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“I’m gonna miss you,” Grantaire sighed, pressing his lips against Enjolras’s spine.
Enjolras rolled over so that he was facing Grantaire, and kissed him gently. “I’m only going to be gone for a little over a week,” he said. “You’ll barely even notice that I’m gone, trust me.”
Grantaire made a skeptical noise and kissed Enjolras. “Easy for you to say,” he grumbled. “You’ll be in meetings at a conference with all these wonderful, important people who all share you exact viewpoints, and you’ll forget all about me.”
Enjolras snorted. “Given the hickey the size of a hockey puck you’ve decided to leave on my shoulder, I somehow doubt I’ll forget about you over the next week. And besides, I don’t want somebody who shares my exact viewpoints. If I did, I’d be dating Combeferre.”
Grantaire considered that for a moment. “Good point.” He curled against Enjolras, fingers lightly running up Enjolras’s sides. “I’m still going to miss you, though.”
Sighing, Enjolras kissed Grantaire’s forehead. “I will text you and call you as often as I can, and I’ll try to Skype with you every night before bed. Is that enough to help with the whole ‘missing me’ thing?”
“It’s a start,” Grantaire said, smiling slightly. “Am I allowed to text you as often as I can?”
Enjolras narrowed his eyes. “This is going to involve you texting extremely not suitable for viewing in public things to me, isn’t it?”
Grantaire smirked. “Maybe.”
Sighing again, Enjolras said dryly, “I don’t suppose that there is going to be any way to stop you from doing so. If you want me to be able to text you back in public, though, you may want to save some of the more graphic things for when you know I’ll be alone.”
Grantaire blinked up at him, eyes wide and innocent. “Ok,” he told Enjolras. “I’ll try.”
He didn’t try very hard.
From the moment Enjolras turned on his phone after his plane landed, he was inundated with messages from Grantaire, ranging from the humorous to the naughty to the downright vulgar (those normally caused Enjolras to blush bright red, and he always had to excuse himself to the bathroom for a few moments to pull himself together).
Every day when they talked on the phone or skyped, Enjolras would tell Grantaire all about how embarrassed he was, or how one of his fellow conference attendees had peeked over his shoulder and almost seen the dick pic that Grantaire had just texted.
Grantaire, for his part, just laughed, growing more and more satisfied with each response he evoked.
And every night, just before they both signed off and went to bed, Grantaire would sigh and say, “Sending you all these messages doesn’t make up for not having you here.”
And Enjolras would sigh and reply quietly, “I know. And they don’t make up for how much more annoying you can be in person.” Grantaire would laugh, and then Enjolras would tell him, sincerely, “I love you.”
And Grantaire would reply, “I love you more.”
But then, suddenly, the messages just stopped. Enjolras got out of his meeting one day and had no new text messages, snapchats, emails, nothing. Needless to say, he was a little worried.
He tried calling Grantaire, but it went straight to voicemail. So he called Joly, knowing that Grantaire hung out with Joly and Bossuet fairly frequently. “Enjolras!” Joly said when he picked up. “I’m assuming you’re calling about Grantaire.”
“Yes,” Enjolras said cautiously. “I’m assuming you know why he didn’t text me at all today, and why he isn’t picking up his phone?”
There was a slight scuffle, and then Grantaire’s voice came on the line. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “I was planning on telling you when we skyped tonight. I, uh, I broke my phone.”
Enjolras frowned. “Oh,” he said, feeling a pang of disappointment, since that likely meant that he wouldn’t be receiving any more messages over the remaining days of his conference. “Well, I’m glad it’s nothing serious. When are you going to be able to get a new one?”
“The shop said that they can’t get another one until Monday. Typical.” Grantaire paused before joking, “I’m sure you’re glad that I won’t be able to annoy you anymore.”
