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The smoke is curling around Grantaire’s face, framing the curve of his jaw and tricking down his reddened fingers like water. It’s so cold that even when he breathes without bringing the cigarette to his lips he’s surrounded by a fog.
Enjolras’ fingers feel like ice, even as he shoves them into the kangaroo pocket of his hoody. He doesn’t regret lending Feuilly his gloves, not in the slightest and had gladly passed the softly warn black leather along, but he can’t help shivering as he tumbles his fingers together inside the fleece lining.
He doesn’t understand how Grantaire can be standing so nonchalantly. Barely noting the cold, even with one, leg kicked up against the wall he’s leaning on, even though that means that one bare thigh is pressed to the cooling brickwork.
Enjolras works his fingers further into a Gordian knot as Bahorel and Courfeyrac laugh at something Grantaire has said. He can see the puff of air escaping Grantaire’s lips, but he can’t catch the words over the clicking of Grantaire’s red heels against the red brick.
“I didn’t think that you’d actually do it R, it’s fucking freezing out here.”
Grantaire’s shrug is lazy, leaning further into the wall. And of course he’s drunk, and christ the cheap chemise is slipping down over his shoulder and Grantaire is making no effort to pull it up, instead taking another drag of the cigarette.
“When,” a puff of smoke, “have you ever known me not to uphold my side of a bet?”
He kicks off the wall suddenly, stepping forward as he does so, and Enjolras listens for the click of red heels against the pavement. The sound feels red somehow, there’s something rich in it. Although that could just be Grantaire’s weight as he settles himself with an unexpected grace after the indulgences of the night.
But in the movement the skirt, with its cheap synthetic fibres had caught on the rough brick work. It’s only a fraction of a second before Grantaire tugs the material down with a lazy gesture- as though he hadn’t noticed, and didn’t care for the consequences, and none of the others have appeared to notice- but Enjolras had seen, and he should have looked away but he couldn’t.
He can imagine that his knuckles have turned white inside his pocket.
This is all Grantaire’s fault.
He should never had made whatever bet it was with Bahorel, and he should never have lost it. It’s such a ridiculously tacky dress. And it’s sure not to have been sourced from an ethical source. Grantaire should have known better.
Enjolras contemplates casting desperate eyes to Combeferre, who should surely understand, but Combeferre is returning the cigarette that Courfeyrac had ‘liberated’ from Grantaire to its rightful owner with a slight scowl. Either way, Enjolras had been sending pleading glances to Combeferre ever since Grantaire had first strode over to the group, that extra inch taller and more scantily clad than Éponine on a warm day.
He’d expected Combeferre to break the tension or to demand an explanation, but his best friend, the bastard, had only lent back in his seat and smiled at Enjolras over his glasses. The noise of Grantaire placing down a bottle of Jack Daniels in front of Bahorel had drawn Enjolras’ attention back to the man, as though he’d been able to ignore it in the periphery of his vision.
As though sensing Enjolras eyes on him, although that was nonsense, as all of Les Amis, and most of the other patrons of the bar were looking at him now, Grantaire stepped back from their table and tucked his hands into a waist he simply didn’t have. Little red laced gloves, that have since disappeared over the course of the evening, a shade or two lighter than the natural port wine staining his palms, helping to frame Grantiare’s hips. He was posing, and they all knew it, head cocked in a way which could almost be described as coquettishly.
Enjolras had noticed faint hints of blue eye shadow at the time, which have disappeared in the darkness of the night, and the light powder noticeable against Grantaire’s bad skin from neck to brow, but there is still the smudge of red lipstick against his lips and the body of the cigarette.
The cockades are still in his hair.
They’re delicately made, out of crêpe and tissue paper. But he hadn’t asked to look, let alone to touch, but when Grantaire had sat down he’d looked at their delicacy, perfectly formed against the coarseness of Grantaire’s hair. They looked like Feuilly’s handiwork. Enjolras doesn’t know why that makes him jealous. Feuilly has given him origami creatures, tucked into bookmarks, highlighting liberation campaigns and to make him smile. But the idea of fingers in his hair. His eyes keep being drawn to the red, white and blue delicate cockades tucked into Grantaire’s hair. He wonders who affixed them. Surely not Grantaire?
