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Grantaire is leaving Paris in the morning, and he has kissed Enjolras exactly three times. These are both unmovable facts. No matter what happens in the night that awaits him, the moon haunting the dark sky like his fate is haunting what could have been, nothing can change them.
Grantaire is also standing next to Enjolras, both leaning on the cold metal bars of his worn-down balcony, both sipping on the last bottle of wine left from his friends’ goodbye party. Despite the apparent casualty of their stances, the conversation between them is momentous, it has been since a quiet look decided Enjolras would stay the night after all their friends left.
“Do you think you could ever be with someone, romantically?”
“I think you’re probably the closest I’ll ever get.”
The answer isn’t surprising, neither is the honesty. Enjolras spoke the truth, always, even when it was a tragic one, and what was there more tragic than that? Two kids, because that’s how he feels, living the night they will remember for the rest of their lives; one of them so in love with the other and so hateful of himself that he was never able to become a man that could have been loved back; the other so in love with the people and so abnegating of his own wants that he would never be able to allow himself love.
He wishes he had a cutting remark now, a critique of theory or praxis to cut the flow of sadness that was sure to soon manifest in his eyes. Nothing comes to mind, though. Maybe it’s for the best, there is little he could say that would express more than the devotion in his eyes has in the last four years.
The wooden boards creak underneath their feet when Enjolras turns away from the inside patio. His face is washed in light, and he feels a growing sense of importance about this moment. He too realises this is a night he will remember for the rest of his life. The thoughts swarming his mind, interrupted as they occasionally are with images of Grantaire, point towards a word. It isn’t a familiar one, his brain struggles to attach a meaning to it, but if his last words are true, if Grantaire really is the closest he’ll ever get to it, why not tell him when he still can?
“If we had gotten it right, we could have been lovers.”
Grantaire laughs, and the cold of the night accentuates its softness with a hue of mist. The water that had been threatening to break the barrier into the outside air dissipates.
“That’s the word you would use for it? It’s not the most common.”
Enjolras shrugs his shoulders. Grantaire’s brain would usually devise a witty remark, but in a quietness that seems secluded only to the hours of today’s night, he simply thinks about it. Maybe it is an appropriate definition to what they could have been. Boyfriend seems too juvenile, and his devotion to Enjolras feels as ancient as the watchful moon; partner denotes an equality, one that never existed in their feelings for each other; husband is too foolish to even consider. “Maybe, if I got my shit together, and we had more time, and you were more forgiving of my cynicism.”
“I don’t know that I ever could be.”
“I don’t know that I could ever stop being one.”
Enjolras is used to pain. Pain at the state of the world, pain at his inability to change things, pain at others suffering - but he rarely feels pain for himself. It is an emotion that visits him rarely, but whenever it does, it is usually tangled with Grantaire’s dark curls. He can’t help but welcome it now, try to saviour every touch it leaves on his body, and hope it is the last time he feels it. Both for its unpleasantness, and because it would feel like betrayal.
“What is it like? Being with someone.”
Grantaire turns in the same way Enjolras did, both looking into his apartment now, crowded as it was with moving boxes but empty of anything else except a lamp and the food he is to take to the airport tomorrow morning.
“It depends, sometimes it’s secure and familiar, others it’s painful and cruel. I suppose the one thing that stays the same is the comfort of having a person. Someone you can call with an idea or something to do, and they will say yes.” It feels wrong as he says it, but he’s never had to dissect what being with someone is like. He usually just agreed with another person that they were, until they agreed that they weren’t. More often than not, that consensus occurred shortly after they realised the soul-consuming veneration he held for the man deep in thought in front of him.
Enjolras is thinking of Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, and how any of those things would be an appropriate description of their relationship. “That doesn’t differ too much from friendship.”
“I guess it’s understood that you put them over everything else, they are your favorite person to hang out with. You think they make every situation better.”
