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Understanding (Enjolras): May, 1832
There must be something to this, Daniel said earlier this evening. More than what I think I know -- and I do love you, Julien, if not in the way other people do. Nothing else he might have said could have moved me so deeply. It was so much of what I felt: that I had missed something, failed to understand something, that came naturally to Audric. And to Aimery. Like a gap in logic, like some deceptively simple exercise in mathematics, this intimacy eludes me. It is comforting to know that Daniel shares my bewilderment. Do I love him? I cannot tell, even now when I lie beside him, skin against skin in the warm night. What I feel for him pales beside my love for Audric; but it burns brighter and far warmer than any feeling I have for my family, for all I call him my brother. Certainly it is more than friendship, or we would not be here together. Part of it, perhaps, is sympathy. I have seen the way he looks at Aimery, as if the sight were breath and blood to him, as if there were nothing else so wondrous in the world. I have suspected, and now I know, that his heart aches on nights like this as much as mine does. He knows what it is to love so much, and be so unable to let go. I did not plan this. I did not mean -- be plain, Julien -- to seduce him. I was aching for Audric all evening, though it would never do to show it; and I kept my composure all too well, for he left lightheartedly with Aimery. Still, when I asked Daniel home with me, I thought only to offer him a place to sleep, a sympathetic ear, a respite from loneliness and nagging, furtive jealousy. But sitting so close beside him, in the security of my home, with his arm about my shoulders -- in that moment, I could not keep from kissing him. His kisses were expert, but inexpressibly shy; his touch was sure but careful, as though he feared to offend. Only at the last did he clutch at me suddenly, as passion overcame caution, and the suddenness of it sent me over the brink, and he held me tenderly, still gasping for breath, while I shuddered against him, and then we were still. I love you, he said afterward. He said it laughing, but sincerely, and I did not know how to answer. Is this love? Affection, and trust, and sudden, fleeting, inexplicable desire? He is handsome, though I never particularly noticed it; all the more so now, with the paint-streaks in his hair bleached by moonlight, and the tension in his face eased by sleep. It is an understated beauty, as everything about him is modest, unassuming. I think now that none of us have appreciated this brother of ours as he deserves. Kissing his forehead as he sleeps, I promise both of us that this, too, will change.
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