a/n: Finally completed. Thanks to all those here and over on Abaissé and the kink meme - I wouldn't have had the confidence to complete this. All of your comments were appreciated and kept me going. I'm grateful to those here on FFnet who comment, particularly FrustratedStudent and AmZ who have been so consistent with their comments and who have made helpful suggestions (I'm nitpicking that last chapter myself, AmZ! I need to go back and do edits). The kink meme version is slightly longer, but in the end I didn't need to cut too much as too much overt eroticism for its own sake would have sat oddly with how the story went. Djaq in a Box, this is the end - I hope you enjoy it (although I have promised MmeJavert I would consider revisiting this AU...like Grantaire, I stumbled over a love story, and it has taken me a bit by surprise).

The passage du Doyenné was too narrow for their carriage, so the alighted at the end of it. There were a few lights along the street – some from the ruins of the Chapelle Doyenné where a few masquerade goers had made their way to the ramshackle stand selling drink beneath the bare ribs of the Romanesque arches, and some from the house next to it that Grantaire knew housed a group of students and writers - or at least that was how Enjolras had vaguely described them (he suspected at least one was a poet acquaintance of Prouvaire). Other lamps and candles cast their stray beams out from the buildings that flanked their own. Given the late hour, there were more than expected.

"Another family has moved in on the third floor," Enjolras said, gazing up at the slivers of light that appeared between the shutters. "Feuilly has been looking to find others that are suitable candidates. And the top floors of the buildings alongside will be finished within the next few weeks. There is a charcutier looking at setting up business at the corner, so Mme Hulot tells me."

"Can you do anything about the building materials the Emperor discarded like so many child's blocks?" He asked, knowing Enjolras couldn't see his smile in the dark.

"All the way between here and the Tuileries. Too much in Paris is still incomplete. But we are not so very much interested in great monuments when there are people to house..."

"I'm glad you're not working in the Treasury. Financing all these projects –"

"We need to attract investment," Enjolras said. "The State can fund some of them, but we must persuade the private investors as well. It is like the railway projects – we must build the infrastructure to bridge the divides between those who generate wealth and those who provide our workforce, and our urban and rural populations."

"Enjolras –" he moved his hand from around Enjolras' arm to place it on his shoulder when they reached their own door – "Give it time. You cannot propel France into the 19th Century and undo decades of work undone in a matter of months."

Enjolras, standing one step higher, looked down on him. The carriage light by the door backlit his head, accentuating that halo glow of his hair, but Grantaire could still make out a sad smile.

"I know. We are young men in a hurry...and as such must take care. Young men in a hurry may propel change, but, as Combeferre reminds me, they are also prone to make mistakes of haste."

"But the lights are going on again in at least one Paris street," Grantaire said gently.

"Yes..." Enjolras smiled. "They are." He held out his hand and pulled Grantaire inside the doors of their home.

There was still a strong smell of paint and damp plaster in their rooms, and the white walls seemed somewhat stark with the sparse furniture. The shabby, faded tableaux on the walls stood out even in their soot begrimed muted colours, and he caught Artemis's conspiring smile as they walked through the salon to the room that they had selected for their bed chamber, discarding coats and hats.

Mme Hulot had built a low burning fire, and as Enjolras built it up with more and raked the coals over before replacing the firedogs, Grantaire lit the bedside lamp. Rising, he met Enjolras in the middle of the room, beside the bed...the new bed that Enjolras had just purchased, plain in style but comfortably capacious for both of them. Enjolras' familiar armoire stood in the corner, along with a few new pieces of furniture, a chair, and a deep rug, the furnishings almost lost in all the space.

"Here we are," Grantaire murmured.

"Yes."

"Are you...afraid?" he asked gently. "Not afraid – nervous –"

"No." Enjolras was smiling on him with trust and warmth. "I want you."

They met in a kiss, slow, deep and tender, building from that tenderness into passion. With only a slight hesitation, he unbuttoned Enjolras' tailcoat and waistcoat. Enjolras, after a moment, began awkwardly mirroring his movements, divesting Grantaire of his own clothes.

