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Combeferre didn’t think anything of Grantaire’s warm hands pulling away from him in the middle of the night. He didn’t speak — he didn’t move. He let the other man roll over and take up a slightly colder spot on the other side of the bed.
He didn’t say anything when Grantaire covered his face with both hands and exhaled roughly.
He didn’t reach out when Grantaire rolled on to his side and pulled his knees up to his chest.
He didn’t react because he’d been intimate with the other man for long enough to know that sometimes comfort didn’t help. Sometimes the darkness couldn’t cope with sympathy.
Grantaire slowly sat up, his feet brushing against the floor. Combeferre couldn’t see him, but the shifting and the squeaking of the bed was impossible to hide.
Quietly, he sighed.
Combeferre didn’t move, but he softly asked: “Do you need anything?”
Grantaire shook his head. He straightened up, shook his head again, and answered: “No, thanks.”
He stood up.
Combeferre pulled the blanket up over his shoulder. “Let me know, alright?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Grantaire slipped out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Combeferre’s apartment was pointlessly old and creaked with every step, but it was nothing compared to the eerie, ominous noises he’d heard his own place make, so he supposed in the end it didn’t matter.
Not that anything did.
It was kind of a wonder that he hadn’t fallen through the cracks of something or other.
There was a dull nothingness fogging up his head. He caught himself staring out the window, even though he’d gotten up to make coffee. He glanced at the kitchen door, but three minutes passed before he even noticed that again, he hadn’t moved.
He just listlessly stood in the same place, watching the dark.
The clocks were silent. The street below was empty. He might as well have been frozen in time.
Combeferre’s voice echoed from the doorway of the bedroom. Grantaire hadn’t even noticed him open it. He didn’t turn around. “Enjolras is awake right now.”
Grantaire blinked.
“If you want to talk to someone.”
“Enjolras doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“Call him,” Combeferre gently coaxed. “You might be surprised.”
Surprised by the most predictable man alive? Unlikely.
Grantaire muttered, “Thanks,” without looking up.
Combeferre closed the bedroom door again. Grantaire heard him that time, sinking back into bed.
He turned and grabbed a sweater from the back of the couch, pulling it on over his head. He pushed his sockless feet into his boots, not caring that he was wearing flannel pyjama pants. He picked up his phone from the coffee table and his keys from the stand by the door, and left.
Combeferre reacted then. Well out of earshot and sight of a man he felt only the most sublime love for, he closed his eyes, and frowned in annoyance at the soft, sympathetic ache in his chest.
Grantaire set out into the soft glow of the city, his unlaced boots thumping against the dew-slicked streets as he walked to nowhere in particular. He had no motives. He had no motivation, he was just moving through the night as thoughtlessly as he’d stood listlessly in the dark. The wet air didn’t faze him. The distant sound of cars didn’t really reach his brain.
He walked.
He circled a block and doubled back on a street. He passed a man sleeping in an alcove and didn’t look down. He stepped in a puddle that was deeper than it looked and didn’t stop even as his left boot went squelch, squelch, squelch.
His phone was in his hand, but for an hour after he left Combeferre’s apartment he could have dropped it in the gutter at any point without noticing. He was crossing a bridge when it suddenly felt heavy.
He tightened his fingers around it, and stopped.
Below his feet, the river gushed quietly by.
[text] Grantaire: u awake?
He stared at his phone as he’d stared out the window back in the apartment — seeing it, but not really seeing it as the minutes dragged on.
There was no answer.
After a while he sighed and lifted his chin. He exhaled slowly, watching his breath turn to mist and spiral away out over the water.
His phone hummed in his hand. His gaze shot down to the screen.
[text] Enjolras: yes why
Grantaire’s mouth twisted into a grimace as he considered.
[text] Grantaire: thought u mite b
[text] Grantaire: bored. come out 2 the river
Another pause, but Enjolras’s reply came through much faster than before.
[text] Enjolras: it’s 4am
[text] Grantaire: and
[text] Enjolras: it’s /4am/
Grantaire frowned.
[text] Enjolras: what part of the river
[text] Grantaire: bridge near ferre’s apt
[text] Enjolras: be there in 15
Ten minutes later Enjolras strolled into view. Grantaire had made himself comfortable on the balustrade, leaning back with one leg hooked over the side bordering the road.
It wasn’t so much that he feared falling.
He just didn’t want to lose his shoe.
Enjolras came to a stop beside him. Unlike Grantaire, he was wearing jeans, and had a warm, red scarf looped loosely around his neck.
And unlike Grantaire — as surprising, and uncharacteristic as it seemed — he was smoking.
Grantaire held out his hand.
Enjolras gave him the pack, and his lighter.
“Can’t sleep?” Enjolras asked, leaning against the cement railing.
Grantaire shot him a sarcastic look over his cupped hand as he shielded the lighter’s flame from the slight breeze. After a moment he pulled the cigarette away from his mouth and said, “I’m surprised you came.”
“I said I would.”
Grantaire leaned back again. “Why, though?”
“Why not?”
“It’s four in the morning.”
Enjolras snorted. He turned, leaning over the balustrade to look into the dark water below. “How’d you know I was awake?”