His hair has been strung up delicately, like Cosette’s hair before she lets it down, causing Marius to swoon and sigh. He’d thought that Grantaire’s hair was brown before, but it can only be black against the red, white and blue.
The cigarette is still dimly glowing in Grantaire’s hand and as he taps it against the wall the ash flitters down his bare thighs.
“So, where next?”
The words are emitted in a cold cloud, and Enjolras shivers again, burying himself deeper into his layers. Even without his gloves he’ll be prepared to bet that he’s significantly warmer than the remaining Amis.
Courfeyrac had charged himself as master of ceremonies with Grantaire indisposed due to his state of attire. Courfeyrac is nothing but through, and as the night hard worn on their numbers had decreased and dispersed. Normally Enjolras is among the first to leave his friends to their jollity once he knows that they are happy, and he can’t fathom how he is among the little group waiting for Grantaire to finish his cigarette. Joly, Bossuet and Musichetta had left first, with cries of work and deadlines the next morning, with Jehan, Cosette, Éponine and Marius bundling into a taxi together next, pressing ardent kisses to their friends cold cheeks as they’d left. Finally Feuilly had rubbed his hands together, contemplating his walk back to his shared apartment, and Enjolras had handed over his gloves without a moment’s hesitation. He hadn’t wanted to think of Feuilly getting cold, he hadn’t wanted to think of Feuilly’s hands.
It’s late in the evening, in fact, so late that Enjolras thinks that it’s morning, but in order to check he’d have to withdraw his hands from his pockets and there’s nothing than can convince him to do that until he can wrap them around a mug of herbal tea.
Grantaire’s feet are tapping against the floor, and Enjolras knows that they’re still red. Grantaire has never worn red. He wears muted greens and mottled purples, nothing controversial, nothing that stands out against his friends. Not like Jehan’s questionable floral patterns, or Bahorel’s belief that brighter equals better. Even Combeferre’s wardrobe has an element of self-identification in it. But Grantaire hides in his obscurity. That is, until he wears heels. Enjolras swears that he can hear Grantaire’s steps far more than he can when any of the others put on high heel shoes, and it must be the combination of the quieter streets and Grantaire’s unease in the shoes.
The heels are sensible however, and now that Grantaire’s not leaning on that wall Enjolras can’t help but noticing his posture. It’s good. His mother had drummed good posture into him and Grantaire has it.
He knows that Grantaire is a dancer, of sorts. Once he’d stripped his boots off and pirouetted in the Musian in just his socks because mid-meeting Jehan expressed doubts, he could believe that Grantaire had been a tap dancer, that he helped Bahorel to teach boxing at the community centre, that he knew modern dance, that he kick boxed, and that he fought sabre and foil, but not that he’d mastered ballet on top of his sporadic studies. So Grantaire had spun for them.
It had been disruptive.
But Enjorlas remembers it. And remembers how Grantaire’s hands had flung themselves solidly on top of his Enjolras’ annotated copy of the terms of reference they had been analysing, paper crumpling but not tearing. When Enjolras had stared up at Grantaire’s reddened and cheerful face, Grantaire’s smile had faded, only slightly, but his eyes had remained bright.
Grantaire has an athlete’s posture, even now, and even with the cigarette being drawn to his lips again. There’s a slight paunch, Enjolras isn’t blind to his friend’s faults, and he could never be blind to Grantaire, and some of the excesses of Grantaire’s life can be seen under the unflattering tricolour dress – and Enjolras would think that he was being mocked if he thought that Grantaire and Bahorel thought of him enough to mock him in their japes- but he’s got a dancers legs. Strong, masculine, but toned, and although R is short his legs go on further than Enjolras is strictly comfortable with, as that ridiculously short skirt proves.
Grantaire breathes a wreath of smoke through his teeth and then he drops the cigarette, grinding it against the pavement. Enjolras hates the way that his eyes flick down with the movement, and the time it take him to drag his eyes up Grantaire’s body until he catches Combeferre’s contented look.
He can feel the heat rush to his face, but he doesn’t know whether it blanches or flushes in the cold morning air.
He frowns at Combeferre’s wry grin, but Combeferre only widens his eyes fractionally, and wraps his arm over Courfeyrac’s shoulder.
