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Enjolras and Grantaire have been dating (for real this time) for multiple months. The first meeting after prom, they take the first 30 minutes to sheepishly explain the situation to their friends. There’s a lot of confusion, and some profanity, and Marius tries in vain to protest that he can keep a secret, but they have since been appropriately chastised and forgiven, and the world has moved on. With the exception of the occasional joke at their expense, everything is back to normal. Even Enjolras’ parents eventually understood, especially once the need for Marius’ lack of involvement is explained.
Regardless of the awkward start to their relationship, Enjolras' parents have been informed about Grantaire's less-than-stellar parents, and have made it clear in no uncertain terms that he is welcome at their house at any time, any day. (in a few more months, as a graduation present, he gets a key to their house. "come home and visit anytime you like. I mean it, Grantaire, you had better come and visit us, with or without Enjolras. you'll need a home cooked meal and some parenting now and then, even if you are I'm college" they say. He totally doesn't cry (he totally does)).
Eponine and Gavroche have gotten settled into their official foster home, and they're happy. Like… really happy. Eponine’s evidence she collected was enough to put her parents away for good, and knowing they’re not coming back has helped them significantly. Eponine is finally letting her guard down, just a bit, and if Eponine trusts that things might be okay now, Gavroche does.
Enjolras' parents frequently check in on them via Grantaire. He is expected to come over any day after he’s visited or seen them, and provide updates. They give him things to sneak to her and Gavroche, sometimes. Nothing too much, nothing she would suspect Gavroche hadn’t stolen from somewhere, but little things. She mentions not having many pencils? Grantaire is instructed to take a pack and distribute them in discreet, separate locations around her new room, casual enough that she may have just forgotten she had it. Gavroche needs new shoes? Grantaire suddenly has an old pair he never wore that he can hand down.
Part of him wishes they could help out themselves and not need him to be the middle-man, but Eponine is still weird about presents, and if he has to put in a little more work to make sure she gets nice things, he figures she’s worth it. He brings Enjolras with him, sometimes, much to Gavroche’s glee. He’s made it his personal mission to get Enjolras caught up with the 21st century in terms of media. Plus, it keeps him from noticing when Grantaire slips a packet of Poptarts into his bag. If either of them have caught onto the sudden appearance of the things they need, they haven’t mentioned it, which is a blessing in and of itself, as far as Grantaire is concerned.
Grantaire is careful not to bring up anything related to why they’re there in the first place. If it’s strictly necessary, he limits himself to just saying ‘before’, and Eponine gets it. She hasn’t made fun of him for it, so he takes that to mean she appreciates it. She worked hard to get to this point, and Grantaire isn’t going to begrudge her trying to move on.
It’s been so long, though, and she’s doing so well, that he was bound to forget. Eponine criticizes him for making a mess in her room, so he jokingly retorts that nothing he could do would be as bad as all the times he found her underwear and bras on his floor. She’s quiet for a moment, and Grantaire realizes his mistake. He frantically searches for something to say, before he realizes the shine in her eyes in accompanied by a smile. A small one, grant you; no one but Grantaire would ever have noticed, but a smile nonetheless.
“I never have to leave my shit on your nasty floor again,” she says, but the joke of it is significantly lessened by the breathless way her voice is coming out. “Oh my God. I never have to carry that sewing machine between houses again. I won’t have to sneak out of your house before your God-awful parents wake up. Oh my God. It’s over. They’re gone.” She giggles for a moment, then stops, surprised at herself. Her smile grows, and she lets out a loud, relieved laugh. It’s big enough that Grantaire can tell she’s not just laughing at her own joke. Gavroche pokes his head in from his room across the hall.
“What’s up with her?” Grantaire can only shrug, not bothering to fight his own smile. Gavroche rolls his eyes, unimpressed by Grantaire’s unhelpfulness. He pokes Eponine in the side.