A silence engulfed them, the only sounds coming from their mouths on the cold wine glasses, drinking with no purpose. Both of them rumble on that last part, they make every situation better, and only one agrees with it.
“Maybe I’m describing a relationship, I can’t say I’ve ever called someone my lover before.” The look on Enjolras’ eyes is doting, and when blue meets brown, Grantaire wonders if he realises. A moment passes, two, three.
And then with resolute tranquility, Enjolras speaks. “We can make our own definition.”
A light flickers in one of the windows to their right, the shaking hue resembling Enjolras’ hands, though his voice is sure. Grantaire’s voice is soft. “Why?” It’s a weird question to ask Enjolras. He usually just follows him, not without complaining along the way, but always following. He supposes things change when you leave, maybe this is the first one to. He wonders if the memory of his voice will dance to no rhythm in a few years, his mind struggling to anchor the melancholy to a steady drum. He wonders if the people he will meet in his apprenticeship in London will someday mock him at the mention of Enjolras just as his friends now do.
The small space in the balcony allows for only a few steps, but Enjolras is taking full advantage of it, pacing back and forth and running his hand through his hair. When he speaks, it’s rushed. “You won’t stop distracting my mind unless I can make something out of us. We will never be anything, I know that. Bu-” He stops and they lock eyes again. Enjolras’ voice breaks, “But I can’t let you go without being some thing first.”
So much has gone unspoken between them in the four years that Grantaire’s heart has been clawing at the sides of Enjolras’ hands. Even now, two years after Enjolras started occasionally caving to the feeling at the bottom of his stomach, only in the comfort of his own bed late at night, when he saw Grantaire boxing, and dancing, and painting; and one year after their hurried first kiss, which neither had ever dared to speak of since; even after all that, Enjolras has never confessed so much.
Grantaire looks at him, really looks at him. The lines around his eyes, the frown between his brows, the long eyelashes struggling to cover purple-colored bags. He looks more human than he ever remembers - lying bare for him, naming him as his almost , which is truly more than he ever deserved, professing to his stolen glances.
He opens the door and walks into his living room, looking back at Enjolras after throwing his coat over a recently taped-closed box. “Come inside.”
Enjolras frowns at him, and Grantaire laughs, the sound breaking through the sanctity of the moment. When Enjolras steps into the room, it is with the familiar warmth in his stomach, the one only Grantaire has ever elicited.
“Help me make space.” They both start pushing boxes into the corners of the small room, creating an even smaller square at its center. As they stand in front of each other Grantaire reaches for Enjolras’ hand and tries to ignore the lightning that crosses through him, as if his body is doing penitence for his sacrilege, ignoring the voice that tells him everyone feels this when they touch the person they love.
The narrowed ends of Enjolras’ eyes cue him to explain. “They say if you’re lovers, you have to try dancing.” He feels insecure for a second, until a dimple hints at the right side of Enjolras’ face. “At least that's what I've seen Joly and Bossuet do in the kitchen light.” They both laugh at the silliness of the lie.
“I think Courfeyrac once told me something of the sort, yes.”
Lightly but sure, they take each other’s hands, placing their empty one upon the other’s waist. Grantaire sucks in a breath at the sight, Enjolras tries to mask the grief that’s finding a comfortable place to sleep in between his ribs.
He speaks. “You’re the expert.”
“First we have to set a goal for this, you have to tell me what will help you let go. Otherwise, I will dance with you until I die, or you leave.” It was spoken in jest, but there was truth in it.
“After I learn not to step on your toe. Then I can let you go.”
Grantaire smiles and starts humming an old tune, the first waltz he ever learnt. He closes his eyes for a second, he doesn’t need time to remember the steps, but he tries to reimagine the room they’re standing in. For a moment, they’re standing in a grand room, surrounded by statues and flower arrangements. A string quintet caresses nylon and steel, and the notes start flowing. Grantaire opens his eyes to an Enjolras that would never look away, and steps forward.
