daresay we all have had too much of what they claimed would be ‘fun’. But do not say what you will regret.” Grantaire shook his head, but remained quiet, and, voice turning slightly desperate, Enjolras asked, “Truth or dare?”
Grantaire shook his head again. “Have we not had enough of this game?” he asked quietly.
Enjolras cracked a weak smile. “I do not believe this is a game we play any longer.” He took a deep breath before repeating, “Truth or dare?”
“After everything this evening, I would give you only what I have offered all along: truth.” Grantaire’s voice was tentative, and he looked almost nervously at Enjolras.
Dropping his hands from Grantaire’s arms to lace their fingers together, Enjolras asked him, “If you believe not in our revolution, in what do you believe?”
For a moment, Grantaire just looked at him. But then he squeezed Enjolras’s hands and told him, sincerity ringing in the simple syllable, “You.”
Though Enjolras’s expression seemed to flicker at that, as if he wished to argue or to discuss it further, he instead bowed his head slightly and told Grantaire quietly, “Thank you.”
Grantaire nodded in return before asking, “And you — truth or dare?”
“I, too, would offer only what truths I can.”
Now Grantaire looked apprehensive, and he licked his lips nervously before blurting, “Has learning the truth of my convictions — or lack thereof — changed how you feel about me, changed this between us?”
In lieu of an answer, Enjolras closed the space between them and kissed Grantaire. It was not as soft as the previous kiss that evening, on display for their friends, nor was it demanding or desperate. Instead, it was stark, plain, as simple a statement as the three words Enjolras uttered after it: “I love you.”
“Even now?” Grantaire asked, unable to stop himself, the doubt in his voice clear.
Enjolras cupped his cheek with one hand. “Even now. If you thought that my feelings for you were somehow dependent on you believing in our cause, I must direct you to Prouvaire, who can more accurately explain the differences between logic and emotion. But in truth, I would not desire that you forget your own beliefs for my sake. If anything, this proves only how much more we have to fight to get even those who do not believe to do so.”
Grantaire half-smiled. “In that case, I am glad to do what I can for the cause.” He glanced up at Enjolras and asked, a little hopefully, “May I dare you to forget this evening ever happened? I fear that I have been foolish, and would not have this stain on what otherwise has been a peaceful time for us.”
Enjolras shook his head. “Do not dare. This evening has been far too important, and we both have learned far too much about the other for me to desire to forget that now.” He smiled a little crookedly at Grantaire. “Besides, if it was peace I desired, I fear I would have most likely set my sights elsewhere.”
“I suppose I have not made your life peaceful, whether while living with you or otherwise,” Grantaire muttered, and Enjolras ran his thumb over Grantaire’s cheekbone.
“I have never been one for a peaceful life,” he reminded Grantaire. “My ambitions should be reminder of that enough. And you have made my life better than I could have imagined. I would not trade anything for a peaceful life without you in it.”
Grantaire leaned into his touch, but his voice was quiet when he asked, “And what of a life where I believed in your cause? What would you trade for that?”
Enjolras shook his head. “Nothing,” he said simply. “For I do not believe it to be an impossible goal. With luck, I may have it all — you, and your belief, and a life that was never meant to be peaceful. And perhaps in that I will find a sort of peace.”
“Perhaps,” Grantaire murmured, his expression contemplative. Then he glanced back towards the Musain. “Shall we go back? Explain our absence to our friends?”
Enjolras shrugged. “They will draw their own conclusions, and chalk it up to a lover’s quarrel. And I suppose they would not be wrong with that. But let us not confirm their conclusions. Leave them to their drinking games.” He held out his hand, which Grantaire took. “I would rather we away back home and to our own kind of peace.”
They walked away together in silence until Grantaire asked conversationally, “Which of them do you think will be dared to attend to your apartment to see what has happened to us?”
Shrugging again, Enjolras said, “I do not know. Courfeyrac, perhaps? As he is to blame for this whole mess.”
Grantaire nodded slowly, an evil grin beginning to spread across his face. “And what do you think he should find if he were to come to find us?”
Enjolras glanced over at Grantaire, beginning to smile as well. “If I am following your thoughts correctly, that is a particularly scandalous idea.”
Grantaire grinned at him. “Oh, but Enjolras — I dare you.”
“Well, a dare is a dare…” Enjolras said, pulling on Grantaire’s hand as they sped up, eager to get back to their place and to making love loudly enough that even Courfeyrac would be scandalized (and eager to get away from the memory of earlier that evening, that hung like a raincloud overhead and in the back of their minds, the potential for discontent).