“Friends, I do believe that we may be done for the night. Courfeyrac, of course I trust you implicitly, and you have your own agency, but I believe you won’t object to a bed for the night.”
Even as Courfeyrac’s arm wraps around Combeferre’s waist his head is beginning to loll onto Combeferre’s willing shoulder, and despite himself Enjolras cannot help but grin at his best friends.
“Bahorel?”
But Bahorel’s smile is willed with joyful wickeness, and it is Grantaire who answers. And there’s still a hint of lipstick around his mouth.
“Oh, Bahorel’s got a ‘friend’ to entertain him, are you ever going to introduce us to her? I’m starting to believe that she’s a myth, sprung from your desperately fevered imagination.”
There is a fraction of a second when Bahorel quirks his eyebrow and Grantaire’s lips purse in unhappiness, but then Bahorel breaks back into his lethally sweet smile.
“What, introduce her to my friend Grantaire, the Drag Queen. You’ve got no hope mate; she’d die laughing and never take me seriously again.”
Grantaire shrugs, and the chemise has fallen even further, and Enjolras is quite sure that it is beginning to approach public indecency. Grantaire’s skin is pebbling from goosebumps, and Enjolras can’t understand how the man isn’t shivering where he stands, heels clacking together. Instead, he’s quiet, although one hand is wrapped around the other’s wrist.
Enjolras is almost unaware that Bahorel is going in for a hug, too busy trying to place the look on Grantaire’s face, but he’s swept up into Bahorel’s goodbyes, and soon Bahorel is tossing them off a salute as he bows out from the scene.
With the exit of Bahorel a type of peace has fallen over the mouth of their alleyway, although the racket of cars and the song of sirens can be heard in the distance.
It is Grantaire who leads their merry band, and Enjolras, Combeferre and Courfeyrac fall into silent, unsteady-step behind him. Courfeyrac and Combeferre are still wrapped together for warmth, with Courfeyrac’s hand encroaching underneath Combeferre’s demin jacket, and Combeferre stoically ignoring his questing fingers.
Enjolras’ hands still feel cold. Colder still as he watches his best friends warm each other.
In front of them, still steady on his red high heels, Grantaire seems somehow smaller. Shoulders hunching in on themselves, as though finally acknowledging the sapping power of the cold morning air, and the fragile lines of his tattoos are peaking over the frills of his chemise. The lines are thin, and in the half-darkness Enjolras shouldn’t be able to trace them with his eyes, but he can’t help but follow their dark angles against Grantaire’s pallid skin.
“So, this is us.”
Grantaire stops and turns at Combeferre’s words, who gestures with his head at the street that he and Courfeyrac will be traipsing down in the darkness. It’s lit, and seems more inviting than the pathways that Enjolras knows that he will have to walk to get home. They seem longer and lonelier in his imagination, and Combeferre catches him with a serious look. Eyes flicking to Grantaire for a fraction of a moment, and Enjolras can’t help but follow the motion.
“Enjolras.”
He doesn’t say anything else, and it’s goodbye and advice in one.
With Combeferre’s almost silent declaration Courfeyrac raises his head from his friend’s shoulder, and is suddenly all tired smiles again, but just as he opens his mouth Combeferre elbows him in the side, gently, but firmly and Courfeyrac half shrugs, before settling back into position.
“Bye Grantai-”
The yawn that cuts of his words is met by a gentle laugh from Combeferre and a wry smile from Enjolras, who has to fight off a yawn of his own.
Grantaire’s hand, looking sore and tender in the darkness is raised in farewell, and Enjolras watches his friends depart, before looking to Grantaire who has stayed, hand still raised by his face.
“Shall we?”
He’s only met by a half-shrug, and he can’t place why that feels like a dismissal. He and Grantaire have never been the most effervescent of companions, and the still night air only cools their demeanour further. Yet there is a bubble of hurt that Enjolras just can’t explain away.
It makes him feel uncomfortable.
He doesn’t know how to address it. And it isn’t that he false starts when he speaks to Grantaire, he’s spoken to Grantaire over the course of the evening, but, suddenly it’s harder under streetlights and looking at hooded eyes were blue eye shadow used to be.