“Hey, what’s up with-?“ He cuts himself off with a yelp, having been grabbed and pulled into her lap for a tight hug. He squirms to get away, but he’s laughing now too, and it’s clear he doesn’t actually mind. It hits Grantaire in this moment that this is the first time he’s seen them act… normally. They’re behaving like normal siblings, like kids who don’t constantly have to be on guard against anyone but each other.
They’re not perfect, and they’re not unaffected by it, but they got past it. They’ll keep moving past it, until the moments like these outweigh the horrible, sullen moments where it feels like nothing’s changed. He can’t help but feel like an intruder, watching something too pure for the rest of the world. He watches anyway, trying to sear the moment into his mind forever.
Later, when Grantaire gets home, he draws it. He needs to get it out, to have it exist somewhere other than in his head. He can’t talk to Eponine about it. He’s sure she’ll feel awkward about it, and she’ll make sure there’s never another moment like that again, and he can’t have that. He’d tell Enjolras, but he wasn’t there. He never really got to know the Eponine from ‘before’, so he won’t understand the beauty in how unprecedented it is.
So he draws. He makes sure to capture the brightness in Eponine's eyes, no longer dimmed by the weight of the world on her shoulders, and Gavroche's smile, so bright and young for someone who has been through so much. He keeps it to pencil, but shades as much as he can remember. When he's done, he's so pleased that he signs it with a flourish.
3.7 seconds after he’s finished, he realizes he has no idea what to DO with it. It’s too precious a moment to him to let it sit in a drawer, but what can he do? He can't give Eponine a picture of herself for the same reason he can’t talk to her about the moment itself. Gavroche would be confused by the sentiment. His friends don't know Eponine or her backstory enough to truly appreciate how big this is. Then it hits him.
The next day, he's scheduled to go to Enjolras’ to give his update. He gets there uncharacteristically early, tells Enjolras to please grab his parents and please not ask why, because "I'm already this close to backing out, okay? And I just. I need to do this. please?" Enjolras, mercifully, does as he's told. It’s not until the three of them are seated on the couch in the living room, looking up expectantly that he realizes he didn’t quite plan this through. His hands, hidden as they are behind his back, begin to shake.
"um. okay. um," he starts, because of course he didn't think to plan this; why didn't he think to plan this oh God this is definitely a bad idea he should just leave before he embarrasses himself fuck how does he get out of this fuck-
"Grantaire?" questions Enjolras, brow furrowed, clearly unsure if he's allowed to interject. Grantaire forces himself to breathe. He's doing this for a reason. Many reasons. Good reasons. He can do this. It’ll be fine.
"You helped Eponine," he says slowly. He's never put this into words before, but he has to if he's going to explain just how much this means. Scared if he pauses too long he’ll back out, he plows onward.
"Her and Gavroche could have been gone. Eponine had plans, but they were... less than ideal. And without you they would probably have happened, and who knows how they would be now." He knows at least one of them are about to say something about how it was nothing, it was what anyone would do, so he pushes through, because that’s not the point and if he doesn't do this now he never will.
"You helped them, and you didn't have to. And don't say anyone would have done it, because if everyone were like you, they wouldn't have been in that mess in the first place. Their parents were the worst, and my parents probably would have kicked them out if they knew how often they had to spend the night at my house."
Grantaire stops for a moment, because this is the important part, and he absolutely has to get it right. "They're… happier now. I don't think Eponine has smiled this much non-sarcastically in the entire time I've known her, and if she's happy Gavroche is happy. And that's because of you all."
Slowly, he pulls from behind his back the picture he drew of Eponine and Gavroche laughing together, having the kind of moment they should have been having their whole lives but only now got to experience, and hands it to Enjolras' dad. He’s the closest, and the least intimidating option. The other two crowd around to see what it is, eyes widening in realization.
"This is from yesterday. It wouldn't look like a big deal to someone who didn't know, but... it only was even capable of happening because you helped." Grantaire notices, very abruptly, that he is in extreme danger of crying. He thinks absently that they probably wouldn't mind if he did, that they’ve already seen him cry over worse, and the thought is enough to get through the last bit of his impromptu speech.