Time slows to the beat of Grantaire’s gentle 1, 2, 3s. A small smile threatens at Enjolras’ mouth, promising to be the first full one since he arrived in the afternoon, despite his friends’ attempts. It doesn't quite break, but he knows Grantaire, having made an academic study out of observing him intently for years, can still feel it.
He steps on his toe once, and then twice. And thrice. The repeated pattern subsides slowly and only after gentle coaching. Grantaire almost purrs the instructions in his ear, closing in until his mouth feels feathery upon his neck. He steps on his toe a fourth time. They glide across the few square meters they managed to clear, careful not to kick into any of the boxes that so carefully pack the life of the only person whose hands he’s ever wanted around his waist. He wonders if he’ll appear as a motif in the paintings he’ll create in London; a splash of red, a slice of yellow, a wash of blue. He steps on his toe a fifth time.
Grantaire has a distinct smell, of detergent, and alcohol, and sweet cologne. It envelops him now, rescuing the memories of their secret looks, sometimes induced by a hunger for him in his lower abdomen, others by disappointment in his actions. He remembers how he’d tried to trust him, sending him to the Barriere du Maine that day, thinking he could somehow rescue him through inclusion, and how Grantaire had broken that promise. Will someone else be able to change him in London, in the way he never could? When he steps on his toe the sixth time, it’s on purpose.
Grantaire sees right through him. “You can’t do it intentionally.”
Enjolras drops his hands to his sides.
“Why not?”
The air is suddenly tense around them, Enjolras’ words coming out icier than he intended.
“Because I’m not wearing shoes, and that last one was a stomp.” Grantaire, for once, is the one to bring them back down to Earth. He wants nothing more than to keep Enjolras in his presence until the sun is back in the sky and the moving truck is at his door.
“Fine. Let’s move on then. What else is there in the lover list?”
“You’re the one that wanted our own definition. What do you want it to include?”
There are so many things Grantaire is hoping for in the answer; most of all, he’s hoping there is one. As he watches Enjolras look down and bite his cheeks, he realises there won’t be. At least not for now.
So he answers for him. “Let’s do nothing.”
The meaning of the words only hits him after Enjolras widens his eyes at him. “Oh?”
He rushes to explain, “No, wait. Not like that. I just mean-” He takes a second to breathe, and reaches out for Enjolras’ hand, who lets him take it. “They say nothing is more fun than doing nothing together, right? Let’s give it a try.” It was a tall ask of someone like Enjolras, who probably hasn’t not done something since he was in the womb - even then, he was probably preaching equality to mitochondrias. The prospect of it though, lying tangled in each other's limbs, able to reach out at any point and wrap his fingers in silky hair, reaching under a t-shirt as they banter and squabble. It makes his brain go foggy, more than the alcohol long soaked and forgotten ever did tonight. “Waste an hour with me.”
There isn’t hesitancy in Enjolras’ eyes. So many ask him to relax, very few ask him to relax with them. Even fewer are people Enjolras would ever consider relaxing with, apart from his friends. It occurs to him that maybe, if they had a couple years, he would be able to think of Grantaire as making every situation better. It also occurs to him that it’s hardly fair to ask someone to wait that long for you, even if he knows he would. “Fine. But only if we lie down in your bed. It’s much more comfortable than this room.” It was also starting to seem a bit eerie, the dark-shadowed boxes ghosts of times past.
“You’re going to love it. I’m basically a pro at lying down doing nothing.”
A huff comes from Enjolras’ stomach, both at the comment and at Grantaire’s theatrics while lying down on the bare mattress. It’s hard to see inside the room, the only light coming from outside, the reflections drawing overlapping circles behind his eyelids when he blinks. Still, when Grantaire’s long shadow upon the bed urges him to lie down, he does so. The dark eclipses Grantaire’s brown eyes, the expressions on his face hard to make out. The mattress gives under their weight when they lay down, next to each other but not quite touching. Enjolras can almost feel the floor under him, and remembers a joke Bahorel made about the mattress being older than all of them.