“Combeferre.” Grantaire flicked his ash into the river. “Why are you?”
“I’m bad at sleeping. You?”
“I’m depressed.”
Enjolras’s head turned, his brown eyes fixing on Grantaire’s face.
Grantaire’s bloodshot blue eyes stared unabashedly back.
“Are you doing anything about it?” Enjolras asked, not looking away.
Grantaire flicked his cigarette again. The corner of Enjolras’s mouth lifted in the barest hint of a smile.
Leaning back, Enjolras stubbed out his cigarette and dropped it on the ground. “Talk to me about it.”
Grantaire blinked.
Of all the things Enjolras had ever said to him, that was the least expected.
He couldn’t keep the suspicion out of his expression.
Enjolras pulled himself up onto the balustrade beside him, and reached for his cigarettes.
“You don’t want to talk about me,” Grantaire murmured, thumbing the lighter and holding it up.
Enjolras leaned in, touching the cigarette he’d slipped between his lips to the dancing flame. “You don’t want to talk about racism,” he replied as he smoked.
Grantaire put the lighter down between them. “That’ll definitely help. Talking about more fucking depressing things. Christ, how do you even survive it?” There was so much sourness in his tone, so much dejected, bitter sorrow.
“By not being cynical,” Enjolras answered, unaffected. “I believe—”
“Because you’re a fucking idiot,” Grantaire interrupted.
“I have faith,” Enjolras countered. “The progress that humanity has made is so obvious—”
“All of Europe is sliding backwards,” Grantaire spat. “People stop you on the street every day to ask you what part of Arabia you’re from.”
“But you don’t,” Enjolras replied.
“I did.”
“Once,” Enjolras admitted, nodding encouragingly. “Only once, and then you learned. That’s the point!”
“Have you noticed most people don’t give a shit?”
“It’s not most people, Grantaire.” Enjolras rested his hand against the balustrade. He was an active speaker, the kind of person who was calm and still until he had something significant to say, at which point his whole being pulled together to convey his feelings on the subject. “It’s not most people,” he repeated. “And you know that.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Grantaire replied. “So it’s not a literal majority — it’s the people with authority, and that’s all that fucking matters.” He drew his legs up and folded his arms over his knees, subconsciously mindful of the lit cigarette in the manner of a true addict. “I’m a fucking cynic because I’m in touch with reality. You want to talk about my depression?” He gestured at the city. “Look at this bullshit.”
Instead of arguing, Enjolras let him rant.
“You all act like you can make a difference— like everything you do has tipped the scales even just a tiny bit in your favour, but it’s so pointless! And the worst part is that you seem to fucking believe it? For fuck’s sake, like you don’t have all of history to show you that everything you’re doing is useless!” Grantaire gestured angrily into the darkness. “You talk about progress and that’s what’s so fucking mind-boggling about you, Enjolras, because you genuinely think that what you’re doing changes anything!”
Grantaire chucked his cigarette out into the river. It wasn’t intentionally symbolic — but it was the fire, or himself.
“Eventually you’re going to die, just like everyone else. Knowing you, you’ll make it sooner rather than later, and then everything’s going to fucking fall apart behind you, because it isn’t your movement that makes a difference, it’s you. It’s you and your stupid, fucking passion that drives people.” He exhaled. “But everything ends. Everything. If not today, then tomorrow. One day there won’t be a tomorrow, and frankly? That’s the least depressing thing I can think of.”
“Why is that?” Enjolras asked.
Grantaire took a moment to respond. Enjolras could see the struggle in his face, could sense it radiating through him — almost as if he didn’t want to say what he was thinking. It was almost as though he was afraid to.
But there was nothing hateful in Enjolras’s expression as he patiently waited for Grantaire’s answer. There was no confusion, no bitterness, and none of the fear that Grantaire thought there should be.
“Because nothing— the… the emptiness, the void or whatever is so much less brutal than watching the people you care about… fail.”
He pushed his hand through his dark hair, pulling on it in his frustration.
“Knowing how meaningless it all is.” His lip curled. “Being the one fucking stupid one who can see it, who drags everybody down because I can’t just turn off what I see is truth. Not being able to deal with your relentless fucking optimism. With how much you all care. It’s so…”
He trailed off, looking down into the river.
His eyes mirrored the black, lightless water below.
Enjolras’s mirrored the soft, warm glow of the lamps lining the bridge.
There was gentleness, and honest curiosity in his voice when he asked, “Why do you stay with us?”
Grantaire’s reciprocal honesty was the miserable resignation of a man who’d already said too much. “I don’t know.”
And he didn’t. There were days he thought he did — days he thought he was convinced. But he never was, and he never would be, because he couldn’t hold on. He couldn’t hold on to anything.
All he had to his name were scraps of dismantled theories and the threads of dreams.
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he repeated. “I don’t know.” He took a deep breath and frowned. “Just… because? Is that enough?”
He raised his hand to push it through his hair again, but Enjolras caught it before he had the chance. With his eyes fixed on Grantaire’s face, he gave the other man’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
Grantaire froze.
“Yes,” Enjolras told him with utter sincerity. “You want to be there. We can argue about the rest and we will, but you want to be there enough to stay with us, and that is not meaningless.”