"I want you to have it. It's not much, and it's not very good, but I'm really grateful and I know they are too, and it's not as though they can like, pay you or anything, so I thought that maybe-"
He's surprised out of his rambling by the sudden onslaught of a bone-crushing hug. Enjolras is holding on tightly, with no indication that he intends to let go anytime soon. Over his shoulder, he sees Enjolras’ mother blinking just a hair too quickly, staring at the picture as if he’d handed them an original Monet. His father seems to be inspecting it closely, angling it this way and that. Grantaire drags his eyes away from them and focuses on the relief the hug is giving him. He squeezes Enjolras slightly, a silent reassurance that he’s here. He’s not entirely sure what’s wrong, only that he’s made Enjolras emotional, and he’s happy to atone if Enjolras will keep inadvertently grounding him like this.
When Enjolras finally lets him go, his mother has stopped blinking quite so much, and his father has an arm around her. They look as though they’ve been waiting patiently for the hug to end, which sends color flying to Grantaire’s face. He’ll never get used to the idea that Enjolras’ perfect parents see him being affectionate with their son. He fights the urge to apologize for it settling for shifting a more respectable distance from Enjolras. The face he gets in return tell him that Enjolras knows exactly what he’s doing, and that they’ll be talking about it later.
“So anyway, I just wanted you to have that. As like, a thank you. Or whatever.” Grantaire isn’t sure how to end this. Should he just walk away? Could he get away with dragging Enjolras up to his room so he can complain about his mortification? Should he just leave entirely so the three of them can talk about how weird this was?
“This needs a frame.” Grantaire is shaken out of his mild panic by Enjolras’ mother. She’s stood up from the couch and gotten into her ready-for-battle stance, which he’s starting to suspect is just her regular standing position.
“A… frame? What for?” Grantaire’s not entirely sure what he missed here. Why would it need a frame? Are they scared it’ll rip or something? The paper’s pretty sturdy; what do they plan on doing with it?
“So we can hang it up,” Enjolras’ father chimes in patiently. “It’s a good job you’ve already signed it; we’ll just write the date on the back and we’ll be ready to go.”
“You want… to hang up… the picture?”
“Yes.”
“In your house?”
“Of course. I’m thinking the hallway, so that everyone can see it when they visit.”
Grantaire is struggling to put this together in his head. “So, you like it?” Next to him, Enjolras scoffs.
“They want to hang it in our house. Yes, they like it! It’s beautifully done, and it’s good to know that Eponine and her brother are doing well. Thus, it’s going up in the hallway.”
Grantaire is clearly overwhelmed, so they make their goodbyes and escape to Enjolras’ room, where Grantaire promptly plops face first on the bed. He lets out a long sigh before trying to talk. “That was…”
“A wonderful idea? Inspired? A beautiful drawing by a beautiful person? Probably the most meaningful piece of art in this or any other house?” Enjolras supplied, ever the supportive boyfriend.
“I was going to say ‘a lot’, but thanks, I suppose.” Grantaire, summoning all his strength, managed to roll over so that he could look Enjolras in the face. Enjolras, who is giving him his you-did-something-surprising-and-it-was-actually-good smile, which is one of his personal favorite Enjolras smiles. Enjolras, who is settling himself next to Grantaire, because Enjolras is never one to miss out on an opportunity for snuggling, especially when he feels Grantaire has done something particularly good.
“Really, Grantaire. It was a great idea, and I know that they appreciate it. Plus, you’re obnoxiously talented. You did well. I’m immensely proud of you.” To anyone else, it might sound condescending, but Enjolras knows by now that Grantaire needs that level of explicit approval. It helps counteract the voice in his head telling him that he isn’t enough if he can point to something specific he knows he did correctly.
Grantaire pretends to preen under the praise, relaxing enough to curl into his boyfriend’s side. “Thanks, cherrytoes,” he says, pressing an obnoxiously wet kiss on his cheek. Enjolras rolled his eyes, pulling him closer. Grantaire focused on matching his breathing to his boyfriend’s, calming himself down from what had not, in fact, been a major embarrassment. He was okay. They were okay.