Smiling slightly, Enjolras shrugged, even though Grantaire couldn’t see him. “Kind of the opposite, actually. It’s been a nice distraction, and something to look forward to through my more boring meetings. Though maybe I’ll actually be a little more productive now…”
Grantaire snorted. “Doubt it.” His voice softened. “Skype tonight still? I can do it on my laptop.”
Enjolras smiled. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Good,” Grantaire said, then he paused before adding in an off-sounding voice, “By the way, I have a surprise to show you tonight, to give you a head’s up so you don’t freak out.”
Enjolras stiffened, his smile fading. “Why would I freak out?”
“Because you’re a freak,” Grantaire said affectionately. “Anyway, I’ll talk to you tonight.”
Needless to say, Enjolras spent the rest of the day doing exactly what Grantaire warned him against, freaking out over what surprise Grantaire possibly could have to show him. He didn’t have to wait long to find out, though; once Skype started up and Grantaire waved at him, it became abundantly clear what the surprise was: the cast on Grantaire’s wrist. “What did you do?” Enjolras squawked, reaching out to touch the screen as if he could somehow reach through it and touch Grantaire.
Grantaire smiled, a little sheepishly. “Well, in addition to breaking my phone, I broke my wrist.”
“But…how?” Enjolras demanded. “Do I need to kick someone’s ass for you?”
“Darling,” Grantaire said, his voice saccharine, “even with a broken wrist I have a better chance of kicking someone’s ass than you. And no, it was my own stupid fault.” To Enjolras’s surprise, he blushed scarlet and looked away as he mumbled, “I fell off our bed.”
Enjolras frowned. “You…what?”
Grantaire blushed even darker. “I was trying to take a nude selfie, alright? And I wanted to get the angle right so that my dick looked…well, you get the point. But I kind of, um, overbalanced and fell right onto the hand that was holding my phone. In the process, I broke my phone screen and I broke my wrist.”
Enjolras opened and closed his mouth, trying to come up with the proper thing to say. “I want to say I’m sorry,” he said cautiously, “but I also kind of want to laugh at you, and need to know which is appropriate.”
Grantaire grinned. “Well, considering I couldn’t call anyone and had to wait until Joly wandered in and found me half an hour later, I’d go with laughter. We’ve certainly been laughing about it all day, it’s only fair that you do, too.”
Enjolras did laugh then, but it was a gentle laugh, and tinged with something almost like regret. “I wish I was there,” he told Grantaire. “Not only because you’re hurt but because if I had been there, you wouldn’t have been hurt.”
“There’s no guarantee of that,” Grantaire pointed out. “I could have been trying to take a nude selfie for fun. Or art. Or just because I could. Not everything is about you, Enj. Don’t go all selfish on me here.”
Enjolras stuck his tongue out at Grantaire, who returned the gesture before softening. “I do appreciate that, though. Doing things one handed is a bummer. Especially since I can only do one thing at a time while masturbating.”
Rolling his eyes, Enjolras sighed and said, “Leave it to you to make this about sex.”
Grantaire shrugged. “It is one place where you absence is most keenly felt.” He hesitated, then stretched his fingertips toward the screen. “I really do miss you, though. And I wish you were here to kiss me and make me feel better.”
“I know,” Enjolras said, his voice gruff. “But I’ll be home soon.”
“Good.” They were both quiet for a few moments, and then Grantaire cleared his throat and said firmly, “Anyway, the good news is, you will not be without texts while my phone is out of commission. I’ve instructed all of our friends to text you as much as possible. Jehan is probably going to be texting you his poetry, Courfeyrac seemed excited about snapchatting nudes to you, Bahorel just laughed maniacally so who knows what he’s planning, Feuilly said he’d try to send you something in between work, Joly and Bossuet are going to alternate, and Combeferre said he wanted absolutely no part of any of this, but then got that look on his face — you know the one, the evil genius one, so really.”
Enjolras let out an undignified noise. “You are a little shit,” he growled.
“And you love me for it,” Granaire said, smirking.
Enjolras sighed and shook his head. “Unfortunately for everyone involved, I do. I really do.”