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Most mornings of Enjolras’ life are routine, which is to say, all of them except the one involving Grantaire. He wakes up in a jolt, mind pacing. He brushes his teeth firmly while he reads political Twitter from the night before, which invigorates him enough to have him lace up his shoes for exercise, typically a long run that ends at the sustainable coffeeshop next door to his apartment.
Unfortunately, this run makes it to his doorstep.
“Grantaire,” he says, stunned. “It’s 8 am.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Grantaire tells him mournfully. Besides his various other vices and annoying personality traits, one of the worst is how miserably sad he is all the time, often for no discernable reason. His moods seem worse in Enjolras’ presence than any of the rest of their merry band. Some people are sad, Enjolras, Courfeyrac had said once, give him a break. That had been a misunderstanding. How was Enjolras supposed to proceed with his day when Grantaire looked so fucking sad? He vibrates with the need to address. “The moon and I took a long walk last night. I just tucked her in. So obviously my next goal was finding you.”
“Can I help you with something?” Enjolras says, who doesn’t really care much for prose about the moon when it’s clearly not the moon that caused the dark crescents beneath Grantaire’s eyes.
“I thought you might ask that,” Grantaire says, nodding his head rapidly, eyes up and down. “Oh. You’re running. We can talk after.”
“I don’t run away from problems,” Enjolras assures him, frank.
“I see,” Grantaire has a quirk to his mouth. “I’m your problem. Also, nice commentary on my main personality flaw in life.”
Enjolras’ lungs and feet itch to run. “I didn’t say that. Come inside.”
Grantaire does not. He remains on the threshold. He, as predicted by his own words, is poised to run. The problem making him run is not yet apparent. With the benefit of hindsight, Enjolras quickly replays their last interaction; no more aggressive than most meetings. There had been raised voices. But they’d taken on their standard approach to their relationship in recent days, where afterward Grantaire sat with his root beer or actual beer and Enjolras with his seltzer water at the bar and they are only allowed to talk about non-political topics. A cool-down. Enjolras enjoys these times almost as much as he enjoys the debates that preceded them.
“Come inside,” Enjolras repeats, when they’re both unmoving. He opens the door wider.
“No,” Grantaire says in explanation. “I won’t be here for long, I’m sure. I just have to tell you something.”
Their cool-downs often leave a fizzy feeling in Enjolras’ stomach that has nothing to do with the seltzer. He feels it now. “I’m listening.”
“Wonderful!” Grantaire exclaims, almost hysterically. A curl is sticking up vertically from his head. It’s clear he never went to bed; how can he have bedhead? Enjolras longs to rearrange it, and ignores the feeling as usual. “Spectacular.” Enjolras waits. He is almost to the point where he begins unlacing his sneakers when the inevitable rant begins.
“I’m trading sinful secrets for sanity,” explains Grantaire. “I’ve been on this journey of self exploration, and my therapist—she said I should tell you. Not expect anything of you, mind, but tell you. She’s deplorable. I must listen. I told her that frankly, I expect the world of you, it was you that expected nothing of me—”
“Grantaire,” says Enjolras.
“Oh,” he says then, picking heavily at a hangnail. “It’s best to be brief. I’m a briefs man.”
“Please,” says Enjolras, not intrigued but—pleased. It’s not often that Grantaire approaches him without artifice or snarky humor. Perhaps Grantaire (finally) wants to contribute more to the cause. Perhaps he’s decided that actually, his poetic and sticky-honeyed personality is not burnt in Enjolras’ fiery justice and that they can be friends. Enjolras would quite like—
“I love you,” says Grantaire then. Casual and grinning. His voice is light and sharp. “Ah, I did it! No,” his eyes widen as Enjolras’ whole body stiffens, “I see instead that I’ve done it, now.”
“What the fuck, Grantaire,” he demands. “I don’t have time for your games today!”
“So return tomorrow?” comes the faint reply.
“Come back if you ever mean it,” Enjolras snarls, and shows him the door.
A vicious exercise session on his stationary bike and a furious phone call to Courfeyrac where he rants about the vice president’s most recent press racket later, Enjolras has calmed down enough to consider why he might have been angry in the first place.
After all, he loves Grantaire. Of course Grantaire would find a way to mock every love of Enjolras’, even this one.
Month one of their acquaintance: standard. Grantaire joked. He prodded. He lackadaisically brought home-baked focaccia and weed brownies to a meeting and flirted with everyone, Enjolras included. After Courfeyrac, the impact was minor.
