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It was spring, and the low sun would seep through the windows of the cafe, painting everyone inside with a pale, watery light. Grantaire would lean into the dazzling glow so that those rays caught in his eyelashes, flecking his vision with splashes of luminous pink and green, squinting but determined not to angle himself away from the window or ask for the blind to be pulled down, because then he'd miss the glorious effect it had on his noble leader.
Enjolras wore a jumper right up until the end of April, perpetually chilly. But even bulked out in bright wool, he was magnificent; the sun striking his skin made him radiant, the pale flesh washed a cool, marbled white. The strong set of his narrow jaw, the delicate wave to his golden hair, the fullness of his pink lips, all gave the impression that he might have been carved by the hand of Michelangelo. The only thing that improved him from a figure sculpted from stone was the life that had been breathed into him - the life which flooded so eloquently from his lips every time he spoke.
And Grantaire would sit. He would let the springtime sun attack his squinting eyes, relishing its colourful glare for the beauty it leant to Enjolras, and he would listen in transfixed rapture as he spoke so firmly, so fiercely, of such fine and lofty goals as befit a man who looked like he had wandered somehow from the heavens.
He sowed seeds when he spoke, talking of new life and fresh growth, freedom and fairness and social responsibility, things Grantaire had always been doubtful of but which he could almost find himself believing in when they bloomed from his mouth like flowers, covering the ground around him and spreading like long evening shadows across the earth. Their perfume was intoxicating. It was spring, and on the heavy scent of Enjolras' words Grantaire found himself drunk.
It was summer, and the daylight hours stretched long into the night, the constant buzzing of the city blending into the humming of biting insects and the vibrations from parties just out of earshot.
Enjolras would burn in the sunshine, so delicate as he was, so he preferred to stick to shadows and shelters, hiding from the sun despite the fact that it's heat still made him damp and sticky.
He was ceaselessly thirsty, his hayfeverish throat tight and dry, and somehow it was always Grantaire who had drinks on hand, and who didn't seem to mind following him into the shade, into darkness, giving him water or rum or whatever happened to be in his bottle that day, shielding him from the heat as best he could while mumbling heartfelt compliments between boisterous teasing and taunting.
Enjolras would thank him, nod politely along with Grantaire's ramblings, trying not to let himself think too much about how close they would end up sitting or how easy it was to slip away from their friends so it was just the two of them, into some narrow side road or a private corner or shaded park bench, alone with nothing but a distant buzzing in his ear and the oppressive heat pushing them ever nearer.
And the nights were short but the parties were long, and for all his eloquence in speeches Enjolras had never been one for intense social situations - that made Grantaire laugh no end when he first found out. So he would cave to the societal expectation that he should drink, and of course it would be Grantaire who would match him for every mouthful, mirroring him with a strange reverence until the both of them lost their defences.
And he liked him. No, it was more than that, because he would never have tried to let someone in without first adoring the very bones of him.
There would have been no sense in saying no when the answer in both hearts was yes - and it was, unshakably so, even if Grantaire's emotional state was rarely as stable as his affection for the marble leader was, and even if Enjolras couldn't discern exactly why he'd found himself so taken with the man who found as much pleasure in mocking him as he did in loving him.
It was summer, and tipsy golden evenings rolled haphazardly into heated stormy nights, urgent kisses, impulsive pledges pressed against sticky skin. And it was enough to wear away at Enjolras' stone exterior, but even the strongest rain leaves imperfections in the wake of its erosion.
It was autumn, and the sweaters were back, and maybe there had been no rational thought in his mind when he'd whispered love against Grantaire's quivering heart, but as sure as the leaves would turn to flame before falling to the ground Enjolras was determined to keep to his word, love you always.
He hadn't had reason to acquaint himself with his own heart before, but he knew that promise was true.
Grantaire knew that Enjolras had meant all of the things they'd shared over the summer because he could see to the very core of him, now. Where once he had seemed the immovable, faultless marble figure, he was now riddled with cracks, each one inflicted deliberately by Enjolras himself, that in chipping away at his barriers he might allow Grantaire to see how deeply he cared for him.
And it was quite sweet, because when Grantaire set his face on Enjolras' bare chest, he could see a heart tentatively full of love, and the sight was pretty enough that he could almost ignore how his lover stiffened beneath him with bated breath.
The nervy way Enjolras would take his hand almost made up for all the times he would step ever-so-subtly out of reach when Grantaire would reach for his shoulder or his waist. It was like a silent reassurance that he still liked him, did truly want to be near him, just not quite that way, not just yet, not when he hadn't been desensitized by a couple of drinks to the point of not minding the full, adoring embrace of Grantaire, as warm and tight as the summer air that had pushed them into this agreement of mutual fondness.
The sweaters were to blame, he was sure. The way Enjolras bundled himself into them to hide from the gathering chill, it was no wonder Grantaire struggled to see that cherished face. See, it made sense, since he'd been trying so hard to dismantle everything that had always kept people at arm's length, that he would need another way to hide himself now.
Just for a little while, just while he adjusted, perhaps, to Grantaire being there wherever he would go, he would need something to protect himself. Because he'd never had a Grantaire in his world, and as much as he wanted show his gratitude for the new presence, it would surely take some time.
His lover was willing to wait; with every passing day the bite of the morning air grew sharper, and with it came the quiet conviction, one day he will let me be the one to keep the cold world at bay.
It was unmistakably love that lifted Grantaire's heart when he found himself back at the cafe, the meetings having resumed their regular schedule since summer ended, watching Enjolras just as he used to; pink in the autumnal glow of sunshine, he still spoke so beautifully, and watching him he decided it was a wonder he hadn't been suffocated by his eloquent words when he was kissing those rose petal lips.