He remembers something else, too. One of the many things that have gone unspoken between them. The night is too short and their peace too brittle to discuss them all, but this one he has a chance to.
“Remember the last time I was here?” Grantaire doesn’t turn to him, or startle at his words; he barely reacts. He keeps his eyes closed, as they were, his hands holding his head up to the ceiling, as if he was expecting the question, knowing the moment was soon to come.
He hums a yes.
Enjolras is unsure how to breach the subject, Grantaire knows. He also knows that he will not throw the lifebuoy now, not about this. If he is to revisit a painful memory, one that he is certain he remembers with much more precision and detail than him, he will not be the one to raise the topic. He is content to lay down and watch amusedly from the corner of his eye as Enjolras’ fingers tap staccato against his ribcage, struggling with the nothing part of their doing plan.
The unsteady beat against Enjolras’ stomach mirrors that of the recollection stumbling in his mind. It teeters, it’s blurry, it’s a collage of pictures torn down the middle.
He remembers only the after and the during of their first kiss. The before is just the taste of vodka burning his throat, and the sudden thirst for something to wash it down with, knowing only one person could satiate him. Being back in the room where it happened helps his brain make sense of some of the images - the hint of a resolute walk, following the dark curls that now lie next to him, an unhesitating grasp of a collar, a wavering murmur of his name in the shape of a question. Then the moment neither expected at the beginning of that night, the clash of lips on lips, the three seconds where Grantaire’s world stopped. Enjolras remembers grinning into the kiss, the burst of fireworks in his chest dropping an ember beside his heart that still burns to this day.
But then an unexplored corner of Grantaire’s mind screamed about fairness, and he pulled away with tense shoulders and vitriol in his eyes. Fuck you. So many words Grantaire could have chosen, so many ways to explain the pain that was hammering his bones - and Enjolras was expecting them, used as he was to his verbosity - but all his agony was condensed into seven letters. He didn’t follow after him, it didn’t even occur to him. He sat down on the bed, and when the mattress gave under his weight thighs almost touched the wooden rail. It took Courfeyrac driving him home to realise that a one night stand was not okay to ask for from Grantaire, and it took a few long conversations with Combeferre, dispersed amongst the months that followed, to realise that was not what he had been asking for that night.
How could he tell Grantaire that? Was it even relevant now? He’s always so sure of his words, and yet they fail to come to him tonight.
“I didn’t realise what I was doing. I know what you thought I was doing, and I thought I was doing that too. I wasn’t, though.” The bandwidth of feelings accessible to him has expanded greatly thanks to Grantaire, leading to annoyance and fluster. He is frustrated by his inability to explain himself. “I wanted you, and it wouldn’t have been as important to me as to you, but it wouldn’t have been meaningless. I need you to know that.”
It wasn’t something that hadn’t occurred to Grantaire, but he feels relief at hearing it nonetheless. He opens his eyes and turns his head to Enjolras, who is already looking at him, his face illuminated in disjointed patterns by passing cars.
“Thank you Enjolras.”
They both surmount the barrier that separated them, the centimetres feeling like a brutal stone monument from times past, and hold each other’s hands. With both of their eyes closed their breaths fall into the same rhythm, and the figures that form behind their eyelids at the scattered flicks of light have the same shapes.
“What’s your favorite book?” Enjolras asks after a while.
“That’s a bit personal don’t you think?”
Before using his free hand to slap Grantaire’s shoulder Enjolras produces a tsk sound from his mouth, one that can only appear when a smile is half-formed. Grantaire takes this as a win, sitting up and grinning.
“Okay if our doing nothing hour is over, I’m bringing some light into the room.”
Enjolras only has time to sit upright against the wall and try to make out the writing in the few boxes distributed with no apparent structure throughout the bedroom before Grantaire comes back, the lamp and a rectangular object in hand.
Grantaire mutters before sitting down, “Why do you even want to know that?”
