Inspired by [x]
enjolras x grantaire
The smile was not ended when the report resounded.
Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained leaning against the wall, as though the balls had nailed him there. Only, his head was bowed.
Grantaire fell at his feet, as though struck by a thunderbolt.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables CHAPTER XXIII Orestes fasting and Pylades drunk
“Chast on earth, but coupling in the infinite. They are souls that have senses. They sleep together in the stars.”
art collab with perplexingly
Grantaire and women
I was gonna answer this question over at lesmisquestions, but it got so long I thought I’d make it into its own post…
Um yes, so, the question of whether Grantaire’s attracted to women or not. Here’s the bit regarding women from his introduction, before we get to the bit about Enjolras (bolding mine, it’ll be important in a sec):
He was inordinately homely: the prettiest boot-stitcher of that day, Irma Boissy, enraged with his homeliness, pronounced sentence on him as follows: “Grantaire is impossible”; but Grantaire’s fatuity was not to be disconcerted. He stared tenderly and fixedly at all women, with the air of saying to them all: “If I only chose!” and of trying to make his comrades believe that he was in general demand. (x)
Then there’s this:
“Go and sleep somewhere else,” cried Enjolras.
But Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed on him, replied:—
“Let me sleep here,—until I die.” (x)
So however he looks at women, he looks at Enjolras in the same way.
When he actually interacts with women, he’s mostly just grabbing them in order to drunkenly rant at them about whatever’s on his mind. Then when he’s at the point of quite epic drunkenness he grabs Matelote the waitress, calls her ugly (you’re one to talk, R), asks her for ‘an embrace’ and talks about her ‘cheeks which invite the kiss of a sister, and lips which claim the kiss of a lover’ in a general sort of way before people start yelling at him for being an arsehole. (No note of what Matelote made of any of that: I don’t imagine she was pleased…)
Then there’s his ramble about the woman he knew who apparently sold out by marrying a banker:
And then, I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be called Floreal, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker all spotted with small-pox, deigned to take a fancy to her[…] Now here she is a bankeress. This transformation took place last night. I met the victim this morning in high spirits. The hideous point about it is, that the jade is as pretty to-day as she was yesterday. (x)
So he notices that girl’s beauty, whoever she is. (Maybe she’s the aforementioned Irma Boissy.) But he’s mad at her for marrying a banker rather than for rejecting him, so he doesn’t appear to have had any romantic interest in her.
And then of course (going back round full circle…) there’s this bit from Grantaire’s introduction:
There are men who seem to be born to be the reverse, the obverse, the wrong side. They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, Pechmeja. They only exist on condition that they are backed up with another man; their name is a sequel, and is only written preceded by the conjunction and; and their existence is not their own; it is the other side of an existence which is not theirs. Grantaire was one of these men. He was the obverse of Enjolras.
Where Grantaire’s compared to a lot of guys who were in relationships with other men, and labeled as Enjolras’s ‘obverse’. Which all seems like Hugo saying that whoever else Grantaire is interested in, he’s interested in Enjolras first and foremost. Whether that extends to other men, though…I dunno.
In conclusion, R’s either a) pretending to be interested in women when he isn’t, b) bisexual or, c) Enjolrasexual. (If that isn’t someone’s URL yet it needs to be.) But I don’t know which. I suspect all are valid really…anyone got anything else?
OTPS I Love To Pieces:
Enjolras/Grantaire
Who: The other unrequited love story of Les Miserables. (The first one being Marius and Eponine, obviously.)
When: I saw the Les Mis movie the day it opened in England (I had fond memories of it from high school), and then I went on the internet and then I read the Actual Book and suddenly a whole new ship had eaten my life. It took a matter of days. DAYS!
Les Mis is really long, summarize this bit for me?: Well, there’s this group called Les Amis d’ABC. They’re all pretty awesome, and Enjolras is their leader, and Grantaire is basically the guy who sits in the corner and gets drunk all the time and is hopelessly in love with Enjolras. (The book devotes a whole paragraph to that, in fact.) Enjolras is a blond, chaste avenging-angel type, and Grantaire is a cynical alcoholic, so it’s not like they really fit together, and Grantaire pretty much screws up any chance he gets to impress him anyway. Then, when the revolution starts and the barricades go up, he gets drunk and passes out in an upstairs room, missing the battle and the deaths of all his friends. Enjolras on the other hand fights bravely and accepts his end when it comes, cornered in the same room.
It’s just when the National Guard are about to shoot him (although luckily for everyone they don’t really want to and are taking their sweet time about it) that Grantaire wakes up, sees the person he loves about to die, calls out and goes to stand with him in front of the guns. He even asks Enjolras if he minds sharing his last moments with him, and Enjolras responds by smiling and grasping his hand. And that’s how they bow out of the story. I bet it’s made a fair few cry.
For love of god someone tell me why everyone tags this as “E/R”: It’s from the book, basically! ‘Grantaire’ sounds like ‘grand R’ or ‘capital R’ in French, so he signs himself ‘R’. (I had to ask that question too. I think everyone does.)
Why: E/R basically has everything I look for in a ship: a redemptive arc and a grand gesture and a tragedy that’s probably not really a tragedy depending on how you look at it. True, they both die, but Grantaire gets to die hand-in-hand with the person he loves and the last thing he sees is his smile; Enjolras gets to die knowing he inspired someone to greater things, and that he meant more than life to the man he always thought believed in nothing.
It’s a relationship that probably couldn’t have succeeded in any way other than how it did, AUs aside. But, loving Enjolras raises Grantaire up to the level he barely believed was even there- when he awakes to see Enjolras about to be shot, and calls out to the firing squad when he could have escaped, the word ‘transfigured’ is used to describe him. Good word. To love another person is to see the face of God, as they say…