It was only later, at Enjolras' apartment watching the man read in silence, tucked into himself at the opposite end of the sofa with his toes just brushing Grantaire's knee, that he realized it must be because that particular kind of glorious speech never manifested at any time other than when his love took on the guise of the confident, bold young leader in red.
It was autumn, and it hadn't quite sunk in yet.
It was winter, and he was still cold.
Grantaire was struck with a rare sense of profundity the day he realized for the first time how bizarrely cool Enjolras' fingertips were, how grimly appropriate it was with the pale dawn light casting him almost blue. He was lying beside him in bed, tracing a couple of tentative fingers through the curls laid upon his temple, and while a subdued flutter at the base of his chest urged, you love this man, you dreamed of his face, you always wanted this, the only thought that manifested in his brain was that months ago in the light of spring, Enjolras had looked like he would be warmer to the touch.
Guilt became the bane of his life, for he knew thinking that way was wrong, and might even be construed as cruel had the young leader known. But Enjolras couldn't possibly have seen those most private doubts, because he was mostly too preoccupied with making sure the self he had bared before Grantaire did not prove itself unworthy of the belief he'd convinced the cynic to stake on him.
The marble man would not have feared his judgment, but risen unwavering in spite of it. The marble man would lean unflinching into his lover, warming himself in the arms of that adoring other, locked together long enough that vines might grow upon the two of them to bind them forever that way.
But Enjolras, as it emerged, was not the marble man he undertook to be when he stood tall and radiant in the cafe, or when, calm and smouldering, he'd easily accepted Grantaire's drinks and summery kisses. Enjolras was the soul inside the statue, the delicate breath that equated life within a beautiful exterior - though even the external statue was crumbling in on itself, made pitiful in the vain attempt to come to terms with all the bare intricacies of his soul.
And Grantaire still felt love. Eyes watering from the stabbing wind outside, he could sit contentedly in the cafe and love the blurred image before him of the man who knew the right things to say. Even in the grip of winter, with the place crowded to bursting with the isolated and excluded of society nursing single drinks for hours to have an excuse to escape the street, he still managed to speak words of hope, which blossomed from his lips and flourished in spite of the season in that cramped little room.
But Grantaire knew, now, how those words like flowers would blacken and rot the moment they left the cafe.
Enjolras was sweet. Endearing in his innocence, the edge of anxiety in his eyes was enough to make Grantaire feel bad for thinking the terrible things that wouldn't leave his mind:
He was truly charming in all his youth and inexperience, and his fumbling attempts to act on the love in his heart left no doubt that he was trying very hard to be okay with the foreign sensations he was feeling, and with Grantaire's knowledge of them.
But it wasn't enough.
And Grantaire had more than enough insecurities of his own, but he had struggled to give everything he had to Enjolras, throwing himself wholeheartedly into their relationship despite dreading the possible condemnation from his lover more than he feared even the final judgment before the gates of heaven. And he had waited, always hoping it wouldn't be long before Enjolras could do the same, trusting that Grantaire would love whatever he had to offer, for the simple virtue that he'd chosen to give it. He had a way with words, and when he eventually found them, he would surely use them to convey the feelings he wasn't sure how to act on, finally, finally convincing Grantaire that his love was all he could want.
But Enjolras didn't know how to show him he was enough, and it was winter when Grantaire decided he never would; at least, not before he stopped resenting himself for trying to let someone in.
So it was winter, and he should probably have waited until daylight, because on those cold nights the air would gnaw mercilessly at his bones until he was entirely numb - although perhaps that was an improvement on misery: because there was an abundance of sorrow weighing on his every heavy step as he walked away from the beautiful shell he'd thought he loved, and the stranger who really lived inside.
Grantaire didn't go back to the cafe for a long time.
It fell to lifelong friends to drag Enjolras, devastated and damaged, out from the pit he'd fallen into the moment he realized his lover had left, sickened by the knowledge that he had not been enough for him. And there was no blame there, since it made a sad kind of sense: the love in his heart was barely tamed by the passage of time, but gradually his relief grew up around it, and he was able to come to terms with the fact that he simply hadn't been ready for the intensity of his feelings.
To love and be loved, he would first have to learn it was okay to want that.
So Combeferre and Courfeyrac offered, as any good friends would, to help him pick up the pieces of his broken heart, and to reassemble him as the striking young leader he had tried so hard to mould himself into. But the marble man had never been real, nothing more than a complex mask, and so he said no.
It was several years of reflection and risk-taking and abundant failures alongside his successes, but Enjolras was not alone through any of it, and with time and perseverance, he learned what it was to stand up as himself, uncertainties and insecurities and deliberations and all, and speak his mind.
He had no guise of marble to make himself falsely stern or confident any longer, but what he had gained was a new kind of sincerity: there was an endearing warmth to his words, it drew in his friends and strangers alike, and soon enough he found he was no longer the only one who could speak of fairness and justice with the conviction of the world on the tip of his tongue.
At the root of it all was a newfound sense of self-acceptance.
When he heard again, years later, of a brilliant young orator with a growing sphere of interest and a glistening path in social justice ahead of him, built on the foundation of his boundless compassion, Grantaire found himself pulled back to the cafe where his love first began. It was busy, busier even than he'd known it in the bitter depths of winter, because with a newly discovered knowledge of his own feelings, Enjolras had been able to evoke and enchant the sentiments of so many others.
Being so busy, it was impossible for Grantaire to reclaim his old seat. There was no sunlight dazzling his eyes, therefore, nothing at all to distort the image before him, and it was perfectly clear that this figure was made of neither marble nor gold: Enjolras was just a man, speaking truthfully about the beliefs in his heart, beautiful, real.
And spring had come again.