The truth is, he is struggling to come up with things lovers would do, having never thought of or experienced it. He does know what he enjoys doing, and within the comfort of a worn mattress and Grantaire’s warm body, he feels safe in voicing it.
“Sharing favorite books is something lovers would do, don’t you think?” Picking apart Grantaire’s brain is a torturous endeavor. It’s like trying to respond to a question, only to find out later that it doesn’t have an answer - an open question. One everyone can prod at, but never close.
And yet he will never stop trying.
Grantaire plugs the lamp in and the room is suddenly illuminated. It takes his eyes a second to adjust, and he finds an anchor in the red of Enjolras’ t-shirt. Tight around the arms, hugging his waist. His eyes are dilated still, trying to balance the dark version of the room with the one that now surrounds them. The sight reminds him of the Introduction to Logic class the Amis met at, their first year of university, and of their analytical arguments trying to demonstrate God’s non-existence.
‘There is evil in this world, and it causes the suffering of innocent people.
If God is unable to redress this, he is impotent.
If God is not good and merely omnipotent, and does not redress these things, he is evil.
If God is neither good nor omnipotent, he cannot be called God.
Therefore the real existence of a good and omnipotent God is an impossible fallacy.’
It feels silly to think that had been his argument back then, when the true fallacy is sitting on his bed, looking up at him.
There is an Angel roaming Paris, martyring himself over the suffering of others. If he exists amongst mortals due to God's inability to allow him back into Heaven, he is impotent. If God let the Angel fall purposefully, knowing the great pain it would impose on him to see the failures of humanity, he is evil. If God is neither good nor impotent, he cannot be called God.
He passes Enjolras the book in his hands.
“This is my favorite book, it’s called Greek lessons. It’s about a mute woman and her blind Ancient Greek teacher.” It sounds foolish to describe it only like that, when the book had meant so much to him when he read it. He wishes he could hear Enjolras’ opinions on it, dissect his mind until all his thoughts had his old shoes footprinted on them. “What about you?”
“You’re going to call me predictable, but it’s Brave New World.” It’s definitely predictable, but even if there is humor to be found in it, no laugh escapes him. He urges Enjolras to explain, resting his hand on his thigh as he sits down next to him. “We had to read it in school a long time ago. I had a strong sense of justice even as a kid, and it made me very lonely at times. I remember reading it in one night and feeling a sense of belonging, knowing someone out there had the same ideas I did. It made me feel like I could find a community some day.”
He presses his palm to his thigh, hoping Enjolras finds the gesture reassuring. It is rare for him to open up, it’s even rarer for it to be when they’re not consumed by anger - he’s trying to respond with kindness, and Enjolras seems to welcome it.
“Why is Greek Lessons your favorite?”
“The writing is beautiful, she manages to unite two character voices that are completely incompatible. It seems impossible when you start it, but it makes so much sense as it draws to an end.” Maybe his reasons are a little more aesthetically-driven, but it doesn’t make them less right.
Enjolras opens the book and reads the first line, a comment on Borges’ epitaph. ‘He took the sword and laid the naked metal between them.’ Funny, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing since they walked out of the balcony. The idea is too significant to explore in the stillness of the night, it makes him hazy to think of it.
So he changes the subject.
“You know what else lovers do?” Enjolras looks at him with expectant wide eyes, the book still open on his lap. “Bicker.” He grins. “Though I guess we’ve done plenty of that already.”
For the third time that night, a smile threatens to break marble. “I’m sure we could find something. I have restrained myself a lot throughout the years for the sake of our friends.”
Grantaire’s back leaves the wall when he chuckles. “Okay, hit me. I’m ready.”
Unimpressed, Enjolras raises an eyebrow at him. It lasts only a second though, as he seems to think it over, trapping an answer that has probably been dodging to be voiced since its first dawn. “Do you remember our second kiss?”
The question is so unexpected it almost freezes him in place. Not because he doesn’t remember it, an army of men could wage war against his memory of that kiss, erase every brain cell that holds an echo of it, and it would still remain carved to the sides of his skull. It’s the context that takes him off guard.