Enjolras recognises the streets that they’re walking in the same way that he recognises the templates of disjunctive syllogism; unconsciously and inherently. They’re almost unimportant in the darkness, he can recognise them and work through them. Paris and logic are much the same in the night time. But Grantaire is walking quietly by his side.
“Look, Grantaire. It’s freezing.”
Grantaire scoffs beside him, and tucks his stained hands into his armpits, shaking his head. The paper cockades don’t fall.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
Enjolras can see the goosebumps up and down Grantaire’s arms, and this close up he can see the faint tremor that accompanies the pause in his speech.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
Grantaire shrugs again, and the chemise has finally given up any semblance of decency, and the words that Enjolras hadn’t yet formed slide off his tongue into nothingness. Enjolras’ hands are cold inside his hoody pocket and Grantaire has bare legs.
“Look, take my jacket.”
He’s pulling his hands out of his pocket to shrug off the jacket before he’s even finished the sentence. It’s not a particularly thick jacket, because Enjolras layers and the hoody beneath is warming in its own right. Warm enough that on cold winter nights he shrugs it on of an evening and ends up sleeping with it, tucked into cosy burgundy. But it’s a jacket to cover Grantaire’s bare arms.
“No, don’t be ridiculous Enjolras, I’ll be fine.”
Something in Grantaire’s voice breaks, and it has to be cold, or the realisation that he is waking slowly, measure for measure alone with Enjolras and the disenchantment that accompanies that realisation. Enjolras feels the plummeting in his stomach that has nothing to do with the weather.
“Grantaire.”
Because Grantaire does listen to Enjolras, even when he says that he doesn’t. Because he has to pay attention to him to be able to parrot his arguments back to him with perfect –if verbose, criticism. But Grantaire looks away, cutting off the eye contact that Enjolras had been relying on.
“It wouldn’t fit me. In case you hadn’t noticed I’m a bit bigger than you.”
There’s derision in his tone, and Enjolras stops.
Grantaire stops walking too, although he hadn’t asked him too, and certainly hadn’t expected Grantaire to pay heed to him.
There is a hint of wind in the air, and the absurd tricolour skirt dances around Grantaire’s thighs.
Enjolras strips the jacket off, ignoring the, ‘I said no’ from Grantaire, and reached up to pull the hoody over his head. It’s soft and warm, old and comfortable, and the cold hits him as soon as he’s begun the movement. It’s freezing. Even pulling the jacket back on immediately Enjolras can still feel the cold strip of air against his skin where his t-shirt had ridden up.
Grantaire is staring at him, aghast; eyes flicking, almost desperately from the hoody in Enjolras trembling hand to his face. As though Enjolras was the peculiarity on the Parisian street.
“Actually, I’m taller than you.”
Grantaire’s stare goes back to the hoody in Enjolras’ hand, which is being held out, half a peace treaty and half an envoy.
He doesn’t reach for it.
“I’m broader than you and- oh, you knew what I meant. I can’t take-”
But Enjolras is cold, and determined, and Grantaire has to be colder still.
“Grantaire.”
Enjolras doesn’t expect the tone of his word. Had half expected to keep talking, but instead Grantaire’s name stands out alone.
The stare can’t go on as long as Enjolras feels like it does, because that wouldn’t make sense. It feels like a small eternity under a broken street light.
It’s broken by the tug of the hoody out of Enjolras’ hand.
Enjolras looks down at his now empty palm, as though it could have been anyone other than Grantaire taking his hoody, before shoving his hand back into his jacket pocket, attempting to push some warmth back into his extremities.
As Grantaire pulls the hoody over his head something runs up Enjolras’ spine. It must be the cold. Grantaire’s hands, near claret purple in the darkness against the burgundy of the hood, go to pull the hood over his elaborately done-up hair. That shiver runs up Enjolras’ spine again, pooling uncomfortably in his throat.
“No.”
Grantaire freezes, fingers still around the material of Enjolras’ hood.
“Sorry, I just assumed.”
And Enjolras for a moment cannot think why he stopped Grantaire from wrapping himself up in his hoody, from preventing Grantaire’s comfort. Until he remembers.
“No, no, the- flowerwork, the cockades, they’ll get broken.”