He felt the shock of cool air on skin as his lover slid his shirt from his shoulder...and the greater surprise of Enjolras' warm lips and mouth on his his neck like a caress, trailing a path down to his collar bone. He slid his own hands up under Enjolras' fine cotton shirt, and through the heightened sensitivity of his finger tips he felt skin slide silkily over the defined muscles of his back. He ran his touch around to Enjolras' waist, resting his hands momentarily at the defined abdomen, then down to the fall of his trousers.

"Perhaps we should remove our footwear?" Enjolras said softly .

"Er – yes."

That accomplished, the rest of their clothing was soon discarded. They stood face to face, unclothed, so close that Grantaire could feel the warmth of Enjolras' skin. Enjolras cupped his face with one hand, looking at him with that compelling gaze, no less intense, but with the implacable ice having given way to heat. The other he draped around Grantaire's midsection, and pulled him tightly close, so they stood pressed together, nothing between them.

He was aware Enjolras' breathing – the deepening sound of arousal as his kisses became harder and fiercer, desire and lust rising. Pulling away slightly, he tugged his lover towards the bed – Enjolras squeezed his hand as they pulled back the turned down covers and fell into bed together, legs and arms tangled, Grantaire giving a low and only slightly nervous chuckle.

It was heart wrenchingly erotic, the sheer pleasure in who his lover was more than enough to compensate for Enjolras' inexperience and lack of skill until the boy's confidence in his own strong, athletic body eventually overcame the abrupt tentativeness of his movements.

Grantaire wanted to stay there forever, fixed with that expression, that transfiguration, their joining. So overwhelming was the combination of heightened emotion and heightened senses that he could hardly make out what Enjolras was saying – words and actions and touch and smell all converging, but finally he disentangled the sounds – and they were abrupt, gasped phrases of love and light and joy, a litany of hope and the future broken off as Enjolras, one hand clenched Grantaire's hair and the other clasping his hip so tightly it must bruise, leaned down to catch his mouth in kisses that were short and desperate because both were so breathless.

It was almost too much. Grantaire had not known he was so empty, to now feel so full, and it was almost too much to hold – this feeling must spill from his fingertips and run from him like water. But hold on to it he did until both had climaxed, and even then, as Enjolras collapsed next to him, recovering slowing but reaching out for Grantaire before his breathing had even begun to even out, Grantaire retained that sensation of being infused with light.

Enjolras was touching his face now, as if to assure himself that Grantaire was real, was beside him, was as tangible as any other reality. His eyes lost the intensity of their lovemaking, softened to warmth, his smile gentle as he lay his head on the pillow, never taking his gaze from Grantaire's.

"So –"

He shifted closer, now he had gained some equilibrium. Enjolras's touch was now lightly caressing, his fingers brushing over Grantaire's slight belly. Grantaire chuckled – once, he might have felt the need for a joke at this moment with a new lover, to break the sense of intimacy so both could roll over and go to sleep, or one might be able to leave the dishevelled bed without a sense of furtive shame.

"My love," he whispered instead. But it did amuse him to feel that touch. He felt no real shame in his body – not when Enjolras so demonstratively appreciated it, but the contrast had to appeal to his humour. "What you were saying – you used the word sublime didn't you? We must be the sublime incarnate in this moment – the grotesque and the beautiful joined."

Enjolras didn't frown or scold in rejection of the little Romantic conceit.

"Perhaps. There is in each of us something of both –" he placed on finger on Grantaire's mouth to silence his protests. "Prouvaire told me of something he once heard – 'there is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.'"

"The mysterium conjunctum,' Grantaire whispered. "The alchemical marriage."

Enjolras answered him with soft kisses.

They lay in their nuptial bed – all that was to be said had been said, so they twined limbs and bodies until they were comfortable, each accommodating the other. But Grantaire lingered awake after Enjolras closed his eyes, watching him sleep for the first time. The room was dark now, only firelight casting strange shadows. And in that trick of the light, he saw the colour of Enjolras' hair darken, and the illusion of lines cast on his face. He looked old...old, and still beautiful, with that fine, fierce nobility, but mellowed and with years of life and existence behind him.

Grantaire held him the tighter, rejoicing in his vision of the years to come, hugging to himself with joy the knowledge that he would see this come to pass, that he had somehow stumbled into a love story, and that he would see Enjolras grow old.