A/N: Full disclosure: I'm still in the process of reading Hunchback of Notre-Dame, only about halfway done. And there will probably be more oneshots from me in the future. I adore Gringoire, and I wish there was more love for the unfortunate poet out there.

Early Days Yet

The largest obstacle to the pleasant duality of home life was the male half of the duet: Gringoire. He was always wanting to speak. He told stories with his back straight, his chin up, his arms out, his fingers spelling. He was always telling stories.

"Pierre Gringoire, a man possessed with a poet's passionate, wordy soul," he said when she called his attention to it.

"Pierre Gringoire, a man incapable of speaking without making a speech," she retorted. He gave a faint shrug.

"Both are true," he said. "Though not particularly beautiful, which perhaps gives the truth of that lie. Not beautiful like you, for instance. Truth is beauty, and beauty is Esmeralda, and Esmeralda is, I hope, true."

The room was too small for all of them: she, Esmeralda; he, Gringoire; and they, Gringoire's words. Her lip moved unbidden, and she slipped into that familiar pout that had so bestruck him when first he'd seen her. He stopped mid-word, in fact; if she had been paying attention, she would have seen that it was an effective weapon in the war between them. He, warring for a marriage of convenience to become a marriage of convention. She, wanting only for some occasional silence.

She said, "I hate it when you tell me I'm beautiful. You do it so often."

"Mon dieu, tell me I'm not repeating myself!" The poet's eyes widened comically; he dragged his fingers through his pale hair, leaving it only more tousled in the wake. "If there's one thing the audience will not stand for, it is to be bored by too much repetition. A little is permissible; just enough to stress the rightness, the justice of the thought. Too much, and there'll be a mob amassing."

"I suppose you ought to know," she said, laconically, and slouched into her chair, folding her arms and legs simultaneously. "I've certainly never amassed a mob."

"Not of that sort, at any rate," he murmured, and she looked up at him suddenly to catch his eyes on her ankles, speculatively. She made as if to stand and he sat down, quickly, and put his arms before him on the table. "How old are you, Esmeralda?"

She worked a fingernail into the rough grain of the wood, and owned her age, as near as she could tell. The man's eyebrows raised with something near violence.

"Sixteen, then! Ah, you're just a child."

It was an insult, and it showed in the quick dart of her eyes upwards, the turn of her mouth downwards. "You don't look at me as though I were just a child."

"Yes, well." He gave a pleased, modest smile. "I'm very good at keeping what I know away from how I act. There is in fact a complete divorce between the knowledge I have and the choices I make; it becomes necessary, sometimes."

"You talk nonsense."

"Quite fluently," he admitted, with a cough. "But you'll be glad of it someday. Did you know your husband is destined for fame and fortune?"

"Fame as the first thief ever to die a pauper, before he could spend his ill-gotten gains?" she taunted him, but Gringoire would not be bristled.

"But of course, I've mentioned— the play." The play. It meant something to him, this word. It meant less than nothing to Esmeralda, and she nearly wished he would go back to enumerating her charms, rather than harping on his failings. "It came off very well— it would have been such a success, were it not for— well. We'll pass by that. There was definite interest, however. I'll more than likely be asked back to write another, and you know, it's the second play that truly makes a man's mark."

"Why did you not write a passion play?" she jibed him faintly. "From the sound of it, it would have been better received. And you certainly seem to know the subject."

Another slight cough, and he was looking at her wrists, now. Not lecherously; no more so than usual, anyway, if that. But looking as though the lines pleased him, with a clean sort of pleasure. As though the sight of her was restful, calming. He looked as though he wanted to take her wrists in his hands, wrap his fingers round the bones. She thought she might let him, if that was all. The poet's fingers twitched, crawled, and stilled on the table, before him, between them.

"Passingly," he said. "Less and less so as every year goes by— which is a rueful thing, isn't it? Considering this is my first week of marriage, and I've had less to comfort and companion me than ten years before it put together."

"Surely not!" said Esmeralda, with a slight laugh.

"Well, no," admitted Gringoire. "I misspoke. But— you understand me. It's no comfortable thing to sleep on that trunk over there in the corner, with the carvings digging into my back."

"It would have been no comfortable thing to be hung, either. There'd be rope, instead, digging into your neck."