Month two of their acquaintance: disastrous. Enjolras walked him home, because Grantaire had made a particularly good if bitterly jaded comment about trickle-down economics. After circling by Grantaire’s house not once but eight times, faster every loop, Enjolras was invigorated. All of his friends were brilliant, brave. But there was a difference between the intellectualism of Combeferre and, say, Bossuet. Grantaire edged closer to the former. Taking him by the elbows on his own front stoop, atop Grantaire’s wipe your paws ya filthy animal welcome mat, he told him so.
“You will be a boon to the cause,” he had said, eyes shining. “I know it.”
“Mm,” said Grantaire. “That’s—a lot of pressure.”
Enjolras put a hand atop Grantaire’s heart, soft faux leather jacket stiffly cold under his palm in the fall chill. “You’ll see,” he said. “There’s so much injustice in society. We have to rise to face it, together.”
“You really believe in that,” Grantaire released, meeting his eyes. Finally. Finally. “A brave new world.”
“Of course.”
“Ah,” said Grantaire, shaking his head. Breaking the spell. “Well. To be honest, I don’t.”
Blinking, Enjolras had said, “what?”
“The world. It’s shitty. It makes me sick to think of it.”
Enjolras’ zealotry for recruitment of smart, communistically minded souls hadn’t quite dimmed.
“But our conversation,” he said, expectantly. “Our walk.”
“I mean,” Grantaire scoffed. “All of that would be fantastic, but the upper class is never going to let that kind of upheaval happen.”
“It’s not let,” Enjolras snapped, feeling his patience slip. “Of course they won’t allow it.”
“Now we’ve reached the renegade nature of your group, which is cushioned by the stuffed-animal soft quality of your brotherhood.”
Enjolras has never shied away from admitting his less than pacifistic nature.
“I’ll have change written in blood if necessary.” Then: “their blood. They’ve taken enough of the people’s.”
“It’s never all their blood,” Grantaire muttered. “God, you talk like a cult leader. You’re mad in the—“
Enjolras takes his stubbled face in his hands. “There’ll be change. You’ll see. I’ll show you, Grantaire, the change we can make together.”
Maybe it’s because Grantaire can’t look away. Maybe it’s because Enjolras uses the windows to the soul that eyes are, and finally moves whatever dark cynicism resides in there.
“Star-crossed,” Grantaire said, sudden.
Enjolras frowned. “My cause?”
“Me,” Grantaire clarifies on a groan. “Fuck, I’m a lunatic. This is going to go so poorly. It doesn’t matter how pretty you are. I hope I forget you in my mid-day nap dreams.” He proceeds to shut the glass door, but not his wooden one quickly enough.
Through the glass, Enjolras declared, louder so as not to be muffled: “someone like you, your potential must not be wasted!”
“A foregone conclusion,” Grantaire had shouted back. “Yeah, that’s my dad’s favorite line too. But I killed all my potential the moment I left the womb.” Then he slammed the door.
The next time Grantaire attended a meeting, he shredded Enjolras’ every argument precisely. He sanded them past smoothness into nothingness. So too his potential, in Enjolras’ eyes.
Everyone is careless, to some degree. Grantaire understands exactly the social justice he is neglecting, which makes it a thousand times worse.
Still. If he ever stopped attending, Enjolras would drag him there by his collar.
It all makes the confession a thousand times worse. Grantaire understands exactly what he is doing. He clearly finds it funny. Enjolras does not find it funny, and he sends Grantaire a series of texts informing him of this.
Must you mock everything I care about? Even the personal?
No response.
I fail to see the humor. I have it on good authority from Joly and Bossuet that pranks require everyone to be laughing afterwards. Perhaps you can explain what part of this is meant to be funny to me.
No response.
I will generously assume you’re asleep and not avoiding me.
No response.
Enjolras sends emails, paces, writes the outline to a few papers. Combeferre texts him at some point to ask if he’s eaten, and Enjolras replies yes once he has a meal bar in hand that ultimately only makes it to his kitchen counter. He texts Courfeyrac why is he so infuriating since he’d refused to let himself text it earlier, but it’s been a few hours and he’s still upset. He should have predicted this. Time never takes away how he feels, only action. He then resolves to try and run again.
Unfortunately, this run also makes it to his doorstep.
“Grantaire,” he says, stunned. “It’s 3 pm.”