“Of course I do.”
A flicker dances in Enjolras’ eyes.
“Before we kissed, during the Amis meeting. We fought over the importance of art.” They had, he’d almost forgotten that. It was a regular fight, they didn’t get rowdy or cruel, just stole glances throughout the rest of the night. Enjolras argued art expresses how humans interpret reality, and in the biases, inequalities, and dreams within that interpretation there is an entire world to learn about how society can be better. Grantaire argued, “You said your art wasn’t important.”, and therefore not all art is.
Enjolras lowers his voice when he speaks next, his fingers caressing his own and their eyes locking. “But R, I think your art is so important. It doesn’t surprise me you were chosen for the apprenticeship. What you do with your talent, it matters so much.”
A knot forms in Grantaire’s throat. He wants to say something, he’s supposed to be bickering with him, but nothing comes out. His calloused hands, the ones that clutch bottles even in the midday, turn over money in remote alleys, punch through cheeks until they feel teeth against them. Those same hands can create something Enjolras deems of significance. What a beautiful thing to have the ability to do.
“I don’t think I want to argue with that. Do you want to talk about our second kiss instead?”
It seems so inconsequential a comment, just a testament to the meaning Enjolras’ words have for him, and yet it is the cause of what is to him the most remarkable event of the night. After an entire day of stone, even through an entire afternoon of their friends retelling stories of their time together, a smile breaks across Enjolras’ face. It starts slow, as if that way he could still control it, but soon he’s beaming at Grantaire and his blue eyes are a lighthouse to find refuge in.
“Sure. What was your favorite part about it?”
They both grin, a blush ascending to their cheeks, giggling like two schoolgirls with a crush. In a way they aren’t too far off, indulging as they are in the secrecy of a kiss that their friends were still not privy to.
It occurred no more than a month ago, after a meeting, when Grantaire had just finished the final interview for the apprenticeship and his world hadn’t yet turned on its axis. They argued over the Musain table until Joly kicked him in the shin under the table and Combeferre tapped Enjolras’ shoulder. They let Courfeyrac discuss the karaoke night they were all being forced to attend that Saturday, they both listened attentively despite the annoyance warming both their bodies - and then Bossuet dropped a bit of beer on himself while drinking.
It was an insignificant amount, really. The liquid barely stained his t-shirt. But Grantaire was the only one to notice it, and the stupidity of the moment clashed with his irritation and he couldn’t help but chortle, almost dropping his beer himself. When he looked around to see if anyone had seen it, some alcohol still dripping from his mouth, he found Enjolras already looking at him. There was still anger to be found in his eyes, but soon his cheeks filled with air and he had to conceal his laughter with a cough, which grew in intensity, worrying everyone at the table and making Courfeyrac stop his spiel.
During the rest of the meeting they shared secret looks, trying to coax the other into a second embarrassing moment, their faces hurting by the end of it. When Combeferre got up to summarise their discussions for the day and commence their more casual hangout, he had to tap Enjolras in the chest numerous times to center his attention again.
“I think my favorite part was the setting, the Musain closet room is the backdrop of all my most romantic dreams.”
Small quick laughs leave Enjolras’ chest and he lifts two fingers to his temple, trying to sustain them. They keep coming though, like waves advancing through the shore after midnight.
“Mine has to be Joly’s face when he saw I was following you there. Like the only things that could come out of us being stuck in a small space together were either murder or-” He’s quiet for two seconds, “I’m trying to come up with something else he could’ve thought but I think his mind went directly to murder.”
They were gone for less than five minutes, so his friends didn’t suspect much, probably thinking they were getting some air or going to the bathroom. But their hands were exploring uncharted territory, hips pressing against each other as if they could become one, as if they were trying to. Grantaire bit Enjolras’ lip, and he involuntarily moaned his name and they both giggled, high on the ability to take that which had always been out of reach. On knowing you would let yourself be taken too.