It sounds like a weak reason to keep a man in the cold and in the dark. But the darkness can’t be helped.
“It’s fine. I can always make more.”
The blaze of a siren in the distance calls Enjolras back to the conversation.
“You made them?”
Grantaire’s returning gesture is less of a shrug, and more of a resettling into the warmth of the hoody, although his fingers are still tight around the hood.
“Who else?”
Who else indeed? Enjolras thinks of Grantaire’s tinged fingers crafting delicate paper, tissue and crêpe, working diligently and delicately. And of course it was Grantaire.
“Effort went into them, you shouldn’t break them.”
Grantaire’s fingers tighten against the hood, and his knuckles are starting to lighten with the strain.
“I can hardly take them out now can I? They’re only paper and ink.”
But they mean more than that. Surely they must. And for the second time that day Enjolras’ hands have unfurled themselves from comfort into the cold morning air, and before he’s quite noted his actions his hands are reaching up to Grantaire’s hair.
He pauses before invading Grantaire’s personal space, and his hand shakes in the air before him. He can sense Grantaire freeze.
“Can I?”
Grantaire’s nod is terse, but there.
And it must be the cold which makes Grantaire’s breathe hitch. It’s certainly why Enjolras is finding it hard to breathe. The cold air sucking into the back of throat and making him swallow. And then his shaking fingers are plucking out the gently made cockades out of Grantaire’s black hair, and it’s not as coarse as he’d expected. And soon he has a bouquet of delicate cockades in his palms.
“Keep them, they mean-”
But Grantaire breaks off, words echoing into silence, and then tugs up the hood over his now empty hair. Decoratively pinned still, only beginning to escape its bonds and wisp around the reddened curve of his neck, but bare of decoration.
Enjolras tucks them into his pocket without a word, cradling them in his hands.
As though they had never stopped walking, they start up again. A companionable silence of the scuff of Enjolras’ converse and the clatter of Grantaire’s heels. Enjolras has never worn high heels for an extended period of time, and his imagines the discomfort, and Grantaire isn’t even wearing tights beneath his cheap textile outfit.
The colours of the dress stand out even in the darkness of morning.
He doesn’t need to walk Grantaire to his door, but he does, even though it adds minutes to his own journey, and the dawn is just beginning to touch the rooftops as Enjolras eventually folds himself into his own bed.
Paper cockades having been poured into his bedside drawer like a secret.
(A month and six days later Grantaire is stretched out lazily over the coverlet of Enjolras’ bed, heady with happiness, hair wild and lips full and wide. When Grantaire’s fingers traipse over to the drawer Enjolras nods from his position of contentment, comfortable against Grantaire’s chest, and Grantaire reaches his fingers in, expecting something else when he brushes against paper. Enjolras can only move faintly against the flannel of Grantaire’s unbuttoned shirt, rubbing his cheek against the material more than a nod.
He has leant of the importance of actions as opposed to words with Grantaire. To Grantaire, words are filled with double meanings and half-truths, while actions are definitive.
He feels the moment that Grantaire extracts the hidden delicacies, and props his chin against Grantaire’s sternum as Grantaire holds the cockade above him with a shadowed smile.
“Why?”
There are many answers that Enjolras could give for why he had kept the precious paper flowers, and why he had kept them next to his bed. That he didn’t know why, or because they were a memory of that night and the cold shiver that still ran up his spine when he looked at Grantaire too closely and caught Grantaire looking back at him, were viable options. But Grantaire is still looking between the cockade and Enjolras with a type of awe and Enjolras presses closer still, hands soft against Grantaire’s sides.
“Because they’re yours.”
And then Grantaire kisses him.
It isn’t a surprise. Not any more, to feel Grantaire’s lips against his own, or to touch him in softness and smiles. To feel the rough skin beneath his hands or to trace the black lines of tattoos with his fingertips. But the shiver, and the feeling of cold, empty palms unless Grantaire is somehow filling them, Enjolras doesn’t think that that will ever go away.
He twists into Grantaire’s kiss, just to make sure.
The cockade is lost between the sheets and their bodies, but Enjolras has more hidden away, and has his hands embedded in Grantaire’s unruly hair, and his legs entwining with Grantaire’s.
He is content.)