"Well, there is that," said the poet, and his gaze drifted again, to the rougher skin at her elbow. He seemed to be peering at it quite hard, as though by sheer force of will he could set it on fire. She folded her arms more tightly, put her palm over her elbow.

"Why won't you look me in the eyes?"

"I don't want to scare you," he murmured, almost dreamily.

She scoffed. "You won't scare me. Nothing you could do would frighten me."

He did not take issue with this; it was God's own truth. Instead, he dragged his eyes up to hers, and she saw that the dreaminess in his tone had taken residence in them, as well. His eyes were a darkish blue, the whites strangely clean for a man who claimed to have difficulty sleeping; they were luminous, and the dreamy quality was one she was quite familiar with. She saw it often on men, in the street. She saw it most often on Gringoire, shortly before she retreated to her bedroom and closed the door in his face.

"I'm not a bad husband, you know," he said softly. "I don't beat you. I only laugh at you a little. I accompany you in your dances, and do what little I can to entertain. I make you smile. I saved you."

"You tried."

"I tried to save you. Still. How many wives do you think could say the same? Esmeralda. Esmeralda." He rubbed a hand over one eye, the other still peering at her in frustration. "I'm kind to your goat."

That was a consideration, she had to admit.

"You said you would be content to be as brother and sister," she reminded him. "After all, I did save you; and it's I who should be granted the decision for how we live afterwards."

"Yes— yes, I know, but truly. I'm married to you without being married to you. How can I be your brother when I'm your husband? How can I be your husband when I'm your brother? How can I get any sleep when I'm sleeping on the lid of a trunk? You needn't—" He stopped, and swallowed, and started again. "You needn't not love your Phoebus, if that's what you're worried for. It's complicated, but— but it can work, you see."

"I don't see." All she saw was the frustration in his eyes, the fondness, and a bit of despair. "What is the matter with men, anyhow?"

"Oh, Esmeralda. As though desire is the sole province of men alone! Your Phoebus, then— what would you have him do, were he here in my place?"

Her mouth quivered, and the words she chose were not the words she meant to say. "I would have him hold me in his arms, I suppose."

Gringoire snorted. "I daresay he would have him hold you in his arms, as well."

She brightened. "Do you really think so?"

A scowl darkened his face. "Keeping in mind it's my wife you are. I'd hold you in my arms, if you like— but you don't, do you? I'd hold you in my arms, and I'd be a good sight more gallant than he, being as I'm married to you, and he is not. Would you have him be pure and virgin?"

"Now, really," she muttered, standing away from the table and turning her face from him.

"Then his arms have nothing to do with it," retorted the poet flippantly. He followed, half without realizing it, and stood before her. "Now, I'm an honest man. I'll tell you you are beautiful because I think you are beautiful."

"Oh, that's nothing new. Everyone thinks I'm beautiful."

"Would you rather have me dishonest and say I think you are ugly?"

"I would rather not have you at all."

"Well, it's early days yet," he said philosophically. "You may change your mind."

"Change my mind!" she cried, as stung as though he had insulted her dearly.

"It happens, you know! There may come a time when the world crushes you underfoot, when you long for the simple pleasure and comfort of a man's embrace; and then— gallantly, as aforementioned, and rightly so— there I'll be, two-armed and willing. One arm to the left of you, one arm to the right—" He was demonstrating as he spoke, and she fairly vibrated with anger in the circle of his grasp. "Pull you close, like so. Face in your hair, like so. Lips against your ear— like so."

"Simple pleasure, simple comfort," she said, still angry— Gringoire was not attending, as his eyes had drifted half shut. "You hold me close so as to laugh at me where I can't see."

All she received in return from the poet was a slight, wordless murmur. This, the impassioned wordy soul of a bard. This, the man who could not speak without making a speech. It seemed warm there in his arms, and as he had made no other untoward advances, she allowed him to remain for the moment. It was warm there, and quiet. The slow thud of his heart was a distant drumbeat, and made something in her long to dance.

His breath stirred her hair.

"If you want me, you want me," he said. "If it happens, it happens."

She let him breathe, and be, a moment longer.

"I don't want you," she said.

She did not push him away. They stood for a moment, and were content: the poet, arms full of wife. The wife, ears full of blessed silence.