“I slept,” Grantaire says, who is curled up in Enjolras’ uncomfortable wooden chair outside his door that serves to hold decorations that Jehan or Cosette like to pick for him. “Your hall neighbors think me uncouth. An eyesore.”
“You’re back,” Enjolras realizes, first shocked and then suspicious. Grantaire typically does obey his directions, he just doesn’t follow the unspoken but most essential spirit of them.
“You said to come back if I ever meant it,” Grantaire says. “I never left.”
“Another loophole found,” Enjolras gives to him, weary.
“No, I’m,” he looks down at his own wringing hands. “I’m that serious. Am I allowed to go now?”
Serious. Grantaire. His phone pings, doubtlessly with a message from Courfyerac that will say something along the lines of it isn’t even meeting day, what are you two doing? The answer to that hypothetical question isn’t clear; he doesn’t even read the message.
“This isn’t a prank,” he clarifies.
“You think my therapist told me to play a prank on you as part of my personal growth journey and that I was willing to put in 7 hours of waiting here with my dead phone and swirling thoughts for it? I have ADHD. I would’ve exploded.”
Not a prank. Enjolras will have to make sure he warns Grantaire about the texts. “That is how you chose to confess to me, and you’re criticizing the delivery of my speeches? Like you found it funny and I was the joke?”
Grantaire flinches. “I thought if I said it with a smile, with no gravitas, like it was acting, you might… find it more funny than pathetic.” It is classic Grantaire defense.
“You and your therapist know better,” Enjolras tells him.
“I love you more than words can wield the matter,” Grantaire tells him gravely, still so fucking sad. “Shit, bad quote, but I mean it sincerely. I’m sorry. Anyway. Am I allowed to go now?”
“No,” Enjolras says. “You love me, and you claim to mean it. So you’ll stay.”
He turns, and walks back into his apartment, leaving the door open. There is quiet, followed by a neighbor-botheringly loud are you serious, Enjolras?
He settles onto his couch, and checks his texts.
Second lunch check, says Combeferre. Enjolras is distracted by Courfeyrac’s:
It isn’t meeting day, what are you two doing? And: Is this why I’m being asked where Grantaire is?
He’s at mine, Enjolras texts back. When he looks up, Grantaire is peering into the apartment with an incredulous look on his uneven face. He may be here awhile. He’s deciding.
“Can I… use your bathroom?” Grantaire says, as an unnecessary foot in the door. The door is already wide open. Enjolras sighs, and replies in the affirmative. “And maybe your phone charger?” Comes after the ordinary-sounding flush and running of the sink. Enjolras’ long unrequited crush tells him he’s in love with him, and ultimately— life goes on.
“There’s one for your phone by the other end of the couch,” Enjolras gestures. Gingerly, like he is handling an old book, Grantaire plugs his phone in.
“I am trying,” he says then, still standing. Both hands raised like he is being threatened. “Not to misunderstand.”
“What’s the issue with us being in a relationship?” Enjolras asks, immediate. Troubleshooting. “No potential?”
“Ahhhhh,” Grantaire lets out in one long deflating hiss. There is visible counting to ten. “Enjolras, can you please communicate what is happening in your mind?”
Grantaire loves him. Enjolras repeats this new and untested fact. “I thought you loved to read between the lines, but I don’t. I love you,” he adds for good measure. “Let’s decide what happens next. Since you’ve done enough speaking for one morning—stay, and we’ll have dinner and listen to NPR and I might kiss you. Leave now and I won’t make you act on what you said. It can be something you got off your chest.”
“Held hostage,” Grantaire squeaks. But he looks like a happy hostage. “I understand.” He sits on the couch. Ten minutes later, after being instructed not to read any texts from Enjolras: “Okay, but why did Combeferre text me to make sure you eat dinner?”
There are a lot of ways to show love, is the answer. Enjolras doesn’t give it, but Grantaire whips them up dinner.
When it comes time for bed: “you’re free. Unless you’d like to borrow some pajamas.”
“Would I,” says Grantaire, squinting at the ceiling. Captured by the force of Enjolras’ surety. “Wait. When am I leaving?” Hopefully never. And Grantaire was honest with him, and certainly Enjolras is bolder, so he tells him so. “Oh,” says Grantaire, and squeezes into the covers beside him as Enjolras flicks off the light. In the dark: “I have to admit—I’m not sure how to change. How to create change between us. We’ve been this way for so long.”
“Don’t worry,” Enjolras assures him. “You already started. I’ll show you.”