They kissed, and grabbed, and felt, and discovered.
And then his phone vibrated with a call from a British number.
“You know Joly told me he knew Bossuet was into him because he kept throwing him these secret looks.”
Enjolras adjusts to a more casual stance, leaning against the wall and facing him, his cheeks still red from laughter. “Oh I’ve given you plenty of those over the years.”
Looking down, he starts picking at a small ball of cotton forming on the mattress, smiling despite himself. “That is very true.” The simplicity of the moment strikes him, and he decides to not consider how this is the only moment he’s felt truly content around him, no convictions of inferiority piercing through the waves of his thoughts and into the outside air. “I guess that’s our definition of lovers, dancing, doing nothing, sharing favorite books and secret glances. And bickering.”
It is strange how small Enjolras becomes all of a sudden, the smile quickly dropping and his brows furrowing. “That’s it?”
“I guess. Usually you’ll do this dozens of times, except it never becomes a routine because you’re having so much fun. We’ll just have to do that part quicker than most.”
They stare at each other, trying to save the memory forever, showing their heart the face of the man it will always have room for.
Grantaire thinks of this quiet acceptance they’ve shared throughout the years, of how he understood the meaning of Enjolras’ hungry glances, his exaggerated worry, his doting eyes. The tear adorning his cheek when he startled him on the balcony earlier tonight, alone while their friends told stories in the living room. He always understood he had something with Enjolras, despite neither of them ever putting a name to it. He appreciates his need for some kind of label, as feeble as it might be, but it wasn’t necessary to him. Any doubt he could have had dissipated during that kiss at the Musain.
Today’s kiss was more for Enjorlas than him.
The definition seems lacking to Enjolras. Even in his few encounters with lovers, there always is something more. Courfeyrac always puts a word to it, one that seems juvenile now, but as soon as it appears to him he knows it’s what he wants. He’s been racking his brain for the last few hours, trying to not feel inadequate at his inability to string two thoughts together, when the answer seems obvious now. It’s what he’s wanted this whole night, and during their whole relationship. What was missing for them to figure it out.
“How about a date?”
The corners of Grantaire’s mouth extend, his eyes narrow. “A date?”
He doesn’t feel shy or hesitant, despite the doubt in the other’s face. “Go on a date with me.”
Grantaire’s eyes soften. He always says his brown eyes were ordinary, and Enjolras always gets angry at it. They are not ordinary to him. “Okay, where are we going?”
When he gets up he grips Grantaire’s hand tighter, lifting him. Then he unplugs the lamp, summersing them in darkness again, and plugs it into a socket in the hallway. “Well the room is small, but the city outside the window is not. After you.” He opens his right arm, guiding Grantaire into the living room. Then he tangles their hand together again, breathing through the sparkles in his stomach, and walks them to the balcony.
The view is not adorned with inside looks into the neighbours’ lives, the hour is too late for that now. Similarly no stars grace the sky, they never do in Paris. Enjolras grabs the glasses of red wine left on the wooden floor, forgotten hours ago, and offers him one. Grantaire takes it, and they stare out into the night, the moon smiling on them even more than earlier.
“What does a date with you entail?” Grantaire asks, and he shyly leans to Enjolras’ shoulder, waiting for a permission he finds when he feels a head resting on his own.
“I’d like it to be something we both enjoyed. Maybe we’d go to a market in the morning, and I’d even listen when you ramble about the lack of meaning behind ecological labels. Then we’d have to go to a bookshop, because I ordered a Chinese philosophy anthology ages ago and it’s finally arrived.” His ribcage reverberates when Grantaire laughs. “You’d make us lunch, and then we’d go on a walk along the Seine and complain about the amount of tourists.” Grantaire’s hair feels wet all of a sudden, it takes a second before Enjolras speaks again. “We’d end the night right here, on this balcony, people watching and making up stories about your neighbours. And then we’d kiss.”
Grantaire pulls away and looks at his face, softly caresses the tears away from his cheeks, just like he did hours ago. “Enjolras.” Hearing his name strangles him.
Maybe Grantaire will never forget their heartless first kiss, or that desirous second one. But their third one is what will keep Enjolras tied to the memory of tonight, forever gasping for the same air he breathes now. It was a feathery touch, brushing that tear away, it was a look down to his lips, a murmured apology, and a steady press of soft skin. Their fingers interlaced on his cheeks, and he brought them down to their sides as they kissed again, and again, and again.
Enjolras will be able to describe the direction of the wind, South East, the feeling of Grantaire’s lips, cracked but growing soft, the smell of his breath, menthol and vodka, the texture of his jeans against exposed stomach; he will be able to detail all these things until the sun sets on his last day.
That kiss allows him to commit this feeling to memory, the pain at the sides of his mouth, the goosebumps where his fingers trace, the sparkles at the end of his own; the butterflies that dance around his stomach whenever Grantaire smiles. If he is never to feel this again, that kiss is the sweetest goodbye to love that he could ask for.
“I guess we’re lovers now.” He says, daring to stare into the eyes that have so frustrated him for years.
Grantaire hugs him, and he feels his smile against his neck. “I wish we had one more day.”
“Me too.” He hugs him back, strong.
Maybe if he hugs him tight enough, the hours will pass and he will miss his flight, and he will have to continue hugging him when he realises it; and maybe if he makes that hug last long enough, he will be able to stay in his apartment, and their friends will come to unpack the boxes for them, leaving them their privacy as they did before they left; and maybe if that hug extends for the time he wants it to, their skin will fuse together, and it will decompose while still tangled, and even if they throw away their bones, their dead cells will remain upon this balcony. An endless date, a forever of looking out onto the flickering lights of neighbouring flats, together.
But that would be an unfair fate to impose on Grantaire. Because he has a once in a lifetime chance, and he is going to be someone important. And his art will matter almost as much as he does.
It would also be an unfair fate for him. To leave his beliefs aside, to stay high on a Parisian balcony while so many suffer under it. Any other night he’d find the thought deplorable. That’s why he knows there won’t be another night.
Instead of allowing himself the sorrow, he asks. “Don’t lovers also kiss?”
“Yes.”
Their fourth kiss is soft and slow. Grantaire kisses him with the sanctity of worship, Enjolras kisses him with the delicacy of finding freedom within the space of an open question.
Their fourth kiss is for neither; it is for both.
When the first rays of sun fall on Enjolras’ blue eyes, lining the smile upon his face, Grantaire asks. “Will you let me go?”
Enjolras answers after a pause. “I’ll have to learn to.”
When a few more hours pass, and the sun rising over the blocks of flats premonitions the arrival of a moving truck, Enjolras asks. “Will you let me go?”
Grantaire answers immediately. “When the Earth starts to slow.”
—
It is only years later that Enjolras dares open the book he bought the day after that night. That first line, Borges’ epitaph, had been too painful to get through for so long.
Grantaire was right, the prose really is a beautiful one. The sentences are enriched with an ample vocabulary, but it never feels ostentatious or gratuitous. It is just the right complex words to describe a complex relationship, between two people that experienced the world in irreconcilable ways and yet managed to come united.
A passage sticks out to him, right at the beginning.
“Why had I been such a fool when it came to loving you? My love for you wasn’t foolish, but I was; had my own innate foolishness made love itself foolish? Or is it that I myself wasn’t all that foolish, but love’s inherent foolishness awakened any foolishness latent in me and eventually smashed everything to pieces?
(...)
When my foolishness destroyed love, if I claim that that foolishness was equally undone in the process, would you call that sophistry?”
Sometimes time makes it hard to remember the existence of their decision, but the ways in which the experience changed him are not so easily ignored.
He needs to put a name to it on occasion, the consequence of that night they shared.
They let each other go.
—-
Grantaire never lets him go.